Lost in Translation

[Glinda]

I edit books for a company in Spain. Some books are written in a foreign language and "translated" into English by another person on their staff (or maybe they just use Google Translate, I can't tell); some are written in "English" by foreign-language speakers who think they know English.

You can't imagine the difficulty I have convincing the bossman that the translations/texts are NOT proper English. For example, for the last two weeks, we've been wrangling about my editing a book (about the Japanese Army in WWII) that was written by a "very educated Spaniard" that has been living in the US for 20 years. They just can't believe that he can't write flawless English - they keep telling me he's "very educated and he's lived in the US for 20 years!"

Yeah, well... you know how many people have lived here their entire lives and can't write a proper sentence?

To be fair, this particular author has done an admirable job, but it still ain't right. One tiny example: he doesn't understand the difference between were and where (uses were every time).

And I did enjoy this sentence:

Extreme heat and humidity combined with exhausting marches suffocated the men and provoked continuous dismals among the troops.

Dismals!

[casimendocina]

Originally Posted by Glinda

I edit books for a company in Spain. Some books are written in a foreign language and "translated" into English by another person on their staff (or maybe they just use Google Translate, I can't tell); some are written in "English" by foreign-language speakers who think they know English.

You can't imagine the difficulty I have convincing the bossman that the translations/texts are NOT proper English. For example, for the last two weeks, we've been wrangling about my editing a book (about the Japanese Army in WWII) that was written by a "very educated Spaniard" that has been living in the US for 20 years. They just can't believe that he can't write flawless English - they keep telling me he's "very educated and he's lived in the US for 20 years!"

Yeah, well... you know how many people have lived here their entire lives and can't write a proper sentence?

To be fair, this particular author has done an admirable job, but it still ain't right. One tiny example: he doesn't understand the difference between were and where (uses were every time).

And I did enjoy this sentence:


Dismals!

A couple of years ago, I read Spanish translations of The Kite Runner and One Thousand Splendid Suns. They'd obviously been translated by different people as the flow and vocab of the Kite Runner (as far as I can remember) was reallly smooth whereas 1000 Splendid Suns sounded really stilted and translated-there was some vocab which really made me wonder what dictionary they'd been using and how old it was. The same year I read Lost City Radio/Radio Ciudad Perdida which although written by a Peruvian born author was written in English and translated by someone else. (From what I remember) it was the most amazing piece of translated prose. The story was great as well, but had the translation been mediocre or bad, it wouldn't have been nearly as readable.

[casimendocina]

Originally Posted by casimendocina

Lost City Radio/Radio Ciudad Perdida

must be based on something like this:

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story...Radio-Lifeline

[Gravdigr]

Disgression!!!

Not what the thread is about, really, but...

That's not an AK-47. It's not even a toy AK-47.



It ain't no machine gun, neither.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, everyone knows that's a dreaded assault rifle.