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I have run across a copy of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, by Laurence Sterne. I recall trying to read Tristam Shandy once, at the recommendation of one of my lit profs, but never was able to get past the first few pages. From what little I read, however, it appeared to me [...] From Jonathan D. Spence’s The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci: One can sense a reason for Ricci’s emotional language: if Chinese had “as many letters [i.e., ideographs] as there are words or things” and if one could learn quite swiftly to subdivide each ideograph into component parts, each of which also had a separate meaning, then [...] When it comes to literature, there is a school of thought that says works (including translations) over some number of years of age ought to be “rewritten” to make them more accessible to contemporary audiences. There is, I am sure, more than enough material in the previous sentence to fuel at least three furious debates. [...] After translating a few hundred words of the project due soon after noon today, it became apparent that I had translated the identical text, and recently. As it turned out, the end client had submitted a document for translation to my client that I had translated about three weeks ago for said client. Now, there are [...] I attended two of Grant Hamilton’s presentations during the ATA conference, one titled “Spot the Gallicism!” and another on the proper use of punctuation in French and English. Both were excellent and very informative. In both presentations, Hamilton put forth the idea that translators ought not be in the vanguard of the forces that change language, [...] I had hoped to stay up to date last week during the 51st Annual ATA Conference in Denver, but between work and all the things to do at the conference, it was just too much for one set of legs and fingers. Over the next few posts, I hope to summarize some of what I learned [...] A linguistics professor was giving a lecture to a class of freshmen and was trying to make a point about how different languages go about expressing a negative. “In some languages, a single negation is sufficient to denote a negative, as is the case in English,” said the prof. “In others, such as Russian, negatives are grammatically [...] Translators live and die by the word count, but don’t be like one of my translator acquaintances who can never just “answer a question,” preferring instead to “provide a response to an interrogative statement.” Thus, avoid “description of the hazardous condition” for описание опасного условия when “hazard description” will do, and don’t “conduct a visual inspection” [...] Back when my college income consisted of tips collected doing close-up magic in one of the better bars in New York, I recall sitting at the table in the bar’s kitchen, which was where the magicians would hang out between shows. I was listening to an old-timer hold forth on the Art of Magic. This [...] Those of you lucky enough to have ever seen The Music Man may recall a number from that production called “Gary, Indiana,” which is memorable if only to illustrate the many different (and some might say beautiful) ways of placing the stress in spoken words. However, as artistic as such spoken manipulations may be, misplacing the [...] |
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