You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August, 2007.
By Martina Smit and agencies
The pitfalls of translation can cause even top international diplomats to stumble – often much to the amusement of their audience, an insider has revealed.
A new book by Richard Woolcott, who ran Australia’s foreign service for four years, recounts the case of an Australian diplomat in France.
The envoy tried to tell his French audience that as he looked back on his career, it was divided in two parts. But his French sparked unintended laughter: “When I look at my backside, I find it is divided into two parts.”
Extracts from Mr Woolcott’s book, Undiplomatic Activities, have been published in the latest Bulletin magazine, although the book has yet to be formally launched.
Mr Woolcott recalled a speech he gave on a visit to Palembang shortly after he had arrived on a posting in Indonesia.
“Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my wife and myself, I want to say how delighted we are to be in Palembang,” he said in English.
The interpreter said something entirely different. “Ladies and gentlemen, on top of my wife, I am delighted to be in Palembang.”
According to the book, the former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke left his Japanese audience bewildered when he used the Australian colloquial phrase “I am not here to play funny buggers” to dismiss a trivial question.
Comparing options is a good idea, depending on the language and needs
By Sharon Reier / International Herald Tribune
When Alain Thienot, a professor of business administration at a French engineering school, decided to translate a classic French finance text into English for his international students, he bought a top-rated computer translation program to do the job, rather than hire a translator.
Among hundreds of errors, the program produced a document that translated the French word “entreprise” as “undertaking,” rather than company, and “frais” as “fresh air” instead of fees or expenses. A frustrated Thienot had to labor five hours a day during his summer vacation to correct “so many stupidities,” he said.
Translators love collecting stories about these kinds of false economies, in part because it proves that translation still requires the human touch.
With so many companies chasing foreign markets, and more people practicing their professional trades abroad, the demand for translators has been expanding. But selecting the right translator for an assignment may make the difference between mission accomplished and mission impossible.
Lori Thicke, co-founder of Eurotexte, a translation agency in Paris, remembered a client who organized trade shows. A contract he had drawn up with exhibitors of X-ray and MRI equipment was supposed to state that radioactive parts “should never be accessible.” Instead, the poorly translated document stated that “radioactive parts should be exposed at all times.”
“They were giving potentially fatal instructions,” Thicke said.
Bas Knoop
Websites/weblogs krijgen duizenden reacties per dag binnen, vaak vol taal- en tikfouten. Maar echt druk lijken ze zich daar niet om te maken. “Het is de verantwoordelijkheid van diegene die een reactie plaatst.”
Weatherman: ‘Tja de pliesie rukt voor dit soort zaakjes niet meer uit, moet de burger zelf maar weer regelen’. De Melkboer: ‘Als ze dat sekreet nou pakken…. snijdt dan meteen zn ballen eraf… of stel em meteen ter beschikking aan de medische wetenschap… scheelt een hoop p3on…’ Reez: ‘Getver die mat ook, ga eens deaud.’
Bovenstaande uitspraken zijn te lezen onder een artikel op de eigenzinnige website GeenStijl.nl, over de moord op een 62-jarige Amstelveense avondwinkelier. Deze schokkende gebeurtenis leidde tot ruim 1100 reacties.
Misschien minder schokkend, maar daardoor niet minder opvallend is het feit dat van de 1110 reacties, een groot aantal boordevol taal- en tikfouten staat, wat het lezen er soms niet gemakkelijker op maakt. De passages uit de eerste alinea van dit artikel accentueren dat treffend.
Drempel
GeenStijl.nl is overigens niet de enige website/weblog waar de kwaliteit van het Nederlands op reactieforums sterk de wensen overlaat. Adfo, Sargasso, Nujij.nl, FOK! en Buro Renkema zijn allen bekende websites/weblogs waar dagelijks duizenden mensen hun mening geven over actuele, maatschappelijke thema’s. Maar waar ook dagelijks de regels van de Nederlandse taal met een korreltje zout wordt genomen.
Hoe hier mee om te gaan? Bij de brievenrubriek van een willekeurig Nederlands dagblad is het duidelijk: De eindredactie haalt een ingezonden brief keurig door de spellingcontrole en zorgt ervoor dat de brief in foutloos Nederlands in de krant verschijnt.
A common misconception about the translator is that he or she is a living dictionary, taking a text in a foreign language and turning it into something a little more accessible to the target audience. Some believe that anyone who can speak a foreign language well can excel as a translator but few realise the amount of time translators pour into their work, the endless hours of playing with words and nuance. While online translation engines are a popular tool for anyone needing quick results, these often translate word for word and are unable to identify set expressions, resulting in a stilted approximation which lacks the fluency and natural feel of a text produced by a human being. Translation, is much more than substituting words of one language into another; it’s an art.
The work of translators can be found almost anywhere in modern society. They were responsible for that English edition of Les Miserables on your bookshelf and the instructions manual for your new iPod. They work at international institutions, translating legal documents into a wide range of languages or helping to negotiate business settlements with faraway lands. Translation is big business in an increasingly globalised world and the demand for language skills is stronger than ever. The rise of the ‘tiger economies’ of the Far East have led to greater career opportunities for speakers of Chinese and Japanese while speakers of Arabic and South Asian languages will find their services are very much in demand by Western governments and intelligence agencies.
Tools of the Trade
Translation is an age-old business which spans millenia. Ever since foreign lands starting dealing and trading with other, there has been a need for interpreters and translators to help ease the process. In the days of yore, translators worked by candlelight, translating religious texts and literature into their native language by hand, sometimes spending several years, if not an entire lifetime, on just one text. Today’s translators are equipped with PCs and word-processing software, where translations can be edited with a few clicks of a mouse button. They have access to terminology databases and translation aids to help streamline their work. They keep sizeable collections of monolingual, bilingual and specialist dictionaries close at hand for quick reference.
An archive of the Scots language is now available all over the world thanks to a comprehensive new website.
Researchers at Glasgow University have completed work on the online resource, which contains more than four million words in Scots and Scottish English.
As well as meaning and usage, the project also has audio links, allowing people to hear words being spoken.
The site, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, can be accessed at www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk.
People from the US, Australia, China, Japan and South America have already logged on to use the service, as well as people in Scotland.
The website currently includes text from 1945 up to the present day, with researchers working on expanding it.
They are building up a new resource for older varieties of language, dating from 1700 to 1945.
Once completed this should allow people to trace the development of features of Scots and Scottish English over time.
Project researcher, Dr Wendy Anderson, said: “The Scots language is a source of interest across the world as it is one aspect of a long and flourishing cultural heritage.
“The website will be a useful language resource for academic researchers and students, language learners and teachers, dictionary writers and secondary school language teachers, not to mention for the large number of general users who just want to satisfy a curiosity about the Scots language.”
Source: BBC News, 12 August 2007
Missing!
At 25th of July Polish citizen Piotr Krzysiak was lost in Amsterdam. He is 26 years old, 196cm tall and weights 80kg. He was wearing yellow t-shirt, dark blue jeans and black shoes. He speaks only polish!
If You see him please contact police or call one of those numbers!
—
Het missen!
Bij 25 van Juli werd de Poolse burger Piotr Krzysiak verloren in Amsterdam. Hij is 26 jaar oud, lange 196cm en gewichten 80kg. Hij droeg gele t-shirt, donkerblauwe jeans en zwarte schoenen. Hij spreekt slechts poetsmiddel!
Als u hem politie gelieve te zien contacteren of één van die aantallen draaien!
Source: Flyer
Kim Willsher in Paris
A French Harry Potter fan was arrested and held by police after allegedly posting a pirate translation of the young wizard’s latest adventures on the internet.
The 16-year-old was apparently too impatient to wait for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last in the bestselling series, to be published in French.
So he set about translating all 784 pages into the language of Molière himself, according to investigators. The first chapters were available for download a few days after the book came out in July and the complete text was online within days. The site has since been shut down.
“He wasn’t doing it to make money, he is a fan,” explained one investigator. “His language is French but he’s very good at English.”
According to Le Parisien newspaper, Miss Rowling alerted her French publishers, Gallimard, to the unofficial version on the Internet.
Police said they were “particularly surprised” by the quality of the pirate version, which they said was “semi-professional”.
The high-school student from Aix-en-Provence, who has not been named, was arrested by police on Monday and kept in custody overnight. He was released today while “preliminary inquiries” are made. Police said they were hoping to question several more people in the case. If convicted, those responsible for the fraud could face heavy fines.
The book will be published in French under the title “Harry Potter et les reliques de la mort” in October.
An internet discussion last month suggested several fans working together had produced the pirate translation. Internet users were given the chance to download it in PDF format.
By LAURA CLARK
Adults remember an average of only seven words from the languages they studied at school, a survey suggests.
Following five years of foreign language classes we cannot even recall basic words such as “sorry” and “goodnight” after we leave school.
Only 2 per cent of those polled know how to ask the way to the lavatory in the language they are meant to have learned.
The scale of ignorance emerged in a BBC survey of 3,210 adults.
It found that French was the most frequently studied language at school, with 85 per cent having taken it.
That was followed by German on 35 per cent, Spanish 11 per cent and Italian 2 per cent.
But the majority of us are unable to use the language in adulthood and struggle to remember the simplest phrases.
The sum of most school-leavers’ knowledge is seven words or phrases – mostly words such as “hello” and “goodbye”.
They can also stretch to “beer” and the Brits-abroad staple of “Do you speak English?”
Only a handful – 2 per cent – went on to become fluent in the language they learned at school.
Nine out of ten said they were less likely to take a holiday in a country where they have to worry about their limited vocabulary.
The main reason was not that they were too lazy but too embarrassed to try to speak the language.
