dodgy translations

The internet is chockers with snapshots of poorly translated signs, some of which we have turned into dinky translation exercises over at the Routes into Languages page. This one was so good I couldn't resist:



(The image is copyright and thanks to TR4NSLATOR, aka Jed Schmidt, over on Flickr.)

So apparently accurate, and yet so tragically wrong...

careless MT costs...

A quick reminder from Wales that uninformed use of machine translation can lead to tears...

ethics in translation

We spend lots of time in class talking about the challenges of translation; how to deal with colloquialisms, ambiguity, puns, cultural references, rhetorical devices, terminology and so on. We ask 'how' a lot. We don't often ask 'whether' - whether we should be translating a text at all in the first place. So I was interested in the discussion taking place on the fxtrans blog about ethical and moral conflicts of interest. Are there subjects (abortion, pornography, animal experimentation; munitions) that make you so uncomfortable that they would stop you taking a translation commission? Are there clients (laboratories testing on animals; arms manufacturers; insurance companies) you wouldn't work for for moral or ethical reasons (as opposed to for banal reasons of low rates/risk of non-payment)? Are there circumstances in which taking part in a boycott (of Israel, of Arizona, or maybe of organisations boycotting Israel or Arizona) could affect what translation commissions you take on? How far should the translator's ethical stance affect how much they work and what they work on? Fxtrans set up a poll, and the discussion that resulted shows that actually, these issues come up for translators pretty often (though not as much in reality as in principle) (see also here and here). The debate ranges from the 'I wouldn't ever translate anything against my beliefs' crowd to the partisans of neutrality and objectivity for whom a translator who turns down a commission because of the content isn't really a translator at all. It's just a pity that the usefulness of the poll is compromised by the fact that it doesn't account for translators who have never thought about it, or the (probably much larger) number of translators, like me, for whom a moral or ethical conflict of interest hasn't (yet) ever arisen.

A couple of posters make the point that it's more professional to turn down a job that you can't be neutral about than it is to take it and possibly compromise the job. I can see why some other translators would think that in these cases one simply stiffens one's upper lip, holds one's head high and slips into a neutral, objective headspace - but I don't see that one is any less of an ethical being as a translator than one is in any other profession. I don't think it's a question of whether or not translators operate in a 'third space' or of professional codes of ethics, so much as of individual ethical stances. No matter what one's profession (in the exercising of which one will of course have to abide by a code of professional conduct) one is always 'free', at least in theory, to refuse to co-operate with power structures or interests with which one disagrees.

I am reminded of a film I saw recently, Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò, released in 1959. It's an early Holocaust fiction film, set in a concentration camp. It's not unproblematic (Jacques Rivette famously declared his 'profound contempt' for its use of a tracking shot to aestheticise the death of one of the inmates), and it's melodramatic by today's standards, but it has one very powerful scene in which a camp inmate, Riva, is asked to interpret at an execution. Part of the way through the execution, Riva simply stumbles to a halt, unable to continue. The German commandant yells at her to translate, but she cannot force the words out despite the savage penalty that will result. (Interestingly, the subtitler takes over where Riva falters, translating the German officer's final peroration. One might ask how and whether the subtitles could or should have supported the interpreter and refused, too, to translate.)

Quite a different tack is taken by Roberto Benigni in a scene which you may remember from Life is Beautiful. Since some kind soul has put the clip up on Youtube, I thought it might be interesting to rewatch and think about the different ways in which ethical behaviour and indeed fidelity can be understood in translation. Note how faithful Benigni is to the body language and gestures of the camp guard for whom he is interpreting:



Maybe it's just the rhythm of consecutive interpreting that they have in common, but I find it hard to imagine that Benigni wouldn't have had Pontecorvo's film in mind when writing this scene.

I would be interested to hear from any readers of the blog about ethical or moral conflicts they may have found themselves in as translators, subtitlers or interpreters, and how they addressed them...?

guess the misunderstanding (DE-EN)

The world needs translators who are real people partly because words can have more than one meaning and so far, human translators have the best record in working out from context which of multiple possible meanings is meant. Of course, it would be boring if they always got it right! German-speaking readers of this blog are invited to take a look at this story about a Legoland giraffe in Germany missing a vital body part, and guess where a possible misunderstanding might arise. The answer can be found here. A cautionary tail for us all! (sorry)

subtitling blunders, Polish-English

Just read a very funny post on a site called Polandian about the subtitling of a Polish film (which I haven't seen) called Dom Zły. The wonders of screenshot technology allow the poster to show us the subtitlers' amazing coinages (the mind boggles at 'dephlegmator'), poor syntax (a sentence beginning 'Probably you can' is unlikely to originate in English), collocational innovation and disregard for niceties like apostrophes and capitalisation.
Of course it's a tiny bit unfair to take single subtitles out of context and subject them to minute scrutiny, but here one can understand the temptation. Always get a native speaker to do your subtitles (and then a second native speaker to check your first native speaker). And then people won't mock your film in public. Well, they might, but not because of a bad translation.

translation funnies

Some light relief for exam stress/election frustration/combat fatigue/dissertation anxiety (delete as applicable):

The ALTA blog has a lovely page of foreign-language cover versions of songs and their originals. For generational-nostalgic reasons I particularly liked the German version of 'Walk Like An Egyptian', but there's something for everyone here.

And the New York Times has a great page of amusing translated signs from foreign places with more funny than you can shake a stick at (and some quite thought-provoking ones too).

hours of fun for all the family: the Bad Translator

The Inttranews twitter feed has just come up with the ultimate timewaster - worse than Youtube, more insidious even than twitter itself - the Bad Translator. It is a little app which takes a phrase and translates it in and out of various language pairs in alphabetical order (from English to Afrikaans, back to English, to Albanian, to English, to Arabic, to English, to Belarussian etc.). It's powered by GoogleTranslate and you choose how many language pairs you want an item translated through: 10, 25 or 'max', which seems to be 54.

I tried it with a few lines off the top of my head:

'Sing me a song but not for me alone' (sue me, I like Lloyd Webber) comes out after 10 translations as 'Singing, but not for me'; after 25 translations as 'Song, but not for me' and after max translations as 'I know Paul'. The key languages where the translation shifts happen seem to be Korean and Norwegian. All explanations welcome.

'I peel and portion a tangerine and spit the pips and feel the drunkenness of things being various' (thank you Louis McNeice) comes out rather come-hither after 10 translations: 'My skin, lemons, spit it out of the moment, things feel different sugar' and 25 translations: 'My skin, lemon, play, feel the various sugars'. I hardly dared to press 'max' but in the end it was all rather tame: 'Lemon zest, I feel the various Sugars.'

Another well-known Irish poem redolent of the values of yesteryear begins 'In a mean abode on the Shankill Road/ lived a man named William Bloat'. Just one translation (in and out of Afrikaans) gives 'In an average home in the Shankill Road, a man named William Bloat'. This is fabulous and can hardly be improved on, but the proper names also get interesting later on. The 25th translation reads: 'On the street, a man named William Shan Kill Iron'. After a few rounds of transliteration, we have: "People oyryamukirushanairon vice". I think Joyce would have liked it.

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness' comes out after 10 translations as '"This is the best time is the worst, which is the age of wisdom, crazy times'; after 25 translations as 'This is the best time of knowledge poor old crazy time' and after max translations becomes unexpectedly lyrical: 'The best time for anger, loss'.

There's an obvious pun there but I'm not going to make it.

interactive translation exercises

Dear all,

You may be interested in some fun interactive translation exercises recently launched on the website of the National Network for Translation, an initiative of Routes into Languages, which promotes language learning in the UK and is trying to raise the profile of the language professions. Feedback on the exercises is very welcome to the address on the site.

translations that are Not Good

Just came across this little tidbit from the website of a translation company in London. Examples of Translations that are wrong, wrong, so very wrong - what's not to love?