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About translating every word in a book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 9 of 13 09 September 2011 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This isn't quite the same requirement as the OP, but I am thinking of doing the following:
I'm a reasonaly advanced learner of German, but conscious that my vocabulary is somewhat lacking. I've recently been looking at the L-R method with a view to improving, and have found some appropriate audiobooks and texts, and have made a cautious start. However, there is one particular book that I'd really like to use with this method, but I can find no English translation or audiobook version. I've thought of suggesting it on Librivox (it's out of copyright and in gutenberg.spiegel.de), but there is no guarantee anybody will take it up. (I'm still waiting for my membership to be approved on the forum). I've thought of doing the following: Translate the whole thing using google translate, and then attempt to correct as best I can. I don't have any translation training, but I seem to be able to read most of the book without too much difficulty, with only occasional lookups. However, I'd never be able to manually translate the whole book, so I'm hoping google will do the grunt work for me, and just leave me to polish up the idioms. Maybe I can get someone on Librivox to collaborate, or at least run an eye over the final result. I then thought I'd volunteer to create an English audiobook from it. Pretty ambitious considering I've never really done this sort of thing before, but I thought it would be a kind of interesting exercise in "L-R in reverse", sort of thing. Questions: Is google translate (toolbox) the right sort of tool to be using? Is there anything better out there (that is either free or cheap)? Does this sound like a doomed idea from the start? Obviously it depends on my level of German, and I can only go by my own estimate that I think I can do it, but I suspect it will take a long time (so a collaborator or two would be good). Ideally I need a native German speaker with good command of idiomatic English to check it over (not to do the translation for me) to make sure I've captured the essence properly. Not sure how many words, but it's 17 chapters. It's not War and Peace. The book in question by the way is Hinter Pflug und Schraubstock by Max Eyth. (There is a free Kindle download on amazon, as well as the Gutenberg version, although I personally don't have a kindle). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 10 of 13 09 September 2011 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You don't need a Kindle in order to read books in Kindle format. There is a free application/program available from Amazon and elsewhere (Calibre) that will allow you to read on virtually any device.
Translating a book is something that I think requires an intimate knowledge of the original language and the language of translation- idioms, colloquialisms, regionalisms. That's why good translators are worth their weight in gold. Read Julian Barnes on translating Madame Bovary. Julian is a great modern British novelist and also fluent in French. He's done a fair bit of translation from French to English. His article points out the inherent difficulty in conveying meaning from one language to another. The aphorism "lost in translation" didn't arise out of nowhere. That's why many of us learn languages so as not to lose that somewhat indefinable "something" that is often missing when translated into our native languages. Still, I wish you best of luck. Edited by iguanamon on 09 September 2011 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 11 of 13 09 September 2011 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you. Yes, perhaps I am being a bit over-ambitious and trying to run before I can walk. Still, I'll see what google makes of it, and get a better idea of the size of the task. Even if it's only good for my personal use, it won't be wasted. I like and admire Julian Barnes. Thanks for the pointer. Another author who does translations is Michael Frayn (from Russian). Clearly being a professional writer must also help! I haven't yet totally given up the idea of finding a ready-made translation, which I will happily use instead! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5320 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 12 of 13 10 September 2011 at 12:11am | IP Logged | |||||
Is there any specific reason for choosing this particular book? I'm asking because I had a look at one chapter and I found it rather pedestrian both in style and content. Why don't you choose a more popular writer whose copyright has expired. BTW, audible.de offers several free German audiobooks. (You don't need a German address and they don't ask for credit card information when you sign up.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 13 of 13 10 September 2011 at 12:58am | IP Logged | |||||
It was recommended to me by a friend. She is actually going to restart her German reading group, and very much wants to encourage the group to start with this one. She is very fond of it for some reason. She says the style is similar to that of J.K.Jerome whom I happen to like very much, so if she's right, I might get on with it ok. I have actually found some German audiobooks on Librivox that are of interest, and the German text is on either gutenberg.spiegel.de or www.gutenberg.org, and in some cases the English translation, so I do have other things to work with. However, many thanks for the pointer. It's nice to know of other audiobook sources. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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