"RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht" (ramblininexile) 07/14/2017 at 15:05 • Filed to: far side friday

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Chariotoflove > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/14/2017 at 15:49

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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Chariotoflove 07/14/2017 at 15:55

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I saw a funny translating error the other day. It was a Japanese SNES game that had never been officially anglicized, and the person doing the Let’s Play of it couldn’t figure out why a place in a school was referred to as an “editing” room. I knew instantly: “revising” is the Brit-English word for “reviewing”, and somehow either going into Japanese or coming back, the translation went “revising (reviewing/studying)“ -> “revising (editing)“ -> “editing”. So, there were rooms in a school in which students were “editing”.

Chariotoflove > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/14/2017 at 16:03

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That’s awesome. Language is such a fragile thing. Being a political translator must be a stressful job.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Chariotoflove 07/14/2017 at 16:21

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My dad was once (because of semi-political reasons) required to talk through a translator to somebody, for a language that he is fluent in and that*he* knew technical terms in and the translator didn’t. He eventually broke down and blurted out in some frustration the *correct* translation, and the translator (momentarily mindwarped) then translated what my dad had said into English and said the phrase in English to the guy. Dead silence - oops.

After that they let him do his own translating.

Chariotoflove > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/14/2017 at 16:28

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I love that.

Funny thing about how the brain handles language. I took French for 6 years in high school and college. Then, in grad school, a friend in the lab taught me some Chinese. I found that my brain was taking the Chinese words, converting them to French, and then then from French to English. I hadn’t used French in years.

Neil drives a beetle and a fancy beetle > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 07/14/2017 at 18:25

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I heard a similar story about an attorney in the area who spoke Spanish, and had a client or witness on the stand who he was questioning in English which was then translated to the witness and then back to the court, and the court approved interpreter kept using different interpretations than the attorney thought were appropriate(technically correct but just different expressions for similar ideas) and the attorney was objecting, but court was deferring to its own interpreter. I’m guessing he prepped the witness in just a direct spanish conversation and so the two rounds of interpretation(questions and answers) were distorting what he expected the person to say. Had to be frustrating for the attorney.