from the mister-translation-wants-equal-time dept.
Mark Polizzotti, author of "Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto" writes an Opinion column in The New York Times entitled Why Mistranslation Matters:
Translation is the silent waiter of linguistic performance: It often gets noticed only when it knocks over the serving cart. Sometimes these are relatively minor errors — a ham-handed rendering of an author's prose, the sort of thing a book reviewer might skewer with an acid pen.
But history is littered with more consequential mistranslations — erroneous, intentional or simply misunderstood. For a job that often involves endless hours poring over books or laptop screens, translation can prove surprisingly hazardous.
Nikita Khrushchev's infamous statement in 1956 — "We will bury you" — ushered in one of the Cold War's most dangerous phases, one rife with paranoia and conviction that both sides were out to destroy the other. But it turns out that's not what he said, not in Russian, anyway. Khrushchev's actual declaration was "We will outlast you" — prematurely boastful, perhaps, but not quite the declaration of hostilities most Americans heard, thanks to his interpreter's mistake.
The response of Kantaro Suzuki, prime minister of Japan, to an Allied ultimatum in July 1945 — just days before Hiroshima — was conveyed to Harry Truman as "silent contempt" ("mokusatsu"), when it was actually intended as "No comment. We need more time." Japan was not given any.
[...] Lately, the perils of mistranslation have taken on renewed currency. How to convey Donald Trump's free-form declarations to a global audience? The president's capricious employ of his native idiom, his fractured syntax and streaming non sequiturs are challenging enough for Anglophones, so imagine the difficulties they pose to foreigners: How, exactly, do you translate "braggadocious"?
The speed and frequency of Mr. Trump's tweets have spawned an explosion of equally fast, equally viral amateur renditions, with little thought as to how they might be interpreted worldwide. The incendiary nature of many of his statements about other political leaders only exacerbates the problem.
When words collide?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @10:29AM (9 children)
Why bother translating anything emanating from Trump? He flip-flops faster than a slinky. Explaning his actions is hard enough, but trying to tie those actions to the incoherence of his free-form speech is a fool's errand.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Saturday August 04 2018, @10:41AM
maybe a translation into American Ènglish, first?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:06AM (7 children)
How do you translate 'deplorable' when used to describe entire regions of the country? Is it prudent to then ignore those whole parts of the country in an election campaign?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:32AM (5 children)
"Deplorable" was not used describe regions of the country. It was used to describe people who do not care that their candidate at the time had (and still has) no moral compass, self control, or even a relationship with the truth. It was used to describe people who thought "he lied to and cheated on his three wives, his business partners and vendors, banks that loaned him money, people who donated to his "charity", and just about everyone else, but he won't do it to us." It seemed pretty apt.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:29PM
So - you're saying that 90% or more of eligible voters are deplorable? But - what about those couple percent who voted third party? And, how 'bout those who just didn't vote? Do we have 100% deplorable yet? If not, why not?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:26PM
Fly over people.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:34AM (2 children)
Pfft... Are "deplorables" so insane for wanting their lies baldfaced and out there? Hillary "I have a public position and a private position" Clinton was to the RIGHT of Trump on some issues such as war, and on jobs Trump at least seemed concerned in his rhetoric. The REAL subversion of the democratic process was committed by Hillary and her campaign, ie. the multiple strategies used in collaboration with the DNC to sideline Bernie and elevate Trump. This was exposed in her s/hacked/leaked emails for the world to see. Two heads of the DNC even admitted as much before backpedaling (ie. interim chair Donna Brazille and Tom Perez). The Trump/Russia nonsense is a distraction from this huge elephant in the room, and the lie has only been able to hold some shape for so long because both the media and the Democrats are owned by the same people.
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday August 05 2018, @04:01AM (1 child)
Would have been nice to see a leak of Trumps emails along with the other Republicans, just for balance.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Monday August 06 2018, @04:48AM
There are certain advantages to be "out there" with your corruption - there are few actual secrets to leak.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday August 04 2018, @07:50PM
"Deplorable" is an actual word in English that can be used to describe large numbers of people; the fact that a comment is offensive doesn't mean that it can't be translated normally. Whether somebody should say something has nothing to do with how to translate it afterward, aside from the reality that the translator can choose words in the target language that makes the comment sound more or less offensive than it actually was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @11:03AM (1 child)
This sort of thing is going on all the time. [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:50AM
Unfortunately, so are attempts to rewrite history. Khruschev did say "we will bury you", and made similar statements at other times, going from the phrase from the communist manifesto that "The proletariat is the undertaker of capitalism". The Japanese mistranslation is also being vastly overstated, the hardliners would never have surrendered, and even tried to stage a coup after the atomic bombings to prevent surrender. A more accurate translation would, at best, have delayed events by a few hours.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Saturday August 04 2018, @12:24PM (8 children)
Then letters are the casualties of war!
(Score: 4, Funny) by theluggage on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:04PM (3 children)
The penis mightier than the sword!
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:47PM
Lubricated with bloody whitespace.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Magic Oddball on Saturday August 04 2018, @07:56PM
Or at least, that's what John Bobbit used to believe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @08:40PM
Why menstruation matters.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:05PM (3 children)
↑ That's free verse poetry; doesn't rhyme and makes no sense.
it's sorta like words collision.
ᵍʳᶦⁿ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:13PM (1 child)
↑ That's sad, and it makes my monkey cry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:27PM
Stop slapping the damned monkey and he may stop crying.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:50PM
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:02PM (2 children)
If none suitable to "mistranslate", they invent phrases out of whole cloth. The credulous populace believes everything anyway.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:59PM (1 child)
Is the number of the beast propaganda?
How about the real [wikipedia.org] number?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:48PM
Of course the actual number of the beast is transcendental. After all, the beast itself is. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:10PM
Bad example. That one's listed in the goddamned dictionary (well, "braggadocio" is). Yes, I checked.
If you are putting any thought at all in to how the tweets might be interpreted worldwide, you are not translating them correctly.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:10PM
No! Don't! STOP!!
What could go wrong, really?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:36PM (2 children)
This is why i don't like phones: i like text (at worst) or face to face (being autistic, face to face is hard enough).
How many times here at SoylentNews have we seen apologies for having mis-read something, or mistaken the tone of something typed (which is why i like using smiley faces, etc...to help convey tone).
When diplomacy fails, i would think it is because of prejudice: even if a translator translates wrong, the diplomat should be there face to face to see if the speakers face is conveying what the translator says (unless the speaker is being deliberately false and doing a poker face).
I like talking face to face so i can try to read the person. Talking on the phone is sooooo hard, i can't imagine talking to someone on the phone or by telegram when there are middle men of translators possibly (probably) screwing with the actual words/phrases.
A humorous aside:
I think world leaders should be forced to sleep together: that way they will get a more true feeling for the person... you know: Trump and May. Trump and Macron.
Churchill and Hitler sharing a bed for a year... that would have been a humorous sight, lol. Churchill smoking and drinking and Hitler talking non-stop, waving his arms in the air: "Who do you think you are? And where did you get that car?"
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:08PM (1 child)
Really? Did it actually happen? Here? On S/N?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by Gaaark on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:55PM
Didn't it?
Shit.
I apologize. :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:39PM (1 child)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:16PM
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-supreme-leader-touts-9-point-plan-to-destroy-israel/ [timesofisrael.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:18PM (4 children)
Polizzotti starts out brilliantly illustrating how mistranslation and misunderstanding greatly contributed to escalation of tensions which could have led to thermonuclear Armageddon, and almost did many times during The Cold War. Obvious lesson to learn is to be cautious about what you believe you know about the message sender's intent.
The concept should be: Misinterpretation could lead to unimaginable disaster, so be more careful about misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Right?
But then he mentions Trump's tweets. It's very interesting how the liberal media like to misinterpret anything Trump says, tweets, or does, always casting him in the most negative light possible, never giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Liberal media would be a bit more believable if they occasionally posted something good about Trump. Liberal media are polarizing the USA and the rest of the world.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:04PM (1 child)
Trump's tweets are a classic example of an English speaker and listener who assume that, because their words come from the same dictionary, that they are, in fact, speaking the same language. They are demonstrably not speaking the same language.
The media does it intentionally, because they do not want us to critically analyze Trump's positions. If we started critically analyzing Trump's positions, we might start critically analyzing other politicians like Hillary Clinton, and we might fail to find substantial difference between the two.
(Score: 5, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:31PM
The media does it intentionally, because they do not want us to critically analyze Trump's positions.
Which position? The one he just said? Or the complete opposite, which he said yesterday?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:39PM
sullying the term "liberal". Remember the term's original meaning, they are nothing of the sort.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday August 05 2018, @12:51AM
But keep in mind for the examples given, that the mistranslation may have been part of the message sender's intent. Translation variations are a great way to deliver different messages to different groups while maintaining plausible deniability.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @02:58PM (2 children)
Translation is an act of compassion both for the speaker/writer's point of view, the ideas they are trying to convey, and the listener's context in which she will receive those ideas.
In all natural languages (so excepting Lojban among others...), some ideas are easy to express, and other ideas are difficult to express. However, in each language, the set of ideas easy to express and the set of ideas difficult to express (if we may create a temporary dichotomy where a spectrum exists instead) may be wildly different.
That even extends to both the speaker and the listener using a shared first language. Even if both the speaker and listener are native English speakers, it's so easy to begin speaking a dialect/jargon/lingo/etc of English that will not effectively convey the speaker's meaning to the listener. Example most here will understand is computer lingo. Stop calling them "I pee addresses;" they're "network addresses." The listener does not give a damn whether the speaker is talking about a MAC address, a v4 address, a v6 address, an IPX/SPX address, etc etc, and that detail is entirely orthogonal to any possible meaning the speaker could be trying to convey to a layman with "I pee address." A broader term will not only suffice but function better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:48PM
The intent of most jargon and slang is to obfuscate meaning. Job security and privacy from snoopers...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:52PM
You mean, in Lojban all ideas are difficult to express?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Rich on Saturday August 04 2018, @06:53PM
Recently I've seen quite a few, even major, websites auto-translate content without me asking for it. That mostly just looks stupid, ebay is a major example here. However, the most deranged example i've seen so far is MSDN. I'm in the slightly unfortunate situation of having to deal with some Windows development at a customer and occasionally look up stuff there. They auto-translate to German without being asked, and every time there are more than two or three sentences of importance, their translation becomes incomprehensible. It strikes me as the linguistic variant of attempting to deploy the current wave of self-driving cars in southern european city traffic.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday August 04 2018, @07:30PM
Martyb escribe:
Mark Polizzotti, autor de "Simpatía por el traidor: un manifiesto de traducción" escribe una columna de opinión en The New York Times titulada Why Mistranlation Matters:
La traducción es el camarero silencioso de la interpretación lingüística: a menudo solo se nota cuando golpea el carrito de servicio. A veces se trata de errores relativamente menores: una representación de la prosa de un autor, el tipo de cosa que un crítico de libros podría ensartar con una pluma ácida.
Pero la historia está plagada de traducciones erróneas más consecuentes: erróneas, intencionales o simplemente incomprendidas. Para un trabajo que a menudo implica horas interminables estudiando libros o pantallas de portátiles, la traducción puede resultar sorprendentemente peligrosa.
La declaración infame de Nikita Khrushchev en 1956 - "Te enterraremos" - marcó el comienzo de una de las fases más peligrosas de la Guerra Fría, una llena de paranoia y convicción de que ambas partes estaban decididas a destruir al otro. Pero resulta que eso no es lo que dijo, no en ruso, de todos modos. La declaración real de Khrushchev fue: "Te duraremos más que tú", quizá presumiblemente prematuro, pero no del todo la declaración de hostilidades que la mayoría de los estadounidenses escuchó, gracias al error de su intérprete.
La respuesta de Kantaro Suzuki, primer ministro de Japón, a un ultimátum aliado en julio de 1945, días antes de Hiroshima, fue transmitida a Harry Truman como "desprecio silencioso" ("mokusatsu"), cuando en realidad era "Sin comentarios". Necesitamos más tiempo ". Japón no recibió ninguno.
[...] Últimamente, los peligros de la mala traducción han tomado una renovada vigencia. ¿Cómo transmitir las declaraciones de forma libre de Donald Trump a una audiencia global? El caprichoso empleo del presidente de su idioma nativo, su sintaxis fracturada y la transmisión de non sequiturs son lo suficientemente desafiantes para los anglófonos, así que imagina las dificultades que representan para los extranjeros: ¿Cómo tratas exactamente de "fanfarrona"?
La velocidad y la frecuencia de los tweets del Sr. Trump han engendrado una explosión de interpretaciones amateurs igualmente virales, igualmente virales, con poca reflexión sobre cómo podrían interpretarse en todo el mundo. La naturaleza incendiaria de muchas de sus declaraciones sobre otros líderes políticos solo agrava el problema.
Cuando las palabras colisionan?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:55PM
doctored english translations of Sergei Magnitsky's testimony were handed out by Bill Browder to promote his story about police stealing his company and framing him for tax fraud
https://www.newnationalist.net/2018/07/the-magnitsky-act-behind-the-scenes-video-in-english/ [newnationalist.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @01:05AM
I think I will forever respect Shep Smith. I hate Fox overall, but that guy seems to be one solid reporter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g4GmgziC_4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:08AM
FTFY
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 05 2018, @05:32AM
It's almost spooky, I just finished watching a fascinating documentary on exactly this subject!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DvD4tuDZvg [youtube.com]
すべてのあなたの基地は私たちのものです！