Amateur Story Translator

[liliput1]

A post in EL on reddit had me thinking the story would go a very different and more interesting direction than it did. I'm not going to be up to tackling a bilingual story let alone a technical one any time soon so I'll leave this here.

One of the difficult parts of doing translation work is that every language has figures of speech that can dominate familiar conversations. These figures of speech, idioms, and euphemisms come to consume a lot of the work to go from 'engrish' to a quality translation.

If you're working to translate for instance German erotica into English, and English is your primary language, you may find yourself needing some demonstrations of certain concepts that don't appear in Langenscheidt or Collins. At least some clips or maybe an in person demonstration, either from the author or a German friend whose English is not as good as your German. Since we're both here right now, and I think you like me, and I definitely like you, maybe I could explain what 'the little man in the boat' means...

 

[sirhugs]

Sorry, I'm just a bit confused what the idea is . It feels like I stepped into the middle of a thread, not the first post.

 

[MikeXIrons]

A post in EL on reddit had me thinking the story would go a very different and more interesting direction than it did. I'm not going to be up to tackling a bilingual story let alone a technical one any time soon so I'll leave this here.

One of the difficult parts of doing translation work is that every language has figures of speech that can dominate familiar conversations. These figures of speech, idioms, and euphemisms come to consume a lot of the work to go from 'engrish' to a quality translation.

If you're working to translate for instance German erotica into English, and English is your primary language, you may find yourself needing some demonstrations of certain concepts that don't appear in Langenscheidt or Collins. At least some clips or maybe an in person demonstration, either from the author or a German friend whose English is not as good as your German. Since we're both here right now, and I think you like me, and I definitely like you, maybe I could explain what 'the little man in the boat' means...

I like it. I've always been a big fan of "innocent" reasons to start down a slippery slope, putting someone (usually a woman for me) in a situation where she is tempted to be naughty without ever intending to do so.

So she gets a side gig translating (and/or maybe narrating audiobooks?) to make a little extra money (maybe saving for her honeymoon?). She does really well and is especially good with hard-to-translate figures of speech and idioms, and at some point gets assigned to an author who, because of his romance and erotic writing, is often dissatisfied with the translators he's assigned.

She's a little uncomfortable at first with the first romance book, but tries to act professional. Each book includes a little more romance, and then they move on to the more erotic books.

Maybe the author not only sees where it's going, but helps guide it there by secretly writing brand new passages intended to slowly "seduce" her.

 

[liliput1]

Sorry, I'm just a bit confused what the idea is . It feels like I stepped into the middle of a thread, not the first post.

Yeah I kinda self-filtered to multilingual people who learned at least 1 language in school. The experience of watching a movie with someone and someone says, "What did he say?" and they just respond, "He's very, very angry with her." That's not what he said. He ranted, and it was thick with figures of speech. What he actually said doesn't make any sense in English, because every language has its own figures of speech and they don't have accurate equivalents. For instance, wtf does "For Pete's sake" even mean to a Mongolian, and why does it translate as "name of a dog" in French? Fuck if I know.

It's why people get paid actual money to translate literature. The Tao Te Ching means absolutely nothing in English if you haven't done anthropology work to understand ancient Chinese culture (and frankly it's still confusing for the average westerner even with a competent translation, because Taoism is Eastern Thought and a lot of us bounce right off). And so people have favorite translations and they don't all say the same thing. You end up having to learn the subject matter in order to re-express its concepts.

So if the subject matter is really steamy sex...

 

[sirhugs]

Well, they say that the best place to learn a language is in bed...

 

[liliput1]

Well, they say that the best place to learn a language is in bed...

Nobody has ever told me that and I'm kinda mad about it.

 

[liliput1]

I like it. I've always been a big fan of "innocent" reasons to start down a slippery slope, putting someone (usually a woman for me) in a situation where she is tempted to be naughty without ever intending to do so.

So she gets a side gig translating (and/or maybe narrating audiobooks?) to make a little extra money (maybe saving for her honeymoon?). She does really well and is especially good with hard-to-translate figures of speech and idioms, and at some point gets assigned to an author who, because of his romance and erotic writing, is often dissatisfied with the translators he's assigned.

She's a little uncomfortable at first with the first romance book, but tries to act professional. Each book includes a little more romance, and then they move on to the more erotic books.

Maybe the author not only sees where it's going, but helps guide it there by secretly writing brand new passages intended to slowly "seduce" her.

I think there's enough adult elements in modern fiction that it's plausible for someone, trying to be prepared for all scenarios, might dabble in more adult themes just to be sure you've got your bases covered.

And part of the fun of literotica is characters who are in denial of how they're being corrupted by another person who just understands them better than they understand themselves and is giving them a gentle nudge. Oh yeah I totally need to translate fetish porn so I can handle the next Stieg Larsson...

 

[MikeXIrons]

Yeah I kinda self-filtered to multilingual people who learned at least 1 language in school. The experience of watching a movie with someone and someone says, "What did he say?" and they just respond, "He's very, very angry with her." That's not what he said. He ranted, and it was thick with figures of speech. What he actually said doesn't make any sense in English, because every language has its own figures of speech and they don't have accurate equivalents. For instance, wtf does "For Pete's sake" even mean to a Mongolian, and why does it translate as "name of a dog" in French? Fuck if I know.

It's why people get paid actual money to translate literature. The Tao Te Ching means absolutely nothing in English if you haven't done anthropology work to understand ancient Chinese culture (and frankly it's still confusing for the average westerner even with a competent translation, because Taoism is Eastern Thought and a lot of us bounce right off). And so people have favorite translations and they don't all say the same thing. You end up having to learn the subject matter in order to re-express its concepts.

So if the subject matter is really steamy sex...

There's a great Star Trek episode called Darmok: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok

…in which the enterprise encounters an alien race for which their universal communicator does not work and they nearly start a battle. It turns out (spoiler alert!) that the alien race communicates almost entirely by referencing old stories and myths, so literal translations mean nothing if you’re unaware of them. Kirk and their leader are beamed to a planet where there's a dangerous monster that they must learn to team up against rather than fight each other. Once they've done that, the phrase "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel” is now a meaningful reference for them.

Personally, I find it fascinating and funny that the phrase "raining cats and dogs" has so many completely different replacements in different languages. There seems to be a universal human need to say "it's raining hard" in a colorful way.