Categories: language, words, translation
Date: 28 March 2008 21:46:06
while I've been "away" from the blog over the past week.
My visitor stats show that my US visitors have just nosed ahead of my visitors from Oz at 77 visits over 76. I don't know if this is Rain and Ian in competition with each other (thank you both for visiting today - even though I hadn't written anything for over a week :-) )- or whether more residents of those countries pop by to see what's going on in the Old Country. I have had my first visitor - or even visitors - from Germany (a grand total of 2 - is this one person who has visited twice, or two separate individuals who have stumbled upon my witterings?) Herzlich Willkommen!
Someone also tipped up in a fruitless search for a translation of the Danish phrase "sitting between two chairs". This sounds to me as if it has been translated from a foreign language into English (a little literally) and now the original language is required again. (This is known as a "back translation" and I am booked to do one next Tuesday for a psychological test for a human resources department....). I think the phrase my visitor really wanted was "falling between two stools". I did a quick bit of research and found this phrase on the internet (disclaimer: no responsibility taken for inaccuracy. I have only consulted one source - and I still haven't got round to looking at Chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Danish..) in case the searcher is still looking: sætte sig mellem to stole - which looks to me as if it literally says "to seat oneself between two chairs". Perhaps it will be useful - perhaps it's utter rubbish.
Which reminds me of a slogan I was asked to comment on this week. I suspect from the way my client phrased her email that the person who had translated the text was not a native speaker of English as she asked for "your native speaker input". Of course, as usual, I wasn't given any context or the original text. It read along the lines of: "over the hill and aged to perfection". You don't have to be a translator to realise that these two phrases are opposites of one another - the first somewhat pejorative and the second a compliment. In my reply to my client, I had to cover myself from all angles as I didn't know what the end client was trying to sell - or even convey. It could be what they want to say for all I know but I doubted it. My client agreed with me having read my reply - with examples - on the subject.
There is a bit of a harumphy PS to this story: my client asked me to comment on the proposed slogan for no payment. As I have already pointed out, you don't have to have special qualifications to see that this particular slogan doesn't work. So you could argue that anyone could do the job and therefore it is not really worth much in monetary terms. On the other hand, you could argue that by giving the client my full and considered professional response (having broken off from another job to do so), I have saved her client a whole shed load of money - not to
mention face - by not committing a ghastly faux pas in blitzing a totally inappropriate slogan around the world. Ought to be worth a bob or two, no? Harumph.
So, what has kept me away from the Wonderful World of Wibble? All will be revealed in another post. Stand by your beds!