SG1 - Gringoes: Brazil: The Perils of Translation
And now for something completely different than the news about the cancellation!
From Gringoes:
http://www.gringoes.com/articles.asp?ID_Noticia=1394
(Please follow the link for the complete article.)
Brazil: The Perils of Translation
By Steven Engler
A translator‘s job is an extremely difficult one. The words of one language seldom match up exactly with those of another. Some words are simply missing in other languages: for example, "saudade" is unique to Portuguese; "homesickness" is unique to English; they overlap a bit but ultimately mean very different things. Shifting contexts and multiple levels of meaning create difficult choices. Slang and jargon confuse matters. Cultural politics on both sides of the linguistic boundary complicate the translator‘s activity. On top of all this, the work of the translator is undervalued. It is a creative art of retelling, of evoking echoes of similarity, of making nuanced judgments about how different audiences will react. Yet most people seem to treat translation as a machine-like substitution. (Try back translating from English to Portuguese to English using software to see the mess that machine translation produces.) To make things worse, translators are never given enough time to do the job as well as they are capable. I worked as a professional translator, briefly, and the money seemed fine... until I started the long, slow task of rough translation, revising, researching technical terms, re-revising, striving to convey the subtle tone of certain passages, etc., etc., etc. It‘s a tough way to make your living.
That said, and with all due respect, I love collecting the mistakes made by the people who provide the Portuguese subtitles for English films and TV programs. (I collect them because the errors amuse me, not because I think I could do any better. If translators were paid what they deserve and were given the time they need to do the job right, Brazilian subtitles would be much more accurate and evocative, but much less amusing...) The results can be hilarious. Often, the cross-cultural attempt to capture the essence of a phrase succeeds only in diluting its meaning to homeopathic levels.
I divide the translation errors that I have collected into ten categories, presented in the following format: A ? B [C], i.e., "what was said in the original English soundtrack" ? " what the Portuguese subtitle means in English [the Portuguese subtitle]"
So, to give an example from Category 1, the line spoken in English was "coal mine," but the subtitle read "mina de ouro," which means "gold mine." This is represented as follows: "coal mine" ? "gold mine [mina de ouro]."
**major snippage**
Category 9 - Beyond wit‘s end
Sometimes, the translator appears to just throw up their hands in confusion, dismay, or surrender. If you can‘t translate it, fake it...
Pick of the crop: In Stargate SG-1 the main characters manage to negotiate their way out of an impossibly dangerous situation. To express his surprise, the dry-witted Co. Jack O‘Neill (as played by Richard Dean Anderson, sans Swiss army knife) says, "Well, spank me rosy!" Faced with this challenge, at once both idiomatic and idiosyncratic, the translator bailed: "Let‘s get out of here! [vamos sair daqui!]."
Category 10 - Never mind
Sometimes, what seems at first to be an error in translation turns out to be a sign of my own ignorance of Portuguese. Confusion is in the ear of the listener...
In Stargate SG-1, O‘Neill says, with his usual wryly sarcastic delivery, "We‘re going to get creamed." I thought I had a classic (Category 5) for my collection when I read the subtitle: "We‘ll start off well [Vamos entrar bem]." It turns out that this latter expression is often used ironically in Portuguese. Live and learn!
Copyright © 2001-2005
|*|(*)|*|(*)|*|
Morjana
From Gringoes:
http://www.gringoes.com/articles.asp?ID_Noticia=1394
(Please follow the link for the complete article.)
Brazil: The Perils of Translation
By Steven Engler
A translator‘s job is an extremely difficult one. The words of one language seldom match up exactly with those of another. Some words are simply missing in other languages: for example, "saudade" is unique to Portuguese; "homesickness" is unique to English; they overlap a bit but ultimately mean very different things. Shifting contexts and multiple levels of meaning create difficult choices. Slang and jargon confuse matters. Cultural politics on both sides of the linguistic boundary complicate the translator‘s activity. On top of all this, the work of the translator is undervalued. It is a creative art of retelling, of evoking echoes of similarity, of making nuanced judgments about how different audiences will react. Yet most people seem to treat translation as a machine-like substitution. (Try back translating from English to Portuguese to English using software to see the mess that machine translation produces.) To make things worse, translators are never given enough time to do the job as well as they are capable. I worked as a professional translator, briefly, and the money seemed fine... until I started the long, slow task of rough translation, revising, researching technical terms, re-revising, striving to convey the subtle tone of certain passages, etc., etc., etc. It‘s a tough way to make your living.
That said, and with all due respect, I love collecting the mistakes made by the people who provide the Portuguese subtitles for English films and TV programs. (I collect them because the errors amuse me, not because I think I could do any better. If translators were paid what they deserve and were given the time they need to do the job right, Brazilian subtitles would be much more accurate and evocative, but much less amusing...) The results can be hilarious. Often, the cross-cultural attempt to capture the essence of a phrase succeeds only in diluting its meaning to homeopathic levels.
I divide the translation errors that I have collected into ten categories, presented in the following format: A ? B [C], i.e., "what was said in the original English soundtrack" ? " what the Portuguese subtitle means in English [the Portuguese subtitle]"
So, to give an example from Category 1, the line spoken in English was "coal mine," but the subtitle read "mina de ouro," which means "gold mine." This is represented as follows: "coal mine" ? "gold mine [mina de ouro]."
**major snippage**
Category 9 - Beyond wit‘s end
Sometimes, the translator appears to just throw up their hands in confusion, dismay, or surrender. If you can‘t translate it, fake it...
Pick of the crop: In Stargate SG-1 the main characters manage to negotiate their way out of an impossibly dangerous situation. To express his surprise, the dry-witted Co. Jack O‘Neill (as played by Richard Dean Anderson, sans Swiss army knife) says, "Well, spank me rosy!" Faced with this challenge, at once both idiomatic and idiosyncratic, the translator bailed: "Let‘s get out of here! [vamos sair daqui!]."
Category 10 - Never mind
Sometimes, what seems at first to be an error in translation turns out to be a sign of my own ignorance of Portuguese. Confusion is in the ear of the listener...
In Stargate SG-1, O‘Neill says, with his usual wryly sarcastic delivery, "We‘re going to get creamed." I thought I had a classic (Category 5) for my collection when I read the subtitle: "We‘ll start off well [Vamos entrar bem]." It turns out that this latter expression is often used ironically in Portuguese. Live and learn!
Copyright © 2001-2005
|*|(*)|*|(*)|*|
Morjana
