Eric
23-May-2011, 11:44
Something I was translating yesterday hinged on the fact that Swedish nouns have two genders: neuter and common. There was a little witticism where the word for "a" / "an", i.e. "en" (common) and "ett" (neuter) were part of the joke. So I had to adopt another strategy to rebuild the little joke by other means.
This is one little problem a translator can come across in an otherwise tranquil and unproblematical text.
Another problem in another text was translating a phrase from Swedish and giving it initials, one which meant something like "tranquil bleakness" or similar. So you could call it TB. Problem is, that that has connotations of tuberculosis in English. And when I did hit upon what I thought was a better phrase "subdued sparsity", I ended up with the initials SS, also misleading and distracting.
So you see, juggling relatively small items is also part of a translator's job.
This is one little problem a translator can come across in an otherwise tranquil and unproblematical text.
Another problem in another text was translating a phrase from Swedish and giving it initials, one which meant something like "tranquil bleakness" or similar. So you could call it TB. Problem is, that that has connotations of tuberculosis in English. And when I did hit upon what I thought was a better phrase "subdued sparsity", I ended up with the initials SS, also misleading and distracting.
So you see, juggling relatively small items is also part of a translator's job.