Today marks 151 years since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published, so I thought I’d share with you a shortened (ish) version of what I wrote about during my Masters degree in Translation Studies, where I researched how on earth you would go about translating a fantasy, nonsense story, like Alice, into French.
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I had some fun translation projects and events lined up for this month.
So Wednesday 26th October was a very exciting day for me, as I had not one, but two media appearances!
When I tell people that I work from home, the general reaction is “lucky you! I wish I could!” After all, what’s not to like? No horrible commute at the crack of dawn, no awkward water-cooler chat with acquaintances about how everyone’s weekend was, and you can make important business decisions without anyone but you knowing that you are, secretly, still in your pyjamas.
Even though we’re only about 21 miles apart at the shortest point of the English Channel, France can sometimes feel like a world apart from the UK. Stereotyping both parties is almost too easy – The French think that the British drop everything to drink tea at 5 pm, while the Brits think that the French drop everything to go on strike…well, whenever they please!
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Working with businesses in translation is great, because you get to build up a personal relationship and sometimes even see the direct result of your work. However, when someone who is unfamiliar with foreign languages needs the services of a translator, more time is required to explain the process and ensure that they know what to expect.
If you love languages like me, then you love coming across articles featuring “untranslatable words” or “foreign words that you’ll wish we had in English.” The bone of contention among translators and other linguists is that words like these are, of course, not actually untranslatable – you just may not be able to do a neat 1:1 substitution. You might need a few extra sentences to explain it, or perhaps you might leave it untranslated.
While attending a few local networking events I’ve noticed that, while people find the notion of translation and other languages very interesting, when it comes down to it they have no idea what translation services actually entail.
Photo credit: Edward Borlase
Ahh, false friends: the bane of any languages student’s life – as well as being rather annoying for translators and travellers alike. Just when you think you’re getting the hang of a language, you come across a word that looks exactly like an English word. Brilliant, you think – and then, you find out later, that it wasn’t at all the word that you thought it was.
Captioning, and in particular theatre captioning, is not necessarily directly related to translation – it tends to be used to provide access to audience members who are hard of hearing. Captioning is different to video subtitling and opera surtitles (which often do have an element of translation), as captions give extra information, such as indicating who is speaking as well as sound effects, in order to give the best experience to the viewer who may not be able to hear these aspects otherwise.
Bellingua Translations 