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Translators and Translation

Translators and Translation

This is a public room. Anyone can join to post and comment.

Administrators

Shannon Jiménez

Members

"Czar" DJ Peterman
Antoine Brunel
atzmon
Dimitar Vesselinov
Godfather
Jianjun Zhang
Marcos Pozo López
Michelle Fullwood
Nadine Touzet
Robert Felty
Translators and Translation
A room for translators and others who would like to share and discuss translation, linguistics, localization and related subjects.
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Ghoti and choughs again
Wednesday at 12:10 pm - via Reshare - Link
On the difficulty of learning to read English compared to other European languages. - Shannon Jiménez
Could one of you please comment on the meaning of "syllabic complexity" in this context? - Language
syllabic complexity here refers to the number of possible syllable types in a language. For example, CCVC (like the word 'step') occurs in English, but not in Spanish. This is why many Spanish speakers will say 'astep' because they treat this like 2 syllables. VC.CVC (. = syllable divider). Unfortunately, in the article they refer to here, they don't detail how they came up with their rankings of syllabic complexity. My feeling is that German syllable structure is slightly more complex than English. - Robert Felty
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Language posted a link
Why German Sounds Funny - "It is something peculiar about English that makes so many German words sound amusing to Anglophone ears."
August 5 at 12:48 pm - Link
very astute point. German does have a number of Latin and Greek borrowings however. Some are definitely more "high register". I had a professor who always said "exakt", instead of "genau". A very common word (in southern Germany, Austria, and among college students) is "Servus", which can be used to say hello or goodbye. This comes from the Latin "Servus" meaning slave or servant. I interpret it as meaning something like "at your service" - Robert Felty
I'd like to add another point: The ability of the German Language to create new words with new meanings is largely based on compounds (Wasserstoff, Weltschmerz, Haferbrei...), whereas for the expansion of the English lexicon, composition is not so important. As far as I know, English has more different word stems/roots (most of them monosyllabic) than German to express every possible old or new concept (beside derivation as a device in both languages, of course), a lot of them of Latin, Greek or French origin. A few examples: dawn - Morgenröte; dusk - Abenddämmerung; pork - Schweinefleisch; orchard - Obstgarten, etc. What sounds funny for an Anglophone person is the sometimes odd combination of words, e. g., "Gebärmutter" for "uterus" or "Kleinkind" for "toddler". At least that's what I assume. - Language
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Nadine Touzet posted a link
ATLF - Traduction automatique au ministère de la Culture
August 14 at 1:10 pm - via Reshare - Link
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Language Log » HVPT
July 19 at 10:47 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
I had never heard of this technique before, but it seems like a great idea. - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
Excellent link, Shannon; this resonates a lot with some of the problems we have very day with dozens of our students. - Matthew Bennett
I just saw a talk yesterday that mentioned hvpt. I work for David Pisoni, who is one of the people that started using it first. The research in this talk was actually not using hvpt, but instead using some adaptive training methods to get Spanish speakers to focus on spectral cues to hear the difference between "sheep" and "ship", instead of duration. After 4 30-minute training sessions, the listeners improved dramatically. - Robert Felty
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
It’s Not What You Say, It’s the Order in Which You Say It | Discoblog | Discover Magazine
It’s Not What You Say, It’s the Order in Which You Say It | Discoblog | Discover Magazine
July 13 at 11:11 pm - via Reshare - Link
"The researchers recruited speakers of English, Mandarin Chinese, and Spanish, all of which use the subject-verb-object construction. They also gathered participants who spoke Turkish, which orders sentences as subject-object-verb. The participants were shown a series of illustrations and asked to communicate the scenes depicted using only gestures. The resulting nonverbal communication was predominantly comprised of subject-object-verb order, regardless of the speaker’s language." - Shannon Jiménez
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Nadine Touzet posted a link
Translation - Language - Culture: Poor spellers, lousy teachers
August 9 at 3:22 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
Unfortunately the site is blocked in China, even during the Olympics! - Jianjun Zhang
On one hand, I absolutely hate bad spelling and multiple spelling errors in a document automatically (though perhaps unfairly) make me consider the writer less intelligent and well-informed. However, on the other hand, the English language has a long history of altering its spelling, usually favoring clarity over tradition. What most surprised me about the article, though, was that the professor in question was British-- I consider them to be (stereotypically) bigger sticklers for spelling than we Americans. I mean, they still use all those worthless "u"s... - Shannon Jiménez
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Google Translation Center, a New Human Translations Service in the Making
Google Translation Center, a New Human Translations Service in the Making
August 5 at 1:13 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Google is working on a new service called Google Translation Center. Just a short while ago, we noticed that “center” had been added to Google’s robots.txt file, and now co-editor Tony Ruscoe discovered the link to the working frontpage... though logging in fails right now. According to the Google explanations on the frontpage and their product overview page, we can see this is meant to be a translation service which offers both volunteers and professional translators... and I suppose at least the professionals will want to get paid. In that regards, the service is in the field of sites like Click2Translate.com (a service by the company which Tony works for, incidentally, and which I’m often using for some of my sites)." - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
What do you guys think about Google offering this service? - Shannon Jiménez
I think this is another piece of evidence that the translation industry is changing. Professional translations are only to be used in ever narrower fields where high quality and accuracy are absolutely necessary. Clients with more flexible quality requirements would probably take advantage of free or low-cost solutions by part-time translators or volunteers. However, this kind of service will also fill the market with poor translations, especially online... - Jianjun Zhang
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Hollywood gets lost in translation
August 5 at 12:57 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
"This weekend, thousands of Mexicans will line up at theaters to see The Knight of the Night, Super Agent 86 and The End of Time. Never heard of them? Those are the literal translations of the Spanish titles given to The Dark Knight, Get Smart and The Happening, examples of the marketing tactics that can leave cinephiles baffled as Hollywood reaches out to increasingly important foreign audiences. Titles are often tweaked to sound better in the local language, or to provide a hint of the plot to audiences who might be skeptical of what is, to them, a foreign film. That's why Steve Carell's Get Smart is playing variously as Max the Menace (France), Agent Smart: Casino Totale (Italy), Is the Spy Capable or Not? (Taiwan), and Confused Spy (China)." - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Iraqi Prime Minister Lost in Translation?
July 22 at 1:02 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
"After taking heat over the weekend for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seemingly endorsing Barack Obama’s plan for a timeline of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the Iraqi P.M. is now backing off of those statements. Al-Maliki was "misunderstood and mistranslated" and his comments were not "conveyed accurately," according to an Iraqi government spokesman." - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
Sure, blame the translator... - Shannon Jiménez
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Jianjun Zhang posted a link
I think this is to some extent is also true to translation business. Large translation companies may not produce ideal work as individual or smaller scale...
July 19 at 9:06 pm - via twhirl - Link
I think that this is generally true, especially since large companies can impede the communication between the translator and the client, which is essential for more complicated translations. - Shannon Jiménez
Translation, like teaching, is still necessarily a human activity, so if your organisation is so large that those human links are somehow lost, quality drops. The trick is trying to grow the company at the same time as maintaining quality and human contact. It's not easy :-). - Matthew Bennett
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Shannon Jiménez posted a message
“Quick poll: what languages do you translate to/from and in what specialties?”
June 17 at 1:40 am - Link
I'll start. I translate Spanish > English and specialize in science (mostly biology). - Shannon Jiménez
I translate from English to Chinese. I specialize in website localization. :) - Jianjun Zhang via twhirl
Show 4 more comments
I translate between these languages : Persian <> English and I specialize in Project management texts, philosophy and literature. :D I'm a graduate student of Translation Studies - Selma
English-Spanish, sometimes French-English or even French-Spanish - Matthew Bennett via twhirl
I translate from Spanish to French (and French to Spanish) with finance/ecomomics especiality. - Jean-Charles
English > Hindi, mainly localization of websites and e-commerce applications. - Vinay | विनय
I translate Greek <> English, French>English, French>Greek, Italian >Greek and specialize in legal and social science texts. - Katerina
English > Italian normally, but I could also do Spanish > Italian - Only videogames - Andrea Santambrogio
I'm currently in a different line of work. But when I translated, it was English > Hebrew, and mostly SF - Didi Chanoch
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Shannon Jiménez posted a message
“Feel free to invite anyone else you think might be interested!”
June 3 at 11:38 am - Link
A friend of mine received an invitation but as he is not related to the field of work he informed me about it and I am really glad as there is some very interesting information!! - Katerina
Welcome, Katerina! FYI for you and others new to friendfeed, here is the page for the bookmarklet, so you can start sharing some of your own interesting links: http://friendfeed.com/share/bo... - Shannon Jiménez
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
A Wicked Deception
A Wicked Deception
June 3 at 1:39 pm - via Reshare - Link
The perils of machine translation. - Shannon Jiménez
This is brilliant!!!! - Katerina
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Nadine Touzet posted a message
“I am on FriendFeed already, but neglecting it.”
June 11 at 7:18 am - Link
Hi Nadine. Out of curiosity, are you neglecting it because the content is irrelevant (or mostly irrelevant) or because the interface is inconvenient? - torque
Twhirl is much easier to use with FF. Personally I don't like to log on to FF each time to see what's going on. :) - Jianjun Zhang via twhirl
I've just discovered friendfeed via twhirl as well, it looks like a much better way to play with it. - Matthew Bennett via twhirl
It's just another tool for me. I've got used to Twitter/Twhirl - Nadine Touzet
Twhirl it's only a Twitter desktop client... FF is a powerful tool for social and networking media - Javier Valiño
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Spanish for your Nanny
Spanish for your Nanny
June 2 at 11:16 pm - via Reshare - Link
Efectivamente eran un selecto grupo de putas gringas de mierda - Javier Valiño
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
languagehat.com: CHECHENS DON'T LIGHTLY CURSE.
June 2 at 11:18 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
ABC News: Switching Languages May Alter Personality
July 13 at 10:24 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Bicultural people may unconsciously change their personality when they switch languages, according to a US study on bilingual Hispanic women. It found that women who were actively involved in both English and Spanish speaking cultures interpreted the same events differently, depending on which language they were using at the time. " - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
Full study the above is based on available here ($10 w/o subscription): http://www.journals.uchicago.e..., and an interesting analysis of the study is at Language Log: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.e... - Shannon Jiménez
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Mythical Beginnings « transubstantiation
Mythical Beginnings « transubstantiation
July 6 at 10:42 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"The reason why translation and translators exist is, of course, because of the fact that there is a huge diversity of languages in the world. There are many theories and hypotheses as to the reason for the evolution of language and the divergence of the world’s languages but some of the most interesting ‘hypotheses’ are the mythical stories that seem to accompany people everywhere around the world." - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand
July 6 at 5:56 pm - via Bookmarklet - Link
"Thanks to globalization, the Allied victories in World War II, and American leadership in science and technology, English has become so successful across the world that it's escaping the boundaries of what we think it should be. In part, this is because there are fewer of us: By 2020, native speakers will make up only 15 percent of the estimated 2 billion people who will be using or learning the language. Already, most conversations in English are between nonnative speakers who use it as a lingua franca." - Shannon Jiménez via Bookmarklet
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Jianjun Zhang posted a message
“Dear fellow translators, what do you think the trend of translation will go? Any idea is appreciated. :)”
June 27 at 4:29 pm - via twhirl - Link
I think that human translators will continue to be used, especially in complex and highly specialized fields (and, of course, literature), but I also see machine translation improving in quality and used more often for less complex subject matter. - Shannon Jiménez
As far as English goes, because more and more people speak it at a 'reasonable' level and are trying to do it themselves I think we'll have a more editor-like role, as well as being called upon to do more specialist documents like contracts, medical reports, articles and engineering documents. - Matthew Bennett via twhirl
I totally agree with Matthew, translators will be acting like editors over the raw outputs from translation machines, however in art and literature i believe translation could develop into a new branch of inter-textual art form... but that's just a rough dream i suppose - Selma
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Selma posted a message
“Great! we really needed a room like this...thanks for the invite”
June 3 at 9:31 am - Link
Hope more translators join the room soon. - Jianjun Zhang via twhirl
I've invited a few, but not everyone is ready to jump into friendfeed. As I posted below, feel free to invite anyone else you know who might be interested. - Shannon Jiménez
I will Shannon. Thanks. - Jianjun Zhang
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Jianjun Zhang posted a link
Translator Tips: How to keep up with the times by Kelly. She translates from Chinese to English.
June 10 at 10:54 pm - via twhirl - Link
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Foreign Concepts « transubstantiation
June 9 at 4:12 am - via Bookmarklet - Link
"One of the greatest problems for translators is translating concepts that simply do not exist in the other language or culture. Examples in Polish include kombinować or lustracja, województwo or szlachta zaściankowa. English examples include elevenses or hoody. There are different ways to attempt to translate these terms, but no translation can be regarded as truly equivalent. Of course, some may argue that no translation is ever truly equivalent, but there are equivalents that might be regarded as more (or less) faithful than other ones. We might also argue that there is a continuum of correctness that allows us to speak of a better or worse translation." - Shannon Jiménez
I'm a grad student of translation studies in Iran …this weblog is very very interesting …I ‎bookmarked it to check it regularly …thanks Shannon :-) - Selma
It's a great blog, though unfortunately (for us) only updated every couple weeks or so. - Shannon Jiménez
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Shannon Jiménez posted a link
Moskau with english lyrics!
Moskau with english lyrics!
June 3 at 1:39 pm - via Reshare - Link
Okay, so not actually a translation, per se... - Shannon Jiménez
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Shannon Jiménez posted a message
“Welcome to Translators and Translation!”
May 26 at 11:38 pm - Link
This looks like a good list to have. I found out about it on the NCTA list. I really got a kick out of that "Spanish for your Nanny" video. Reminded me a little bit of a T-shirt I saw in a store in Houston, TX last Feb. It had an English & Spanish phrase on it. The English was something like "I'm your friend" & the Spanish translation was given as "Tu eres un pendejo." Really hilarious, that! - Bill Turrentine
Thanks for joining us, Bill. That t-shirt sounds hilarious! - Shannon Jiménez
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