It seems ages since I last posted anything, but life has been pretty busy after getting back from cruising around the Baltic a few days ago. Very good to be faced with so many different languages in such a short time, though humiliating to realise how few I knew by comparison with so many Scandinavians. I suppose any linguist will try to puzzle out different alphabets and try to guess what signs mean. It really got in the way sometimes, especially in St Petersburg - the most breathtakingly beautiful city I have ever seen bar none (yes, not even Florence or Venice or Paris) - and I kept on being distracted from the view by trying to figure out the text on toothpaste ads!
I've spent a lot of time this week reading the introductory posts from the MA students and am reminding of how many people simply enjoy the pleasure of translating. Finding a really good way of transferring a tricky message is deeply satisfying and I suppose that's why there is a literary translator dying to get out in so many of us - even if we know there is about as much chance of paying the mortgage by translating a novel than by writing one!
It's a paradox in some ways that most of us take such a pride in translating as well as we can when there is an opportunity. There are so many contexts in which an approximate translation is functionally perfectly adequate. It really doesn't matter if a menu, for instance, makes us laugh- 'fungal' omelettes and the like - provided that you know more or less what you're ordering. I suppose that's why people still undervalue translation so badly. The skill needed to translate at a high level is a very specialised one but the situations when a really skilful translation is needed don't arise often if you think of all the situations where you contrive to communicate at a basic level... more of this anon!
No comments:
Post a Comment