image credit: Thinkstock
Knowing how to speak two languages is not the same thing as
knowing how to translate. Translation is a special skill that professionals
work hard to develop. In their new book
Found in
Translation, professional translators Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche
give a spirited tour of the world of translation, full of fascinating stories
about everything from volunteer text message translators during the Haitian
earthquake rescue effort, to the challenges of translation at the Olympics and
the World Cup, to the personal friendships celebrities like Yao Ming and Marlee
Matlin have with their translators.
The importance of good translation is most obvious when
things go wrong. Here are nine examples from the book that show just how
high-stakes the job of translation can be.
1. The seventy-one-million-dollar word
In 1980, 18-year-old Willie Ramirez was admitted to a
Florida hospital in a comatose state. His friends and family tried to describe
his condition to the paramedics and doctors who treated him, but they only
spoke Spanish. Translation was provided by a bilingual staff member who
translated "intoxicado" as "intoxicated." A professional
interpreter would have known that "intoxicado" is closer to
"poisoned" and doesn't carry the same connotations of drug or alcohol
use that "intoxicated" does. Ramirez's family believed he was
suffering from food poisoning. He was actually suffering from an intracerebral
hemorrhage, but the doctors proceeded as if he were suffering from an
intentional drug overdose, which can lead to some of the symptoms he displayed.
Because of the delay in treatment, Ramirez was left quadriplegic. He received a
malpractice settlement of $71 million.
2. Your lusts for the future
When President Carter traveled to Poland in 1977, the State
Department hired a Russian interpreter who knew Polish, but was not used to
interpreting professionally in that language. Through the interpreter, Carter
ended up saying things in Polish like "when I abandoned the United
States" (for "when I left the United States") and "your
lusts for the future" (for "your desires for the future"),
mistakes that the media in both countries very much enjoyed.
3. We will bury you
At the height of the cold war, Soviet premier Nikita
Khrushchev gave a speech in which he uttered a phrase that interpreted from
Russian as "we will bury you." It was taken as chilling threat to
bury the U.S. with a nuclear attack and escalated the tension between the U.S.
and Russia. However, the translation was a bit too literal. The sense of the
Russian phrase was more that "we will live to see you buried" or
"we will outlast you." Still not exactly friendly, but not quite so
threatening.
4. Do nothing
In 2009, HSBC bank had to launch a $10 million rebranding
campaign to repair the damage done when its catchphrase "Assume Nothing"
was mistranslated as "Do Nothing" in various countries.
5. Markets tumble
A panic in the world's foreign exchange market led the U.S.
dollar to plunge in value after a poor English translation of an article by
Guan Xiangdong of the China News Service zoomed around the Internet. The
original article was a casual, speculative overview of some financial reports,
but the English translation sounded much more authoritative and concrete.
6. What's that on Moses's head?
St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators, studied Hebrew
so he could translate the Old Testament into Latin from the original, instead
of from the third century Greek version that everyone else had used. The
resulting Latin version, which became the basis for hundreds of subsequent translations,
contained a famous mistake. When Moses comes down from Mount Sinai his head has
"radiance" or, in Hebrew, "karan." But Hebrew is written
without the vowels, and St. Jerome had read "karan" as
"keren," or "horned." From this error came centuries of
paintings and sculptures of Moses with horns and the odd offensive stereotype
of the horned Jew.
7. Chocolates for him
In the 50s, when chocolate companies began encouraging
people to celebrate Valentine's Day in Japan, a mistranslation from one company
gave people the idea that it was customary for women to give chocolate to men
on the holiday. And that's what they do to this day. On February 14, the women
of Japan shower their men with chocolate hearts and truffles, and on March 14
the men return the favor. An all around win for the chocolate companies!
8. You must defeat Sheng Long
In the Japanese video game Street Fighter II a
character says, "if you cannot overcome the Rising Dragon Punch, you
cannot win!" When this was translated from Japanese into English, the
characters for "rising dragon" were interpreted as "Sheng
Long." The same characters can have different readings in Japanese, and
the translator, working on a list of phrases and unaware of the context,
thought a new person was being introduced to the game. Gamers went crazy trying
to figure out who this Sheng Long was and how they could defeat him. In 1992,
as an April Fools Day joke, Electronic Gaming Monthly published elaborate and
difficult to execute instructions for how to find Sheng Long. It wasn't
revealed as a hoax until that December, after countless hours had no doubt been
wasted.
9. Trouble at Waitangi
In 1840, the British government made a deal with the Maori
chiefs in New Zealand. The Maori wanted protection from marauding convicts,
sailors, and traders running roughshod through their villages, and the British
wanted to expand their colonial holdings. The Treaty of Waitangi was drawn up
and both sides signed it. But they were signing different documents. In the
English version, the Maori were to "cede to Her Majesty the Queen of
England absolutely and without reservation all the rights and powers of
Sovereignty." In the Maori translation, composed by a British missionary,
they were not to give up sovereignty, but governance. They thought they were
getting a legal system, but keeping their right to rule themselves. That's not
how it turned out, and generations later the issues around the meaning of this
treaty are still being worked out.
February 10, 2013 - 11:44pm
More from mental_floss...
No comments :
Post a Comment