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Qp10qp
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2004 11:32 pm
Post subject: Lost in translation. |
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I found the following on the "Today In Literature" site:
The first English translation of A Doll's House in 1881 was by T. Weber, a
Danish schoolteacher who seems to have approached the task trusting to his good
intentions and his Danish-English dictionary. If the following bits from Act V
are representative, the results could only have been received with blank-stare
confusion, or worse:
HELMER. Don't utter such stupid shuffles.... Doff the shawl!... From this
moment it depends no longer on felicity; it depends only on saving the rests,
remnants, and the appearance.
HELMER. You are first of all a wife and mother.
NORA. ... I believe that I am first of all a man, I as well as you -- or at all
events, that I am to try to become a man.
NORA. As I am now, I am no wife for you.
HELMER. I have power to grow another.
HELMER. Change yourself in such a manner that--
NORA. --that cohabitation between you and me might become a matrimony. Goodbye.
Michael Meyer's biography of Ibsen, from which much of the above is taken,
quotes Harley Granville Barker saying that this last line tempted him "to offer
a prize at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to the student who could manage to
speak [it] without making the audience laugh."
I'd be interested to read other examples of laughable translation, if you've
got any. (Now that I've at last recovered from Richard Chambers's "dos bacones"
story.)
Peasemarch. |
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Richard Chambers
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:07 am
Post subject: Re: Lost in translation. |
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"Qp10qp" <qp10qp@aol.com> wrote
| Quote: |
The first English translation of A Doll's House in 1881 was by T. Weber, a
Danish schoolteacher who seems to have approached the task trusting to his
good
intentions and his Danish-English dictionary. If the following bits from
Act V
are representative, the results could only have been received with
blank-stare
confusion, or worse:
HELMER. Don't utter such stupid shuffles.... Doff the shawl!... From this
moment it depends no longer on felicity; it depends only on saving the
rests,
remnants, and the appearance.
[ ... ]
I'd be interested to read other examples of laughable translation, if
you've
got any.
|
My webpage, advertising my services as a consultant in electrical
engineering, is at address www.metercare.co.uk . I wrote this page in
English, but decided that I would like to offer foreign engineers a
translation into French (which I speak reasonably well) and Spanish (which I
can translate in written form, with much help from the dictionary, but which
I cannot hear sufficiently accurately to speak well). I decided that the
quickest way of doing both translations would be to use the translation
facility on the Altavista search engine, and then to tidy it all up as best
I could. As a further check on the accuracy of the Altavista translation, I
decided to use the same facility to re-translate the raw (Altavista) French
or Spanish version back into English, and see how well it corresponded with
the original.
As a result of the re-translation, my company changed its name from Chambers
Metercare to Bedroom Metercare. There were many other features of the
re-translation into English that made me laugh, but I cannot share them with
you here because my Internet Explorer has developed a fault which I have not
had time to get repaired. If you want to, you have my permission to do the
same translation into French and re-translation into English, and to post
the more amusing extracts here.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK. |
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Mark Brader
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:25 am
Post subject: Re: Lost in translation. |
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| Quote: | I'd be interested to read other examples of laughable translation,
if you've got any.
|
The ultimate in this area is an 1855 phrasebook originally published
under the title "O Novo Guia da Conversacao, em Portuguez e Inglez"
-- A New Guide to Conversation, in Portuguese and English.
<http://www.collinslibrary.com/english.html> sets out what is known
about the history of this volume. In brief, an author named Jose da
Fonseca had earlier produced a competent French-English phrasebook
and a competent French-Portuguese phrasebook; these were two separate
works, rather than one being adapted from the other. Apparently the
publisher of his French-Portuguese phrasebook decided they could
make some money by having it adapted into an English-Portuguese one.
Rather than having da Fonseca do this, for some reason they turned
to one Pedro Carolino, who apparently knew practically no English,
and for the most part simply "translated" all the French into
English in simple word-for-word fashion, like a human Babelfish.
For example, in the chapter on Proverbs and Idiotisms, a Portuguese
phrase equivalent to "to cast pearls before swine" is rendered as
"To make paps for the cats."
The book was soon republished under the title "English As She
Is Spoke", with an introduction by Mark Twain (which, however,
assumed that both da Fonseca and Carolino were responsible for
the incompetence). In recent years it has again been republished
under that title.
--
Mark Brader "...out of the dark coffee-stained mugs of
Toronto insane programmers throughout the world..."
msb@vex.net -- Liam Quin
"Or their bosses..." -- Steve Summit
My text in this article is in the public domain. |
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Donna Richoux
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 9:26 pm
Post subject: Re: Lost in translation. |
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Qp10qp <qp10qp@aol.com> wrote:
| Quote: | I'd be interested to read other examples of laughable translation, if
you've got any. (Now that I've at last recovered from Richard Chambers's
"dos bacones" story.)
|
I've got a bookmark somewhere... I haven't checked it out lately, but
this site made an effort to keep track of mistranslations of the "Chevy
No Va" variety -- both actual and legendary-fictitious. Maybe you could
report back as to whether the site seems to be current or abandoned...
Marketing Translation Mistakes
http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html
--
Best -- Donna Richoux |
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don groves
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 7:36 am
Post subject: Re: Lost in translation. |
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In article <1gp96ow.ctlhdj1hwc9rN%trio@euronet.nl>, Donna Richoux
at trio@euronet.nl hath writ:
| Quote: | Qp10qp <qp10qp@aol.com> wrote:
I'd be interested to read other examples of laughable translation, if
you've got any. (Now that I've at last recovered from Richard Chambers's
"dos bacones" story.)
I've got a bookmark somewhere... I haven't checked it out lately, but
this site made an effort to keep track of mistranslations of the "Chevy
No Va" variety -- both actual and legendary-fictitious. Maybe you could
report back as to whether the site seems to be current or abandoned...
Marketing Translation Mistakes
http://www.i18nguy.com/translations.html
|
Seems to be current. Lots of stuff from the past few months.
The one about "latte" meaning "erection" in German is cute. Can
a German speaker here can tell us if it's authentic? Think I'll
go have my morning latte now.
--
dg (domain=ccwebster) |
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