cartoons about translation

This gem is from a very cute blog with cartoons about translation (http://mox.ingenierotraductor.com/) with much appreciation!

some good links

Just came across the Polyglot Blog, a useful-looking blog with lots of links and resources. See the Lost in Babel resources site and an excellent response to the question 'What does it take to become a freelance translator?' I get asked a lot how many words a translator can translate in a day: the answer is here.

French-English translation prize, deadline 1 April 2010

Some of you may be interested in the latest round of the French Translation Prize run by the Institut français. It's open to all unpublished translators resident in the UK. First prize is a weekend in Paris and publication. Entries by post only (!). More information, rules, and copies of the two set texts for this year's competition can be found at the French Book News site.
Good luck to any of you who give it a go!

translation spats and spittings

They do seem to lead rich and full lives over at the Poetry Foundation. Among other goodies, this vivacious exchange on their blog Harriet about procedural translation, in which posters got very aerated about 'conceptual' translation, whether it should exist, what Benjamin said and what translation is anyway. Apparently there is only one sort of translation and everything else is wrong and false and shouldn't be allowed.

Elsewhere, a sharp riposte by Michael Hofmann to a letter picking holes in his translations of Gottfried Benn. The translation under fire is of Benn's 'Was schlimm ist':

Wenn man kein Englisch kann,
von einem guten englischen Kriminalroman zu hören,
der nicht ins Deutsche übersetzt ist.

Bei Hitze ein Bier sehn,
das man nicht bezahlen kann.

Einen neuen Gedanken haben,
den man nicht in einem Hölderlinvers einwickeln kann,
wie es die Professoren tun.

Nachts auf Reisen Wellen schlagen hören
und sich sagen, daß sie das immer tun.

Sehr schlimm: eingeladen sein,
wenn zu Hause die Räume stiller,
der Café besser
und keine Unterhaltung nötig ist.

Am schlimmsten:
nicht im Sommer sterben,
wenn alles hell ist
und die Erde für Spaten leicht.

Why not make your own mind up: were these the Wrong Words? Or was it a case of Wrong Wreviewing? Hofmann's translation is here for your enjoyful comparement. More Benn here; more Hofmann translations here.

Art of Translation

More Friday frivolity. By serendipitous chance today I came across the fabulous work of an American artist called Nina Katchadourian. Her work intersects with translation in wonderful ways. She's a translator's daughter, so this is probably not a coincidence (something to bear in mind, all you translators out there with daughters). She has translated rocks, parsed the secret language of bookshelves and facilitated the speech of popcorn. Her translation projects address questions of resemblance, identity and imitation. As someone who grew up in a bicultural household and in an Ireland where accent and identity were everyday issues, I really like her project 'Accent Elimination', of which you can see a clip here:






I ask myself how one would subtitle this...
My favourite project of all, though, is the one where she gets a bunch of United Nations translators and interpreters to imitate birdsong, apparently not on the basis of listening to recordings but by reading other people's graphic and syllabic representations of what the birdsong sounded like. There's a good article about her work here (needs flash enabled). Enjoy.

paying for translation and interpreting

Pro-bono translation and interpreting work isn't necessarily bad. Can be done well and professionally, can be useful for the translators/interpreters and their clients. When it's for a worthy cause I think it's a positive thing. But I'm perturbed by the assumption that translation and interpreting aren't worth spending money on, and that money spent on translation and interpreting is somehow wasted in a way which money spent on electricity, or lawyers, or equipment isn't. This is an assumption to which the Telegraph seems sadly prone (see here, here or here). And I just came across an call from Dorset County Council for volunteer interpreters for the Olympic sailing events which will be held there in 2012. Grand, and probably a useful experience for the volunteer interpreters involved, but I hope it doesn't herald a more generalised expectation that language support for the Olympics can be provided on a voluntary basis.
And here's hoping that the organisers of the Olympics don't put too much of their faith in automated translation technologies either. I was looking at a new site called Meedan, which offers an alternative source of news translation between Arabic and English. The site uses MT technologies supported by human translators and editors. It looks like a thoughtful and well-designed project and generates interesting reading, but the software (IBM TransBrowser) used to translate external content gives pretty uneven results. Try clicking on the grey 'English Translation' button against any story to make your own mind up.