|
 |
Please be my translator | ||
Tags: Writing | Translation | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| matthewmathieu Newbie United States Joined 5121 days ago 14 posts - 19 votes | Message 9 of 20 07 March 2011 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Sorry about the typo... you're right, it is definitely chutes that you slide down in the game, and not shoots.
Funny-- I think I wrote this because I've seen the game with snakes as well, which slide down shoots instead of the chutes the little people slide down. Kounotori, thank you very much for the translation! Resources like this exponentially expand the possibilities of writing, and I greatly appreciate it. Was there anything particularly difficult about the translation into Finnish? Cainntear, I think I have a very different experience with foreign text than you. I can look at its aesthetic qualities for a very long time and without tiring my eyes-- in fact, it's enjoyable. But I think your reaction corresponds well to the whole point I wanted to make with the translations, and what you experience is a reality that an author with translated works probably faces at least once. I know a writer who collects the translations of his books, he has a whole shelf full of them. He occasionally picks them up and tries to comprehend the link between him, as a writer, and what he holds in is hands, totally unintelligible signs. Also, it's not really a book I'm writing, but what I'd like to call an instance of "fictionalizing theory" (instead of theorizing fiction) for a graduate seminar on cultural translation. The skipping of foreign texts as an almost natural reaction, especially in contrast with the spoken language (if you could pronounce Finnish, would you be more likely to read it?), and the seeking of maternal comprehension among the foreign, is exactly what I want to analyze. Try this: Write a novel in a language, then over a period of several decades forget the language. Your novel remains, practically unreadable—it's an exhilarating experience. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 20 07 March 2011 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Esperanto version:
Mi tordas kaj turnas kaj stumblas ebrie, ene de mia propra paragrafo, kiel ludo de serpentoj kaj eskaloj, rampante al finvideblan eliron, kiam lumoj brilas sur mia propra nekonata visaĝo en la distanco, ĝis mi glitas, falas, kaj reekas denove. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5345 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 20 07 March 2011 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm glad you appreciated it. The text didn't pose any major problems, even though all of it was one long and winding sentence, which isn't easy to translate in any language. There were some changes to the text that always inevitably occur when translating: I had to change the word order a little (e.g. "I twist and turn" became "I turn and twist" in Finnish because it sounded better that way); when translating "exit" I had to choose between "ulospääsy" (exit as in "way out") and "uloskäynti" (exit as in a building; naturally, I chose the former); and I had to change the phrase "in the distance" into an adjective because otherwise the sentence would have become too complicated structurally to be enjoyable. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 14 of 20 07 March 2011 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, but I wouldn't enjoy reading this sentence in any language. I don't like the mixing of imagery/metaphor and the unclear meaning. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5336 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 15 of 20 07 March 2011 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Here's my attempt in Dutch:
Ik kronkel en kringel en strompel dronken rond in mijn eigen alinea als een spelletje slangen en ladders, al kruipend richting een eindelijk in zicht komende uitweg waar licht schijnt op mijn eigen onbekende gezicht in de verte, totdat ik uitglijd, val en weer opnieuw begin. I tried to keep changes to a minimum but I did change "twist and turn" slightly to keep the alliteration. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 16 of 20 07 March 2011 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
That still undermines the point of fiction, though, because you're now actively becoming involved with the text as an entity, and not treating the text as a passive medium fot the delivery medium of the story. This may be a legitimate goal in the OP's thesis, even though that's what it says in the original description. We will all experience that text in an uncontrolled, variable manner, so it does not allow us to experience the same thing as the protagonist as the writer sees it. Our projection of self onto the character's experience may be inconsistent with what the character does next, and our sense of time may be thrown out of the chronology of the story by the differing levels of attention we each give to the foreign text. (Which again could be a legitimate goal in the thesis.) 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
