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“You should take note to the role of the connectives" Dano said, "which determine the character and meaning of relationships." It often occurs that the misunderstanding of the connectives leads to weird interpretations, Dano said.
Text:
"Oh, I'm going to be a doctor, too--but in the sense that Keats, Rabelais, Checkhov, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were doctors."
"I thought Keats didn't graduate," Barney remarked.
"He still worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital." Maury's eyes gleamed. "Do you want to write too?" (Doctors, Erich Segal, p.87) (The Korean version1, p.116)
Dano's comments:
Adverb still works as a connective which is retroactively related to the clause previously stated (Keats didn't graduate). It's astonishing to find that the Korean translator of Doctors has shown such brazenness by making a bold rendition of protagonist Keats as a character living in the present. He translated the part at issue to the effect that "he is still working..."
I will make a demonstration of the controversial part by rewriting.
"He still worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital."
=>"Though he didn't graduate, he worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital."
=>"He didn't graduate, but he worked as assistant surgeon at St. Thomas' Hospital, nonetheless."
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Translators' Betrayals
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Relationships cited in the original prose should all be conveyed as they were to the readers of the vernacular version, Dano said, "but some of them mustn't be arbitrarily omitted" just like in so many cases seen in South Korea.
Text:
As to the question of why we search, aside from securing our immortality, the answer is more complicated than it might seem. Sure, we search to find information on all manner of things, or locate something to buy, or to simply find the shortest route to a site we already know exists (the practice of typing in a word you know so as to yield a site you wish to visit, also called a navigational query). In short, we search to find. (The Search, John Battelle, p.31) (The Korean version, p.70)
Dano's comments:
What is translation about? It is the matter of trust, I said whenever the ludicrous instances of the translators' betrayals took place. The translator, first among all things, should carry out the mission of a transporter. He or she must not do the original works any harm by truncating the trunk or cutting off the stem or branches.
Of all the reasons and purposes of the search, the search for "securing our immortality" is listed on top. The Korean translator, stalling for a while before the bold-typed phrase and shaking his shoulders, decided to ignore the part. How is this possible? On what grounds, and by which rights do the so-called translators commit such illegal behaviors?
By "securing our immortality" the writer meant that people do searches to live longer and healthier lives. They search the Google site to seek out ways to enjoy happy lives, to seek out ways by which how to overcome their illnesses. That kind of search is on the top list.
Relationships cited in the original prose should all be conveyed as they were to the readers of the vernacular version, Dano said, "but some of them mustn't be arbitrarily omitted" just like in so many cases seen in South Korea.
Text:
As to the question of why we search, aside from securing our immortality, the answer is more complicated than it might seem. Sure, we search to find information on all manner of things, or locate something to buy, or to simply find the shortest route to a site we already know exists (the practice of typing in a word you know so as to yield a site you wish to visit, also called a navigational query). In short, we search to find. (The Search, John Battelle, p.31) (The Korean version, p.70)
Dano's comments:
What is translation about? It is the matter of trust, I said whenever the ludicrous instances of the translators' betrayals took place. The translator, first among all things, should carry out the mission of a transporter. He or she must not do the original works any harm by truncating the trunk or cutting off the stem or branches.
Of all the reasons and purposes of the search, the search for "securing our immortality" is listed on top. The Korean translator, stalling for a while before the bold-typed phrase and shaking his shoulders, decided to ignore the part. How is this possible? On what grounds, and by which rights do the so-called translators commit such illegal behaviors?
By "securing our immortality" the writer meant that people do searches to live longer and healthier lives. They search the Google site to seek out ways to enjoy happy lives, to seek out ways by which how to overcome their illnesses. That kind of search is on the top list.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Misidentification of the Character
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If and when relationships are measured by size, quantity, and attribute and so described, Dano said, "then the translators of the English documents should make their best efforts possible" to convey the exact relationships. But more often than not the writers of the Korean version fail to do that by equivocating or prevaricating, taking advantage of the linguistic leeway and generous readers.
Text:
For some reason, said Brin, "people underestimated the importance of finding information, as opposed to other things you would do online. If you are searching for something like a health issue, you really want to know, in some cases it is a life-and-death matter. We have people who search Google for heart-attack symptoms and then call nine-one-one." But sometimes you really want to in-form yourself about something much simpler.
When I was in Beijing in June 2004, I was riding the elevator down one morning with my wife, Ann, and sixteen-year-old daughter, Natalie, who was carrying a fistful of postcards written to her friends. Ann said to her, "Did you bring their addresses along?" Natalie looked at her as if she were positively nineteenth-century. "No," she said, with that you-are-so-out-of-it-Mom tone of voice. "I just Googled their phone numbers, and their home addresses came up." (The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman, p.155) (The Korean version, p.205)
Dano's comments:
It often occurs that people get lost and lose their cherished families. But the writer mustn't get lost and lose track of his or her characters. It's a disgrace that the Korean translator was missing in the evident typographical trails and because of the trauma he couldn't recognize who was who.
As a result, the innocent readers of the Korean version were forced to meet Brin, who had been Google's founding CEO, with wife and his sixteen-year-old daughter. It's because the writer of the Korean version of The World Is Flat "fell suddenly ill" and mistook Thomas L. Friedman and his family for Brin's. Thus, the translator ended up mistaking the first-person pronoun "I" in the second paragraph as the founder of Google instead of Mr. Friedman, with Friedman's daughter turing into Brin's. I wish you could read the Korean version.
If and when relationships are measured by size, quantity, and attribute and so described, Dano said, "then the translators of the English documents should make their best efforts possible" to convey the exact relationships. But more often than not the writers of the Korean version fail to do that by equivocating or prevaricating, taking advantage of the linguistic leeway and generous readers.
Text:
For some reason, said Brin, "people underestimated the importance of finding information, as opposed to other things you would do online. If you are searching for something like a health issue, you really want to know, in some cases it is a life-and-death matter. We have people who search Google for heart-attack symptoms and then call nine-one-one." But sometimes you really want to in-form yourself about something much simpler.
When I was in Beijing in June 2004, I was riding the elevator down one morning with my wife, Ann, and sixteen-year-old daughter, Natalie, who was carrying a fistful of postcards written to her friends. Ann said to her, "Did you bring their addresses along?" Natalie looked at her as if she were positively nineteenth-century. "No," she said, with that you-are-so-out-of-it-Mom tone of voice. "I just Googled their phone numbers, and their home addresses came up." (The World Is Flat, Thomas L. Friedman, p.155) (The Korean version, p.205)
Dano's comments:
It often occurs that people get lost and lose their cherished families. But the writer mustn't get lost and lose track of his or her characters. It's a disgrace that the Korean translator was missing in the evident typographical trails and because of the trauma he couldn't recognize who was who.
As a result, the innocent readers of the Korean version were forced to meet Brin, who had been Google's founding CEO, with wife and his sixteen-year-old daughter. It's because the writer of the Korean version of The World Is Flat "fell suddenly ill" and mistook Thomas L. Friedman and his family for Brin's. Thus, the translator ended up mistaking the first-person pronoun "I" in the second paragraph as the founder of Google instead of Mr. Friedman, with Friedman's daughter turing into Brin's. I wish you could read the Korean version.
Kinda Cool Out There?
----------------
Some vernacular language copies, not all, of course, used to be deceptive. In other words, the readers of some Korean version copies used to be taken advantage of their innocence by some manipulative publishers and "over-creative translators." In sum, some copies of the local language version carried the lukewarm taste of the original at best, the insipid taste at worst. And whenever there arose the matter of misinterpretations in the local language translations, they used to make prevarications of some sort, excusing themselves by saying, "Translation is a second creation," giggling away.
Text:
"About ninety degrees?" I would ask. "Sure, Mr. Thomas, whatever you say," the answer would come back. "Something like that." So I would write, "High 90 degrees." Then I would ask later, "Kinda cool out there now?" "Sure, Mr. Thomas," the answer would come back. "About seventy-two degrees, would you say?" "Sure, Mr. Thomas, whatever you say," the answer would come back. And so I would write, "Low seventy-two degrees." And thus was the weather report filed from Beirut. (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman, p.18) (The Korean version, p.59)
Dano's comments:
The Korean translator's rendition of the original script is really hilarious, because he hollers Kinda. He mistakes the bold-typed word Kinda for the name of a person. So he calls him Kin-da. In other words, he pronounces the word as Kin-der but not as Kine-der. That is a modest revelation of the lack of syntactic training. If Kinda had been a proper noun denoting a man's name used as a callee, you should have put a comma after Kinda. (cf Kinda,)
The bold-typed sentence is about ellipsis. The non-elliptical version should have been: Is it kind of cool out there now?
(Is it) kind of cool out there now?
=>Kind of cool out there now?
=>Kinda cool out there now?
Some vernacular language copies, not all, of course, used to be deceptive. In other words, the readers of some Korean version copies used to be taken advantage of their innocence by some manipulative publishers and "over-creative translators." In sum, some copies of the local language version carried the lukewarm taste of the original at best, the insipid taste at worst. And whenever there arose the matter of misinterpretations in the local language translations, they used to make prevarications of some sort, excusing themselves by saying, "Translation is a second creation," giggling away.
Text:
"About ninety degrees?" I would ask. "Sure, Mr. Thomas, whatever you say," the answer would come back. "Something like that." So I would write, "High 90 degrees." Then I would ask later, "Kinda cool out there now?" "Sure, Mr. Thomas," the answer would come back. "About seventy-two degrees, would you say?" "Sure, Mr. Thomas, whatever you say," the answer would come back. And so I would write, "Low seventy-two degrees." And thus was the weather report filed from Beirut. (The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman, p.18) (The Korean version, p.59)
Dano's comments:
The Korean translator's rendition of the original script is really hilarious, because he hollers Kinda. He mistakes the bold-typed word Kinda for the name of a person. So he calls him Kin-da. In other words, he pronounces the word as Kin-der but not as Kine-der. That is a modest revelation of the lack of syntactic training. If Kinda had been a proper noun denoting a man's name used as a callee, you should have put a comma after Kinda. (cf Kinda,)
The bold-typed sentence is about ellipsis. The non-elliptical version should have been: Is it kind of cool out there now?
(Is it) kind of cool out there now?
=>Kind of cool out there now?
=>Kinda cool out there now?
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