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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2016 19:46:10 GMT
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Post by rikita on Jun 9, 2016 22:32:30 GMT
Some people are willing to pay a fortune just because they think that paying a fortune ensures top quality. On the other hand, don't believe the cheap places either, because there is no end to their inventiveness when it comes to chargeable extras. "file transfer" "formatting" "font surcharge" "punctuation fee" "rate for more than 5 paragraphs" additionally with cheap places you might end up paying twice. i have edited translations done by a cheap place - my impression was that they were not particularly good at either language (the one they were translating from and the one they were translating to). it was really not much better than google translate. and i don't have the impression translation is where the money is or a way to get rich - most translators, unless they have a very good customer base, are specialized in a very in-demand field, and lucky, are probably not making particularly big bucks. as said above, a good translation takes up a lot of time.
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Post by lagatta on Jun 10, 2016 0:51:03 GMT
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 10, 2016 6:20:14 GMT
In my experience dogs have a very limited vocabulary anyway. Usually restricted to food, sex, shit. They are not deep thinkers like cats.
rikita, I think I'll give up on the translation idea and do it myself anyway if I've a mind to.
lagatta, well found that. Excellent. I have to smile when I read it, it's just like being back home. I can hear the voices. Some of the phonetics I have to read out loud as reading some is no good to understand it - like "It’ul norrotcha" or "Izon Iz-ollidiz". My favourite is, "Tin-tin-tin". I know it's not comprehensive but they have missed out mithering and scrating. As for your bike, is it with the Sturmey Archer hub or Derailleur gears? Those with the Sturmey Archer have a heavier accent as they are usually older. Some with the Derailleurs can be a bit snobby.
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Post by kerouac2 on Mar 19, 2018 5:55:26 GMT
Translation can be a real challenge when meanings change and you can't even find the correct meaning in a dictionary.
I have been quite intrigued over the past few years in France at the new use of the word "maraude" (which would be marauding in English). The dictionary definition is the same in both languages -- basically to roam the countryside for pillage and plunder.
However, marauding is the term now used in France to describe social workers who go looking for the homeless to give them soup, blankets and other things. It's on the news almost every day, especially when there is a cold wave like now. You have to dig really deep into the definitions of "maraude" to discover "to make neighbourhood visits" at the very end of the list.
I have often seen mistranslations where the person has just chosen the most common definition of a word thinking "that must be it" -- which is why menu translations can often be so hilarious. Now I am wondering how often people get serious subjects wrong and come up with the opposite meaning. ("The scandal of social workers in Paris robbing the homeless!")
This leads to another interrogation -- how long does it take to decide to change the order of definitions in a dictionary?
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Post by bjd on Mar 19, 2018 6:50:22 GMT
I don't have an answer to that but speaking of bad translations, the other day a friend called me to check a translation she had paid a press agency for. The agency wrote the original French text and someone called James (good English name!) had done the translation into English.
It was terrible! Worse than Google Translate. About halfway through the corrections, she called him up to complain about the work. She handed me the phone and I spoke to him in English. He's not English, as I soon discovered from his accent - his mother is English. That certainly doesn't qualify him to be a translator. Some of the sentences didn't even sound like English, not to mention the use of articles when unnecessary, etc. I told him it was obviously the other side of his background that had done the translation and he got a bit snippy. She had me to check it for her, but I'm sure many people end up with unacceptable work done.
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 19, 2018 7:33:48 GMT
You might be interested in Charlie Croker's collection Lost in TranslationAs in Do not enter the lift backwards, and only when lit upIn France you can cruise on many canals and see the peculiarities(Notice on a Soviet ship, though I can't help wondering if they'd been taking lessons from Stanley Unwin): Helpsavering in emergings behold many whistles! Associate the stringing apparata about the bosoms and meet behind. Flee then to the indifferent lifesavering shippen obediencing the instructs of the vessel chef.And let's not forget the classic: My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
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Post by bjd on Mar 19, 2018 10:34:15 GMT
It's hard to know whether these belong in the translation thread or in mangled English.
It reminds me too of a book I once bought about this southern area of France, Midi-Pyrénées, in Spanish to send to some people in Argentina. At that time, I needed help to write a little note with it, so asked an Argentinian friend for help. As she looked through the book -- lots of nice photographs and done by a small local publisher -- she noticed that they had translated "midi", which means the 'south' but also 'noon' as "el mediodia de la Francia", i.e. the noon of France, instead of the south of France.
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Post by fumobici on Mar 19, 2018 15:04:35 GMT
Translation doesn't require full native fluency in both languages (although that always helps), but it does require full native fluency in the language being translated *into*. I can translate everyday Italian into English and the result will be good; me translating English into Italian will be terrible, if perhaps comprehensible.
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 19, 2018 15:04:58 GMT
The noon of France would have to be somewhere in the middle of France, not the south, right? I have often seen mistranslations where the person has just chosen the most common definition of a word thinking "that must be it" In line with that & with "the noon of France", That sort of mistranslation is particularly maddening when that is done in lieu of simply asking a native speaker. We're positively surrounded by native speakers here, but a notice was put on a box of books in front of the English-language library informing passers-by that the books were "libre", i.e. free in the sense of Elsa the lion instead of gratis, free for the taking.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 19, 2018 18:23:54 GMT
I do like the idea of liberating books, though.
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Post by whatagain on Mar 19, 2018 20:20:34 GMT
Maraude for me always meant 'foraging' - I guess that is why 'jounralists' use this word : they go 'en maraude' looking for old clothes etc. When I was a kid, I would go 'en maraude' or maybe it was 'à maraude' with my grand-pa, it would mean going into the patatoes fields armed with a young branch, on which we would spike a young patato and we would then try to lauch it as far as possible. Grand-Pa was quite a character actually...
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Post by patricklondon on Mar 20, 2018 8:11:40 GMT
I have often seen mistranslations where the person has just chosen the most common definition of a word thinking "that must be it" That reminds me. In a previous employment, I once dealt with a letter from someone in a francophone country whose letter ended with one of those standard French formulae, but his English version came out as something like "Please accept this chest-of-drawers expression of my gratitude". I had to do a sort of reverse look-up to realise he'd picked the wrong meaning for "commode" (could have been worse, considering what "commode" is usually taken to mean in this country). My blog | My photos | My video clips | My Librivox recordings"too literate to be spam"
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