Iraqi translators in a new stage production

George Packer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author, most recently, of The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, which won several awards and was named by The New York Times as one of the 10 best books of 2005. He has published The Village of Waiting (1988), a memoir about his years in the Peace Corps in West Africa, and Blood of the Liberals (2000), a three-generational political history, which won the 2001 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. Packer is the editor of The Fight is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World (2003).

In early 2007, George Packer published an article entitled "Betrayed" in The New Yorker about Iraqi interpreters who jeopardized their lives on behalf of the Americans in Iraq with little or no U.S. protection or security. The article drew national attention to the humanitarian and moral scandal. Based on Packer's first-person interviews in Baghdad, the stage adaptation of BETRAYED tells the story of three young Iraqis, two men and one woman, motivated to risk everything by America's promise of freedom. Hailed as "eloquent" and full of "sharp dramatic impact and beauty" by The New York Times, BETRAYED explores the complex relationship between a Sunni and a Shiite Muslim who build a rare bond as they face the daily dangers of working for the American authorities after the 2003 invasion in Baghdad. Joined by a woman who refuses to submit to Islamic law, all three struggle to realize their dreams and hopes for a new world in a country that is collapsing around them.

And now it has been staged by Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company. The play, which is a provocative theatrical adaptation of Packer's eye-opening 2007 essay in The New Yorker, has already won the 2008 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play. Robin Stanton helms this astonishing play, featuring Bobak Cyrus Bakhtiari, Keith Burkland, Denmo Ibrahim, Alex Moggridge, Amir Sharafeh, Khalid Shayota, and James Wagner.

A review of the play can be read here.

New York Times Makes the Pope Majestic

OK, I don't like Ratzinger. We have family reasons dating from early 1940s not to. So when an article about Catholic-Jewish reconciliation was published in Wednesday's New York Times in which he was said to have called on Jews to meet his conciliatory gesture with “ a commitment on their part to fulfill the further steps necessary to realize full communion with the church,” including “recognizing the majesty and authority of the pope and of the Second Vatican Council,” I thought "right.. first a demented infallibility, now he wants to take on some more G-d's attributes and become majestic as well?? And this is supposed to be re conciliatory?"

I was wrong.

Ratzie actually said the following: "Auspico che a questo mio gesto faccia seguito il sollecito impegno da parte loro di compiere gli ulteriori passi necessari per realizzare la piena comunione con la Chiesa, testimoniando così vera fedeltà e vero riconoscimento del magistero e dell’autorità del Papa e del Concilio Vaticano II."

I know enough lame Latin to be aware that magistero and maesta are two different items. Magisterium is Latin for teaching, instruction, or advice, and it means in this context the teaching authority, of the Roman Catholic Church. So the guy wants us to recognize the teaching, not his personal majesty.

Well, I am not sure about us accepting this, Ratzie, but at least it is a relief to know you are not in the process of usurping Adonai.

From "Religion Dispatches" - Translating Rumi

Coleman Barks, Rumi's most popular "translator" in the USA, can neither read nor speak Farsi. Being a poet himself, Barks “re-Englishes” existing translations, releasing, in his own words, “the fire and ecstasy of Rumi’s ghazals” from the stale confines of their scholarly translations.

It doesn't make his critics happy! Read Ryan Croker explaining why they are wrong here.

Barks is also known from his very emotive letter sent in 2003 to President Bush, in which he called for sending translators and peace activists to Iraq instead of bombs: "Now imagine some other way to do it. Quadruple the inspectors, or put a thousand and one U.N. people in. Then call for peace activists to volunteer to go to Iraq for two weeks each. Flood that country with well-meaning tourists, people curious about the land that produced the great saints, Gilani, Hallaj, and Rabia. Set up hostels near those tombs. Encourage peace people to spend a bunch of money in shops, to bring rugs home and samovars by the bushel. Send an Arabic translator with every four peace activists. The U.S. government will pay for the translators and for building and staffing the hostels, one hostel for every twenty activists and five translators. The hostels are state of the art, and they belong to the Iraqis at the end of this experiment. "

You can listen to a sample of Barks "translations" of Rumi's 'What Was Said To the Rose' here

"Slumdogs", idioms and translation

According to reports, an aggrieved Indian has filed a petition in a court against the producers of the film, Slumdog Millionaire

Niranjan Desai, who worked as the press counsellor in the Indian high commission in London in the eighties, makes some good comments on how idioms get lost in mis-interpretations:

"The English cricket team was in India and there was a middle-page spread in an evening paper of photographs of the two teams basking in the sun in Indore, if one remembers correctly. The caption was, 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the sun!' I got a telephone complaint from an Indian with a thick Punjabi accent soon enough. I was asked to immediately take up the issue with the editor because the reporter had dared to insult all Indians as mad dogs ! I tried to explain to this gentleman about the origin of the phrase and assured him that this in no way implied that Indians were mad dogs. He quickly brushed aside my explanation and accused me of being a coward in not standing up to the 'gora'! "

A New Translation of Shalom Aleichem's "Wandering Stars'

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sholom Aleichem.

The Ann Arbor-based translator and author Aliza Shevrin, who has also done eight other Aleichem novels from Yiddish, said in an interview that hers is the first complete English version of "Wandering Stars" - a different translator in 1952 abridged the text and gave it a happy ending completely different from the Yiddish original. Shevrin's fluid translation captures the idiomatic richness of the original Yiddish and brings Aleichem's vanished culture to vibrant life.

Sholem Aleichem is the pen name of Sholem Rabinovitch (1859–1916), the most beloved writer in Yiddish literature, whose most famous work is "The Fiddler on the Roof". Born in Pereyaslev, Ukraine, one of nine children in a poverty-stricken Jewish family, complete with an evil stepmother, Sholom Rabinovitch (the writer’s real name) fled the pogroms and immigrated to New York in 1905. At 16, he took a job tutoring the daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman. He promptly fell in love with his 13-year-old student. After several years the two eloped, to the businessman’s despair. But shortly after reconciling, his father-in-law died and left Rabinovitch, already the author of several stories under his pen name, a vast fortune.

In Wandering Stars, Reisel, daughter of a poor cantor, and Leibel, son of a rich man, fall under the spell of a traveling Yiddish acting company. Together they run off to join the theater but quickly become separated. Reisel goes on to become Rosa Spivak, concert star, and Leibel becomes Leo Rafalesko, theatrical sensation. Kept apart by their own successes and by the managers who exploit their talent, they tour the world until their wanderings bring them both to New York. An engrossing romance, a great New York story, and an anthem for the theater, Wandering Stars is a long-lost literary classic, rediscovered here in a vibrant new translation.

The new translation will be published in May 2009.

Read more here

There is an excpert from the new translation here .

Inquiry into trial’s use of unqualified interpreter

Comment: Why do I have a sinking feeling that the worse the recession becomes, the more I am going to see of such cases? Hungry students, agencies scraping the bottom, hapless victims and a miscarriage of justice?

By John Bynorth
http://www.sundayherald.com/search/display.var.2468270.0.inquiry_into_trials_use_of_unqualified_interpreter.php

An urgent inquiry has been launched into how a jury trial of a migrant collapsed after the sheriff discovered the accused’s interpreter had no qualifications.
AN URGENT inquiry has been launched into how a jury trial of a migrant collapsed after the sheriff discovered the accused's interpreter had no qualifications, nor had she previously been engaged in a trial.

Sheriff James Tierney halted the trial of Krzysztof Kucharski on the second day after the freelance interpreter admitted her inexperience in open court, despite reassurances from the interpreting firm that she was suitably qualified. She herself had, at the start of the trial, confirmed that she was able to undertake the work.

The Scottish Court Service (SCS) hired criminology and psychology student Beata Kozlowska from Alpha Translating and Interpreting Services, the country's largest interpreting firm. Kozlowska was to interpret in the case against Kucharski, 24, at Aberdeen Sheriff Court last month, despite not possessing the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (DPSI), the minimum industry benchmark qualification for linguists working in the public sector.

Kucharski, a car valet from Aberdeen, was alleged to have repeatedly struck his victim, Fryderyk Polak, on the body with a knife or similar instrument to his severe injury on October 12 last year. He has always maintained his innocence.

Kucharski's defence lawyer, Taco Nolf, himself a qualified translator in two foreign languages, formally objected to Kozlowska's handling of key evidence from two Polish witnesses.
The sheriff then investigated the interpreter's qualifications and deserted the case pro loco et tempore ("for the place and time") and discharged the 15-strong jury. Legal sources have indicated it is unlikely the trial could be re-staged.

The event highlighted how the SCS is continuing to use inexperienced foreign students - without the DPSI or any other interpreting qualifications - despite issuing guidelines in June that interpreters should hold the DPSI with the option in Scots law "or an equivalent qualification of similar standard".

The Sunday Herald revealed this year how mistakes are being made that could lead to miscarriages of justice, and that migrants without the DPSI are exploiting a lucrative trade in court interpreting.

Labour's justice spokeman, Richard Baker, said: "If cases are being lost like this due to translation errors then something is seriously wrong with our prosecution system. There is a principle that everyone is entitled to fair representation but from this evidence it appears this is not the case when some translation companies are involved."

In 2006, Nolf was representing in an assault case at Wick Sheriff Court that collapsed because of an error made by one of Alpha's unqualified freelance interpreters.

The lawyer said: "This is the third trial in which I have been involved that has been deserted because of incompetent interpreters, all of them supplied by the same agency."

In a statement, the SCS said that an interpreter with the DPSI plus Scottish law option qualification was "specifically requested in this case", and that Alpha provided a note to the court explaining why it thought the interpreter had other suitable qualifications, which was accepted.
It added: "The matter has been urgently raised with Alpha Translating, and we are awaiting the outcome of their internal inquiry."

Saif Shah, head of interpreting at Alpha, said it followed the guidelines in providing all relevant details about its interpreters. He added: "We are very disappointed about this development and will be investigating the matter internally and with our clients at the SCS."

An Englishman’s life in translation

Having coffee with Denys Johnson-Davies does not seem all that remarkable – until you remember that this silver-haired Englishman shared a table with Tawfik al Hakim three decades before you were born. Hakim may not be as familiar to western readers as Naguib Mahfouz, but he was a much bigger deal in his time. Then again, Johnson-Davies was a literary figure in Cairo long before Mahfouz made his name.

“Can you imagine,” he says, recalling his early days with the BBC in Evesham, where the broadcast company’s headquarters were relocated while London was bombed during the Second World War. “Here was Britain, with this enormous empire, throughout the Arab world – it didn’t have anybody who spoke Arabic. They did have this one Scotsman, Cowen,” he corrects himself, “but when the war came, there was nobody in Cambridge apart from me and Abba Eban,” he smiles, “who later became the Israeli foreign minister. When I started learning Arabic I was 15; they wouldn’t take me at Cambridge so I went to London, and I went to Cambridge when I was 16. The BBC had obviously contacted Cambridge and said, ‘Do you have anyone studying Arabic?’ And so I went to London, and I remember being taken into the studio to listen to a news bulletin in Arabic, and I didn’t even know what the subject was, let alone understand a word. But they took me on.” It was in Evesham, while living with the Arab employees (“mainly they were Egyptians”) in bunks in an army-managed dormitory, that Johnson-Davies began to learn Arabic for real: “It was a third university for me, and very much better than Cambridge or London. Directly I was released, I went to Cairo...”

Nearly six decades and numerous seminal translations later, Johnson-Davies received the inaugural Personality of the Year Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2007, adding incentive to complete his new book of Emirati short stories in translation, a project begun several years ago to be published by the American University in Cairo Press with support from the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage in time for the next Abu Dhabi Book Fair. He is here with the final proofs, to revise them with Juma al Qubaisi, the director of the Abu Dhabi Book Fair, to catch up with the poet Ahmad Rashid Thani and other friends and to reflect on his relationship with the Gulf. On his way to Abu Dhabi, Johnson-Davies stopped in Doha, and was amazed to find absolutely no sign of the city he first knew in 1951. “I would ask about certain things and say, ‘It was here a long time ago.’ And people would say, ‘How long ago? In the time of Sheikh Khalifa?’ No, Sheikh Ali [bin Abdulla Al Thani]. ‘Sheikh Ali!’ It was as if I was talking about prehistoric times.”

Johnson-Davies originally went to Doha to represent an American oil company: “I had signed a two-year contract, but after a year they said there was no oil in the sea – it was a marine company. And then while I was there, somebody came along to me and said that in Dubai, they want a translator to translate for Sheikh Said bin Maktoum, but they have no money, so are you ready to perform this service? And I said yes; I’d love to see Dubai. So, I went by private aeroplane. There was no airport or anything in Doha, and nothing at all in Dubai, no hotels or amenities. They put me up in a place belonging to the sheikh, and I translated for five days or so, but I saw Dubai in 1951. And then,” he goes on in the same breath, “I came here as the head of Sawt al Sahel (The Voice of the Coast), which was a radio operated by the English, an Arabic broadcast, and all the employees were Palestinians, poor and cheerful men. The place was headquartered in Sharjah, but I would travel all round, to Ras al Khaimah, to Abu Dhabi. That was in 1969... So,” Johnson-Davies winds down abruptly, “I had experience very early on here.”
And as he gets up to greet the head waiter at the Beach Rotana, who welcomes him as an old friend, it suddenly dawns on you just how remarkable having coffee with Denys Johnson-Davies really is.

Youssef Rakha
The National (UAE)

Copywriting Thoughts

Some decades back, in the magic country of India, a print advertisement for a two-in-one battery was designed. The copy simply said: “Revolution in the world of batteries”. Most of the target users lived in the hinterland, hence translation of the line was essential. The translator took less than half an hour to come up with "Battery ke duniya mein yugantar". The copy chief knew no better. So that line got translated in all vernacular languages. In the Bengali ad, the copy read somewhat faithfully “Battery-r jagate jugantar”. "Jugantar" or "jug er antar" means beginning of a new era.

A smart brand manager, sensing the criticality of the language ads, recommended an advertising pre-test. A handful of consumers living in a small town near Calcutta and its surrounding rural areas saw this ad and said they liked it. When asked what they understood from the ad, all of them said the same thing: "The house of Jugantar is bringing out a new battery". Jugantar, incidentally, was one of the two top Bengali dailies in the state then.

A few questions to ponder here:

Is comprehension equal to persuasion? Does understanding of what is being said or shown in an ad in Hindi or for that matter in English — neither being the language of comfort — ensure automatically that I will be convinced or cajoled by the message? Is comprehension only a necessary condition or is it also sufficient?

The touch point for persuasion does not reside in the language but in what the language envelopes. A language is not merely the letters, the words and their grammar. It is the cultural DNA of a consumer world. To a Bengali or an Oriya, to a Marathi or an Ohomiya, the soft points of titillation are rooted in their native culture encoded in their own language. Sure, the Hindi ad can do a reasonable approximation but it possibly can never do as great a job of persuasion in Bengal or Assam as it will do in UP or Bihar. Even in these days of satellite transmission, enticing someone still needs tribal idioms. Translated advertising thus can never be an adequate surrogate.

Translating Religious Texts

"One who wishes to translate from one language to another by rendering each word literally and adhering to the original order of words and sentences... will end up with a translation that is difficult and confusing. Instead, the translator should first try to grasp the sense of the subject and then explain the theme, according to his understanding, in the other language..." - Maimonides to his translator, Rabbi Shmuel ibn Tibbon

This is elementary to any translation attempt. But every translator faces the dilemma of how far is it permissible for him/her to go? Two conflicting aims play a part here: the aim of faithfully conveying the content of the original, and the aim of making it not only understood to their intended audience but also as attractive and as "natural" as possible in its target text version.

This dilemma is doubly acute when it comes to conveying the teachings of any "sacred texts" to an audience whose primary point of reference is western and secular, because the translator - or "adapter" - is attempting here to bridge two worlds which differ in far more than language and idiom; two worlds which differ in their very conception of intellectual discourse and articulation.

The modern Western mind recognizes no sacred ideas or inviolable axioms. "Taking yourself too seriously," being "dogmatic" and failing to offer a "balanced view" are rhetorical "sins". Nothing is for sure: the author has to keep it light, with a periodic wink at the audience that says, "Hey, guys, we're just throwing some ideas around." So called "sacred texts", on the other hand, unabashedly inform and instruct readers, being written as blueprints for existence, without any self-depreciating humor or moral ambivalence. They presume that the reader will take them seriously and regard the "truths" they convey with reverence.

So the translator - or is it "adaptor"? - has two options:

(1) They can limit their tampering with the original text or idea to its re-articulation in the new language, while preserving the source text's style and approach; or

(2) They can assume, to a certain extent, the tone of modern writing, by attempting to truly translate: "to grasp the sense of the subject and then explain the theme, according to their understanding, in the other language" not only in the dictionary sense of "language" but in the broader cultural-conceptual sense as well.

What are corpora for?

I get this queestion every time we talk Translation Memories, so here are a few links to good reading materials for translators:

http://www.jostrans.org/issue07/art_wilkinson.php

Exploring corpora with concordancers can help translators to improve the quality of their translations by, for example, providing them with information about collocates; by helping them to choose between terms; or by enabling them to confirm intuitive decisions. But corpora also allow unpredictable, incidental learning: the user may notice unfamiliar uses in a concordance and follow them up by exploratory browsing. The article discusses the potential of corpora to throw up previously unknown information that may be relevant to a translation assignment, and illustrates how advanced search strategies can increase the likelihood of “accidentally” finding relevant information.

http://www.jostrans.org/issue10/art_maher.php

Abstract: Translators and editors who work in a specialised field—a particular branch of medicine, technology or finance, for instance—may find it difficult to acquire (or enhance) their domain-specific knowledge other than by learning as they go or going back to college. Both strategies can be slow and costly. Our paper describes a faster, more economical way to climb the specialist learning ladder, namely a corpus-guided approach to translating, revising and editing. We describe two tools for analysing a corpus of model texts: on the one hand, a user-friendly concordancer with an intuitive interface; on the other, an equally easy-to-use desktop-based indexer. Finally, we propose an approach to the issue of corpus size (sampling adequacy) that provides a practical solution for the working translator: we recommend creating a carefully chosen, cleaned text collection that functions as a reliable substrate corpus for language pattern guidance and adding to it an ad-hoc ‘quick and dirty’ corpus to further narrow the topic focus as needed.

Why you should wear the right footwear!

Daniel James, born Ismail Mohammed Beigi Gamasai, 44, is a corporal in the British Army who has been charged withallegedly passing information to Iranians. James was formerly the interpreter for British Army Lt.Gen. David Richards , who commanded the NATO forces in Afghanistan. James speaks fluent Pashtun and Farsi.

So?

Well, the reason HRM forces felt there was something wrong with Corporal James was that (a) he was not deferential enough for a corporal; (b) wore a weird sunhat and (c) had different footwear. In addition, he also used magic (!!!)

The Guardian reported that:

"An army interpreter accused of spying for Iran was "strange and eccentric" in both his appearance and behaviour, his former commanding officer told a court today.

Tehran-born Daniel James, who also worked for the British military commander in Afghanistan, wore "distinctive and odd" headgear and did not act in the way expected of a low-ranking soldier, Colonel John Donnelly said (...) "His attire wasn't what I would normally have expected of a junior NCO," he said. "He had a very distinctive and odd sun hat with a cape down the back of his neck, and he wore slightly different boots."

Two weeks later the same paper stated that: "James explained that his interest in salsa had led him to Cuba. While there, he was introduced to the Yoruba faith. "I actually did black magic for General Richards, praying to God to protect him from the Taliban," he said. "

Interestingly enough, on his first appearance James said it was racism in the British Army that led to his downfall..

The guy needs a good shrink and a pair of regulation boots.

Linguistic Anecdote Award of the Year

Thanks to John Rawlins of http://johnrawlins.typepad.com/

Supposedly Madame de Gaulle, the wife of the former French president, was asked at a diplomatic dinner what she desired most in life.

'A penis', she tartly replied, causing a stunned and embarrassed silence around the table.

'Ah yes, Madame', said a quick-thinking diplomat once normal speaking became possible, 'I'm sure all of us wish for happiness'.

"So who is your mother sleeping with, Sir?"

This is better than the Welsh sign board:

The incident occurred in November last year, when a standard request for advance questions from the Dutch Foreign Ministry turned into what an officer in the Israeli Foreign Ministry called a "major, major incident." As the Jerusalem Post reported earlier this week, a group of Israeli journalists attempted to use an online translation tool to translate their Hebrew questions into English. The results were less than precise.

"Helloh bud," began the e-mail. "Enclosed five of the questions in honor of the foreign minister: The mother your visit in Israel is a sleep to the favor or to the bed your mind on the conflict are Israeli Palestinian, and on relational Israel Holland."

The e-mailed questions were more than simply an embarrassment for the reporters. According to the Jerusalem Post, the Dutch Foreign Ministry is now considering canceling the entire trip and filing a formal complaint over the incident.

After the questions were entered into the online translation tool, questions like "What, in your opinion, needs to be done regarding the Iranian threat to Israel?" Became: "What in your opinion needs to do opposite the awful the Iranian of Israel." Additional translation errors included "bandages of the knitted domes" instead of "Dome of the Rock" and a question that read "Why we did not heard on mutual visits of main the states of Israel and Holland, this is in the country of this."

Write Your Out of Office Note in English

From the BBC

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.

Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".

Read more here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm

Apparently, this is not the only time Welsh has been translated incorrectly or put in the wrong place:
• Cyclists between Cardiff and Penarth in 2006 were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an "inflamed bladder".

• In the same year, a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.

• In 2006, a shared-faith school in Wrexham removed a sign which translated the Welsh for staff as "wooden stave".

• Football fans at a FA Cup tie between Oldham and Chasetown - two English teams - in 2005 were left scratching their heads after a Welsh-language hoarding was put up along the pitch. It should have gone to a match in Merthyr Tydfil.

Oh, well.. we shouldn't blame them. After all, we only speak Australian :-)

FAREWELL TO ARMS

As a new leaf is starting for AUSIT, and we move our National Administration to PAMS, it is time to pay tribute to the person who had, for so many years, been the voice of AUSIT. We all know Georges Mayes as the Administrator, but few know him as the networks engineer and technical translator. And although he will no longer answer the 1800 number, he is not leaving AUSIT – just changing hats.
For me, this was a bit of “re-discovering Georges” whom I only got to know personally at the last AUSIT Awards and immediately sensed there was more than met my eye in those half serious utterances. I was right. This interview was done in a hurry, as Georges is about to be beamed up by Scotty to Mauritius, and I am glad it went as smoothly as it did, the hardest part being Georges’ hesitancy to provide a mug shot “so that the guys at Port Hedland don’t find out I escaped”.

SB: I used to think you were French, but you’re not.
I was born in Mauritius - a colony that had been French for a very long time before being taken over by the British. So I am bilingual because although technically the official language was English, both English and French were spoken in the parliament, and the French-speaking Catholic Church had more weight than the English-speaking Anglican Church.
When Mauritius became a British colony, Britain was interested in the sugar produced by the French settlers (on the backs of African slaves, of course) and kept amicable relations with the sugar producers, so Mauritius remained very French. I spoke French at home, but at secondary school the HSC exam papers came from England. I therefore studied Shakespeare and Chaucer (Canterbury Tales) towards the end of secondary, after having become familiar with Molière in the earlier years of secondary schooling.

SB: So being bilingual led to translating?
Not immediately. I am a relative late-comer into this industry. When I left secondary school I joined Cable and Wireless who had the monopoly on overseas telecommunications. C&W had a branch in Australia, and in all British colonies, before they gave way to the OTC in Australia. In 1962 they sent me to their technical college at Porthcurno in Cornwall, and I spent 18 months there before returning to Mauritius to work as a telecommunications technician. In 1968 I was involved in a very severe car accident and in 1969 I went to England for advanced treatment and I eventually resigned from C&W and started a career in Computer Technology.
From England I came to Melbourne and worked in mainframe computers and then with what they called super mini computers. Later I returned to my previous preference for telecommunications when I joined Victoria Police to work in mainframe communications, before joining the Crime Department to work in Local Area Networking. When Jeff Kennett became premier of Victoria and started to privatise everything I returned to the private sector and worked for the ANZ bank in the same field of Local Area Networking.
I was short of my 60th when ANZ informed me that my position no longer existed. At that time there was a slump in information technology and finding a new job in that field was not easy. That's when I started enquiring about translation and found out about NAATI from l'Alliance Française in Melbourne and then about AUSIT. I emailed a few AUSIT members enquiring about how one "became a translator" but got no responses. Then my ex-wife sent me a paper clipping advertising Translation studies at Monash University. It was early Translation study days at Monash and eventually I came to the UWS Bankstown campus in Milperra in south-western Sydney, because they had a good track record, having been responsible for interpreting and translation during the Olympic games. The intent was to go back to Melbourne upon completion of my studies at UWS. However my wife (Josiane) and I were lucky to find this little "garden flat" to rent in East Hills. It was next to the Georges river and within 5 minutes by car from the UWS campus, . It was a delightful and memorable time; the equivalent of a little stay EN PROVENCE. During my working life I had always studied for my employers, but now I was studying for myself. At UWS I had Felicity Mueller, Sandra Hale and Vivian Stevenson amongst my lecturers. They are passionate about their profession and they are still active members of AUSIT. Felicity gave me the application form to join AUSIT as a student, which I did. The rest is history.

SB: OK. I know this sounds theoretical, but which is your “native” tongue?
Being Mauritian means being multicultural. In the translation field there are, as you know, domains. In the technical domain English is my first language. In the personal domain, French is my first language, and so on.

SB: You must have worked on some fascinating technical bits as a translator..
I have not done a lot of translation to date. The fascination is when the text being translated leads into research that takes you into the thinking behind the text. Sounds a bit pompous, I know, but that’s what I like most about it. I will be getting back into translating again when I return from my holidays.

SB: And the Administration part?
Because we felt so much at home in Sydney, we moved there permanently. By the time I completed my Masters in Translation at UWS, we had sold our little place in Melbourne and bought an old house in Ingleburn. The thinking behind translation was that, apart from the intellectual interest, it would allow me to work for as long as I wanted and not be subject to outsourcing, down sizing etc.. In the short term I had bills to pay and I tried my luck at becoming a CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) instructor. I was unable to find employment in that field and Josiane and I spent many many months doing home renovation for friends who had lots of houses they wanted to renovate and rent. Then came the job of part time administrator and I started working in that capacity at Uli Priester's office in Sydney. Eventually it became apparent that working from home was far more practical for this part time job. 2 Hours travel per day for a part time job and the fact that the phone calls interfered with the translation environment of Uli's office made working from home an obvious choice. And so I did. The trouble with working from home is that it is part time pay but full time work and AUSIT has consumed all my hours and very little translation has occurred. What I do is labour intensive.
Still, my years as administrator have been wonderful because I have met some incredible people I would not have met otherwise. AUSIT NSW organised a farewell dinner for me in Sydney last month and Josiane commented about the richness of the very many unassuming, unpretentious, formidable, translators and interpreters who were there. And I would also like to mention my colleague, Bradley Dawson, who unfortunately left as well. I say unfortunately, because he is very gifted and talented, and he is still an asset to AUSIT.

SB: You must have met some wonderful and interesting people throughout the years..
Oh I could mention quite a few, but I won’t, because you can't mention all. So that would be unfair. But what I would like to mention are the unsung heroes. For example, the lady who is visually impaired, can only work 20 hours a week, and is worried because revalidation might stop her pursuing her work as an interpreter. There are many like her who provide an essential community service as well. In her case, her physical handicap also allows her to gently admonish, in their mother tongue, those who give up too easily on the rehabilitation work required of them.
I guess in life there are those who look after number one at the expense of others, and those who look after number one full stop. And then there are the many who are very cognizant of their environment and who have the intellect and the sensitivity to know its boundaries as well as its possibilities, and whose prime motivation is not self but something else, and in the case of my unsung AUSIT heroes the something else is translation, interpreting, the profession, the community.
My unsung heroes are the gentle dignified souls who speak softly but so coherently and who have a powerful message to share.

SB: What will you remember with a smile?
I guess the young mum with her very new baby at the general meeting. In a different setting, I will always recall with a smile the mum who was explaining the ins and outs of administration to visitors whilst attending to the need of 2 very young boys, ushering in the serviceman who came to repair the washing machine, coping with translation deadline and helping run a business. It was all done with a tranquility that would make the Dalai Lama envious.

SB: Where do you see us – translators and interpreters – going in the future?
We do know about very qualified migrants who are labourers because their experience and qualifications are not recognised in Australia. It is possible that very qualified translators and interpreters may become further marginalised by the revalidation process.
And I have in mind the translator who spends "a great deal of time trying to hone my skills as a translator and first and foremost to produce high-quality translations, but not many of the activities in the logbook seem very relevant to what I actually do..........It is almost as if the whole thing is about a DIFFERENT profession. I have been translating for many years and have gathered various qualifications along the way. I did an excellent year-long course in legal translation overseas. A great deal of time was spent on translation skills (in my university degree course overseas) ."

SB: And your future plans?
When I come back I have 2 weeks work filling in for a friend who goes on annual leave After that I am thinking about cryo-preservation. It occurs to me that I am too far ahead of current thinking, which doesn’t help. Perhaps they could bring me back into action in 10 years. It is possible I may not go ahead with that because Josiane gave the concept a cold reception. Plan B is translation and whatever else I can find. Perhaps I am not old enough to go into hibernation.

Bruno and the Snake

We had a big drama yesterday.

Dan came back home earlier than usual from work, and that is one big blessing in this whole story.

About 10 minutes after her arrival, Bruno - my remaining dog - was bitten by an adult, 1-meter long brown snake. Bruno unfortunately did a wee-wee on the thing, and got bitten. Not that she let it go. When Dan turned around to see what the commotion was, Bruno was shaking a 1-meter thingy in her teeth, blood sprouting all over her. It is good that she is trained to obey - LEAVE IT means leave it. RUN. UP. STAY. Otherwise we would have had a dead staffie *sigh*

We rushed her to the vet within 10 minutes, but by the time we got there she was losing her back legs and bowel control. God, I was so worried about her. Especially as I run into the vets saying "She is still all right" only to hear Dan screaming from the front yard "STRETCHER! Her legs are gone!"

Her heartbeat was 145 per minute and she was labouring for breath. They gave her one vial of anti-venom, antibiotics, Vitamin C injection, etc. etc. and we drove her (much more perkier, but unable to stand on her back legs) to the veterinary hospital 45 minutes away, where a friend of ours is a vet.
By 6:00 PM she was vomiting, and her blood would not clot. She was given the second vial of anti-venom, and we waited for the next clotting test at 11:00 PM. According to the vet, she had about 85% chance by then.

Today at 9:00 AM they gave her the third vial and she is finally clotting almost normally. As Fiona, the vet said, "she has suddenly metamorphosed into a very cuddly animal; but having said that, I'd rather see the fidgety Bruno back to us again.." She is going to stay at the hospital until Monday..

The pleasure is costing us well over 1500 bucks. I might be found standing on the corner of Queen and Edward, selling Big Issue, or playing the accordion. Just kidding - we have insurance for this kind of stuff.

As if that wasn't a worry enough, this shitty 1 meter snake is still somewhere around the house (I have heard it in the roof of my office before), probably with some injuries as Bruno did manage to get her teeth into it. From what we know, that is something to worry about big time.. Friends are urging snake-catchers, as these wonderful little creatures lay 30-40 eggs and hatch in 4 months. I had two encounters with this snake already - one when it was a babe, and I let it be; and the other late autumn when I moved a green tree frog out of my footpath, and it was doing the Indian Dance about 2 cm from my hand (at night), but thankfully did not strike. It spent the winter in my office, slithering around the ceiling - but I let it be, because I don't believe I have more right to this place than it does. What happened with Bruno is that she peed on it, it struck, she grabbed it in her teeth and shook it badly enough to be splattered with blood. So now I have a potentially dangerous and injured snake somewhere around the house, feeling vulnerable and so not in a mood to behave. We have to be extra careful.

Last week, on the tree outside the car port, we had a dozen miners, the whole babbler brood and our (by now adult) six butcherbirds, plus a crow - making such an emergency racket that it was hard not to notice. They were all sitting up high off the ground, behaving nervously and looking into the shrubs bordering us and the neighbours. I suspected then that they were aware of a snake, but Dan and I couldn't find it. I am glad we did not, Dan shuffling as she usually does in her Christ-like sandaled feet!

*******

I got lots of support from my friends, all begging me to get a snake-catcher (or charmer, or whatever) to get rid of it. But the best email came from my dear friend Rehab in London:

"Hi Sam,I was wondering why I am not hearing from you any more. Now I know. So, you were hearing a snake in the roof of your office where you work. No big deal, eh? I have gone as far as hearing a rat which was enough for me to end my stay and run like a pro. Fear has an amazing effect on a middle-aged, over-weight woman. They should consider it in the Olympics. I hope Bruno will recover well. Let me know what's up with her. Don't do the Big Issue or accordion thing. Bruno gotta have her share in this especially the mess is partially hers. Have her learn some tricks and bring in some cash lol. Snake charming might be an option now that it is the major culprit.

So, we have a case of a poisoned dog and a rabbied snake. I salute you... you came face to face with it twice and did nothing (the snake lol). It only took him a wee-wee over his bald head for him to avenge his honor... I told you it's a he.. and probably of Arab origin lol. "

*****

I want to marry!!!

Not me :-)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7554892.stm presents a young Egyptian female writer, Ghada Abdelaal whose blog turned into a book and will become a sitcome.The blog, for those of you who read in Arabic and understand Egyptian vernacular, is here http://www.wanna-b-a-bride.blogspot.com/.

I have not laughed so hard in a long time.. As good as The Big Fat Greek Wedding (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS1aFVVOJmg).

After having laughed, however, a question crossed my mind. How do you translate this into English. Translating Ghada's writings would involve (a) translating foreign humour and (b) translating a whole cultural perception totally alien to the English-speaking world. Not to mention that the vernacular will have to be translated into vernacular - i.e. Aussie dialect - or totally exoticised to remain Egyptian. In both cases one loses much of the original appeal.

Any ideas?

Farewell to a teacher... who didn't even know

It is difficult to say what the influence of Sami Khashaba was on me, but he definitely made me aware very early in my life what a great translation looked like.

I was a bilingual teenager when I first got to read Colin Wilson - through my dad's fascination with him - and I read him in translation, the translations done by Sami Khashaba.

Later, in my first years at uni, I re-read Colin Wilson in English, and found him as good as Sami's translations of him. In actual fact, Sami probably made Colin sound more academic than he ever was, without killing the boyish enthusiasm.

Sami passed away last month. Me, far away from the throbbing heart of the Arab intellectual circles, did not even get to hear until today.

I am a translator, Sami. It’s a pity I can’t tell you that, and thank you for what you taught me without knowing.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/904/cu2.htm

Just Surfing

I came back from Melbourne yesterday more a zombie than a human, but my inert mental state did not stop me from savouring the after-taste of yet another good workshop.

So there were 20 in Brisbane, 20 in Melbourne and over 60 in Sydney, and then some more in Hobart and Launceston. Maybe not what the Pope got, but for AUSIT, this is not bad for a PD performance. What was even better, was the fact that people were really interested, that the workshop was full of participant's questions, and that people had fun as well as learning new information.

I call it making holes in brick-walls. Love the sunshine that comes in afterwards.

Once the clouds of sleep depravation and hurting feet lifted, I started thinking about what one VIC/TAS member had said - we are an aging industry in Australia, and no one is preparing the younger generation. I have to admit that it was a bit of a shock to the system to find out how many seasoned (and often BBQed) translators, with many more years of expertise than me, battled with the world of new technologies, and how many missed on what it could offer them.

So maybe the book is in order now. NOW. Before I, too, become too tired and old to teach. But a book that stays updated, not one that is obsolete before it even hits the offset press. So maybe a hyper-book? A book written by more than one person, by all of us, together, as we learn? An interactive book, full of good tips, and laughter?

I think I will start it with a Google Group first, and a dedicated blog for my longer epiphanies.

Pommies Making Fun of Kiwis?

Only on Sky Sport (http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12325_3680560,00.html) can you see such lack of tact towards other "Englishes":

"Language

All of us here meanwhile are still coming to terms with the cultural differences between New Zealand and dear old Blighty. Here, and at no added expense, is a quick guide to the language and the customs:

To start with, "chicken" is something you do when you arrive at an airport.

The "flight-dick" is what the pilot sits on.

A "pin" is what you write with.

A "pun" is what you pop balloons with.

I don't know how you say "no pun intended".

Three times two is "sux".

Honeymooning couples are expected to have "six".

*****

Which woodwork did this ignoramus come out of? Two by three is sex, as I can ascertain from my wonderful osteopath.. "See you at sex, Sam, next Thursday.." I wish! Instead, I get a good cracking of my spine, but no sex :-D

If anything "sux", it is the writer of the above article.

Not fair dinkum at all. The Poms better get their interpreters with them when they come to the country of "where the hell are yeah?"