What news could I reasonably expect for this blog to which I only turn on occasion now, as a rule with light stuff?
At best, some newcomer who'd come across it and say hello here, right?
This best expectation did materialize through Betty.
Betty, an American from (or living in) Baltimore I met by chance in a Linked In group gave me the honor to show up here and not only greeted me but left her comments on a number of old posts, following the timeline. She wrote a book I wouldn’t hesitate ordering, if I were a little better off now. My other readers can check all that for themselves just by clicking where she left comments here.
Other persons I met thanks to internet also took cognizance of my blogging and let me know of it.
Gabriela is a translator from Argentina and she runs a translation office there. She told me that a comment I wrote in a discussion stirred her curiosity and then she came to see my blogs. She knows a whole bunch of languages and is very good at them all, one of them being Portuguese. So she could read from everything I write. She commented through e-mail even on posts of my Bonde Andando. Her first message to me read at its head "Nice to e-meet you". What an opening, isn’t it?
Another colleague from another international list of translators first-named Dorothy came to visit my blogs and told me so. She had seen my introduction there and felt like knowing more. Her own records are impressive, indeed. She is successful as a translator; she travels a lot the world over and was born in France. We began communicating in English and so we kept doing. After many e-mails about translation, an exchange of résumés and this and that, she told me she's going to give me some work to do when something fit comes up. Naturally I'm rooting for that to happen soon. Bills keep coming fierce as usual, don’t they?
Then there's Patty, a very good poet from Poets group, again at Linked In. She accepted some contribution of mine and expressed beautifully her appreciation for my Rights, there. We got virtually acquainted and then I found her at Facebook. We entertained online conversation yesterday. She told me of her impressions this blog gave her in a ten minute chat. Used as she is of reading varied and lengthy written material on a daily basis, she’s really skilled at assessing fast someone’s style, correctness, etc. She told me she likes my English. Oh how good it feels knowing of this from her!
Marna was the first international visitor this blog received. Our interblog dialogue began with my visit to one of hers. I left a comment on sheet music reading then and we began this wholesome interchange of ideas, now extended to Facebook, too.
I think of her now as of a next door neighbor, though I never saw her except in photos and never heard her voice.
Such generously stated and reinforced appreciation I receive from these virtual friends and acquaintances makes me wonder if I really deserve it. I wish I do.
quinta-feira, 24 de novembro de 2011
quarta-feira, 21 de setembro de 2011
With naturalness, naturally
Since I’m a Brazilian translator, I'll naturally restrict my examples to the pair English-Portuguese, in either way.
Unnaturalness in translation can be lavishly exemplified, by resorting to anything translated automatically by any of the tools now available therefor. Bad human translators will also contribute a lot of these unhappy examples.
I know a blogger whose stuff is read by too many people from too many places. He has his posts translated automatically. Anyone can see the texts so translated are invariably clumsy, hard to understand, full of absurdities, incoherent, in short, they simply never sound natural. No wonder. Anyone but those who believe something automatically translated is adequate to be ‘served’ to a multilingual readership can see how texts are impoverished by direct machine translation, without at least a competent review.
Delivering the raw translation made by Google Translator, for instance, to readers of another language may seem almost unthinkable to anyone who has the slightest idea of what a well written text is. However, that’s just what some people out there are doing. No kidding. You’ll certainly get plenty of sentences which sound now stilted, now unintelligible, nonsensical and utterly ridiculous.
These automatic translating resources do not work in much the same way as we humans (the ‘natural’ translators) use to. For one, most of them, as far as I know, work for free. We humans also make mistakes, of course. The great difference I see lies in the fact that we, at least, stand a chance of ever feeling ashamed for such mistakes.
Onn the other hand, there is no point in praising a machine translator for an outstanding performance, is there? or in telling it off on account of a shabby, unspeakably ridiculous rendering. It is supposed to react with exactly the same indifference to either the highest praise or the harsher scolding, aren’t I right?
What is the point in expecting any naturalness from a machine? It can’t react to any opinion, it can’t understand anything at all, it can’t make any sensible choice to fit situations or circumstances, it can’t consider what it takes in order to choose how to say what to whom, it can’t translate with minimum taste or expertise. Only we humans, who have the experience of using a language as a tool for real communication, can supply any degree of naturalness in translation.
There is much to be considered when you translate, if you want to sound natural. First of all, you have to understand very well what is being conveyed in the original text, and you should also be able to guess certain intentions on the part of the author. For instance, when an author says/writes something only to be funny - no matter how successfully - if his translator just can’t guess this, and worse still, treats the would-be joke as something serious, something important will certainly be lost in translation. No naturalness will be attained. The language used in a given situation may be full of metaphors that give color to the original, but hell to the translator, unless if it is a machine, who isn’t anyway supposed to care for naturalness, adequateness, taste, etc...
Many a time I saw expressions like ‘How far is far?” translated into Portuguese as “Quão longe é longe?” True, it is a literal, word-for-word translation. The problem is that no Portuguese speaker would ever think of asking such a question this way. It is on the whole unnatural. There are human translators who don’t seem even to suspect how unnatural “quão longe é longe” sounds. These will never be good translators before they manage to make such an obvious realization. Machines will never be good translators at all, in this sense, before they can understand what is being said and react accordingly.
I don’t think a cold machine is likely to make the right decision when ‘good morning’ can be translated literally as ‘boa manhã’ (if that’s what these words really mean, for example, in “I spent a very good morning with them”), or when to translate it as “bom dia”, a usual greeting. As a rule, human translators are.
Expressions like “both A and B are …”, according to my experience, are too often translated as “ambos A e B são …”. Laughable, to say the least.
In order to translate even objective, predominantly referential texts with naturalness, the person (or machine, if it were possible) should possess both a lot of experience with the target language handling and a sound knowledge of the source language. In the absence of both, it’s simply impossible, for either man or machine.
Unnaturalness in translation can be lavishly exemplified, by resorting to anything translated automatically by any of the tools now available therefor. Bad human translators will also contribute a lot of these unhappy examples.
I know a blogger whose stuff is read by too many people from too many places. He has his posts translated automatically. Anyone can see the texts so translated are invariably clumsy, hard to understand, full of absurdities, incoherent, in short, they simply never sound natural. No wonder. Anyone but those who believe something automatically translated is adequate to be ‘served’ to a multilingual readership can see how texts are impoverished by direct machine translation, without at least a competent review.
Delivering the raw translation made by Google Translator, for instance, to readers of another language may seem almost unthinkable to anyone who has the slightest idea of what a well written text is. However, that’s just what some people out there are doing. No kidding. You’ll certainly get plenty of sentences which sound now stilted, now unintelligible, nonsensical and utterly ridiculous.
These automatic translating resources do not work in much the same way as we humans (the ‘natural’ translators) use to. For one, most of them, as far as I know, work for free. We humans also make mistakes, of course. The great difference I see lies in the fact that we, at least, stand a chance of ever feeling ashamed for such mistakes.
Onn the other hand, there is no point in praising a machine translator for an outstanding performance, is there? or in telling it off on account of a shabby, unspeakably ridiculous rendering. It is supposed to react with exactly the same indifference to either the highest praise or the harsher scolding, aren’t I right?
What is the point in expecting any naturalness from a machine? It can’t react to any opinion, it can’t understand anything at all, it can’t make any sensible choice to fit situations or circumstances, it can’t consider what it takes in order to choose how to say what to whom, it can’t translate with minimum taste or expertise. Only we humans, who have the experience of using a language as a tool for real communication, can supply any degree of naturalness in translation.
There is much to be considered when you translate, if you want to sound natural. First of all, you have to understand very well what is being conveyed in the original text, and you should also be able to guess certain intentions on the part of the author. For instance, when an author says/writes something only to be funny - no matter how successfully - if his translator just can’t guess this, and worse still, treats the would-be joke as something serious, something important will certainly be lost in translation. No naturalness will be attained. The language used in a given situation may be full of metaphors that give color to the original, but hell to the translator, unless if it is a machine, who isn’t anyway supposed to care for naturalness, adequateness, taste, etc...
Many a time I saw expressions like ‘How far is far?” translated into Portuguese as “Quão longe é longe?” True, it is a literal, word-for-word translation. The problem is that no Portuguese speaker would ever think of asking such a question this way. It is on the whole unnatural. There are human translators who don’t seem even to suspect how unnatural “quão longe é longe” sounds. These will never be good translators before they manage to make such an obvious realization. Machines will never be good translators at all, in this sense, before they can understand what is being said and react accordingly.
I don’t think a cold machine is likely to make the right decision when ‘good morning’ can be translated literally as ‘boa manhã’ (if that’s what these words really mean, for example, in “I spent a very good morning with them”), or when to translate it as “bom dia”, a usual greeting. As a rule, human translators are.
Expressions like “both A and B are …”, according to my experience, are too often translated as “ambos A e B são …”. Laughable, to say the least.
In order to translate even objective, predominantly referential texts with naturalness, the person (or machine, if it were possible) should possess both a lot of experience with the target language handling and a sound knowledge of the source language. In the absence of both, it’s simply impossible, for either man or machine.
segunda-feira, 5 de setembro de 2011
Workout
I'm giving private classes again.
A new friend's wife had picked my phone number somewhere, so he gave me a ring a couple of days ago.
After a short introduction, we appointed a first class which took place at his house.
He is in his early thirties and wants to acquire a working command of the English language for professional reasons. He is in marketing, has a university degree and now he has to learn English, otherwise he will be doomed to stick to his present position in the business.
I had sent him some exercises by email, which were used in our first training session. He began to understand and use basic structures of the language by manipulating them himself in the way I had shown him.
He was glad to see by himself that the whole stuff works.
This kindled in him justifiable hope. He had already tried 'fashionable' methods which are expensive but led him to no progress worth mentioning.
Let's see what comes next.
A new friend's wife had picked my phone number somewhere, so he gave me a ring a couple of days ago.
After a short introduction, we appointed a first class which took place at his house.
He is in his early thirties and wants to acquire a working command of the English language for professional reasons. He is in marketing, has a university degree and now he has to learn English, otherwise he will be doomed to stick to his present position in the business.
I had sent him some exercises by email, which were used in our first training session. He began to understand and use basic structures of the language by manipulating them himself in the way I had shown him.
He was glad to see by himself that the whole stuff works.
This kindled in him justifiable hope. He had already tried 'fashionable' methods which are expensive but led him to no progress worth mentioning.
Let's see what comes next.
sexta-feira, 6 de maio de 2011
Nutness
I'm nuts. Plain like that, I am, and that’s all.
I don’t expect you to believe a word of what I am writing here (even if you are also nuts like me, which I have no reason to believe), despite the fact that I'm talking so shamelessly about myself (not at any rate my favorite subject, however much I resort to it while blogging).
In fact, I suspect my very wording here discourages belief in my nutness, but this won't make me any less nuts, though.
Then my hard-to-believe nutness.
If I want to explain it, it is highly advisable to do so understandably, otherwise in the end I won’t have explained a thing to any possible reader. I suppose I can do this, but the better I explain my own nutness, the harder to believe it naturally gets.
So, whether you believe me or not, I'm stating my nutness here. What the hell am I doing that for? This is something I don’t know myself, which makes good sense if you bear in mind that I'm really nuts.
The strangest fact about my nutness is its intriguing implausibility. Things I say do sound sound, and things I write usually sound still more so. There seems to be no way out.
I don’t expect you to believe a word of what I am writing here (even if you are also nuts like me, which I have no reason to believe), despite the fact that I'm talking so shamelessly about myself (not at any rate my favorite subject, however much I resort to it while blogging).
In fact, I suspect my very wording here discourages belief in my nutness, but this won't make me any less nuts, though.
Then my hard-to-believe nutness.
If I want to explain it, it is highly advisable to do so understandably, otherwise in the end I won’t have explained a thing to any possible reader. I suppose I can do this, but the better I explain my own nutness, the harder to believe it naturally gets.
So, whether you believe me or not, I'm stating my nutness here. What the hell am I doing that for? This is something I don’t know myself, which makes good sense if you bear in mind that I'm really nuts.
The strangest fact about my nutness is its intriguing implausibility. Things I say do sound sound, and things I write usually sound still more so. There seems to be no way out.
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)
Postagens
