Juan Carlos Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Anders, I think you are doing pretty well. Don't be so modest! I don`t like to stand out, but Anders, "the one who has real problems is myself"! History teacher, I learnt French at the high school and I have been struggling for years to get by in English. I would highlight one fact: if I am holding a meeting in English with teachers from all around Europe, most of them non English native speakers I normally manage to communicate without problems. The troubles start when most of the people at the meeting are English native speakers. I had this feeling in some of our EHELP reunions, our British colleagues begin talking away... and I get lost for a longer or shorter while. Getting down to practical issues, I strongly think that we need some money for paying for translation in EHELP project. In my case, translating into English a long text will be a terribly time-consuming task with quite poor results. It will mean double work and low-quality product. I hope we will find a solution at the next Toulouse meeting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Davies Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Juan Carlos writes: The troubles start when most of the people at the meeting are English native speakers. I had this feeling in some of our EHELP reunions, our British colleagues begin talking away... and I get lost for a longer or shorter while. This is quite a common problem. English native speakers tend to forget that they are addressing non-native speakers and not only talk at high speed but also use lots of idiomatic expressions and references to British culture that make no sense to non-native speakers. It is a phenomenon that I have observed at numerous meetings, seminars and conferences. Many of us need training in addressing non-native speakers of our language. Regarding translation: It is agreed practice among professional translators that they should normally translate only into their mother tongue. However, this rule is often broken due to the shortage of translators for some language pairs, and many translators have to translate in both directions - often with disastrous results. The EC is apparently desperate for Maltese speakers, having some 80,000 pages to translate and only 5 applicants for the 120 jobs on offer. See the Web pages of the Directorate General for Translation of the European Commission (DGT): http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/translation/index_en.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anders MacGregor-Thunell Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Getting down to practical issues, I strongly think that we need some money for paying for translation in EHELP project. In my case, translating into English a long text will be a terribly time-consuming task with quite poor results. It is agreed practice among professional translators that they should normally translate only into their mother tongue. However, this rule is often broken due to the shortage of translators for some language pairs, and many translators have to translate in both directions - often with disastrous results. The two comments above raise the issues that I wanted to bring up when I decided to participate in this debate. The time factor is very important when you translate. Even though I have the advantage of being married to a native speaker (who can correct my articles) I do spend a lot of time trying to find the correct expressions in English. Since we need to publish our material in English (as well as in our own language/languages) we need more time (or the opportunity to pay some translator). Graham I completely agree with your point. It's extremely important to have a native speaker when you translate professionally. I have done translations from English to Swedish but never the other way around. I remember when I was invited to a formal dinner in Austin Texas and a young ambitious Swedish businessman introduced his VD and pointed to the managing director of the company... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nico Zijlstra Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Of course the translation of texts is a problem we've got to look into seriously. But there is a way of minimizing the problem: try to be brief in using and translating texts. Nobody, especially students and even teachers don't want to read from the screen. Large chunks of texts will -at the best- be ingnored or scrolled by viewers/users. I'll be writing short pieces of texts on Dutch women. And I'll focus on using images rather than words to describe and investigate the History of Women in the 20th century. Translating those materials is hard though, that's true! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Davies Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Reading from the computer screen is around 25% slower than reading from the printed page and, ideally, you should write in a different way for the computer screen than for a printed publication. Web guru Jakob Nielsen writes: "Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. Even users who don't know this human factors research usually say that they feel unpleasant when reading online text." Be Succinct! Writing for the Web, Alertbox for March 15, 1997: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Davies Posted April 5, 2005 Share Posted April 5, 2005 Anders writes: I remember when I was invited to a formal dinner in Austin Texas and a young ambitious Swedish businessman introduced his VD and pointed to the managing director of the company... And then there's the story of the Swedish branch of Electrolux that suggested, in all seriousness, the following as an advertising slogan for a new Electrolux vacuum cleaner: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux." I have colllected a stack of similar bloopers, that can be downloaded as a Word document from: http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/docs/bloopers.doc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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