life in translation

First ever direct English translation of Stanisław Lem's “Solaris”

2011-06-16T14:41:00.005-05:00

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.

Four Steps to Translation Quality

2011-05-16T14:29:00.003-05:00

Luciano 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 (

Course for Korean literature translation

2011-02-24T11:10:00.007-06:00

The 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

Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation into English

2010-12-01T22:43:00.003-06:00

If 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 to

False Friend: Inconvenient[e]

2010-07-10T22:31:00.004-05:00

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

Interview with Don Bartlett, translator of the Garmann books

2010-05-13T16:03:00.005-05:00

This 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

What translators don’t want to hear: “Just…”

2010-05-04T12:48:00.004-05:00

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

Subtitle translation as it should be

2010-04-23T22:26:00.003-05:00

Last 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 for

Maps of multiple demons

2010-04-23T16:55:00.003-05:00

This 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!

Strike Two for “The Second Sex”

2010-02-25T16:06:00.009-06:00

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

One-to-many (ES-EN) or many-to-one (EN-ES)

2010-02-09T22:43:00.003-06:00

Both “spectre” and “spectrum” are “espectro” in Spanish. Confusion abounded until I figured it out.

Followup to elements: Anecdote found

2010-01-21T19:12:00.004-06:00

A 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

Singular “they” resource

2009-09-21T22:15:00.003-05:00

Note 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.

Bad subtitles: A case report

2009-06-25T15:16:00.012-05:00

It’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

Further to the previous

2009-06-12T10:24:00.003-05:00

To 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 how

Losing one’s cool

2009-06-01T20:32:00.009-05:00

This 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

Very good corpus search tool

2009-05-08T23:35:00.004-05:00

Thanks to Reed James for a tip about Linear B, an set of online searchable translation memories. I don't know where the translation memories are from—evidently not ancient Mycenean stone tablets, because it is giving me spectacular results whenever I’m stuck on a word or phrase. I think I will be using this a lot from now on.Here are the direct links for searching Linear B Spanish to English, and

English grammar update

2009-04-13T11:43:00.003-05:00

A long time ago I read that Strunk and White was the must-have guide to style in English writing. I dutifully bought a copy, and I may have read it.It's still praised, but not by anyone who reads Language Log, I think. Language Loggers have been pointing out the deficiencies and inconsistencies of The Elements of Style for quite some time.Dr. Geoffrey Pullum has written a succint and scathing

Confidential to “mache”

2009-01-06T00:03:00.001-06:00

Please repost your comment to the relevant post and I will publish it.

Life in a different language?

2009-01-05T23:57:00.003-06:00

A lot of visitors to this blog arrive here via a search for “life in a different language” or “life in different languages.”I am curious what they are seeking. If you are one of these visitors, how about describing in a comment what you were looking for? Was it about living in different languages, or about the translation of the word “life” into other languages, or something else?

Tool Terminology: The Definitive Guide to Screws

2009-01-05T14:47:00.003-06:00

When a Phillips is not a Phillips!(Via LifeHacker.)If you liked the Instructables post linked above, you may also enjoy One Good Turn by Witold Rybczynski. (About tornillos in Spanish.)

What different languages sound like, Part II

2008-12-09T19:57:00.002-06:00

How time flies! It's been four years since I posted about a website with samples of different languages.Now, thanks to languagehat, here's another one, the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory Archive, with many, many more languages.

Victim of a capricious editor

2008-11-24T13:26:00.003-06:00

Regular Onion readers may be mildly amused at this article—or not. Translators who have been victimized by the “change every possible word to its synonym” editor will smart in sympathy.Consolidated Concepts copywriter Ronald Leff announced Monday that his vision for the Black & Decker Electronic Toast-R-Oven™ Broiler instruction booklet was "thoroughly betrayed" in the final editing process. […]

A rescuing minority languages and cultures story

2008-11-10T19:58:00.004-06:00

From the International Herald Tribune, India's aborigines study, rather than shed, their culture.The story opens with a linguistic focus on one of the tasks being undertaken at the Adivasi Academy founded by Professor Ganesh Devy in 1996. Five Indian young people from Adivasi (aboriginal [sort of]) tribes are writing down their native languages.One word at a time, they are making dictionaries of

Translation links

2008-10-24T11:55:00.002-05:00

Click here for a useful, ample, and up-to-date page of translation links from the Swansea University Translation Program. Contents of general interest include: Swansea University Research in Translation (departments, programs, centres, groups and projects, etc.) General translation resources Resources for specific languages Translation organizations Translation journals Mailing lists and forums

English speech accent archive

2008-10-17T19:43:00.003-05:00

Several readers mentioned that they liked the post on comparisons of different accents in English at Sound Comparisons. Here's another one for you. While Sound Comparisons allows you to compare a single word at a time, the Speech Accent Archive presents a short paragraph read by a variety of different native and non-native English speakers from all over the world. Most of the sound files are

Hiſtory of the long “s”

2008-10-17T19:11:00.004-05:00

Andrew West has published two fascinating, comprehensive posts about the history of the long “s” and the rules for its use. These posts are a couple of years old, but our attention was just drawn to them today by a mention on Lantra.For the latter post, West derived the rules empirically, as no contemporary source gave a complete, consistent account. He also examines the evolution over time of

Case study of a book translation

2008-10-17T13:32:00.002-05:00

Language Hat alerts us to translator Daniel Hahn's new translation blog, in which Hahn sets out to document and reflect on the process as he translates Estação das Chuvas by Angolan novelist José Eduardo Agualusa. In the third post, he considers the problem of footnotes in a novel. Language Hat's commenters debate the question further.

Comparisons of different English accents

2008-08-26T14:19:00.006-05:00

Sound Comparisons is a website where you can listen to English words pronounced in a variety of different accents, including those from various British, Irish, North American regions, as well as some other countries around the world where English is spoken, and also comparisons with the same word in various Germanic languages. Very interesting, and the page is easy to use (to hear any given sound

False friend: psícico/psychic (adjective)

2008-08-15T17:07:00.005-05:00

Psícico: adj. Perteneciente o relativo a las funciones y contenidos psicológicos. (RAE)Pertaining or relative to psychological function and content.Psychic: adj.1. Of, relating to, affecting, or influenced by the human mind or psyche; mental: psychic trauma; psychic energy.2.a. Capable of extraordinary mental processes, such as extrasensory perception and mental telepathy.b. Of or relating to

Nothing to report

2008-05-21T13:52:00.001-05:00

Just working, like Sam.

Reading the clues

2008-04-10T13:50:00.004-05:00

For a sum of money, translators can buy a list of translation agency addresses to spam with their CVs. This is not the famous one that has been around for quite some time, but a new one. Some linguistic clues on their website allude to the established one, so I suppose they are trying to imitate the success of the original. Is it worth it? Judge for yourself. I find another certain linguistic

Geography lesson needed?

2008-04-03T21:37:00.000-06:00

*jaw drops, hits floor*

Client with keen grasp of the essentials

2008-02-26T16:05:00.009-06:00

Sometimes clients commission a translation job without really knowing what is involved. This was certainly not the case with this job which appeared on an internet forum: Buenas tarde, andaba buscando alguien que me pudiera ayudar a traducir las descripciones de [...], a ingles. la traduccion consiste en expresar en ingles exactamente lo que dice la descripcion de las [..] que ya tengo. asi como

Elements and Spices

2008-02-06T15:12:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Michael of Translate This, here is a pointer to Elementymology & Elements Multidict by Peter van der Krogt, a site which gives the entymology of the elements and their names in 72 languages. 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,

What Book of Mine is This?

2008-01-05T18:46:00.000-06:00

Did you know that if you're an author popular enough to have your books translated into many languages, not only do you have no control over the image of your foreign language editions but you may not even be able to tell which ones they are? And no one fills you in, either. Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries and other popular series, shares some of her foreign editions and wonders which

How to advertise machine translation (not)

2007-11-27T20:35:00.001-06:00

I saw an ad for a machine translation system and thought it would be interesting to try it out. Machine translation is supposed to be getting better and better as it makes ever more sophisticated use of statistical algorithms, making it more effective than free methods like Babelfish. So I tried translating a paragraph at the program's website. The instructions read:1)Enter your Source Text (up

Word lookup / ¿Cómo se dice...?

2007-11-25T20:12:00.001-06:00

Visitors to this blog over the last couple of weeks have been looking for the meaning or translation of the following: basto, morado, rude, cliente consentido, workmanlike finish, brown, life, cínico, pull an allnighter, brown hair colors, December, November, October, mundo, de nada, corn, purple and de viaje.Here are the meanings:basto (unless they actually meant "vasto")morado; see also this

Tip of the Day: Detouring Around Writer's Block

2007-11-08T12:31:00.000-06:00

I knew this tip already, and you probably did too, but yesterday I wasted too much time websurfing and waiting for inspiration while not wanting to remember it. If stuck at a sentence near the beginning, just mark it as pending and move on. The next sentence is too hard, too? Repeat and move on. Eventually a sentence is reached that is so trivial and basic that it's doable. That seems to loosen

Who do you translate for?

2007-10-04T22:20:00.000-05:00

From an article in Full Tilt, a journal of East Asian poetry, translation and the arts, some wise words from Harold Goldblatt, who "all but single-handedly introduced contemporary Chinese-language literature to the English-speaking world". Who do you translate for? I believe first of all that, like an editor, the translator's primary obligation is to the reader, not the writer. I realize that a

On translating poetry

2007-09-30T22:42:00.000-05:00

An article by Carol Rumens and discussion by divers commenters about translating poetry here, at the Guardian.The nub:So why translate? My first answer is that poetry in translation simply adds to the sum total of human pleasure obtainable through a single language. It opens up new language worlds within our own tongues, as every good poem does. It revitalises our daily, cliche-haunted vocabulary

Jules Verne needs better English translations

2007-09-13T12:37:00.000-05:00

Just because a body of work is a venerated classic doesn't mean the translations we have are necessarily good. From an article by Adam Roberts in the Guardian:I'd always liked reading Jules Verne and I've read most of his novels; but it wasn't until recently that I really understood I hadn't been reading Jules Verne at all.I'll explain what I mean. Verne has been globally popular since the 19th

Rejected! Utterly untranslatable

2007-09-12T11:37:00.000-05:00

Via Justine Larbalestier we have this New York Times article by David Oshinsky on rejection letters from Alfred A. Kopf Inc. to famous and great writers; a collection to stir hope in the heart of any aspiring writer. The whole article is delightful reading, but the part that caught my translatorish attention was Knopf's rejection of Jorge Luis Borges's work as "utterly untranslatable." Segue into

A Site for Movie Translation Mistakes

2007-09-05T15:30:00.000-05:00

A bilingual movie-watcher can often recognize dubbing mistakes through knowledge of the original version. We find these errors horridly fascinating. "Navaja en el ojo" at "Switch off and Let's Go" points us to a collection of movie dubbing goofs. (As she points out, most, but not all of them are translation mistakes.)A sample mistake: In an episode of "Babylon 5," there was a reference to the

Translating "su" and "important"

2007-08-16T19:57:00.000-05:00

Ace blogger Mimi Smartypants was bemused to compare the instructions for a feminine product in French and Spanish with the English ones. She writesThe maxi-pad box was labeled in many languages [...], and I really enjoyed how a "heavy" flow turns into an "important" flow in French and an "abundant" flow in Spanish. Also how the Spanish claims to protect against "loss" rather than the English "

El viaje de ¿Hablas español?

2007-08-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

Two BBC reporters, José Baig and Carlos Ceresole, have just finished a coast-to-coast trip through the southern U.S. speaking only Spanish. They documented the project in their blog ¿Hablas español?, where they tell about the people and the language they met. The blog, with links to their photo album and video and sound clips, and to their Facebook group ¿Hablas español y vives en EEUU? is an

A short digression: How to say "off topic" in Spanish

2007-07-19T20:26:00.001-05:00

At Switch Off and Go, "La navaja en el ojo" writes about the options in Spanish for translating "off topic." She points out that unfortunately the English term will probably prevail over digresión or any other option in Spanish. The foreign phrase being restricted to the world of blogs and forums, its use signals that the writer is making reference to that sphere. She adds that "off topic" covers

Translation nightmare

2007-06-08T23:40:00.001-05:00

The kind of text that stops the translator of abstracts cold in her tracks:This article is about the difference between X and Y. We examine the relationship between them and propose a concept of X that is free from dependence on Y. Except that X and Y translate to the same word in the target language. Help!

Frequently asked questions about translating

2007-06-06T11:31:00.001-05:00

A recent ProZ forum thread discussed sticky topics to answer questions asked time and again—often by newcomers who aren't aware that countless past discussions and advice on their query can be accessed by searching the forums. (I discuss this specific one here but of course it occurs in virtually every internet forum, discussion group, bulletin board, etc.)The example cited was "How do I convert

¿Güeir du dei tich dat?

2007-05-18T12:18:00.000-05:00

I was unable to apply for a nice little "translation" job posted today at ProZ because the outsourcer restricted bidding to credentialed translators. But the job consisted of writing out some 200 words of Spanish phonetically so that a non-Spanish speaker could pronounce them. En-TONN-sehss loh kay may pray-GOON-toh ehss DONE-day say tee-TOO-lah OO-noh pah-rah EH-ssoh. KRAY-oh kay loh SAY ah-SAIR

The rude world

2007-05-11T14:08:00.000-05:00

Here's a funny one. What does the expression "basto mundo" mean? By the dictionary, it should be something like the "rude, crude world," but the usage examples, of which there are some 800+, don't seem to fit that meaning. Suddenly light dawns! Someone meant to write "vasto mundo," and so it means the "wide world," the "vast world." The slip could be due either to the "v" and the "b" being next

Despicable metapost

2007-05-10T20:53:00.000-05:00

Don't you just hate reading blog entries along the lines of "sorry I've been too busy to post"? THEN WHY BOTHER!? JUST DON'T POST AT ALL! DIDN'T YOU PAY ATTENTION?I've been so busy I haven't updated my "latest jobs" list for 5.5 months. Sorry.

New Translation of "The Second Sex"

2007-03-22T19:36:00.001-06:00

Remember last year three years ago* when the story went around about how bad the 1953 English translation, The Second Sex, of Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe was?To summarize, the translation is said to be full of hundreds of major and minor errors, some of which do not merely miss or distort the meaning, but make the text state the opposite of the original. The original translator was a retired

A different reason to choose human translation

2007-03-14T20:40:00.000-06:00

Last December, Blogherald, a blogger's blog, installed a plugin to translate their content to eight languages, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Today, they announced that they've decided to remove it... because of technical problems. They're exploring human translation as an alternative. It's interesting that technical—not quality—criteria motivated the

Como convertirte en cliente consentido

2007-03-04T22:26:00.000-06:00

Encargarme traducciones de textos interesantes, de temas interesantes, sean ésas: de textos bien escritos, o bien de textos mal escritos de manera que mejorarlos constituye un reto interesante y divertido. Tener sexto sentido para mandarme trabajos voluminosos cuando me falta trabajo, y pequeños (o ninguno) cuando me encuentro ya muy atareada. Felicitarme por la calidad de mis traducciones (sin

Would you trust a barefoot shoemaker?

2007-03-01T11:07:00.000-06:00

This discussion at ProZ is about how to regard an agency whose own website isn't, shall we say, a good advertisement for their own language services. It's not hard to find examples. As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."One agency is a little shaky in punctuation, prepositions and tenses:Why we are the best?In XXXX, we specialized in the following languages:[It may not be clear from

Vertiente

2007-02-20T22:54:00.000-06:00

Some options for translating vertiente (when it doesn't mean "slope"): field activity category aspect side consideration dimension...and one context-specific one that worked well in a certain specific sentence: byway

Two Journals About Multiple Languages

2007-02-09T16:10:00.000-06:00

1. Three UCLA students have started an online journal LALA (L.A. LAnguage) to celebrate and examine multilingual diversity in Los Angeles. 2. Words Without Borders is a showcase of international literature translated into English. The site also includes forums, a blog and more. The theme of the February 2007 issue is graphic novels.Published works are indexed both by the part of the world where

Article on translating Harry Potter

2007-01-29T19:58:00.000-06:00

...in The Guardian. Link to print-friendly version.Sorry, this blog is too busy to comment, just go read it yourself.

Final checklist tip

2007-01-27T16:36:00.000-06:00

A question at ProZ reminds me that if the word "public" is in the final text, it is a good idea to check, just before delivery, that no instance of the word is missing the "L".This is true for Spanish, as well as English. púbico: 1. adj. Perteneciente o relativo al pubis.

A Resolution To Be Broken

2007-01-26T14:04:00.000-06:00

Does this ever happen to you? Translating publisher's blurbs or liner notes for music albums I generally become so taken with the product that I offer to be paid in kind instead of in cash. Write 10 times:Publishers are not good clients for book addict translators.Publishers are not good clients for book addict translators.Publishers are not good clients for...

Fortalecer, fortalecimiento

2007-01-02T16:33:00.000-06:00

Here's how I've translated fortalecer [or resp. fortalecimiento] in past translations:strengthensupportbuild upreinforcepromoteboostand two context-specific solutions: enhanceincrease

Translators: Learning from architects

2006-12-28T13:26:00.000-06:00

A common query and topic of discussion at translator forums and on translator lists is whether the customer is always right. How should a translator respond when the client insists that the translation must adhere to a faulty glossary, lets a reviewer who is non-native or unacquainted with the subject matter alter or add to the translation (thereby introducing errors), or insists that wrong terms

Penalty for Not Translating Into One's Native Language, ca. 1744

2006-12-18T14:31:00.000-06:00

In an episode of In Our Time dealing with the French Encyclopédie, Judith Hawley tells that the origins of the Encylopédie lay in a translation of Chambers' Cyclopaedia by John Mills. The translation, however, was so incompetent, due to Mills' deficient knowledge of French, that publisher André le Breton had Mills beat up. As Dr. Hawley recounts it, "they punched him in the stomach and hit him

The proof of the pudding is in the eating

2006-11-28T17:42:00.000-06:00

Some days I feel curmudgeonly. And here's why.How does a client know if a translator is good? Experience, education, qualifications... If you want to hire a translator, should you require that he or she has a degree in translation, a degree in the subject matter, sufficient experience...?Here's a query about how to translate: "Do not make change for a customer outside of their order."A difficult

Translation in Vietnam

2006-10-27T12:10:00.000-05:00

This article from the VietNamNet Bridge makes an interesting juxtaposition with the previous two articles posted here about Russian literary translation and a star Vietnamese translator.Vietnamese translators killing int’l authorsMany foreign books have been translated into Vietnamese in the past 15 years and many of them contained major errors in translation. Are translators assassinating

Movie about a translator

2006-10-26T18:25:00.000-05:00

This article in the St. Petersburg Times talks about changes in the literary translation industry in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, touching on a number of interesting issues.By Evgenia IvanovaStaff Writer"'The goat cried in an inhuman voice…' I could not leave this in!" the English professor in Autumn Marathon (1979) remarks after spending hours helping with a translation by his less

“The most prolific and fastest translator”

2006-10-23T11:58:00.000-05:00

From an article in ThanNien News, English edition:Prolific translator says secret is determination, self-studyHaving translated Doctor Zhivago in two months besides numerous other books from Russian and Chinese into Vietnamese, a 64-year-old man has achieved the impossible, even lecturing leaders on economic policy.Born into a poor family in northern Vietnam’s Ha Nam province, Le Khanh Truong

Be prepared in case of important award

2006-10-13T20:44:00.000-05:00

From a report in the Chicago Tribune by reporter Patrick T. Reardon:Orhan Pamuk, who won the 2006 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, once had a doozy of a friendly argument with Guneli Gun over the word "doozies."Gun, a novelist and occasional college teacher in Oberlin, Ohio, is the translator of two of Pamuk's novels, "The New Life" and "The Black Book." And it was during her work on the

Mexican Spanish, or, When the DRAE Is Not Enough

2006-10-03T11:09:00.000-05:00

Four online sources for consulting Mexican expressions/vocabulary:*Diccionario breve de mexicanismos:-Alphabetical index page-Search page*Jergas de habla hispana - Jerga de México*Diccionario de Regionalismos de la Lengua Española (Grosschmid)*José R. Morales's index of links to Mexican Spanish (not all links are current anymore, unfortunately)...and...*Diccionario de la lengua española (22a ed.)

"-OR" and "-EE"; three sticky notes.

2006-09-21T13:49:00.000-05:00

Surely by the same mental lacuna that I'm unable to remember readily which side is left and which is right, I can never remember who does what to whom. (I can instantly identify left and right if I think of my writing (righting) hand, and I never forget that the right turn is easy and the left turn is hard but I go blank when I have to take sides in any other context. I ought to use these

False Friend Alert: comunicación

2006-08-31T11:16:00.001-05:00

A publicity feature about an airline begins with the subtitle “Respondiendo a las necesidades de comunicación,” and the first sentence reads: “NNNN es el año en el que comienza una nueva época en la aviación en México al crearse el Consorcio XXXX, S.A. de C.V., una empresa dedicada a satisfacer las necesidades de comunicación del estado de YYY.” It wasn't clear from the title alone, but the first

Legal "shall" vs. "will"

2006-08-31T11:02:00.000-05:00

A ProZ forum post quotes this summary of Bryan A. Garner’s explanation of "shall" vs. "will" from his A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage.1) American Rule: shall = has a duty to must = is required to (used for all requirements that are not duties imposed on the subject of a clause) must not = is required not to; is disallowed from; is not permitted to may = has discretion to; is permitted to

U.S. national anthem in Spanish

2006-05-04T18:01:00.000-05:00

For all the recent fuss over the American reception of their national anthem translated into Spanish, I've found it a challenge to actually find the lyrics. Some stories, pointing out that translation of the anthem into Spanish is neither a new nor unique phenomenon, referred to four different Spanish versions available at the website of the U.S. State Department. Here they are, located thanks to

Translation challenge: rezago

2006-03-07T14:39:00.000-06:00

Note to self for future reference: solutions I have used for expressions involving rezago:- set-back- lag- backward- underdeveloped- deficit- gap

Bunch grasses

2005-11-14T20:36:00.000-06:00

According to this site:Páramos are ecosystems within the tropical regions of Mexico, Central and South America, Africa, Malesia including New Guinea, and Hawaii, that occur between the upper limit of continuous, closed-canopy forest (i.e., forest line or timberline) and the upper limit of plant life (i.e., snow line) between about 3000 m and 5000 m. Locally these "zacatonales" (the Mexican and

Getting better all the time

2005-10-16T11:06:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from an article by Michael Janairo in the Albany Times Union:The publication of a new translation of Natsume Soseki's Botchan (Kodansha International; [...] translated by J. Cohn) offers the perfect opportunity to enter the fascinating world of modern Japanese literature.In Japan, Botchan is regarded as a classic (it was originally published in 1906) and remains one of the most widely

Bible translated into SMS

2005-10-10T17:05:00.000-05:00

Posted at Christian Today:"In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth". The entire Bible has been translated into SMS format by the Bible Society in Australia. The latest version of the Bible enables 31,171 verses in the abbreviated text style to be sent direct to mobile phones. The verses are available free of charge on the internet.The text versions also include, “da earth was barren, wit no

Computer-aided Bible translation

2005-05-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

From an article by Ron Csillag. Excerpts:With a few deft keystrokes and clicks of his mouse, "Mr. Le" (he asked that his full name not be used) can read about God cleaving day from night in Hebrew, English and his native Vietnamese, the texts arranged in three neat vertical columns on his laptop's screen.Complementing the verse from the first chapter of Genesis is a palette of icons from which he

Off-shore call centres in Latin America

2005-05-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from an article in Forbes by Kerry A. Dolan:Banks, cell phone companies, airlines. Name just about any consumer industry and it's likely they've got a plan to woo Latino customers. Not surprising, given that the Latino demographic is a hot one, and getting bigger. Latinos are this country's fastest-growing ethnic group, expected to account for 15% of the population, or 48 million people,

Bad news, good news

2005-04-12T18:15:00.000-05:00

I delivered the translation on time (nearly 2 working days ago) but Client just informed me that they hadn't received it yet because their system glitch turned out to be a major meltdown; they still have no e-mail. So while faxing the translation (fortunately a feasible 6 pages), just as page 1 slides out of the fax machine onto the floor, that word I needed to avoid the awkward,

On colours

2005-03-08T21:32:00.000-06:00

When you learn a new language, colour names are among the basic vocabulary you’re taught in the early lessons. Yet different cultures and languages don’t divide up the colour spectrum in the same way, nor into the same number of basic chunks. Cannylinguist points to an interesting recent article in Scientific American on the topic. [UPDATE: This article by Tuomas Tanner gives a very good overview

Eje

2005-02-07T21:58:00.000-06:00

Eje is so often used figuratively that axis is hardly ever an appropriate choice. Here is the full definition from Orellana: axismiddlecenter line (street, river)crux, hub, core (argument)cynosure, center (attraction)pivotal point (attention, conversation)main highwaycentral elementpivotpivotal figurecrucial or cardinal factor, member, part, person, point,

Idiom alert: "poner en evidencia"

2005-01-31T10:54:00.001-06:00

Poner en evidencia looks as though it ought to mean "demonstrate," "give evidence to show." In fact, it does seem as though this meaning is often intended. Native speakers seem to misuse it this way often enough to rate a note by J. Javier Mangado Martínez at this site. He writes:Poner en evidencia no significa en español ‘hacer patente o demostrar con claridad la certeza de algo’, o sea, no

Unamazing language curmudgeon

2005-01-15T22:20:00.000-06:00

I find myself unexplicably annoyed by the current use of amazing to mean "wonderful" or sometimes even just "big." Amazing: causing surprise, wonder, astonishment. When we describe someone's comportment in a situation, or simply their personality as "amazing," are we implying that wonderfulness is astonishing or surprising?

What different languages sound like

2004-12-12T20:38:00.000-06:00

Here is a site that lets visitors listen to what over 20 different languages sound like: Italian, English, French, German, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Dutch, Russian, Romanian, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese (unspecified), Greek, Polish, Serbian and "Indian" (Hindi?).

The Third Language

2004-12-08T09:55:00.000-06:00

The legendary book Third Language: Recurrent Problems of Translation into English by Alan Duff was published over 20 years ago; in 1981. I call it "legendary" because I see it cited in every relevant book and paper on translation, but I've never yet met (even virtually) anyone who's had their hands on a copy. It's out of print, but I see a couple of used copies for sale at Amazon at the time of

Cynical about the dictionaries

2004-12-03T10:13:00.000-06:00

When we look up cínico in the Spanish<>English dictionary: Espasa gives the meaning as "cynical" (adjective) and "cynic" (noun). Quite obvious. I can look up "cynical" and "cynic" in the English-to-Spanish dictionary and find the same thing; cínico(a). Same in the Oxford. Hmm, the Gran Larousse gives two meanings for cínico; (1) "cynical/cynic" and (2)"hardfaced, shameless or brazen," illustrated

Quechua 1.0

2004-11-14T20:51:00.000-06:00

Story from Yahoo! News, via Bill Poser at language.log. Microsoft will translate its blockbuster computer software Windows and Office into Quechua, the language of the indigenous Inca, for Andean nations from Argentina to Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, where it is spoken, the company said. Microsoft opted to bring today's high-tech software to speakers of Quechua as it is the most

NAFTA effects on Mexican farming

2004-11-13T13:09:00.000-06:00

The BBC reports on a TVE story on NAFTA effects on corn (maize) farming in Mexico: Nafta was set up ten years ago by Mexico, Canada and the US to promote competition and efficiency. But US maize farmers, propped up by subsidies, are outcompeting their Mexican counterparts. As a result, US maize is flooding Mexican markets, threatening to put traditional farmers out of business. Not only

Staying up late and sleeping in

2004-11-08T21:12:00.000-06:00

I don't know any English word or even any phrase that succintly expresses the meaning of "desvelar." It means to stay up later than usual, to stay up really late, to stay up too late, to burn the midnight oil, or to pull an all-nighter. Any one of these might be the choice in English, depending on the context and the register. And any of them can be neatly expressed in just one and the same

Diagnosticar

2004-11-06T17:06:00.000-06:00

Ideas for translating "diagnosticar" when used in a non-medical (semi-metaphorical?) sense:review, research, assess, investigate, explore, examine, question, look into, inquire, dissect.