[Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

Ray Saintonge saintonge at telus.net
Sun Dec 24 05:41:59 UTC 2006


daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>Dictionary translations are infamously bad, as anyone who has worked in  
>translation or even travelled overseas can tell you. In Israel, my friends and I  
>used to love checking out the menus of cheap restaurants for the bad  
>translations. Two favorites come to mind:
> 
>1. Difficult egg -- hard boiled egg
>2. Grenade juice -- pomegranate juice
> 
>>From film subtitles (which I got a lot of money to correct) -- You sun of  
>the beach -- You son of a bitch ( I remember this especially because the  
>original translator argued furiously that I did not know popular idioms in  English 
>because I had lived overseas for too long, while he had an MA in English  
>Lit.). 
>
Some people feel that we should not be so anti-elitist. :-)

Two movies that I happened to see with French subtitles when they were 
current were "Easy Rider" and "Alice's Restaurant" where translations 
can get you anything you want. :-)

Ec




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