Mailing List Archive

Translating pun is well known one of most difficult part of
translation arts. Most of translations even tend to ignore them even
by professionals. If you have a foreign language version of a
Shakespeare play and English, compare two and find how many puns are
left untranslated or ignored. If I am in the position of Election
Officer, I would like to advice every such candidate to alter those,
but the requirement of neutrality made he hesitant.

Just for your information.

On 9/24/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn@dachte.org> wrote:
> habj wrote:
> >I am not sure if the translators need appreciation from the candidates. I
> >think it would be more appreciated if more of them made their texts more
> >easy to translate. Things to avoid are things like puns: "Bored? Board
> >Questions for Improv." OK of course I just skipped the pun, but he risked
> >getting it translated to something strange in a couple of languages. So do
> >the people who write "endowment" rather than "finansial reserve" or
> >something similar (if I understood that term correct in context - I am still
> >not 100% sure that I did.
>
> My apologies on that front. I assumed that the pun would simply be
> translated out by the translators -- I tried to help out in
> the translation task for a few languages which I kinda-sorta speak,
> and removed the pun in each non-English (I think). I believe I was
> the one who first introduced the idea of an endowment -- it's not quite
> exactly identical to a financial reserve, in that only interest from
> its investment flows into the general coffers of the project. My apologies
> if it wasn't exactly clear -- it's a financial-esque term. If you had asked,
> I would've explained. I do appreciate the efforts of translators though,
> especially those who had to deal with my half-baked Spanish. My thanks
> to them and to the election coordinators.
>
> ---
> Pat Gunn
> mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom
> http://dachte.org
> Yeah, I totally did the Vulcan nerve pinch on a guy once
> and it definitely worked because he said "Ow."
> -- Seen on SomethingAwful
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *
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habj wrote:
>I am not sure if the translators need appreciation from the candidates. I
>think it would be more appreciated if more of them made their texts more
>easy to translate. Things to avoid are things like puns: "Bored? Board
>Questions for Improv." OK of course I just skipped the pun, but he risked
>getting it translated to something strange in a couple of languages. So do
>the people who write "endowment" rather than "finansial reserve" or
>something similar (if I understood that term correct in context - I am still
>not 100% sure that I did.

My apologies on that front. I assumed that the pun would simply be
translated out by the translators -- I tried to help out in
the translation task for a few languages which I kinda-sorta speak,
and removed the pun in each non-English (I think). I believe I was
the one who first introduced the idea of an endowment -- it's not quite
exactly identical to a financial reserve, in that only interest from
its investment flows into the general coffers of the project. My apologies
if it wasn't exactly clear -- it's a financial-esque term. If you had asked,
I would've explained. I do appreciate the efforts of translators though,
especially those who had to deal with my half-baked Spanish. My thanks
to them and to the election coordinators.

---
Pat Gunn
mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom
http://dachte.org
Yeah, I totally did the Vulcan nerve pinch on a guy once
and it definitely worked because he said "Ow."
-- Seen on SomethingAwful
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foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Actually, I think a translation that equals "financial reserve" is as good
as can possibly be expected considering the circumstances. Any candidate who
uses many words and/or concepts that the average native English speaker does
not know well enough to give a somewhat decent explanation of, will when
translated yield some half-good and some outright wrong stuff. That is IMHO
natural, especially since we are in most cases not talking about
professional translators - but even in printed books one often can find the
most amusing translation mistakes. I expect the result of the translations
to various languages to vary. Work load also plays a part in how refined
translations will become.

As Alphaia pointed out, puns and many types of jokes are typically
impossible to translate. One has to make up a new joke - not recommended in
this context - or leave it out. Some of the statements had words in them
linked to the corresponding articles on English Wikipedia. Some of those
exist in Swedish, others do not. Linking to the sometimes small and
sometimes bad articles on the subjects in Swedish Wikipedia was hardly the
effect the author was searching for.Linking to articles in English in a text
that is supposed to the Swedish translation really shows that the candidate
only has the English-speaking voters in mind.

If you make sure not to use too difficult words, and avoid jokes at all
cost, and not even wikilink freely... you risk a bunch of pretty colourless
statement, maybe. Do we want to rob those who speak good English of the
possibilities to use the full scale of their language? Well, that is what
one does in a room where there are many non-native speakers so... maybe,
although the thought is not entirely appealing. There are ways around it,
though. Oscar very cleverly linked to Wikipedia articles in several
different languages; it was obvious that I should let the links remain as
they were., and there is no bad message to a user of any language.

I am sorry if it seems like I especially targeted Improv here. I was
certainly not trying to do that! Several candidates used the word endowment,
and his explanation on why he wanted to establish this endowment is what
helped me the most in determening its meaning in context. Asking the
candidates to explain things might be a good idea, I never thought of that.
I regularly consulted - besides my dictionary plus the Wikipedias and
Wiktionaries - my boyfriend, who is a native English speaker and interested
in languages, the English speaking Wikipedia IRC channels (with varying
result, for instance the people I spoke to in #wikimedia immediately thought
of university colleges when they heard the word endowment; the context given
did not make them change their mind), and #wiktionary (generally with better
result than the wikipedia channels).

If you want to make a good impression on the non-English speakers, write a
statement that can be translated. OTOH, since the English speakers are the
majority of the voters I guess it does not make much of a difference for the
outcome of the election. I don't suppose it will be possible to see how the
voters from different projects voted? Not even the bigger ones?

/habj
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On 9/24/06, habj <sweetadelaide@gmail.com> wrote:

> As Alphaia pointed out, puns and many types of jokes are typically
> impossible to translate.
[...]
> If you make sure not to use too difficult words, and avoid jokes at all
> cost, and not even wikilink freely... you risk a bunch of pretty colourless
> statement, maybe. Do we want to rob those who speak good English of the
> possibilities to use the full scale of their language?

In my impression Angela Beesley has been always skillful to express
her ideas in a natural, warming and quite clear even to EFL (English
as foreign lang) speakers. It may be relevant to her experience of
working for dyslexia children and skill of writing in Simple English.
It may be not impossible to write fravored and simple statement,
however, it suggests to require training and skills.

It is true for us to be concious of our own wording. I myself have
been sometimes complainted of difficulties on my wording; too much
rhethorical, pedantic etc. But it is worthy to try if we are
interested in communicating with a broader audience.

One possible compensation for English native speakers may be
submitting two versions. Normal one and simpler ones. Consider to
write with around 3,000 word vocaburary (I admit it may sound
shabby...), for example.

During Election, we have faced some challanges on communications.
Translation and its difficulty, it is just a part of iceberg. For
better future and sanity of our tirelessly expanding community, those
challanges will be good to be described and exmained carefully as
potential signs things we haven't been aware as total.

--
Kizu Naoko
Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
* vox populi, vox dei *
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