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From: jerry.friedman99@gmail.com (jerryfriedman)
Newsgroups: sci.lang,alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Inkhorns are a fascinating linguistic phenomenon, ...
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Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2024 01:57:49 +0000
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On Mon, 16 Sep 2024 20:11:31 +0000, Silvano wrote:

> jerryfriedman hat am 16.09.2024 um 20:31 geschrieben:
>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2024 18:03:02 +0000, Silvano wrote:
>>
>>> jerryfriedman hat am 16.09.2024 um 16:35 geschrieben:
>>>> [alt.language.latin deleted]
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 16 Sep 2024 6:19:10 +0000, Aidan Kehoe wrote:
>>>> ..
>>>>
>>>>> IOne of the reasons I listen to MDR Sachsen’s
>>>>> „Hausarztsprechstunde“
>>>>> https://www.mdr.de/sachsenradio/programm/ratgeber/hausarztsprechstunde100.html
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> is for the non-jargon vocabulary. (It’s a radio programme aimed at the
>>>>> general
>>>>> public.) Like, of course I know that a pneumothorax is a Pneumothorax,
>>>>> but
>>>>> what’s equivalent to “collapsed lung” when speaking to non-medical
>>>>> patients?
>>>>
>>>> Do you practice in a German-speaking country?  Or in an English-
>>>> speaking country where you see so many German-speaking
>>>> patients that you need to know such things?
>>>
>>> I don't know what is Aidan's profession,
>>
>> (That should be "I don't know what Aiden's profession is."  A very
>> difficult point for many non-native speakers.)
>
> Not so difficult, actually. But then, I should try more intensely to
> think in English and be more careful before I write to AUE. Both German
> and Italian draw me to the wrong order and at present I use English only
> here, as a casual listener to BBC World Service and a reader to many
> Guardian articles. Let's hope I can still learn something from your
> suggestions. The fight against Alzheimer is on.

OK, it's "reader of", not "reader to".

>>> but medical practitioners are
>>> not the only people who may need to know the equivalent to a medical
>>> expression in another language. There are also those strange beasts
>>> called translators. I am one of them.
>>
>> Anch'io sono tradutorre.  (I had to look that up.)
>
> And you looked it up wrong. Correct: Anch'io sono un traduttore. It
> would be understandable without "un", though, just like "I'm translator,
> too." is understandable. Understandable, but not correct.

Sorry, I meant to add that I was adapting a quotation from
Michelangelo.

>> I've published some
>> of my translations of Antonio Machado's poems, and I'm actually
>> supposed to get money for some of them.
>
> Congratulations. I'm serious. Even more serious for your feat of
> actually getting money (if you do get it) than for your ability to
> translate poems, although it's an extremely difficult job.

Thanks!

> > Germans have
> > the word "Königsdisziplin" for that, but I know no ready translation
> in
> any other language. You can translate it, of course, but you'll probably
> have to explain the concept with several words.

Google Translate suggests "supreme discipline", though I don't
think I'd say that the decathlon is the supreme /discipline/ of
track and field.

Poetry is certainly the hardest kind of translation, but there's
a certain comfort in knowing you can't really succeed anyway.

>>  My wages for this project
>> so far amount to about ten cents an hour, maybe less.
>
> ROTFL. I've earned a living as a translator and interpreter for 40
> years. You must have been exceptionally slow, not quite unsurprising for
> translators of poems.

Overnegation?  I think you mean "unsurprising" or "not
entirely surprising".

Anyway, I am slow--it's slow work, and I have a job, and anyway I
get distracted by things like Usenet-- but I've translated much
more than I've published, and the majority of what I've
published or had accepted was in literary magazines that
don't pay, or only pay a copy of the issue you're in.

"There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money,
either."

--Robert Graves, who I'm sure got paid a lot more for his poetry
than I ever will

> I don't know the current prices that publishing
> houses in English-speaking houses pay for literary translations, but the
> prices I heard from German and Italian publishing houses make me
> comment: beggars might get a higher hourly income. Unless the translator
> signs a contract giving them a share of the sales revenue and they
> translate all Harry Potter books. Once in ten blue moons. (Yes, I know
> the original idiom.)

I'm not at the point of going to publishing houses yet,
though maybe I should be thinking about it.  I suspect the
people who do the prestigious translations are getting
subsidized somehow, either by grants or by the publishers
of, say, university presses.

> And before a smarty-pants suggests ChatGPT or something like that: let's
> wait and see who is responsible and gets fined or jailed when ChatGPT
> botches a translation and legal proceedings involving 100 million pounds
> or dollars get lost, or a bridge collapses and people die, as a
> consequence of that translation mistake.

I haven't dared to see what ChatGPT and its friends would do
with the poems I've translated.  However, no one would be
risking a lawsuit.

--
Jerry Friedman