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English as She Is Spoke

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Re: English as She Is Spoke

#51

Post by saurik »

joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

Since words don't have a one-to-one mapping or anything--even in cases where the mapping of words themselves makes sense (and if often doesn't, as words in language say have different attachments for how to convey meaning)--this is still mostly a subjective translation problem; if you want to come close to this I recommend playing with apps like Pleco (for Chinese) that are designed to give you the source text in the original language and then let you click each word to get a dictionary definition (in your language) for each word (which of course isn't a single word and can't be, which is the problem with trying to get a "literal" translation). (I think Google Translate might have a mode like this?)

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#52

Post by henrikschroder »

joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

I've spent a considerable amount subtitling a TV series, and there were subtitles floating around for it before I started, but they contained a ton of bad English; wrong idioms, and wrong word order.

But when I did my translation, I tried to stick to the word order and expressions of the original language when possible. You could translate each sentence to the most likely way an English-speaking person would express themselves, but can also stray a bit, pick something that's closer to the original, but still works. I wanted to subtly remind people that they're not in Kansas anymore. Even though the show is a teen high school drama, it's absolutely not an American high school, so you can't use words associated with that either.

One example from the French remake: In English, a conventional piece of dialogue goes "I love you" - "I love you too".

But in French, that dialogue goes "Je t'aime" - "Moi aussi". So in this case we actually picked "Me too" as the translation for that, which definitely sticks out, but comes across as a little bit of a teaching French moment, because you can clearly hear that the character isn't saying "Je t'aime aussi".

That's kinda what you were looking for, right?

However, somewhere there is a line, across which lies a sea of Bad English, and even further from that line, you get the incomprehensible gibberish of the work in the article, and you really, really don't want to end up there.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#53

Post by hooande »

madrox wrote: post #24

A similarly unintentional comedy in translation was a book I found several years ago that I believe was an autotranslation: "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?". The amazon reviews are similarly hilarious. https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...

well? ...did the anus constricting work??

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#54

Post by cbfrench »

exolymph wrote: post #36
joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

YES. I'm stoked about David Bentley Hart's New Testament translation for that reason: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/030024844X/ref=ox_sc_sav... > Reproducing the texts' often fragmentary formulations without augmentation or correction, he has produced a pitilessly literal translation, one that captures the texts' impenetrability and unfinished quality while awakening readers to an uncanniness that often lies hi…

It’s up for conjecture how “pitilessly literal” the DBH translation is. As is the case with most translations, he imports his own agenda (particularly with regard to his universalist soteriology). It’s good, but it’s also not as “pitilessly” objective as he may believe it to be.

Traduttore, traditore, etc.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#55

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

ma2rten wrote: post #25
madrox wrote: post #24

A similarly unintentional comedy in translation was a book I found several years ago that I believe was an autotranslation: "How to Good-bye Depression: If You Constrict Anus 100 Times Everyday. Malarkey? or Effective Way?". The amazon reviews are similarly hilarious. https://www.amazon.com/How-Good-bye-Depression-Constrict-Eve...

That's crazy, according to the reviews the first 90 pages are also just usenet conversations where people are making fun of the author who apparently just copy-pasted the conversations into the book.

This sounds like a work of genius. Unfortunately I have not resurrected my Abby's so I great I may next movie the thrush.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#56

Post by henrikschroder »

whym wrote: post #50
joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

You are thinking about foreignization, which is more common (but still not really common) in the translation of literary fictions than that of subtitles. I think most movies don't do that because they target casual audience who is not ready to consume too much foreignization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_and_foreignizati...

Well, one more example for the TV show I spent time translating: It's a teen high school drama, but it's a Norwegian high school, not an American high school. The characters have all just started high school, but during your first year in Norway, you and your classmates will vary in age from 15-16-17, and high school lasts three years, not four.

If you use "freshmen" to describe them, you get the "new at school" aspect, but viewers will get the completely wrong idea about their age. If you use "juniors", you get the age aspect right, but their role and social standing at school would be completely off.

So in a case like that, domesticating the translation simply doesn't work, you'd get super confused as a viewer if you use American high school terms. So you have to foreignize it, you have to call them something else, and you have to make up new terms when translating the various Norwegian derogatory terms for first-year students that exist.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#57

Post by colanderman »

andai wrote: post #45
colanderman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not even grammatical That's what GPT-2 is for! " To craunch a marmoset , it may take less than two hours. But a brindle should be done within five." " You mistake you! It is a frog. It is one of the most powerful of the edible frogs,' Jadon said as he dragged its body slowly toward the throne." " That pond it seems me many multiplied of fishes. Let us amuse rather to the fishing. This fish filled with colors,…

Did you pre-train it on anything?

Nope. This is the provided 774M model with top-P sampling at 95%, prompted with the text in italics.

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#59

Post by ani-ani »

joshspankit wrote: post #27

I hope this is not too off-topic, but I really wish there were more (excellent) “literal translations”. Yes: it would be tricky and unpalatable for much of the audience, but I personally find it fascinating to get in to the “mind” of a language and would like the opportunity without having to memorize (something I find particularly challenging) the “words” of a language. Movie and TV subtitles especially.

For fr/en, author Jean-Loup Chiflet has written a few books consisting entirely of what you're describing. The most famous is "Sky My Husband (dictionary of the running English)"

Re: English as She Is Spoke

#60

Post by meristem »

I highly recommend the book “The cow went to the swamp”. It is illustrations of Portuguese sayings paired with literal English translations. If you speak Portuguese, it is precious. If you don’t, it is so bizarre you cannot help but laugh.
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