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From: Silvano <Silvano@noncisonopernessuno.it>
Newsgroups: sci.lang, alt.usage.english
Subject: Re: Inkhorns are a fascinating linguistic phenomenon, ...
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2024 22:11:31 +0200
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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.



> As I recall, he's made it clear here that he's a physician.

Thanks. I had missed that piece of information.



>> 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.



> 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. 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.


>  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. 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.)

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.