Translators, Inc., a world leader in foreign language solutions (aren't they all world leaders?) is giving its clients cash back offers, discounts, referral programs, and translation give-aways of up to $10,000, hoping they will give them work rather than go somewhere else.
Discount is a dirty word, mind you.
If you can give your client 10 grand, how much are you making? You obviously have loads of liquid cash lying around, or you would be mad to do this. Or maybe you have joined slave-trade and have a few guys locked up in various garages around Florida, slaving away at their laptops?
If I was a business, my first concern would be - can I get high quality for low price? After all, it is my product that you guys are translating for overseas markets. Can I trust you not to hire some local court clerk in you-know-where who does 7 languages officially and 6 others on the side while running a successful ear-cleaning and nasal-hairs trimming??
Monday, May 04, 2009
Cheater Blogging - how to unethically market yourself
Go here.
What do you see? A start of an academic article on a blog that purports to belong to a translation company, right? Except that it does not make sense as only the first paragraph is included, there is a totally unrelated photo, and no author name.
This is because the person owning the URL is plagiarising articles from other legitimate websites (including Accurapid) to bring in traffic to his/her website at no great effort for themselves. And the more they put, the higher the probability that people like me, who keep an RSS and a Google Alert for publications in my industry field, will be directed to this website.
They are going to be in great trouble if I find any of my academic writing on there!
What do you see? A start of an academic article on a blog that purports to belong to a translation company, right? Except that it does not make sense as only the first paragraph is included, there is a totally unrelated photo, and no author name.
This is because the person owning the URL is plagiarising articles from other legitimate websites (including Accurapid) to bring in traffic to his/her website at no great effort for themselves. And the more they put, the higher the probability that people like me, who keep an RSS and a Google Alert for publications in my industry field, will be directed to this website.
They are going to be in great trouble if I find any of my academic writing on there!
The Headaches of conversions, virgules and ellipsis
"..my purpose here is to assure my colleagues, who will forever be accused of treason, that English is like any other language: a language in constant change, whose users will do what they please, stylebooks and scolding editors notwithstanding. Translators of non-fiction documents, if lucky, will have access to people who will be able to clarify texts that have hard to crack nuts in them.." - Anne Jones, legal and technical translator
If you do technical translations, then you should read the Ever-Changing English: A Translator’s Headache by Anne. Just to whet your appetite, here are a few gems:
(1) “If there is no data, NA it.” As it turned out, the idea was for the person to write NA (N/A or Not Applicable) in the space provided for writing the data. (This is an example of "verbing")
(2) "place on a table and/or rack.” Here the issue is really of a physical impossibility: you cannot place the same object on a table and a rack at the same time. (An example of a nonsensical virgule)
(3) A “temperature EN” was explained to me as a device with an Equipment Number that is used to measure temperature. And the engineer triumphantly informed me that “temperature is not a noun!” (elliptic ellipsis enough to make you want to give up translating and go on dole!)
Do read it. Long as it is, it is very entertaining (and elliptically useful).
If you do technical translations, then you should read the Ever-Changing English: A Translator’s Headache by Anne. Just to whet your appetite, here are a few gems:
(1) “If there is no data, NA it.” As it turned out, the idea was for the person to write NA (N/A or Not Applicable) in the space provided for writing the data. (This is an example of "verbing")
(2) "place on a table and/or rack.” Here the issue is really of a physical impossibility: you cannot place the same object on a table and a rack at the same time. (An example of a nonsensical virgule)
(3) A “temperature EN” was explained to me as a device with an Equipment Number that is used to measure temperature. And the engineer triumphantly informed me that “temperature is not a noun!” (elliptic ellipsis enough to make you want to give up translating and go on dole!)
Do read it. Long as it is, it is very entertaining (and elliptically useful).
Techno-damage
This is a very well written - but not very well thought out - article on why SMS and Twitter are doing damage to our language(s).
Not very well thought out because language does not die except when its speakers die, and it does not "deteriorate", at least not in theory, just because it changes. True, it might not be to our liking, but hey! Shakespeare would not like our Queen's English either - and I would dearly love to hear what Chaucer would have to say about the modern "translations" of his Canterbury Tales.
Twitter has its uses - mostly pushing advertising and sharing emotional crap by mind-teenagers (regardless to their age). If it is being taken on by the masses it is because the masses were always plebians and intellectual activity is not the domain of plebians. Theirs is the domain of circuses (festivals these days), pubs and mass education. So there is nothing to worry about.
A world where everyone is a thinker with perfect command over more than 5,000 arcane words and spotless grammar is one in which no one will be an employee. This is what mass education is for - not to produce intellectuals, but to produce literate cogs in the machines, who can decipher orders but not have the mental tools to think of their meaning.
We give the world Twitter for the same reason that we do not teach them philosophy of law and science at school, that we protect them with "political correctness" from reading through the lies of advertisers and politicians, that we avoid discussing religion and politics at the table for fear they may start getting dangerous ideas. An educated mass of humanity is hellishly difficult to manage, after all.
They don't have bread? Give the Twitter. After all, it derives from the name of their mental state, right?
Not very well thought out because language does not die except when its speakers die, and it does not "deteriorate", at least not in theory, just because it changes. True, it might not be to our liking, but hey! Shakespeare would not like our Queen's English either - and I would dearly love to hear what Chaucer would have to say about the modern "translations" of his Canterbury Tales.
Twitter has its uses - mostly pushing advertising and sharing emotional crap by mind-teenagers (regardless to their age). If it is being taken on by the masses it is because the masses were always plebians and intellectual activity is not the domain of plebians. Theirs is the domain of circuses (festivals these days), pubs and mass education. So there is nothing to worry about.
A world where everyone is a thinker with perfect command over more than 5,000 arcane words and spotless grammar is one in which no one will be an employee. This is what mass education is for - not to produce intellectuals, but to produce literate cogs in the machines, who can decipher orders but not have the mental tools to think of their meaning.
We give the world Twitter for the same reason that we do not teach them philosophy of law and science at school, that we protect them with "political correctness" from reading through the lies of advertisers and politicians, that we avoid discussing religion and politics at the table for fear they may start getting dangerous ideas. An educated mass of humanity is hellishly difficult to manage, after all.
They don't have bread? Give the Twitter. After all, it derives from the name of their mental state, right?
Software to detect dialects
The MIT News reported on April 16th that Pedro Torres-Carrasquillo and his colleagues at Lincoln Laboratory are working on a software that a dialect identification system that compensates for an interpreter's inexperience with multiple variants of a spoken language.
Mostly to use when you are snooping on other people's phones, of course, since an interpreter doing a face-to-face, or even a phone job can always ask the client where they are from.
How are they proposing to do that? Their earlier work on dialect identification focused on building models that mapped the audiowave frequencies of phonemes - the individual sounds of a spoken language. Torres-Carrasquillo, an electrical engineer specializing in speech processing in the laboratory's Information Systems Technology Group, says his group has more recently moved from this phonetic-based approach to lower-level acoustic systems that use the basic spectral similarities of small pieces of spoken utterances. "We are not looking for the types of data linguists deal with - larger units such as phonemes and words," he says. "We're looking at the statistical distributions of basic frequency spectra of small pieces of sounds (...) Our group's idea is that we don't need a model that looks like our data - we need a model that can classify our data," Torres-Carrasquillo explains. "We take very small pieces - snippets of speech - turn them into frequencies, add up all these contributions, and make a model that can tell them apart. We're looking for patterns from just milliseconds of speech."
How is this affected for people with speech impediments, or people like me, whose extensive travel has created a bastardized dialect, and an even more bastardized accent?
Mostly to use when you are snooping on other people's phones, of course, since an interpreter doing a face-to-face, or even a phone job can always ask the client where they are from.
How are they proposing to do that? Their earlier work on dialect identification focused on building models that mapped the audiowave frequencies of phonemes - the individual sounds of a spoken language. Torres-Carrasquillo, an electrical engineer specializing in speech processing in the laboratory's Information Systems Technology Group, says his group has more recently moved from this phonetic-based approach to lower-level acoustic systems that use the basic spectral similarities of small pieces of spoken utterances. "We are not looking for the types of data linguists deal with - larger units such as phonemes and words," he says. "We're looking at the statistical distributions of basic frequency spectra of small pieces of sounds (...) Our group's idea is that we don't need a model that looks like our data - we need a model that can classify our data," Torres-Carrasquillo explains. "We take very small pieces - snippets of speech - turn them into frequencies, add up all these contributions, and make a model that can tell them apart. We're looking for patterns from just milliseconds of speech."
How is this affected for people with speech impediments, or people like me, whose extensive travel has created a bastardized dialect, and an even more bastardized accent?
Like a Pot of Clay On the Wheel
This is how the Canadian Biblical scholar John Hobbins describes translation:
"It’s not about conforming a text in a source language to the dictates of past usage of a target language. A target language is more than the sum of attested usage. It is a vulnerable, receptive medium, to be worked like a pot on a wheel. Translation is about putting new wine into new wine skins."
Hmmm.. again on craftsmanship. The art that we lost in the business of translating. And then some more from the great Jerome Rothenberg:
"Translation alongside original creation is the great conduit for bringing new language and thought into a culture (...) for those of us who approach translation in this way, this enters into an assessment of any particular translation as an example of the translator’s art and practice."
And then Clayton Eshleman who won the Landon Translation Award for his Complete Poetry of Cesar Vallejo (that's 50 years of translation work), describing in his Afterword, subtitled A Translation Memoir his struggle with Vallejo, not in the usual sense of a translator working on a difficult text but in a way reminiscent of Lorca’s intuition that the greatest poetry results from a struggle with the Duende, the more-than-muse for poetry, speaking of “violent and morbid fantasies” and a dreamlike struggle with “a figure who possessed a language the meaning of which I was attempting to wrest away.” Of those early imaginings, he writes later: “I thought Vallejo day and night, dreamed Vallejo (...) Now I was having dreams in which Vallejo’s corpse, wearing muddy shoes, was laid out in bed between [Eshleman’s first wife] Barbara and me."
At the same time, and more than many, Eshleman is scrupulous in his working and goes to great lengths to get Vallejo right. As he tells it, speaking of advice given him by Cid Corman, an older poet/mentor, whatever the relationship might be to Vallejo or other translated poets, the act of translation was not to be an act of “interpretation,” a freewheeling remake of the original poem. Rather: “Corman taught me to respect the original at every point, to check everything (including words I thought I knew), to research arcane and archaic words, and to invent English words for coined words – in other words to aim for a translation that was absolutely accurate and up to the performance level of the original (at times, quite incompatible goals).”
"It’s not about conforming a text in a source language to the dictates of past usage of a target language. A target language is more than the sum of attested usage. It is a vulnerable, receptive medium, to be worked like a pot on a wheel. Translation is about putting new wine into new wine skins."
Hmmm.. again on craftsmanship. The art that we lost in the business of translating. And then some more from the great Jerome Rothenberg:
"Translation alongside original creation is the great conduit for bringing new language and thought into a culture (...) for those of us who approach translation in this way, this enters into an assessment of any particular translation as an example of the translator’s art and practice."
And then Clayton Eshleman who won the Landon Translation Award for his Complete Poetry of Cesar Vallejo (that's 50 years of translation work), describing in his Afterword, subtitled A Translation Memoir his struggle with Vallejo, not in the usual sense of a translator working on a difficult text but in a way reminiscent of Lorca’s intuition that the greatest poetry results from a struggle with the Duende, the more-than-muse for poetry, speaking of “violent and morbid fantasies” and a dreamlike struggle with “a figure who possessed a language the meaning of which I was attempting to wrest away.” Of those early imaginings, he writes later: “I thought Vallejo day and night, dreamed Vallejo (...) Now I was having dreams in which Vallejo’s corpse, wearing muddy shoes, was laid out in bed between [Eshleman’s first wife] Barbara and me."
At the same time, and more than many, Eshleman is scrupulous in his working and goes to great lengths to get Vallejo right. As he tells it, speaking of advice given him by Cid Corman, an older poet/mentor, whatever the relationship might be to Vallejo or other translated poets, the act of translation was not to be an act of “interpretation,” a freewheeling remake of the original poem. Rather: “Corman taught me to respect the original at every point, to check everything (including words I thought I knew), to research arcane and archaic words, and to invent English words for coined words – in other words to aim for a translation that was absolutely accurate and up to the performance level of the original (at times, quite incompatible goals).”
Speaking the right language to the wrong people..
Colin McEnroe is an award winning journalist from the Hartford Courant with a degree from Yale University (shows in the quality of his writing). He teaches, hosts radio talks, and does "spoken word parts with several orchestras" (I want to see this!). But I think the reason I read him is his sense of humour (are you of Irish ancestry, Mr McEnroe?). Here is him preparing for a trip overseas:
"So I'm trying to learn a little Japanese in preparation for my trip, which is why I can occasionally be seen, headphones on, alone with my dog in the woods of the Reservoir asking no one in particular how to get to various Tokyo train stations.
And it's all very well and good to practice these things alone, but once in a while you want to know whether you are even coming close to intelligibility. So I biked to a very nearby Japanese restaurant the other night, plopped down at the sushi bar, had a little to eat and then thanked the two chefs in Japanese. So far so good. They acknowledged my thanks. I got a little bolder. I decided to say "see you later" in Japanese. They appeared nonplussed. "How did I do?" I asked them. They didn't really respond.
Pause.
Waiter who has been watching whole thing looks at me and says: "They're Chinese.""
Ooops. Maybe some classes in cultural intelligence would be more useful than roaming through Reservoir, Colin? Does your dog look the same as all the other dogs in the neighbourhood? How would you feel if someone in Burma started chatting you up in Gaelic? After all, you do look like, what's-his-name, Billy Connolly.
"So I'm trying to learn a little Japanese in preparation for my trip, which is why I can occasionally be seen, headphones on, alone with my dog in the woods of the Reservoir asking no one in particular how to get to various Tokyo train stations.
And it's all very well and good to practice these things alone, but once in a while you want to know whether you are even coming close to intelligibility. So I biked to a very nearby Japanese restaurant the other night, plopped down at the sushi bar, had a little to eat and then thanked the two chefs in Japanese. So far so good. They acknowledged my thanks. I got a little bolder. I decided to say "see you later" in Japanese. They appeared nonplussed. "How did I do?" I asked them. They didn't really respond.
Pause.
Waiter who has been watching whole thing looks at me and says: "They're Chinese.""
Ooops. Maybe some classes in cultural intelligence would be more useful than roaming through Reservoir, Colin? Does your dog look the same as all the other dogs in the neighbourhood? How would you feel if someone in Burma started chatting you up in Gaelic? After all, you do look like, what's-his-name, Billy Connolly.
Dialects, broken Arabic and the Emirati society
The duality in the Arabic language (classical Arabic and local dialects) is not always a negative thing, said Dr Maryam Byshak, Professor of Linguistics and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs at UAE University "Having two systems to communicate in is an honour for speakers (language users). "
Dr Maryam has carried out important specialist research on the same topic says the language mirrors what is happening in society.
"Due to education and interaction with Arab residents in the UAE, Emiratis are pronouncing words correctly in their dialects," she said, referring to the habit of replacing letters by another in some Arabic dialects."
On the other hand Dr Maryam thinks that "foreign migration to the country has led to the use of broken Arabic in dealing with non-Arabs which has created a strange language on the street".
Dr Maryam thinks that one of the disadvantages of social change is "losing some national characteristics that distinguish the unique Emirati identity. It is not about being arrogant, but being special. We lost lots of national knowledge due to a lack of research and studies that documents dialectic vocabularies and related knowledge, which affects the national identity."
Dr Maryam expects that Arabic dialects will be upgraded as many Arabs are living in the UAE.
"Different Arabic dialects are becoming similar and returning to be a unifying element for all Arabs as it used to be," she said.
(I am sure she is not thinking about North African dialects. They will need some time to insert vowels into their speech before they become comprehensible to the rest of us "long-aleph" drawlers. )
Dr Maryam has carried out important specialist research on the same topic says the language mirrors what is happening in society.
"Due to education and interaction with Arab residents in the UAE, Emiratis are pronouncing words correctly in their dialects," she said, referring to the habit of replacing letters by another in some Arabic dialects."
On the other hand Dr Maryam thinks that "foreign migration to the country has led to the use of broken Arabic in dealing with non-Arabs which has created a strange language on the street".
Dr Maryam thinks that one of the disadvantages of social change is "losing some national characteristics that distinguish the unique Emirati identity. It is not about being arrogant, but being special. We lost lots of national knowledge due to a lack of research and studies that documents dialectic vocabularies and related knowledge, which affects the national identity."
Dr Maryam expects that Arabic dialects will be upgraded as many Arabs are living in the UAE.
"Different Arabic dialects are becoming similar and returning to be a unifying element for all Arabs as it used to be," she said.
(I am sure she is not thinking about North African dialects. They will need some time to insert vowels into their speech before they become comprehensible to the rest of us "long-aleph" drawlers. )
On daisies and pasta
From the TTBLOG:
Paolo Doino's attempted in the USA to register the mark FIOR DI GRANO for pasta, tomato sauce, pasta sauce, and related goods, the simple process turned into a translation saga. The Patent and Tradesmarks Office claimed that Doino failed to comply with a Rule 2.61(b) requirement that he translate the phrase into English as "corn marigold", which Doino argued also meant "flower of grain." It went to Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which found Doino's evidence that the Italian phrase has two ordinary meanings "stands unrebutted," and it reversed the refusal to register.
The Examining Attorney relied on a translation provided by the PTO's Technical Translator, Steven M. Spar, stating that "the wording fior di grano means 'corn marigold.'" She also submitted a definition of "corn marigold" from Webster's Online Dictionary:
Corn Marigold 1. European herb with bright yellow flowers, a common weed in grain fields. Synonym: Field marigold.Modern Translation (alternative meanings in parentheses): Italian fior de grano (yellow oxeye daisy).
Doino countered with the declaration of Alessandro Rubinacci, a certified English/Italian translator that:
The literal translation of “FIOR DI GRANO” is “FLOWER OF GRAIN” ;“FLOWER OF GRAIN” is the ordinary meaning of “FIOR DI GRANO” in Italian; a common speaker of Italian would readily understand “FIOR DI GRANO” to mean “FLOWER OF GRAIN"; “FIOR DI GRANO” is also the Italian name for the weed known in English as corn marigold, and the phrase “fior di grano” appears to be suggestive of the weed’s flower-like appearance. Diono asserted that his translation is undisputed by the PTO's Declaration, and suggested that "both translations appear, as both have significance."
Rule 2.32(a)(9) states that if the mark in an application includes non-English wording, an English translation of that wording must be included in the application. The TMEP says that the translation should be the one "that has significance in the United States as the equivalent of the meaning in the non-English language." Section 809.01. It should be "the clear and exact equivalent," which "normally, means only one translation." Section 809.02.
The Examining Attorney insisted that FIOR DI GRANO has only one English equivalent: corn marigold. The Board pointed out that such assertion indicates that FIOR DI GRANO is a unitary phrase, but the PTO required a disclaimer of GRANO because it means "grain." The Board seized on that contradiction:
Either “fior di grano” is a unitary phrase and has only one translation, and, therefore, no disclaimer is required, or it has an ordinary meaning and a disclaimer is required. Of course the third possibility is that it has both meanings, and the connotation would depend on the context. In this case, it is more likely that applicant seeks to evoke the idea that the pasta is the “flower of grain” rather than a weed. In any event, as applicant points out, the declaration of this translator indicating the phrase has both meanings to “a common speaker of Italian,” stands unrebutted.The Board noted the TMEP's statement that normally one translation is appropriate, thus contemplating the possibility of more than one.
Therefore, based on the record where there is a dispute, applicant's evidence of two ordinary meanings stand unrebutted, and applicant's translation makes more sense in the context of the goods, we defer to applicant's translation.And so the Board ruled that Doina's submission of "flower of grain" as the translation for FIOR DE GRANO satisfied the PTO's Rule 2.61(b) request.
******
How many words in the world have only one translation? Is Mr. Spar specialising in Italian as a language, or just looks up words in dictionaries and provides a translation? How much time and money was wasted on this?
When you go to register a business name in Australia, and the name is not in English, they do ask you at the counter what it means. They usually accept your explanation. I remember registering our KM business under ECognus, being asked what it meant, and explaining that it was e- as in electronic and cognus was from cognition. The woman looked long at me and said, "What does cognition mean?"
The mind boggles!
Paolo Doino's attempted in the USA to register the mark FIOR DI GRANO for pasta, tomato sauce, pasta sauce, and related goods, the simple process turned into a translation saga. The Patent and Tradesmarks Office claimed that Doino failed to comply with a Rule 2.61(b) requirement that he translate the phrase into English as "corn marigold", which Doino argued also meant "flower of grain." It went to Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, which found Doino's evidence that the Italian phrase has two ordinary meanings "stands unrebutted," and it reversed the refusal to register.
The Examining Attorney relied on a translation provided by the PTO's Technical Translator, Steven M. Spar, stating that "the wording fior di grano means 'corn marigold.'" She also submitted a definition of "corn marigold" from Webster's Online Dictionary:
Corn Marigold 1. European herb with bright yellow flowers, a common weed in grain fields. Synonym: Field marigold.Modern Translation (alternative meanings in parentheses): Italian fior de grano (yellow oxeye daisy).
Doino countered with the declaration of Alessandro Rubinacci, a certified English/Italian translator that:
The literal translation of “FIOR DI GRANO” is “FLOWER OF GRAIN” ;“FLOWER OF GRAIN” is the ordinary meaning of “FIOR DI GRANO” in Italian; a common speaker of Italian would readily understand “FIOR DI GRANO” to mean “FLOWER OF GRAIN"; “FIOR DI GRANO” is also the Italian name for the weed known in English as corn marigold, and the phrase “fior di grano” appears to be suggestive of the weed’s flower-like appearance. Diono asserted that his translation is undisputed by the PTO's Declaration, and suggested that "both translations appear, as both have significance."
Rule 2.32(a)(9) states that if the mark in an application includes non-English wording, an English translation of that wording must be included in the application. The TMEP says that the translation should be the one "that has significance in the United States as the equivalent of the meaning in the non-English language." Section 809.01. It should be "the clear and exact equivalent," which "normally, means only one translation." Section 809.02.
The Examining Attorney insisted that FIOR DI GRANO has only one English equivalent: corn marigold. The Board pointed out that such assertion indicates that FIOR DI GRANO is a unitary phrase, but the PTO required a disclaimer of GRANO because it means "grain." The Board seized on that contradiction:
Either “fior di grano” is a unitary phrase and has only one translation, and, therefore, no disclaimer is required, or it has an ordinary meaning and a disclaimer is required. Of course the third possibility is that it has both meanings, and the connotation would depend on the context. In this case, it is more likely that applicant seeks to evoke the idea that the pasta is the “flower of grain” rather than a weed. In any event, as applicant points out, the declaration of this translator indicating the phrase has both meanings to “a common speaker of Italian,” stands unrebutted.The Board noted the TMEP's statement that normally one translation is appropriate, thus contemplating the possibility of more than one.
Therefore, based on the record where there is a dispute, applicant's evidence of two ordinary meanings stand unrebutted, and applicant's translation makes more sense in the context of the goods, we defer to applicant's translation.And so the Board ruled that Doina's submission of "flower of grain" as the translation for FIOR DE GRANO satisfied the PTO's Rule 2.61(b) request.
******
How many words in the world have only one translation? Is Mr. Spar specialising in Italian as a language, or just looks up words in dictionaries and provides a translation? How much time and money was wasted on this?
When you go to register a business name in Australia, and the name is not in English, they do ask you at the counter what it means. They usually accept your explanation. I remember registering our KM business under ECognus, being asked what it meant, and explaining that it was e- as in electronic and cognus was from cognition. The woman looked long at me and said, "What does cognition mean?"
The mind boggles!
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Internet deregulation might be good news
The demand for translation into English could grow exponentially over the coming years, as Icann – the body that runs the internet's domain name system – pushes ahead with plans to liberalise the rules governing the way the net works.
The move would allow domain names to be written in other alphabets, such as Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese: carving out entire chunks of the internet that could effectively become invisible to English-speaking users without translation.
The move has proven controversial in some quarters, with American officials writing to the organisation in December to question "whether the potential consumer benefits outweigh the potential costs".
Such a move will not encourage a sudden jump away from English, thanks to the language's influence and power – and some technical limitations.
Extract from the Guardian
The move would allow domain names to be written in other alphabets, such as Cyrillic, Arabic or Chinese: carving out entire chunks of the internet that could effectively become invisible to English-speaking users without translation.
The move has proven controversial in some quarters, with American officials writing to the organisation in December to question "whether the potential consumer benefits outweigh the potential costs".
Such a move will not encourage a sudden jump away from English, thanks to the language's influence and power – and some technical limitations.
Extract from the Guardian
The Comedy of Dishes
From the News Observer, Greg Cox talks about dining in a Chinese restaurant when your Chinese is not as good as the food served:
""Dan dan noodle," the waitress said, naming the dish that she was setting before us on the table. It's one of my go-to dishes in a Szechwan restaurant, and Super Wok's version -- a skein of vermicelli topped with minced pork, chopped scallions and a pungent chile sauce, served piping hot in a deep bowl -- was as good as any I've ever had.
But here's the catch: I hadn't ordered dan dan noodles. Doubtless I would have, if I had seen the dish listed on the authentic Chinese menu (which you'll have to ask for; otherwise, you'll be handed a menu of mostly generic Chinese and pan-Asian fare aimed at the mainstream American palate). What I had ordered instead -- at least, what I think I ordered -- is a dish listed under the Cold Appetizers heading as Szechwan-style spicy noodles. After tasting the dan dan noodles, though, I wasn't about to send the dish back.
The confusion is understandable. The command of English among the wait staff at this small, family-run eatery is -- to put it mildly -- variable. But they're uniformly eager to please and remarkably patient with those of us whose Chinese vocabulary doesn't go much beyond "kung pao" and "moo shu."
In its defense, the staff hadn't yet had a chance to become familiar with the bilingual version of the menu, which was still in draft form when I dined there. My attempt to order a dish that had been highly recommended to me and variously described as "squirrel fish" and "squirrel tail fish" was a comedy of language-barrier errors (including my attempt to pantomime the furry-tailed creature, which I'm sure proved entertaining to fellow diners).
The matter was finally resolved when I spotted the words "fried fish cut like a squirrel tail in sweet & sour sauce" penned in the margins of the menu.
Am I ever glad I saw those words. Turns out the name of the dish is a fanciful description of the appearance of its star ingredients: filets of a sweet white fish, their flesh cut in a cross-hatch pattern before being deep-fried in a light, tempura-like batter.
The point-at-what-you-want method proved efficient at ordering other dishes"
""Dan dan noodle," the waitress said, naming the dish that she was setting before us on the table. It's one of my go-to dishes in a Szechwan restaurant, and Super Wok's version -- a skein of vermicelli topped with minced pork, chopped scallions and a pungent chile sauce, served piping hot in a deep bowl -- was as good as any I've ever had.
But here's the catch: I hadn't ordered dan dan noodles. Doubtless I would have, if I had seen the dish listed on the authentic Chinese menu (which you'll have to ask for; otherwise, you'll be handed a menu of mostly generic Chinese and pan-Asian fare aimed at the mainstream American palate). What I had ordered instead -- at least, what I think I ordered -- is a dish listed under the Cold Appetizers heading as Szechwan-style spicy noodles. After tasting the dan dan noodles, though, I wasn't about to send the dish back.
The confusion is understandable. The command of English among the wait staff at this small, family-run eatery is -- to put it mildly -- variable. But they're uniformly eager to please and remarkably patient with those of us whose Chinese vocabulary doesn't go much beyond "kung pao" and "moo shu."
In its defense, the staff hadn't yet had a chance to become familiar with the bilingual version of the menu, which was still in draft form when I dined there. My attempt to order a dish that had been highly recommended to me and variously described as "squirrel fish" and "squirrel tail fish" was a comedy of language-barrier errors (including my attempt to pantomime the furry-tailed creature, which I'm sure proved entertaining to fellow diners).
The matter was finally resolved when I spotted the words "fried fish cut like a squirrel tail in sweet & sour sauce" penned in the margins of the menu.
Am I ever glad I saw those words. Turns out the name of the dish is a fanciful description of the appearance of its star ingredients: filets of a sweet white fish, their flesh cut in a cross-hatch pattern before being deep-fried in a light, tempura-like batter.
The point-at-what-you-want method proved efficient at ordering other dishes"
Explain, please?
Across Systems is a translation management platform which has been making a bit of noise lately. Which is understandable - one needs to yak a lot in a recessed market, otherwise you go belly up. But what I don't understand is this bit:
"Across claims that they are the "only major translation technology provider whose core business is software development". Recent mergers and acquisitions within the industry has made Across management even more committed to staying independent. So much so, they decided to back its promises with a money-back guarantee, to prove that independence is central to its strategic business objectives. Should it be acquired by another entity any time within the next five years, it will refund to its LSP customers any license fees they pay throughout 2009, although the licenses would remain in effect."
Ok, I know who they are talking about in the T&I business - all these large agencies suddenly inhaling smaller fry, and TM software providers going into "strategic alliances", etc. etc - but WHY is it so important to them? Why is it a selling point?
Please explain?
"Across claims that they are the "only major translation technology provider whose core business is software development". Recent mergers and acquisitions within the industry has made Across management even more committed to staying independent. So much so, they decided to back its promises with a money-back guarantee, to prove that independence is central to its strategic business objectives. Should it be acquired by another entity any time within the next five years, it will refund to its LSP customers any license fees they pay throughout 2009, although the licenses would remain in effect."
Ok, I know who they are talking about in the T&I business - all these large agencies suddenly inhaling smaller fry, and TM software providers going into "strategic alliances", etc. etc - but WHY is it so important to them? Why is it a selling point?
Please explain?
PEN World Voices Festival - not getting lost in translation
The Huffington Post reporting on the festival:
"When the novelist Jose Manuel Prieto left Cuba to spend a decade in Siberia, he could only fit a few books in his suitcase, so he packed several volumes (not all) of "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" by Marcel Proust. When winter closed in, Proust was more or less all Prieto had, and he read with a concentration "bordering on obsession."
So when, in preparation for Tuesday's panel, Prieto was asked to identify a favorite classic work, he immediately thought of Proust. He highlighted an excerpt from a minor Proust novel about diamond forgery, which his interpreter then read in English. Meanwhile, further down the dais, another interpreter whispered a simultaneous translation to the Syrian-French writer Salwa Al Neimi.
Thus was Proust translated from French into Spanish, then into English, and back into the original French, by way of Syria and Siberia. (With so many far-flung luminaries struggling to be understood, it was as if the UN had convened a Special Commission on Synecdoche.)"
This is multiculturalism at its height :-)
"When the novelist Jose Manuel Prieto left Cuba to spend a decade in Siberia, he could only fit a few books in his suitcase, so he packed several volumes (not all) of "A La Recherche du Temps Perdu" by Marcel Proust. When winter closed in, Proust was more or less all Prieto had, and he read with a concentration "bordering on obsession."
So when, in preparation for Tuesday's panel, Prieto was asked to identify a favorite classic work, he immediately thought of Proust. He highlighted an excerpt from a minor Proust novel about diamond forgery, which his interpreter then read in English. Meanwhile, further down the dais, another interpreter whispered a simultaneous translation to the Syrian-French writer Salwa Al Neimi.
Thus was Proust translated from French into Spanish, then into English, and back into the original French, by way of Syria and Siberia. (With so many far-flung luminaries struggling to be understood, it was as if the UN had convened a Special Commission on Synecdoche.)"
This is multiculturalism at its height :-)
"I have not known of any veiled words in Arabic"
I came across the Syrian novelist Salwa Al-Neimi when preparing my paper for the 2008 AUSIT Conference on Translating Sexualities. I had asked on the Arabic-language forum about translating materials pertaining to sexuality into Arabic language, and one of the collegues argued that translating such materials would be inappropriate and "get stuck in the Arab cultural throat".
I did, however, know that there was quite a bit of erotica in classical Arabic literature, so I went online searching if anyone was doing anything with it. Arabs used to have an extremely rich erotic literature - from Abu Nawas to Sheikh Nafzawi, and from Daoud Al-Antaqi to Sheikh Tifashi.
Then I came across Salwa and her book "The Proof of Honey", about a randy librarian who knows all about this stuff. Salwa wrote her book in Arabic to prove that Arabic can be used to talk about erotic motifs without having to use roundabout euphemisms, because it is all there already, written many centuries ago - when prudishness was something unknown.
So what exactly happened in that culture? When it was at the height of its power, the Arab world was very open to talking about sexuality, and when it disintegrated, got occupied, and became a Third World it took on a mantle of puritanism that is just a bit more excessive than the Victorian norm? Is Salwa correct in saying that the puritanism is not ours, but imposed by the West? The same West that has now described that Arab world as backwards for being puritan? What has happened to all the hundreds of very poetic terms describing the act and the organs that Sheikh Nafzawi mentions in his book "Al-Rawd Al-Ater"? Why do we have to use English and French as euphemisms for something G-d created (as if G-d's creation could be dysphemistic) when we have so much linguistic wealth in Arabic?
When condemned by one Arab literary critique for using shameless vocabulary (he used the word "safera" which literally means "having her face uncovered", Salwa replied "I have not known of any veiled words in Arabic". I had to smile..
******
I don't translate literature, but I listened to her interviews in Arabic and read the book, and I got hooked. So I decided to transcribe and translate bits of the interview and Chapter IX: The Chapter on Linguistics from her book. I know there must be an English translation coming soon, but I found it to be worth trying to translate. So here are bits from the interview, followed by an extract from chapter IX:
"Recently a French publisher signed a contract with Salwa Al Neimi, the Syrian writer and poet, for the publication rights of her novel The Proof of Honey into French and other languages, and for the film rights to the book.
The work got translated into 17 languages; it is hugely popular, with excellent sales record in Beirut and at the Dahia Book Fair. However it is banned in Syria due to the way it has tackled taboo subjects like sex. “The reason I wrote this book,” says Al Neimi, “is that all the French-writing Arab authors around me were saying it was impossible to write about intimacy and sex in Arabic, because it is a lingua sacra that could not be used to describe profanities. These were such preemptory opinions! Arabic is my specialization, fascination and addiction. I am fully aware of what is available in Arabic literature. The book was sort of a rebellion, a response against these opinions that were totally removed from reality. (…)I wanted to show that on the contrary, it is possible, and that sexuality in the Arabo-Islamic culture is clearly ever present. So I went back to the classics of Arab literature which dealt openly with sex and sexuality, such as those by Siyuti Tifashi, Nefzawi, and others, and mixed it with contemporary narrative. I refused to pass any moral judgment on the narrative itself, because when they wrote, they told stories as they happened, without passing judgment on them.” (…) The writer stressed that “Puritanism is a trend we have inherited from the West, and the notion of sin is absent from our culture, and is an accretion from Europe. In addition to its constant presence, sexuality in Arab life is joyful, open-minded and necessary for the physical and psychological well being. Also, it is more of a cultural notion than a religious dimension (…) I don’t know why the Arab censor is scared of words denoting sexual organs, but the moment one appears in print, the publication gets banned. This despite the presence of these words in Arabic literature and every day speech. It is sad that these terms have become words of insult and abuse nowadays, and this is what I want to do; to give these terms back their natural and humane meaning.” “Freedom is indivisible. So when writers are banned from writing about sex, they are also banned from writing about politics, religion and social issues. And we have internalized that, so when we write, we write with the censor inside our heads. (…)”
“My soul is my body. The division between soul and body is alien to the Arab culture. It is something we learnt from the West. My body is just my intelligence and my culture. Arabs spoil the body at all levels – through cleaning, sport, perfume. It is a source of pleasure and joy. This is what we find in all our Arabic literary heritage.” Al-Naimi also wanted to prove through her book that Islam is not a repressive and harsh religion as advertised by the Islamists and Islamophobes on both sides of the spectrum. (Anon, 2008; Al-Neimi, 2008)
*******
“I come to realize increasingly that I am a creature of language, and that language entraps me, forcing me to touch its sounds, to scrutinize it and to ponder the details of its meanings. That’s why I love all kinds of dictionaries, returning to them with every one of the unending linguistic questions that I have. I can’t utter a word without trying to find out its roots, and understand it origins, derivatives, and synonyms. I even try to invent new words in a language that will be mine alone.
Yesterday, the Roamer told me that his motto was “I fuck, therefore I am”. He said it in French, the language of de Sade, not Molliere. I repeated it after him laughingly, and considered it a play with words.
The Roamer always used the verb in its passive form, “fucked”, which would amaze me every time he said it. The form implied a negativity odd in this devastating ravisher, if one went by his tales. It crossed my mind that I liked using the three forms of the verb freely, without any derivatives that would ruin the freshness of its meaning.
“I fuck, therefore I am.” Why can’t I say it and write in Arabic?
Nowadays, the term and act of fucking is banned in public Arabic. Nowadays, fucking is a sin even when it is legal. Even the term “coitus” in the title of one of Sheik Al-Suyuti’s books has been purified and translated into from Arabic into Arabic: “An Exposition on the Science of Coitus” thus became “An Exposition on the Science of Congress”, and bugger the rhyming that got lost.
When the Thinker used a word in French the other day, I asked him about its Arabic translation:
“The use of buggered and buggers is common even in colloquial speech. Why do you ask?”'
“I don’t know. I find the word appropriate in male context, but I want to invent a new word when it has to do with women. How about I inflect a verb ‘sodomed’ from the noun Sodom, as in French? This way we can differentiate between the two cases..”
“The differentiation is clear, as you know, and does not require your linguistic inventiveness.”
“No, seriously! Listen: as we say ‘Omar hit Zaid’, we will say ‘Zaid sodomed Hind’. What do you think? We will avenge him with this pleasure after he has been bashed up in all books on language.”
“I think you should seek the opinion of your sheikhs at the Arabic language Department, if you are so obsessed with linguistics.”
So what if I sought the opinion of the intellectuals around me? I am sure they’ll have something to say about it. But no, I won’t. If I did, the discussion of a new word will lead them by association to the same old stories about the gay minister, and whoever followed the path among the union members, as they are sarcastically called; to the latest of their news and scandals which I know by heart. I won’t hear anything new. So I’ll let them be tickled by the talk of the blue pill which breathes life into decomposing bones. They are new to this subject, at least.
Should I ask them how they translate XVth century Arabic to today’s in such titles as “The Blooming Copse of Fucking Anecdotes” or “The Copse of Knowledge of Fucking”?
All this hypocrisy reminds me of what Al-Jahiz wrote: “Some of those who display their asceticism and austerity become disgusted and depressed if cunts, dicks or fucking is mentioned. And the most prominent among them is one who lacks knowledge and generosity, nobility and dignity, except for what he pretends then. These terms were produced for the use of linguists, and if the prevalent opinion was not to utter them then their existence would have been meaningless, and it would have been better for the banning and the preservation of the Arabic language that these names and terms be totally excised from it.”
So I am now translating the Roamer’s French statement and writing it in Arabic: “I fuck, therefore I am.”
He fucked, he fucks. I type the word and the computer underlines it in red. I play with conjugating and deflecting the verb, and deriving words from it, and the red lines pop under every single word. I type all the sensitive words and the computer does not recognize any of them, placing a red line under every one of them, as if it too was programmed with piety.
A virgin computer! Or rather, a castrated one.
Who has castrated language?
Who has castrated the computer?
Who has castrated me? (Al-Neimi, 2007)
******
I did, however, know that there was quite a bit of erotica in classical Arabic literature, so I went online searching if anyone was doing anything with it. Arabs used to have an extremely rich erotic literature - from Abu Nawas to Sheikh Nafzawi, and from Daoud Al-Antaqi to Sheikh Tifashi.
Then I came across Salwa and her book "The Proof of Honey", about a randy librarian who knows all about this stuff. Salwa wrote her book in Arabic to prove that Arabic can be used to talk about erotic motifs without having to use roundabout euphemisms, because it is all there already, written many centuries ago - when prudishness was something unknown.
So what exactly happened in that culture? When it was at the height of its power, the Arab world was very open to talking about sexuality, and when it disintegrated, got occupied, and became a Third World it took on a mantle of puritanism that is just a bit more excessive than the Victorian norm? Is Salwa correct in saying that the puritanism is not ours, but imposed by the West? The same West that has now described that Arab world as backwards for being puritan? What has happened to all the hundreds of very poetic terms describing the act and the organs that Sheikh Nafzawi mentions in his book "Al-Rawd Al-Ater"? Why do we have to use English and French as euphemisms for something G-d created (as if G-d's creation could be dysphemistic) when we have so much linguistic wealth in Arabic?
When condemned by one Arab literary critique for using shameless vocabulary (he used the word "safera" which literally means "having her face uncovered", Salwa replied "I have not known of any veiled words in Arabic". I had to smile..
******
I don't translate literature, but I listened to her interviews in Arabic and read the book, and I got hooked. So I decided to transcribe and translate bits of the interview and Chapter IX: The Chapter on Linguistics from her book. I know there must be an English translation coming soon, but I found it to be worth trying to translate. So here are bits from the interview, followed by an extract from chapter IX:
"Recently a French publisher signed a contract with Salwa Al Neimi, the Syrian writer and poet, for the publication rights of her novel The Proof of Honey into French and other languages, and for the film rights to the book.
The work got translated into 17 languages; it is hugely popular, with excellent sales record in Beirut and at the Dahia Book Fair. However it is banned in Syria due to the way it has tackled taboo subjects like sex. “The reason I wrote this book,” says Al Neimi, “is that all the French-writing Arab authors around me were saying it was impossible to write about intimacy and sex in Arabic, because it is a lingua sacra that could not be used to describe profanities. These were such preemptory opinions! Arabic is my specialization, fascination and addiction. I am fully aware of what is available in Arabic literature. The book was sort of a rebellion, a response against these opinions that were totally removed from reality. (…)I wanted to show that on the contrary, it is possible, and that sexuality in the Arabo-Islamic culture is clearly ever present. So I went back to the classics of Arab literature which dealt openly with sex and sexuality, such as those by Siyuti Tifashi, Nefzawi, and others, and mixed it with contemporary narrative. I refused to pass any moral judgment on the narrative itself, because when they wrote, they told stories as they happened, without passing judgment on them.” (…) The writer stressed that “Puritanism is a trend we have inherited from the West, and the notion of sin is absent from our culture, and is an accretion from Europe. In addition to its constant presence, sexuality in Arab life is joyful, open-minded and necessary for the physical and psychological well being. Also, it is more of a cultural notion than a religious dimension (…) I don’t know why the Arab censor is scared of words denoting sexual organs, but the moment one appears in print, the publication gets banned. This despite the presence of these words in Arabic literature and every day speech. It is sad that these terms have become words of insult and abuse nowadays, and this is what I want to do; to give these terms back their natural and humane meaning.” “Freedom is indivisible. So when writers are banned from writing about sex, they are also banned from writing about politics, religion and social issues. And we have internalized that, so when we write, we write with the censor inside our heads. (…)”
“My soul is my body. The division between soul and body is alien to the Arab culture. It is something we learnt from the West. My body is just my intelligence and my culture. Arabs spoil the body at all levels – through cleaning, sport, perfume. It is a source of pleasure and joy. This is what we find in all our Arabic literary heritage.” Al-Naimi also wanted to prove through her book that Islam is not a repressive and harsh religion as advertised by the Islamists and Islamophobes on both sides of the spectrum. (Anon, 2008; Al-Neimi, 2008)
*******
“I come to realize increasingly that I am a creature of language, and that language entraps me, forcing me to touch its sounds, to scrutinize it and to ponder the details of its meanings. That’s why I love all kinds of dictionaries, returning to them with every one of the unending linguistic questions that I have. I can’t utter a word without trying to find out its roots, and understand it origins, derivatives, and synonyms. I even try to invent new words in a language that will be mine alone.
Yesterday, the Roamer told me that his motto was “I fuck, therefore I am”. He said it in French, the language of de Sade, not Molliere. I repeated it after him laughingly, and considered it a play with words.
The Roamer always used the verb in its passive form, “fucked”, which would amaze me every time he said it. The form implied a negativity odd in this devastating ravisher, if one went by his tales. It crossed my mind that I liked using the three forms of the verb freely, without any derivatives that would ruin the freshness of its meaning.
“I fuck, therefore I am.” Why can’t I say it and write in Arabic?
Nowadays, the term and act of fucking is banned in public Arabic. Nowadays, fucking is a sin even when it is legal. Even the term “coitus” in the title of one of Sheik Al-Suyuti’s books has been purified and translated into from Arabic into Arabic: “An Exposition on the Science of Coitus” thus became “An Exposition on the Science of Congress”, and bugger the rhyming that got lost.
When the Thinker used a word in French the other day, I asked him about its Arabic translation:
“The use of buggered and buggers is common even in colloquial speech. Why do you ask?”'
“I don’t know. I find the word appropriate in male context, but I want to invent a new word when it has to do with women. How about I inflect a verb ‘sodomed’ from the noun Sodom, as in French? This way we can differentiate between the two cases..”
“The differentiation is clear, as you know, and does not require your linguistic inventiveness.”
“No, seriously! Listen: as we say ‘Omar hit Zaid’, we will say ‘Zaid sodomed Hind’. What do you think? We will avenge him with this pleasure after he has been bashed up in all books on language.”
“I think you should seek the opinion of your sheikhs at the Arabic language Department, if you are so obsessed with linguistics.”
So what if I sought the opinion of the intellectuals around me? I am sure they’ll have something to say about it. But no, I won’t. If I did, the discussion of a new word will lead them by association to the same old stories about the gay minister, and whoever followed the path among the union members, as they are sarcastically called; to the latest of their news and scandals which I know by heart. I won’t hear anything new. So I’ll let them be tickled by the talk of the blue pill which breathes life into decomposing bones. They are new to this subject, at least.
Should I ask them how they translate XVth century Arabic to today’s in such titles as “The Blooming Copse of Fucking Anecdotes” or “The Copse of Knowledge of Fucking”?
All this hypocrisy reminds me of what Al-Jahiz wrote: “Some of those who display their asceticism and austerity become disgusted and depressed if cunts, dicks or fucking is mentioned. And the most prominent among them is one who lacks knowledge and generosity, nobility and dignity, except for what he pretends then. These terms were produced for the use of linguists, and if the prevalent opinion was not to utter them then their existence would have been meaningless, and it would have been better for the banning and the preservation of the Arabic language that these names and terms be totally excised from it.”
So I am now translating the Roamer’s French statement and writing it in Arabic: “I fuck, therefore I am.”
He fucked, he fucks. I type the word and the computer underlines it in red. I play with conjugating and deflecting the verb, and deriving words from it, and the red lines pop under every single word. I type all the sensitive words and the computer does not recognize any of them, placing a red line under every one of them, as if it too was programmed with piety.
A virgin computer! Or rather, a castrated one.
Who has castrated language?
Who has castrated the computer?
Who has castrated me? (Al-Neimi, 2007)
******
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Translation is a Dirty Job
Don't start getting ideas! It's not what I meant.
Elephant Journal has a short post by Henry Schliff describing translation:
"Words should be simpler. Or the mind more advanced. That is why translation is like constructing a puzzle without any pieces. All the pieces of the puzzle are scattered in a vast jungle and you only know the picture they form because of some gossip you heard back in town. That was before you got lost in the jungle. The gossip said the puzzle showed an image of a house, but now you think to yourself: I know what a house looks like, two levels constructed of wood and brick stained a deep cedar red. What if their house is something else, maybe its cement, maybe its fiberglass, maybe it’s what I call a cave, maybe it’s a tent, maybe it’s a tree canopy, maybe it’s a cardboard box, maybe signifies the place of one’s birth, maybe…maybe…
A common English dictionary defines ‘should’ as a word “used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions.” It is easy enough to loose a house in translation, how is it possible to realize the significance of a word created from another cultures standards of morality, social and familial responsibility, and degree of taboos. But that’s large scale, a society size example. What happens when getting down to the individual with all his/her conditioning and understanding, an entity more or less remote from the norm yet still affected by social constraints? Then bring it back around to where I started, translating a near two-thousand year old text from a vastly different society. It is a wonder people can even communicate the most basic information when speaking the same language; throw in a handful of obscuring factors and you’re back in the jungle.
The transmission of meaning is a dirty business, never simple. And it must be utter stupidity to base our existence on what is heard, what is told to us, what is read, or what comes as “information”. But since this is largely how we live, is life not often a play of ignorance and is there not an imperative for the apprehension of the fundamental basis of that ignorance?"
Elephant Journal has a short post by Henry Schliff describing translation:
"Words should be simpler. Or the mind more advanced. That is why translation is like constructing a puzzle without any pieces. All the pieces of the puzzle are scattered in a vast jungle and you only know the picture they form because of some gossip you heard back in town. That was before you got lost in the jungle. The gossip said the puzzle showed an image of a house, but now you think to yourself: I know what a house looks like, two levels constructed of wood and brick stained a deep cedar red. What if their house is something else, maybe its cement, maybe its fiberglass, maybe it’s what I call a cave, maybe it’s a tent, maybe it’s a tree canopy, maybe it’s a cardboard box, maybe signifies the place of one’s birth, maybe…maybe…
A common English dictionary defines ‘should’ as a word “used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions.” It is easy enough to loose a house in translation, how is it possible to realize the significance of a word created from another cultures standards of morality, social and familial responsibility, and degree of taboos. But that’s large scale, a society size example. What happens when getting down to the individual with all his/her conditioning and understanding, an entity more or less remote from the norm yet still affected by social constraints? Then bring it back around to where I started, translating a near two-thousand year old text from a vastly different society. It is a wonder people can even communicate the most basic information when speaking the same language; throw in a handful of obscuring factors and you’re back in the jungle.
The transmission of meaning is a dirty business, never simple. And it must be utter stupidity to base our existence on what is heard, what is told to us, what is read, or what comes as “information”. But since this is largely how we live, is life not often a play of ignorance and is there not an imperative for the apprehension of the fundamental basis of that ignorance?"
Will Trados Translate Alone?
News for you: SDL and Language Weaver, a leader in statistically-based automated language translation have gone into a "strategic alliance" (I wonder who swallowed whom?) to - hold on to your keyboard - deliver Language Weaver’s translation software tightly integrated into SDL’s GIM platform and as part of SDL Knowledge-based Translation System.
In case it hasn't struck you yet, a translation memory software sitting atop a machine translation software. It sends the shivers up my spine.
So now your role, the slave of Trados already, will be to input your human translation into the TM, give it to your client, who will fit it into the MT and pronto! you are a DT (dead translator!).
And here is some more scary stuff for localisers: "Language Weaver automated translation solutions have been deployed for the enterprise and large web properties to deliver compelling translations of digital content. This partnership will give SDL customers the opportunity to deliver effective communication to customers across many more languages." Hey, guys, the billions are running out of the window (or is it your laptop screen that's getting dimmer?)
The companies announced that the agreement encompasses a number of different applications of automated translation, including:
• Translation of content that is otherwise too expensive or time consuming to translate, such as online support content that re-directs customers from expensive call centers to more cost-effective self-service on the web
• Integrating automated translation into the translation process for high-quality technical documentation, taking up to 40 percent of the cost and 50 percent of the time out of the process without sacrificing quality and enabling translation teams to translate more, reduce backlog and serve more markets
• Providing ubiquitous access to automated translation, through integration into the industry-standard desktop translation technology, SDL Trados®, and integration into the world’s most popular translation website www.freetranslation.com
Don't you just luv the way they sprinkle us in there, just in case we suffer anxiety attacks after reading this and start clamouring for copyright to our TMs, or worse, throw the Trados suite out of the window?
“We want to offer our customers the widest possible choice of translation solutions, all integrated into a single managed environment,” said Mark Lancaster, chairman and CEO of SDL. Preferably one without those pesky human linguists. The partnership will allow our customers to maximize the leverage of previous translations held in translation memory and achieve the best possible quality for automated translation. This offers enterprises new opportunities to drive cost out of global content translation processes, which is particularly important in these tough economic times.” I assume the "tough economic times" are sweet music in the ears of SDL. As for us, bread and water on some remote Aussie inland station sounds like a livable alternative.
In case it hasn't struck you yet, a translation memory software sitting atop a machine translation software. It sends the shivers up my spine.
So now your role, the slave of Trados already, will be to input your human translation into the TM, give it to your client, who will fit it into the MT and pronto! you are a DT (dead translator!).
And here is some more scary stuff for localisers: "Language Weaver automated translation solutions have been deployed for the enterprise and large web properties to deliver compelling translations of digital content. This partnership will give SDL customers the opportunity to deliver effective communication to customers across many more languages." Hey, guys, the billions are running out of the window (or is it your laptop screen that's getting dimmer?)
The companies announced that the agreement encompasses a number of different applications of automated translation, including:
• Translation of content that is otherwise too expensive or time consuming to translate, such as online support content that re-directs customers from expensive call centers to more cost-effective self-service on the web
• Integrating automated translation into the translation process for high-quality technical documentation, taking up to 40 percent of the cost and 50 percent of the time out of the process without sacrificing quality and enabling translation teams to translate more, reduce backlog and serve more markets
• Providing ubiquitous access to automated translation, through integration into the industry-standard desktop translation technology, SDL Trados®, and integration into the world’s most popular translation website www.freetranslation.com
Don't you just luv the way they sprinkle us in there, just in case we suffer anxiety attacks after reading this and start clamouring for copyright to our TMs, or worse, throw the Trados suite out of the window?
“We want to offer our customers the widest possible choice of translation solutions, all integrated into a single managed environment,” said Mark Lancaster, chairman and CEO of SDL. Preferably one without those pesky human linguists. The partnership will allow our customers to maximize the leverage of previous translations held in translation memory and achieve the best possible quality for automated translation. This offers enterprises new opportunities to drive cost out of global content translation processes, which is particularly important in these tough economic times.” I assume the "tough economic times" are sweet music in the ears of SDL. As for us, bread and water on some remote Aussie inland station sounds like a livable alternative.
Korean Airlines and the Cultural Clash
"A Korean Airlines plane that crashed a few years ago did so because of the hierarchical culture, and not some hardware malfunctioning. The reason this particular plane crashed was due to a disagreement between the pilot and co-pilot on the way to solve a problem with landing the plane, and to make matters worse there was a disagreement with ground control in Korea. This all stemmed from their communications in Korean because Korean is a hierarchical language where honorifics and speech level play and important part in grammar and verbiage used between conversations of people with different status. By status I mean either ones job position, age, and education level.
Allegedly, there was verbiage and tone that was incorrectly used between the co-pilot (lower status), and the pilot (higher status) as they disputed ideas to solve the problem they were encountering. This created an argument, and when the ground control officer got involved it elevated the communication breakdown that had occurred between the pilot and co-pilot. The language hierarchical problem that occurred was a costly life-ending event for Korean Airlines and since that incident, they have enforced the use of English for all instructions and commands on their airplanes."
So, says the blogger above, translators should not only translate language, but culture as well. Sounds logical, right? No. According to a large number of my colleagues here in Australia the Fair, a translator or interpreter should never act as a cultural consultant. Of course, no one really knows what a cultural consultant does for a living (I do) and as such, they cannot explain why such cultural consulting has any conflict of interest or ethics with translating/interpreting. So I happily hobble around on my two unfitting (or befitting) professional legs - I translate, and I consult on cultural issues.
Simply put, when we translate a text - in the post-modern meaning of the term - we must be in some way or another bridging the cultural gap between the two languages. No language exists without a culture, and no culture without a language.
Some ideas, though, are embedded in our Aussie mind-sets and are hard to eradicate.
Allegedly, there was verbiage and tone that was incorrectly used between the co-pilot (lower status), and the pilot (higher status) as they disputed ideas to solve the problem they were encountering. This created an argument, and when the ground control officer got involved it elevated the communication breakdown that had occurred between the pilot and co-pilot. The language hierarchical problem that occurred was a costly life-ending event for Korean Airlines and since that incident, they have enforced the use of English for all instructions and commands on their airplanes."
So, says the blogger above, translators should not only translate language, but culture as well. Sounds logical, right? No. According to a large number of my colleagues here in Australia the Fair, a translator or interpreter should never act as a cultural consultant. Of course, no one really knows what a cultural consultant does for a living (I do) and as such, they cannot explain why such cultural consulting has any conflict of interest or ethics with translating/interpreting. So I happily hobble around on my two unfitting (or befitting) professional legs - I translate, and I consult on cultural issues.
Simply put, when we translate a text - in the post-modern meaning of the term - we must be in some way or another bridging the cultural gap between the two languages. No language exists without a culture, and no culture without a language.
Some ideas, though, are embedded in our Aussie mind-sets and are hard to eradicate.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
When being decent works against you
A very thought-provoking post from a UK based conference interpreter:
She says that the reason she is not getting much work despite being an excellent interpreter is that she never says anything bad about her colleagues, even when she should because they are stuffing up, and because she fights for decent work conditions.
"I know one colleague who is a wonderful human being but the embodiment of a sub-standard interpreter, and he has much more work than I do. We get on well, to the point that he passes the odd job here and there on to me. This is very nice but lately it has been bugging me. Why would people offer a job to a below-average interpreter before they even try to ring a good one? Why do the agencies think he is the most capable person when anyone who has worked with him can tell them that he isn't? Why don't they care?
It must be because he is so nice. He accepts terms as sub-standard as himself without argument. He is pflegeleicht, or low-maintenance, if you like. That's why. People who insist on being provided with the right conditions to be able to do a good job, and to be fairly compensated for doing one, are seen as querulous, difficult, and are taken off the calling list."
I would love to hear other practitioners' opinions on this.
She says that the reason she is not getting much work despite being an excellent interpreter is that she never says anything bad about her colleagues, even when she should because they are stuffing up, and because she fights for decent work conditions.
"I know one colleague who is a wonderful human being but the embodiment of a sub-standard interpreter, and he has much more work than I do. We get on well, to the point that he passes the odd job here and there on to me. This is very nice but lately it has been bugging me. Why would people offer a job to a below-average interpreter before they even try to ring a good one? Why do the agencies think he is the most capable person when anyone who has worked with him can tell them that he isn't? Why don't they care?
It must be because he is so nice. He accepts terms as sub-standard as himself without argument. He is pflegeleicht, or low-maintenance, if you like. That's why. People who insist on being provided with the right conditions to be able to do a good job, and to be fairly compensated for doing one, are seen as querulous, difficult, and are taken off the calling list."
I would love to hear other practitioners' opinions on this.
A novel by a translator, about a translator
Los Angeles Times review of Foreign Tongue by Vanina Marsot. Next on my reading list..
Vanina Marsot's first novel, "Foreign Tongue," is a rare and canny creature: a brainy, sexy, romantic comedy of letters -- albeit one whose plot is set in motion too predictably by a humiliating breakup with a cheating boyfriend.
Anna, its heroine, wouldn't be quite so eager to escape Los Angeles if said cheater hadn't recently become pop culture's latest It Boy, his image taunting her from magazine covers. To nurse her wounded heart, she flees to Paris, keys to her aunt's empty apartment in hand. Courtesy of her French father, Anna has dual citizenship; she knows the language and the city, and she has friends there.
When she needs a job, the owner of a bookshop near the Palais du Luxembourg hires her to translate into English an erotic roman à clef by a well-known man whose identity is to remain a secret from her. So assiduously guarded is the text that it's doled out to her a chapter at a time. To us, it becomes a book within a book, and we watch as Anna confronts the issues that bedevil anyone trying to fully and richly convey in one language something that is said in another.
With an American translator as its heroine and an intrigue about authorship at its center, "Foreign Tongue" could hardly be more enamored of literature and the nuances of language. When those things are somehow concerned with sex and affairs of the heart, so much the better.
It's a spirit perfectly captured by the epigraph to an early chapter, a question posed in French by novelist and critic Frédéric Beigbeder, fluidly translated by Marsot: "Why do your knees make me want to invent transitive verbs?"
For Marsot, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Paris and has worked as a translator of television and film scripts, translation is more than a subject. It's a task she sets herself here, studding "Foreign Tongue" with French words and passages. She manages, rather astonishingly, to make her meanings clear to readers who don't speak the language while avoiding the trap of over-explaining to those who do.
"You translate a whole culture when you translate a novel," an acquaintance tells Anna, so it's a boon to her work, not to mention her mood, that she soon falls hard for the tall, square-jawed actor-director Olivier Vallant, whose numerous attractions include a habit of assembling delectable breakfasts while she sleeps.
But Anna is a bit of a rube at love, easily taken in by charm and good looks, willing to ignore what common sense tells her she ought at least to investigate. There is, for example, Olivier's unhealthily avid interest in the novel she's translating. And is he still involved with the famous, older, married actress he's directing in a play, even if he says their romance is through?
Anna's avoidance of confrontation enables Marsot to sustain such ambiguities and draw out suspense as she sprinkles the narrative with red herrings -- about Olivier, about the anonymous author and his novel and about the strange behavior of Anna's closest friend in Paris, an editor in his 60s whom she long ago nicknamed Bunny. (The name is forced on the character in the interest of foreshadowing. It's a gratingly too-cute appellation for a dignified man well over 6 feet tall; it does, however, perfectly set up a poignant line more than 300 pages in.)
As the book Anna is translating shifts from erotic adventure to love story to something darker and more searching, so does her daily life. Whether the parallels are the product of coincidence, the unknown novelist's design or her own perception is a puzzle that pulls the reader along.
Occasionally Marsot's structure creaks, as when Anna keeps lucking into strangers who raise convenient points about translation, or when she turns mercurial in moments that feel engineered for the plot. But this grown-up smart-girl fantasy is generally well constructed. It's fun too.
"Tell me," Anna asks a friend, "what's it called in French when a film ends happily but in a way you don't believe?"
"An American ending," the friend replies.
Anna doesn't get an American ending, not in that sense. But she and Marsot are both straddling cultures. If the moonlit Parisian finish to "Foreign Tongue" is a little Hollywood, who says that's a bad thing?
Give it more, more.. more
BBC announces the death of 100%:
"Before the days of linguistic inflation, 100% was considered enough. But no longer, says Chris Bowlby, in a personal reflection on how language has changed.
How committed are you to finishing this article? 110%? Maybe 150%? Or, if you're in the US, perhaps 1,000% is what you need to say to show you really care.
There once was a time when 100% really meant something. That was the top figure you could commit, or the maximum you were allowed for a mortgage, 100% of your house's value.
But then came linguistic - as well as mortgage - inflation. It began in a very modest, British kind of way. Susie Dent, a writer and language expert, has been delving in the old dictionaries and thinks the breach may have come in the early 1980s when British ice-dancing stars were hoping for Olympic glory.
"The first citation comes from a biography of Torville and Dean. It said they were going to put in nothing less than 101%, so possibly that's when things began to edge upwards".
Susie Dent says it has all been part of a "bigging up" of language. Think of the way we say superhero instead of just hero, and feel the need to add "über" or "mega" to make words sound more impressive.
Percentages inflated under the same kind of pressure. And poor old 100% was left looking, she says, "a bit paltry".
In the US, it's claimed the going rate for some job applications is to promise no less than 1,000% commitment.
But could all this be changing? Employers are becoming less and less impressed by job candidates whose inflated promises seem out of all proportion to their actual qualifications and performance.
So a return to 100% as a kind of limit might well be popular with those bewildered by the way we've been playing fast and loose with our percentages. "
Listen to the whole thing here.
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