Here’s why: Thoughts on Language and Translation.

Since leaving my office job two months ago my working life has seen many changes. Far from being the ‘easy life’ working from home, I’ve found myself busier, more stressed, and more productive than ever before. In the early stages of freelancing there’s a lot for me to learn, and what a steep learning curve it is! Not only am I handling the huge responsibility that comes with being your own boss and running your own affairs, but I am working in the world of business for basically the first time in my life (I’ve worked in companies for short bursts in the past, but the main bulk of my work experience is in the public sector). I think this transition may be one of the most challenging of all, and I hadn’t anticipated quite how difficult I would find this.

The other challenge I’m facing at the moment is how to juggle my two jobs. My mind is literally awash with a mix of my English students’ grammar problems and my own translation deadlines. I currently teach English every afternoon, and on one day of the week I’m more or less out of the office all day teaching. I’m glad to have a bit of financial security at this stage, but the extra work is clearly compromising my availability as a freelance translator, and to be honest is a little more than I’d like to be away from my little home office. As such I plan to reduce my teaching time substantially by the summer. I read this post by Susan Johnston last month, and really identified with it. She is coming from the perspective of a full-time copywriter who writes in the evenings, so the issues are slightly different, but she some excellent suggestions which could be useful for anyone who faces the challenge of having commitments to one job whilst striving to maintain a professional image in another.

So, you may ask, is all the extra stress worth it? The simple answer is, most definitely, yes. To be honest, I just haven’t looked back. Now, I’m not someone who believes that hard work is the route to happiness, but there is definitely something to be said for being in a job which stretches you and provides clear career goals.

I’ve decided to spend much of this week (when I’m not teaching) taking stock, and catching up with myself. Now that I’m my own boss, I have a lot of paperwork and accounts to get in order…

Last weekend I attended an event at International Pen’s ‘Free the Word’ festival at the Southbank Centre. This was the first of what I hope will become an annual event, celebrating literature in translation and literature published in languages other than English.

In the UK the literature market is dominated by English-language books, and only 2% of the books on our bookshops’ shelves are translations from another language. As a result, we are missing out on wider cultural insights beyond our own, and our view of the world is in ‘mono’ when it could be in ’stereo’. In turn, literary translation is not normally given as much esteem as it deserves, and from what I know this is usually expressed through low rates of pay for literary translators. Faced with this predicament, many experienced and skillful translators stay away from this area of work and in consequence the resulting translated novels suffer. We’ve all read books in translation which we found less satisfying than books originally written in English, and I firmly believe that this sad situation should change.

The event I attended was an interview between Icelandic author Sjón, who you may know for his musical collaborations with Bjork, but who recently won the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize (about equivalent to the Booker prize, so no small-fry) for his novel ‘The blue fox’ (Skugga-Baldur in Icelandic), and his translator Victoria Cribb. The book is unique in many ways, and Sjón’s writing style provides an incredibly insightful perspective on the world, a perspective perhaps only possible from a country such as Iceland.

I found the event uplifting and encouraging, from a translator’s point of view. I was in awe of Victoria Cribb as a translator and of the symbiotic relationship between her and Sjón, who seemed to have an astute appreciation of the role of translators, and of the importance of translation as a whole. In fact, one of his final comments was ‘translation is the greatest human project of our time’.

Amen Sjón. Keep up the good work, Pen!

In line with my occasional series on linguistic gaffes, I was intrigued by an article published in The Telegraph on Monday about the translation into Galician of the famous book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon. As the article mentions, the book “won the Whitbread Book of the Year in 2003 and has been translated into more than 40 languages”. It is a personal favourite of mine, and I’m thrilled that it is now so widely read that it’s even being translated into Galician.

I was surprised to read, however, that the translator was fired for ‘changing the sex of several of the book’s characters’, including Toby the rat, to female. Her translation was deemed ‘feminist-biased’ by the publishers, who she is now taking to court. Hers did seem like a *curious* (geddit?) translation technique, but perhaps the case isn’t quite as black and white as it first appears. There’s been a lot of discussion about the case on translators’ forums, and the consensus seems to be that the translator herself should not necessarily be to blame, that it’s simply a confusion over the lack of neutral gender in Spanish grammar. Perhaps others would disagree….?

By way of example, the word ‘rat’ in Spanish is actually a feminine noun (’la rata’) so it would just have been plain incorrect to use the masculine gender, and quite tricky to inform the reader that ‘Toby’ was in fact male, when presumably a Galician readership would not be familiar with the name ‘Toby’ .

The crux of the issue is whether the translator was sufficiently faithful to the original text, which is after all the primary concern of all translators, but I think it would be nice to see a translator get some good press for a change!

I can hardly fail to have noticed the visit by Nicolas Sarkozy to London this week. Oh what a visit it was! It was initially unclear what the purpose of this visit was, it seemed like a bit of a love-in and an excuse for yet another flashy trip abroad for ‘Sarko’. It eventually culminated in a charm offensive by Sarkozy calling for an ‘entente fraternelle’; a closer working relationship between the UK and France than previously enjoyed under the ‘entente cordialle’.

It is debatable whether ‘Sarko’ had really intended the focus of his visit to be his new wife, Carla Bruni, but as far as our papers, particularly the tabloids, were concerned she was the main attraction. ‘Part Grace Kelly, part Jackie Kennedy, part Princess Diana’, the charmante Carla Bruni gracefully stepped into our green and pleasant land in her little black pumps and we found ourselves collectively seduced by her, rather than by the French President himself, as was perhaps intended.

Or was it?

Amanda Platell writing for Daily Mail praised Bruni’s choice of outfit and contrasted it to Camilla’s less than stylish look, which she jokingly referred to as ‘road-kill’. By the way, how many times in her life is that poor woman going to be compared to another, more conventionally beautiful woman? Nobody’d blame her for having a bit of an inferiority complex. But on this occasion the comparison was especially poignant in light of the French President’s apparent wish for his wife to be the ‘new Diana’. And so it was: The International Herald Tribune ran the headline ‘The New Diana? In Britain, Carla steals the show’ on Thursday.

However this bizarre Sarkozy’s aspiration may be, our reaction to this particular attractive woman dressed beautifully in designer clothing was much the same as it was for Diana; we can’t get enough. But how was our reaction seen in France? ‘Londres craque pour Carla’ (roughly translated as: ‘London goes nuts for Carla’) was the headline in Le Monde on Saturday. However, on the whole my brief scan of the French press today found few articles similar to our gushing praise of Mme. Sarkozy. Our excitement was acknowledged, but rather disdainfully, since the couple are not viewed quite so fondly in France; their whirlwind romance is seen by many as a distraction from the proper business of politics. The Nouvel Obs discussed Gordon Brown and Sarkozy’s plans to ‘change the world’ at length, with only a passing reference to Carla, mentioning that ‘the UK won’t be forgetting [the President's] wife Carla in a hurry’, that she was ‘watched constantly’.

Indeed, the French press seem to be concentrating more on the content and implications of Sarkozy’s speech and exchanges with Gordon Brown. I’m guessing that Sarkozy’s recent poor showing in French polls has been focussing French minds a little more, and on substance over style. Having enjoyed the luxuries of the royal palace, far from the scrutinies of his own press, I imagine it may be a rather bumpy return to earth on his return to France.

It has seemed to me recently that the translation industry in the U.S might be rather more developed than in the UK, particularly if I go by the number of translation blogs which originate from the U.S. I must say I am slightly surprised by this; forming part of the continent of Europe you would expect us to be a lot more ‘translation-aware’. However, perhaps it is also true that the U.S. has been lagging behind slightly in its recognition of foreign literature, and consequently missing out on the rich cultural interaction such literature affords.

Courtesy of Inttranews, this morning I read this article with enthusiasm. It was posted on U.S. newszine for St. Louis (yes, this is a local newspaper - how many local newspapers in the UK discuss translation?!) about a ‘growing interest’ in translated literature. The article informs us that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a new Centre for Translation Studies, and armiger banditgeld gewinnewww casino on net,casino on net,www casino on net deonline casino slotscasino bonus ohne einzahlungfrench rouletteroulette downloadencasino online forumslot machine online spielenkostenloses spiel onlinegolden palace online casinocasino roulette gamescasino games freewareglucksspiel onlinecasino games 2007casino automaten spielecasino games pro 2007spielanleitung crapscpayscom2 online casinoeve online rig slotskasino gamescasino online playonline baccaratinternet gewinnspielepoker spielen depoker regeln blattpoker regeln straighttexas holdem gamespoker gratis kostenloshohe auszahlungonline poker play moneykostenlose online spiele pokereuro poker bonusonline 7 card stud spieledraw poker onlinetexas holdem pc gameholdem poker flash gametexas holdem h?ndepoker lan gamepoker spielanleitung texas holdemcasino poker regelnparty poker sign up codehigh stakes pokertexas holdem poker spielregelnholdem poker gamepoker gamespoker texas holdem no limitgratis 7 card stud spielenpoker regeln kartenpoker spielregeln,kartenspiel poker spielregeln,party poker spielregeln that the University’s publisher, Dalkey Archive Press, is publishing an increasing number of books written by foreign writers. Let’s hope this is the start of wider recognition for non-English writers; after all, for me translation is about sharing information across linguistic and cultural barriers, and no work should go unnoticed simply because it has not been translated.

For more information on this go to:

http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/

http://www.englishpen.org/

Happy reading!

I’m celebrating with a new look to my site!

Even in my modest little home office I try to make my own, small, positive contribution to the world by operating an ethical business policy. The website for the current Fairtrade Fortnight offers suggestions on how to make your workplace a little more ‘fair’ in this respect, and so I felt inspired to outline what my own contribution to that aim is.

I’ve been buying Fairtrade goods for personal use for a long time now; not only coffee and bananas but also clothing from companies such as Peopletree, and I wanted this to be true for my professional use as well. And, in addition to buying Fairtrade products, my ethical business policy extends to trying to minimise my impact on the environment as a whole, through the following 6 practices:

1. All coffee and tea products and other foodstuffs are purchased are Fairtrade products where applicable.

2. My office is heated using a ’sustainable energy’ gas and electricity supplier (E:On, if you must know!). Rest assured that in these chilly months of winter I *try* to take the big jumper option before resorting to turning up the thermostat (most of the time!).

3. I avoid printing out documents if at all possible, and when I do they are printed on recycled paper.

4. On the subject of recycling, I have a rigorous recycling system (not to mention a very large recycling bin, made from recycled plastic, of course) and aim to recycle 85% of my office waste. Even batteries are re-charged rather than thrown away.

5. Back to office supplies: these are sourced from environmentally-conscious suppliers, such as Naturalcollection and Ethical Office. Staple-free stapler anyone?

6. And finally, I clean my office using non-toxic, environmentally friendly products only. My, how utopian and fragrant!

I still have a long way to go before I can truly call myself a totally ‘eco-friendly’ linguist, but we all have to start somewhere.

You may find the following ‘viral video’ from the Fairtrade Foundation inspiring/amusing:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMZjbZRwIW0 355 425]

Any regular readers may have noticed that my blog had been experiencing serious technical difficulties over the past few days - a momentary blip in an otherwise successful first week in my new role. It began with there being a warning message next to my site saying ‘this site may harm your computer’ - not exactly a phrase I wanted associated with my blog and I wanted it removed, quickly.

Although I am a reasonably competent internet user I’m afraid this problem was not something I’d encountered before or knew how to deal with. Luckily there’s always someone who does have the know-how, and I was subsequently advised by my learned friend at Pagespank.com that some horrid hacker had ‘injected’ an ‘iframe virus’ into my site. It was invisible, apparently, but the nasty little blighter ended up bringing my whole site down after Google and my domain hoster decided I was a ‘dangerous’ website. For a more technical explanation of how this happened go to Pagespank.com, but rest assured that this is still a healthy, virus-free, clean-living little blog.

Whilst I enjoy the blissful first days of freelancing, optimistically arranging my new stationery on my desk and honing my business skills before the real work begins, it would seem that across the channel feelings are turning a little sour. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, has provided the world’s media and Francophiles such as myself with a topic for discussion. How, exactly, should Sarkozy’s remark “Casse-toi, alors pauvre con” be translated? Is it quite as rude as it first appears? Whichever way you look at it, as Matthew Weaver points out on his newsblog at The Guardian, this is not the ideal behaviour of any head of state.

Watch the offending remark below:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvBrbDB2Rk]