Babar, Pippi Longstocking, Emil and the Detectives, Heidi, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils and even Asterix and Obelix or Tintin (comic books meant for adults more than children) are works we are familiar with. Some of them have marked our childhood, and those books are available to all thanks to the wonders of translation. Yet how many more translations do you know? They can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and most of them are not recent. They are the exceptions that have managed to make their way into the intense world of Anglo-American literature. But did you know that translations only represent 3% of publications in the UK and the US, and that fiction only makes less than 1% of this figure?
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Thanks to a raft of streaming services, the demand for foreign-language films and TV shows is growing. A golden opportunity for translators, surely? So why is it proving difficult to meet the demand for subtitling services? According to this article published in The Guardian, it's not because there's a shortage of qualified translators...
www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/nov/14/where-have-all-the-translators-gone Does the language you speak affect or reflect how you perceive and think about the world?10/11/2021 Guy Deutscher adds to the age-old debate on this question. His book, "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" is a fascinating read and provides several examples of the complex interplay between culture and language. Linguistic nature or nurture? Well, it's a little of both.
uk.bookshop.org/books/through-the-language-glass-why-the-world-looks-different-in-other-languages/9780099505570?aid=9178 Ever thought of the perfect comeback when it's far too late? Well the French have an idiom for it - "l' esprit de l' escalier", literally "staircase wit".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27esprit_de_l%27escalier This is an episode of a podcast I listen to regularly. The podcast is entitled "The Allusionist", and is all about my favourite thing, words. How words come into being, how they spread and/or become embedded into a language or region, how their use differs from culture to culture (there was a very interesting episode about how Brits and Americans use the word "please", for example). This particular episode gives an insight into literary translation. If you think translating is just a case of CTRL+C into Google Translate, this may help to explain why that's not quite the case. www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/translation The link will take you to the podcast website, then you're looking for Episode 59: One to Another. (Can't find an episode-specific HTML link, sorry. It's worth the extra click though).
How would you translate British culture? VeryBritishProblems on Twitter (@SoVeryBritish) does a pretty good job. Great for a Monday morning chuckle. First published in 1865, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll has proved to be a stalwart classic of children's literature. Carroll's puns, parodies and wordplays were in no small part responsible for sparking my lifelong love of words. But: how on EARTH would you translate Alice?! Well, if you're interested, you should get your hands on a copy of Alice in a World of Wonderlands quick-smart. A three-volume compendium containing a wealth of information on all known translations of Alice, including a stunning 207 back translations. I'm galumphing off to a bookshop as we speak...
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AuthorI'm fascinated by the quirks of language, and how we learn language. This is where I post links to facts I find interesting or amusing. Archives
February 2022
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