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Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

blog.korny.info

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Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#21

Post by JoeAltmaier »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #7
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the intent. If I want to learn about a culture and language, an objective translation is what I want. E.g. I want to learn the idioms of the time and place, not have them changed by the whim of the translator to something similar but perhaps changing the intent If I want to persuade or illuminate the topic, then by all means a more approachable translation with modern idiom is more useful. An example I…

> E.g. I want to learn the idioms of the time and place, not have them changed by the whim of the translator to something similar but perhaps changing the intent But how can you learn the meaning of an idiom if it's translated literally? For example, even in context, "and now we have the salad" can be pretty baffling.

Read more I guess, until a variety of contexts makes the meaning more clear.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#22

Post by emmelaich »

Very interesting. Goed gedaan!

Note the title of the book should be Een Waarlijk Vrije; i.e. the last word has a j.

Curious that DeepL translated "Gaf geen kamp" to "gave a camp", since "geen" means no/none. It seemed to totally ignore it or reverse it's meaning.

Regarding "droving" perhaps "herding" might be a more familiar term. And it might be more accurate; I suspect that long distance herding wasn't a common thing in the Netherlands.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#23

Post by haensi »

wslh wrote: post #20

Most probably the author knows this but there are some photos and information here [1]. His grandfather is a member of "The Righteous Among the Nations" [2]. [1] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sietsma.html [2] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous.html

Thanks for sharing this, I was not aware of it and I’m currently in the process of learning Hebrew, dealing with the intersection of (Jewish and Christian) culture and technology.

One example is a GPT version [1] fine tuned on texts of Sefaria [2].

The initiator was in direct contact with Sam Altman to kickstart it. (Personal communication).

He talks about this publicly [3]

[1]: https://github.com/Sefaria/AppliedAI [2]: https://www.sefaria.org/texts [3]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tZkJl2fk0rc

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#24

Post by emmelaich »

dhosek wrote: post #16
ilamont wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a Mandarin speaker, and a very interesting thing happens when I try to read classical Chinese by dictionary or my modern understanding of the language: It's vague, lacking nuance, and basically unreadable. It requires very talented translators and skilled academics to make readable modern translations. For classical Chinese poetry, the best English translations have been other poets, even though most have b…

Translating poetry is, in many ways, an impossibility, which is why the best translations are by poets and not linguists as they’re essentially writing a new poem with the skeleton of the original.

Relevant and entertaining: Why Shakespeare Could Never Have Been French by Tom Scott

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUnGvH8fUUc

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#25

Post by mistrial9 »

throwup238 wrote: post #13

I’ve got my great-grandfather’s autobiography and one of the striking features is the language. It’s extremely matter of fact with very little prose to connect his life together, just a lot of details like “moved to X in year Y” and “went to school for X between Y and Z years”. It’s got a lot of facts, but little coherent narrative. If someone is important enough to warrant a biographer they’ll put more work into the…

In some regions of the expanding USA about 150 years ago, a printed record of families in an area was sometimes printed and bound as a formal book. Part of the publishing model for some of those books was to solicit money from a person or family. For a larger price you could have a longer and more prominent description. Naturally some publishers had no trouble making flattering or "puffed up" entries, for a price. The simple entries in a book like that often were a listing of facts like names, birthdates, occupation or death date, and not much else.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#26

Post by card_zero »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #3
yawnxyz wrote: post #2

Translation has always been interesting to me as I speak Mandarin, Swedish, and English. I think a lot of subtlety gets lost in translations, even from person to person. Is the more "academically correct" translation better, or is the one that captures the slang and the vibe in modern terms and memes in a way we can feel the speaker more correct? I think most people who choose the former look at translations as somet…

It depends on the intent. If I want to learn about a culture and language, an objective translation is what I want. E.g. I want to learn the idioms of the time and place, not have them changed by the whim of the translator to something similar but perhaps changing the intent If I want to persuade or illuminate the topic, then by all means a more approachable translation with modern idiom is more useful. An example I…

That's the etymology of redolent. To be redolent of high technology, taken literally, means to smell similar.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#27

Post by marc_abonce »

litenboll wrote: post #11
yawnxyz wrote: post #2

Translation has always been interesting to me as I speak Mandarin, Swedish, and English. I think a lot of subtlety gets lost in translations, even from person to person. Is the more "academically correct" translation better, or is the one that captures the slang and the vibe in modern terms and memes in a way we can feel the speaker more correct? I think most people who choose the former look at translations as somet…

I thought about something similar today. My kid (2.5 years) watches some stuff on Netflix which is translated to Swedish from English. It's very obvious that the voice over and subtitles are done by different teams/companies, because they often mismatch. What I find more interesting is how they differ, and it's related to the "slang vs academic" but it's about culture and context. Stuff like word puns that doesn't wo…

I've always noticed this (even before Netflix) and I always assumed that it's because the dub is meant to somewhat match the character's mouth movements, whereas the subtitles don't have such restriction. So I always assume that the subtitles have the more accurate translation compared to the dub.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#28

Post by fjfaase »

pomian wrote: post #18

That is an interesting project. I would like to take that to the next level, where translation is the easy part. It's converting old handwritten letters, journals, and texts with now archaic cursive, into text. We have fascinating material from before WWII, in various languages - but trying to decipher it accurately, is a challenge. As the older generations died off, it is hard to find anyone to read that text.

My wife has done a lot of genealogical research and has experience with reading cursive text going back to about 1700 in both Dutch and German. (Many Dutch people have German ancestors.) A lot depends on the quality of the scans. You can contact me through the email address mentioned on my website, which is mentioned in my profile.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#29

Post by korny »

wslh wrote: post #20

Most probably the author knows this but there are some photos and information here [1]. His grandfather is a member of "The Righteous Among the Nations" [2]. [1] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sietsma.html [2] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous.html

Good find - Henk and Hein were actually cousins of my grandfather. His eldest two sons (my uncles) were also involved with the resistance, though this only came out recently.

Re: Translating my Grandfather’s biograpy

#30

Post by korny »

emmelaich wrote: post #22

Very interesting. Goed gedaan! Note the title of the book should be Een Waarlijk Vrije ; i.e. the last word has a j. Curious that DeepL translated "Gaf geen kamp" to "gave a camp", since "geen" means no/none. It seemed to totally ignore it or reverse it's meaning. Regarding "droving" perhaps "herding" might be a more familiar term. And it might be more accurate; I suspect that long distance herding wasn't a common th…

Oops - that's a typo, I hope I got it right elsewhere.

"Droving" is admittedly a bit silly - herding probably makes more sense.

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