Translation is a traitor (spam on subject)

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:49 am

The Italians have a phrase for it: Traduttore, traditore, or translation betrays. I was just thinking of that after reading a description written by someone who is not a native English speaker on another site, regarding a new game:

- Original puzzles

So far, so good.

- More than 30 hours of game process

Now, things begin to move a bit south. "Process" and "play" seem to have been confused.

- The convenient interface of management
- Game in the high permission
- Music forcing atmosphere

I'm still not sure where "forcing" originated, and I don't know what "game in the high permission" might mean. Likely Babelfish or some other, similar translation tool was used to arrive at this. As a rule, it is a bad idea to use free translation software when the object is to translate phrases into somebody else's language, rather than as a word-to-word assistant for one's own understanding. English is notoriously difficult to translate, in any case. There are too many lookalike and soundalike words with different meanings, plenty of individual words that shade meaning (as opposed to word part modifiers, as in, say, Italian or more seriously, Hungarian), and tons of idioms.

But so much for English. Whether you're an English native speaker or not, what have been your experiences with translations that played the traitor to your meaning, or the meanings of others?

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:05 am

Many experiences like that since I have a foreign girlfriend and we chat a lot. My written english is pretty good, but her spoken is better.

In conversation it doesn't happen much, but over the internet I sometimes misunderstand a sentence or two. It sometimes lays at the basis of some of our more futile arguments, but you just have to realize that in order to get over it.

What's more interesting is that they just as easily come from slightly less familiar but correctly spelled words, like 'tantamount' or 'vacuous'. It's like geek english that not everyone gets.

galraen · Post by **galraen** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:46 am

Translating from English to 'American English', or Usian, can be problematic, especially idiomatic English.

Ask many Usians if they fancied a *** and the response could be quite bruising!

Edit: The idiot word censor on GB just proved the point actually, by replacing the perfectly innocent English term for cigarette with three stars!

fable · Post by **fable** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:23 pm

galraen wrote:Ask many Usians if they fancied a *** and the response could be quite bruising!

Edit: The idiot word censor on GB just proved the point actually, by replacing the perfectly innocent English term for cigarette with three stars!

Oh, yes. That one. The American use actually came from British English, but fell out of use--and it was a bit of dark humor that came from German, where the original six-letter version meant "wood." In fact, in modern German, ****** (bleeped out by the engine, too!) means bassoon, which is a wood-based wind instrument.

When I was a program director for a USian public radio station attached to a university back in the 1980s,we had an Indian student who announced a sextet for a variety of instruments. The album was titled in German, but he got everything right until he came to ******, or bassoon, and compounded the error by putting the accent on the first syllable, as USians do when making it a pejorative to homosexuals, rather than on the second syllable, which is the German for bassoon. Several of us staff rushed in to quietly correct him after the record started up.

QuenGalad · Post by **QuenGalad** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:24 am

I'm a professional translator, and you would not believe the things i see. I have recently agreed to correct translations of Baldur's Gate mods into polish - a fans for fans enterprise - and it's amazing what kind of people think they are perfectly competent to do it.

But what you guys would be most interested in, probably, is this : the guy who contacted me on this, and who saw himself as the boss of the whole thing, was trying to make a professional impression, even though his translations were only marginally better than the usual nightmare. I had a soft spot for him though, and one day i sent him via a messenger the sentence Dragon Wench posted here : "do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?" as i found it very amusing. After some time he replied in a very serious way : "if you need help with translating the sentence, then i can only say it is complete gibberish pretending to be wise". It took me some time to realize he didn't understand what 'adultery' was, and didn't bother to check even though he thought of himself as a competent translator.
Now who's pretending to be wise, huh?

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:33 am

Tricky wrote:What's more interesting is that they just as easily come from slightly less familiar but correctly spelled words, like 'tantamount' or 'vacuous'. It's like geek english that not everyone gets.

That's called well-spoken English, not geek English.

It's the difference between having a primary school education--which is pretty much what most people operate on--and being literate enough to read, comprehend, and discuss one's insights. Now, I'm sure you do better than the masses in your native tongue, but does that make you a geek?

I'm a professional translator, and you would not believe the things i see. I have recently agreed to correct translations of Baldur's Gate mods into polish - a fans for fans enterprise - and it's amazing what kind of people think they are perfectly competent to do it.

Unfortunately, language is an area in which everyone assumes they are competent, and blames everybody else when they can't make themselves understood. Nor is this a modern phenomenon, alone. I read older English plays, dating back to Elizabethan and Jacobean times, and they include disgraceful satires on other nationalities characterized in part by over-the-top accents that are supposed to demonstrate low intelligence. All they demonstrate is so-called patriotism, the cultural insularity that looks for ways to mock others. And language comes immediately to mind.

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:45 am

fable wrote:That's called well-spoken English, not geek English.

Really? But I was so sure I read a Wikipedia article about Geek English?

Drat..

Gilliatt · Post by **Gilliatt** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:41 pm

QuenGalad wrote:I'm a professional translator, and you would not believe the things i see.

I'm a professional translator too. So I do believe the things you see!

The most frustrating thing is that most clients do not understand the language we translate to, so they will give the job to the person who charges less even though that person can't do it right!

To get back to the subject, here is my favorite one in French:

English uses the same word (Turkey) for the country and the bird, while in French the country is "Turquie" and the bird is "dinde". Well, it seems there is a whole lot of things that are made in the bird! "Made in Turkey" is translated by "Fabriqué en Dinde" way too often!