tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89987352024-03-05T23:15:01.180-06:00life in translationMagohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.comBlogger101125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-58863796602867043222017-04-28T10:30:00.000-05:002017-04-28T10:30:31.072-05:00Still here, editing more than translatingYes, I’m still alive (both in the physical sense and as a translator). A lot of the action (in terms of freelance translators talking to each other) has moved to Facebook, and dangnabbit, it’s a lot easier to post a link on my FB page and participate in FB groups than to compose a blog post.
My business has evolved over recent years, and now I’m doing a lot more editing of English texts written Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-48410188626836312272015-02-23T17:28:00.000-06:002015-02-23T17:29:18.654-06:00‘Monte’ in EnglishMonte means “Mount” (as in the name of a mountain), of course, but it also means “tierra inculta cubierta de árboles, arbustos o matas” (RAE); in other words, “bush”.Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-65774306987796804652014-03-13T10:35:00.003-06:002014-03-13T10:35:54.019-06:00SuponerI was familiar with ‘suponer(se)’ meaning ‘to assume’ or ‘to suppose,’ or used to express ‘supposed to’ in texts by Latin American authors, so I was stymied at first when I ran into a different usage from Spanish authors. This usage corresponds to meaning #3 in the DRAE (and perhaps metaphorical use of #5):
suponer.
(Del lat. supponĕre).
1. tr. Dar por sentado y existente algo.
2. tr. Fingir, darMagohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-88596231864538405422013-09-09T11:53:00.002-05:002013-09-17T19:02:43.986-05:00False friends in ES>EN pharmaceutical translationsIn her blog, “Signs & Symptoms of Translation”, Emma Goldsmith has a brief but very relevant and useful list of false friends in ES>EN pharmaceutical translation.Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-16088575120863088572012-11-16T00:52:00.000-06:002012-11-16T01:01:10.669-06:00German–Spanish correspondence that skips over the English middleman
An English speaker
learning German will note many correspondences and cognates between the
English and German languages. English is, indeed, a member of the
Germanic family of languages.
Likewise, an English speaker learning Spanish will notice many
cognates – mostly different ones – between English and Spanish, due mainly to
the Latin roots of Spanish and the influence of Latin on Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-32285887409783422492012-11-06T13:50:00.000-06:002013-09-17T19:04:15.076-05:00Annals of bad literary translationI’m excited to have another amazing story to add to Life in Translation’s collection of bad literary translations. At the same time, though, it’s disappointing to see that French readers who thought they were reading classic 1950’s hardboiled detective and noire novels were actually reading distorted and condensed versions of them.
Here is the L’Expresse article: Polars américains: la Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-78433666335797591412012-10-22T13:48:00.000-05:002012-10-22T13:49:57.003-05:00Creating translations that sound like originals: some examplesIn the current issue of Panace@, a Spanish language journal of medical translation and interpretation, Juan Manuel Martín Arias has a short article (pdf) illustrating some pitfalls of over-literal translation of certain terms from English to Spanish.
Turning his examples around results in a lesson in obtaining natural-sounding translations from Spanish to English.
In Spanish, a drug (Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-57038995871873757682012-09-28T11:05:00.000-05:002012-09-28T11:05:09.253-05:00A new old translation of the US national anthem into SpanishIn 2006, a new Spanish version of the US national anthem generated some controversy. In particular, the 2006 version included a new, original second verse.
A forgotten 1945 version, translated by a Peruvian immigrant to the US, Clothilde Arias, was recently recovered. Curator Marvette Perez researched the translation for three years, preparing the exhibit for the Smithsonian Institution. The Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-49466413272331173552012-09-12T19:51:00.001-05:002012-09-12T19:51:31.528-05:00Free EN-ES legal dictionary appWordMagic is giving away free for a limited time their English<>Spanish legal dictionary app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-49649100360913104062011-06-16T14:41:00.005-05:002011-06-16T15:10:26.276-05:00First ever direct English translation of Stanisław Lem's “Solaris”What is it with classic novels and bad translations? (See past posts on bad or faulty translations of Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, The Second Sex reloaded, Levi’s The Periodic Table, and Verne’s Off On a Comet (Hector Servadac).)Now it turns out that the only available English version of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 Polish science fiction novel Solaris had been relay translated from a poor French version. Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-65801001271389914872011-05-16T14:29:00.003-05:002011-05-16T14:41:59.819-05:00Four Steps to Translation QualityLuciano Monteiro has a blog post about the four steps to translation quality. I think this is a really good post. Well I would, wouldn’t I, because these are exactly the four steps I use. I could have written his post if I were a better blogger. Please go and read it.I used to feel inadequate because I had read many times that the translation process should start with reading the entire text (Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-25645168675794560812011-02-24T11:10:00.007-06:002011-02-24T11:23:07.091-06:00Course for Korean literature translationThe Korean JungAng Daily has an article about a literature translation course being offered by the Korea Literature Translation Institute:The special translation course is being held to train new translators who will provide high quality translations based on in-depth knowledge of Korean literature. This course is different from other translation courses because it focuses solely on Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-46171182790945331252010-12-01T22:43:00.003-06:002010-12-01T22:47:09.464-06:00Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation into EnglishIf you are a translator and a SFF fan/reader, you will want to visit—and probably bookmark—the Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Awards website. These awards are about translation of SFF into English from other languages.The stated purpose of the Awards:These Awards reward the translation of science fiction, fantasy and related fiction from other languages into English. They exist both Magohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16407615052791946172noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-53165514630806719462010-07-10T22:31:00.004-05:002012-09-12T19:52:20.257-05:00False Friend: Inconvenient[e]Sometimes a false friend turns up when there is no actual translation from a source text to a target text (at least I surmise that’s what happened here). I may be stretching in calling it a false friend, but in my judgement, the word choice was too influenced by Spanish, and gives the wrong impression. This article in the the Toronto Star is about Mexico’s promotion of less-known sites to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-87452196608733461922010-05-13T16:03:00.005-05:002010-05-14T17:45:33.356-05:00Interview with Don Bartlett, translator of the Garmann booksThis e-mail interview with Don Bartlett, who has translated three of the Garmann novels by Stian Hole from Norwegian, was recently published in the Montreal Gazette. I hadn’t heard of the books before, but this article and an interview with the author have piqued my interest.Bartlett talks about his work translating novels, translating children’s books, illustrations, idioms, translating for UK Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-66161407575357719552010-05-04T12:48:00.004-05:002010-05-04T12:56:32.273-05:00What translators don’t want to hear: “Just…”Inspired by a recent post on a translators list, here are the top 5 things a translator doesn’t want to hear after researching a difficult term or expression:1. Just leave it in the source language.2. Sorry, typo. It was supposed to be [well-known term], not [unintelligible term].3. Just translate it literally.4. [crickets] Um, just leave it out.5. You don’t have to understand it, just translate Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-62747443188985205982010-04-23T22:26:00.003-05:002010-04-23T22:46:51.044-05:00Subtitle translation as it should beLast year, I wrote about a poor example of subtitle translation that I had come across. The subtitler evidently did not have a sufficient comprehension of the film’s dialogue, and made up what they did not understand, which sometimes resulted in important aspects of the meaning being lost, or even twisted around to mean the opposite of the actual dialogue. In happy contrast, English subtitles forUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-65023001025795795502010-04-23T16:55:00.003-05:002010-04-23T17:02:40.343-05:00Maps of multiple demonsThis was the ad that just appeared in my Gmail: Can you see that? Here's a closer look:If you wrestle with English spelling, you might think that languages with phonetic spelling are impervious to spelling mistakes. Evidently not. And a government agency, too!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-47682070349495817052010-02-25T16:06:00.009-06:002010-07-10T23:16:10.254-05:00Strike Two for “The Second Sex”The story about the new translation into English of Simone Beauvoir’s Le deuxieme sexe (The Second Sex) turns out to have a shocking and disappointing sequel.To recap, the original 1953 translation was full of inaccuracies ranging from distortions to errors that reversed the meaning of Beauvoir’s words, as well as sizeable omissions. A new translation was finally commissioned in 2006 by the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-29141026487842447442010-02-09T22:43:00.003-06:002010-02-09T22:46:12.640-06:00One-to-many (ES-EN) or many-to-one (EN-ES)Both “spectre” and “spectrum” are “espectro” in Spanish. Confusion abounded until I figured it out.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-11129563157309291312010-01-21T19:12:00.004-06:002010-01-21T19:23:50.544-06:00Followup to elements: Anecdote foundA year ago, I wrote:I remember reading an anecdote about a translation of a major literary work in which the translator wasn't familiar with chemistry, didn’t know the names of the elements in the target language, didn't bother to look them up, and got many of them wrong. I’d like to be more specific, but unfortunately I didn’t save the article and could never find it again in spite of much Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-43634641348606513192009-09-21T22:15:00.003-05:002009-09-21T22:20:25.270-05:00Singular “they” resourceNote to self: bookmark this post by Gabe Doyle at Motivated Grammar in case of future need to convince anyone that singular “they” is not incorrect English. Also references the classic Language Log posts on same.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-63445728248907560242009-06-25T15:16:00.012-05:002009-06-27T19:24:04.869-05:00Bad subtitles: A case reportIt’s not uncommon to see queries from experienced translators and beginners alike, as well as non-translators, about how to get into the field of subtitling films. When we watch a movie with poor subtitles, we can’t help thinking we could have done it better.Bad subtitles are legendary among translators and movie fans alike. This Times article describes some examples, and blames it on cut-rate Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-25627722617402051302009-06-12T10:24:00.003-05:002009-06-12T11:08:31.276-05:00Further to the previousTo continue on the subject of poorly-written originals, the website for “Eurozone Translations” has apparently been around for at least a year, but has just recently made the round of translator lists and forums.“When quality and price don't matter”Eurozone Translations bases its success on a very simple premise:We know more about translating than the customer does.We don't tell our customers howUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8998735.post-53005003474654720962009-06-01T20:32:00.009-05:002009-06-03T14:30:32.412-05:00Losing one’s coolThis moment when an interpreter on CBC lost her cool because she couldn’t hear the feed is going to be all over the internet presently.Except that it’s billed in the popular media as a “translator’s” goof. But it was an interpreter. A translator translates the written word, and an interpreter translates the spoken word.Sometimes a translator might lose her cool. Sometimes she feels like asking Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2