Let's party again!

[wiseheart]

Well, folks, it's *that* time of the year again: I'll be 53 next Friday. So, it's time for the annual game of "let's the threads collapse". Come in, make yourselves comfortable, have a good time and bring your friends. Last years we had some 400+ comments, now we're in for the new record. ;)

This entry will be bounced up each day until October 9, so that all those who want can participate.

Update: On October 4, we had 195 comments on 2 pages. Well done. We still have got 5 more days, so let's see what we can do in that time. I have to say, the conversations in the individual threads were absolutely delightful. *is happy*

Update #2: On October 6, we had 270 comments - sadly, still on only 2 pages. Only 3 more day left to reach the ultimate goal, which would be 444 comments on 4 pages. But the discussions are great, so at the very least, we have the quality, if not the quantity yet. And that's more important, I'd say.

Update #3: On October 8, we had 388 comments, on 3 pages! Yay! I'm not very optimistic about Page 4, but I think the 444 comments might come together by the end of the day itself.

Pre-birthday gifts:
Got a wonderful bakery book from Mum, titled "Muffins and..." well, I seriously doubt that the English language has a word for the rest. Germans might know what Pogatschen are. They are small, salty or cheesy cookies, made usually of yeast dough... a Hungarian speciality. We already have quite a few recepies, but there are some in that book I never heard of. It will be a delight to try them out.

Also, I got the box-set of 2nd Season Torchwood from the most generous the_wild_iris! Thanks, my friend, you really, really made my day after two rather stressful weeks. I can finally watch the only episode I missed while we were in Belgium - the one in which Owen becomes a zombie. Heh!

Pre-birthday preparations:
I baked some strawberry flavoured muffins tonigh - not from the new book, from the carton box, I'm afraid, but for the colleagues they will do tomorrow.

Mum's bravely going down to the hairdresser's tomorrow, because, as she told me, "I can't look like this on your birthday!" Well, after not seeing a hairdresser for months, there's some truth in it.

The day after tomorrow, we're going to the "Blind Crow" for lunch. Unlike in English-speaking countries, lunch is actually the main meal of the day over here, so it will be great. The "Blind Crow" is a very nice little restaurant, and we can reach it on foot, which is the main issue, as Mum can't climb into any busses yet.


Final update:
Well, folks, the party will still be going on until midnight, CET, but I'm already declaring it a great success. We've made it onto Page 4, we've broken through the 500 (!!!)-comment-barrier, and I'm very happy.

Thanks everyone for participating, especially altariel, rcfinch, solanpolarn, the_wild_iris, theromangeneral and lhun_dweller, who've been working diligently and tirelessly to help me break the record. Should I've forgotten anyone, I humbly apologize.

Comments

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

In an effort to make sense of the world, I hereby theoretically predict that on LJ you get a new page of comments when the number of first-level comments reaches 25n+1, where n is an integer. If this is correct, the third comment page will occur when there are 51 first-level comments.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Well, unlike Drs Zelenka and Kavanagh, I've got serious problems with any numbers above 9, but I can tell you two simple facts:

a) We're three minutes into October 5 on my side of the pond, and

b) this is Comment #200.

I seriously doubt that those facts would help to make sense of the world, but 200 comments in 2 days (plus 4 minutes, meantime) are a handsome result.

[maglors-finch.livejournal.com]

May I suggest that according to your theory it should occur with the 51st first-level comment? One has to be exact in matters of language, too.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Oh you are absolutely right: one should definitely be exact in matters of language as well! (and you are right about the phrasing as well, but you knew that already.) Thank you for phrasing my thought better than I could. Please take this as the compliment it is meant as: it is wonderful to meet a fellow language-geek!

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Well met! In RL I work as a translator, which I suppose is a result of the language-geekery - as is my love of Tolkien. Does your work involve anything language-related?

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I work as a research scientist at Imperial college in London, which actually is more language-related than you might think at first glance. We do write 'papers' for scientific journals to publish the results of our research and (if you are lucky) you can get some quite good language-geeky discussions going about the best word or phrase to use to convey the proper message.

When I was a student, which lasted for quite some time what with doing a Ph.D., I was involved in the making of our students' union magazine and that was quite language-geeky as well. Given half a chance I am likely to be geeky about just about anything...

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

you can get some quite good language-geeky discussions going about the best word or phrase to use to convey the proper message

I know those, too - from a Yahoo-list of translators. You can get pages and pages of discussion about one and the same term - what exactly it means in the source language and how to create the closest equivalent in the target language, a one-to-one correspondence usually being out of reach.

And geekery resides in the mind of the geek, not in the object.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

And geekery resides in the mind of the geek, not in the object.
I have a very geeky mind, with room for all sorts of things to be geeky about! :-)

I think being a translator must be a fascinating, but sometimes very frustrating job because of the issue you describe. People sometimes ask me what a word in English means and while I understand the word and its connotations, I still find it hard to explain these to other people. This is also one of the reasons why I try and read books in the original language they were written in, if I can; while translators do a wonderful job and I wouldn't for example be able to read anything by say Greek, Latin or Russian authors without them, they do still change the work in subtle ways. This is especially evident in poetry and humour I think where word choices have extra dimensions to them, but it is to some extent true of every translated text.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Translating poetry is near impossible - you either end up with prose, or you compose a new poem, and neither is a faithful rendering of the original. But, then, no translation really is. The Italians knew it long ago: traduttore - traditore, translator - traitor. Puns are another source of woe (though this one happens to work quite well in English).
I prefer to read books in the original language, too, knowing only too well how much is lost in translation. But many of my fellow translators don't, and they can get pissed if you read the originals instead of their translations.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I sometimes see poetry that has been translated into Swedish saying "interpreted by" which seems the honest thing to say, both to the original poet and to the interpreter. I think perhaps what we should do is put more emphasis on the translator and her art and appreciate that the text is different after translation; perhaps we could liken it to the difference between the same play being directed by different directors?

While a badly translated text is horrid, I have come across instances where I like the translated version better. The only example I can think of off-the-top of my head concerns a line in The Lion King but I am sure there are others as well.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Yes, "interpreted by" is much better than "translated by". It also serves to save translators from critics who accuse them of having been unfaithful to the original without having an inkling of how difficult it is to translate (interpret) poetry. Translators are undervalued anyway .

The problem with the two different directors is that they're on equal footing, while an original poet and his/her translator are not. Maybe the comparison between the composer of a piece of music and the interpreter of the piece would be better.

Could you give me the example from The Lion King? I can read Swedish.

BTW, your theory was correct. Page 3 opened with the 51st first-level comment. The number of other comments does not seem to be relevant.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Translators are certainly undervalued! I think part of that is due to the fact that we only really notice when they do a bad job; if the translation is good you don't think of the fact that the text has been translated. It is a bit like typography and proof-reading, which I think are also very important for the readability of a text but when done well shouldn't register on your conscious mind.

As for the example from The Lion King it occurs when Simba and his friends get back to his home. Timon comments on the state of it and says: "Snacka om renoveringsobjekt!". I don't actually remember what the line is in English, just that when I did see it in English I didn't sound as good. It may of course partly be due to the delivery of the line by the actor. However, I have on several occasions heard that particular line, with clear reference to The Lion King, used about houses in similar states in Sweden.

Yes, I think your comparison of composer and interpreter of a piece of music is better for original poet and translator. I think 'original' is an important word there, because to interpret/translate poetry well you need to be a poet yourself. I do know that some of the famous Swedish poets have also 'translated' poetry into Swedish and their name tends to appear almost as prominently on the cover of the poetry collection as that of the original poet.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

"Snacka om renoveringsobjekt!"

Definitely a line that sticks in the memory. Maybe the translator would do well in the commercial business...

I do know that some of the famous Swedish poets have also 'translated' poetry into Swedish

Poets are usually good at adapting/translating poetry (provided they know the source language well, of course). Writers in general are good translators, but translating novels takes a lot of time, and they usually prefer their own stuff.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Having tried, very unsuccessfully!, to translate beloved Swedish poems into English to be able to share them with people who don't speak Swedish, I fully appreciate the difficulty of the task. I think you have to be a poet to be able to 'translate' poetry, and of course know both the original and the target language well.

I would imagine translating a novel, if done well, will take of the same order of magnitude of time as writing it in the first place. OK, you don't have to plot out the story, but you do have to worry about getting the text to sound consistent and what little clues the original author was planting with the use of particular words and phrases and how to transfer them, without having the freedom of changing the story if you find it doesn't work... I can see why people would prefer writing their own stuff if they have a choice.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Well... no, translating a novel doesn't take as much time as writing it. I know this from experience, as I've done both. (For novel, read: historical mystery). Creating a consistent, novel-length story and putting it into words takes a lot more organisation than translating the same kind of thing does - with the possible exception of the run-of-the-mill-stuff that used to be known as `penny dreadfuls`. IMO, the main reason why people prefer writing their own stuff is that writing is a much more prestigious job than translating. The author's name always appears on the cover, the translator's name rarely so.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to imply that writing a novel wouldn't take longer than translating it, just that I though it wouldn't take ten times as long. I may of course be entirely wrong about that, too; I have never even tried to do either. Your point that people will prefer to write their own stuff because it is more prestigious sounds probable, but I would add that they may also find it more rewarding and enjoyable to tell their own story than to help tell someone else's.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Let's say it takes an author a year to write a 300 page novel. It depends on the kind of novel, of course, and some people write faster than others, but it seems a reasonable estimate to me. The last 300 page novel I translated took me about three months. So that would be four times as fast. OTOH, George Martin needs five years to write a 1000 page fantasy novel, which I translate in about nine months. That's six times as fast. But yes, ten times is on the high side.

Your other point is well taken, too. Of course it's much more gratifying to tell your own story! On the other hand, it causes a lot more headaches and you can never lay it aside.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

That sounds like the sort of time-scales I imagined. I seem to remember that when the fourth or fifth Harry Potter book came out it took about six months for them to appear in Swedish after they were published in English. I imagine some of this time would be printing and proof-reading/editing, but the fact that it takes time to translate them was reason given for them not coming out earlier. I realize I may have been guilty of using scientific-jargon in my original post: when we say 'within an order of magnitude' in science we mean 'not more than ten times larger or a tenth as small'.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

If the HP translation appeared six months after the original, it probably took four to five months to translate the book. Usually, after I send a translation to the publisher, it takes about ten weeks before I see the printed result, but in the case of Harry Potter they probably sped up the process. Or they work faster in Sweden than in the Netherlands.

As for the order of magnitude - no, I didn't know that. But one is never to old to learn!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I meant to ask what languages do you work in? and because people understanding anything of my native language always fascinates me: how/why did you learn to read Swedish?

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

I learned Swedish at Leiden University and during the six months I lived in Göteborg. At the time, I used to speak it quite well too, but this was long ago, and I haven't had much practice since.

The languages I translatate from are English, German and occasionally - surprise! - Swedish (there's not much demand for translators from Swedish, though). I've done Norwegian and Danish too, but I have to take care to avoid pitfalls there.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I take it the language you translate into is Dutch, then, since you studied at Leiden university? It doesn't surprise me that there isn't much demand for translators from Swedish; it is a fairly small language in number of native (or otherwise) speakers after all. Whenever people here in England express admiration for the level of mastery Swedish people have of English I usually tell them that it is partly a matter of necessity: if we want to speak to anybody outside of Sweden and some parts of Finland we really need to learn another language!

Another Dutch friend of mine, and fellow book-lover, told me that the recent series of crime novels by Stieg Larsson were translated into Dutch before they were translated into English. Were you by any chance involved in that?

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

Yes, my native language is indeed Dutch. And what you say for Swedish applies to our language as well, thoug we have a greater number of speakers. But the big languages surrounding us dwarf ours, so learning English (and a little French and German) is a must for us.

Unfortunately, though I would have loved to, I never got the chance to translate Stieg Larsson's books - I work for different publishers.

p.s.

[rcfinch.livejournal.com]

p.s. That's me, too. I forgot to log in as rcfinch.