Translation Center

To be or not to be a translator

[translationcenter]

The activity of translating, which had seemed the plainest thing in the world, turned out to be an act so complex and extraordinary that it was puzzling to see how any human being could perform it.

Iris Murdoch, Under the Net

[translationcenter]

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.

Iris Murdoch  

[specgram]

Like a diaphanous nightgown, language both hides and reveals.

—Karen Elizabeth Gordon (via speculativegrammarian)

[translatable]

What advice do you have for young dreamers like me who aspire to be literary translators and will someday soon approach publishers like you? My advice for translators is to go for it—translate the books you want to see in English, translate the books that make you happy, translate the books that people want to read, but get out there and translate. Don’t listen to the professors who tell you there’s no money in it and to find another path. Just translate. Translate in your spare time, translate on vacation. Translate because you love the text, translate because you love the language(s), translate because you love the process of translating, because you can giggle over the inside jokes in the text and you can giggle on how to translate them, translate everything, just do it!! And then when you’re done translating, introduce yourself to people and send your manuscript to everybody you can. Get an audience. Get people excited. It’s a changing world, and the translator has a lot of power in our digital future!! Who knows where translation can take you, so go for it. And go all the way. And if the text is awesome and contemporary, send it to me.

Five Questions for Will Evans, Publishing the World

                             (via translatable)

[translationcenter]

Les traducteurs sont des chatons | Slate

En tout cas, même s’ils sont invisibles, ils existent et méritent au moins autant d’égard que ces petites bêtes.

[translatorsanonymous]

When a freelance translator meets another freelance translator

[translationcenter]

JRR Tolkien translation of Beowulf to be published after 90-year wait

The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings author's version of epic Anglo-Saxon poem fleshes out heroes' past, says son who edited manuscript.

[translatorsanonymous]

When the client says to always use the passive voice when its used in the original German text

[translatorsanonymous]

When a client sends you an email asking "Could you please translate these 25 documents by Friday" like he's asking you to translate 200 words

[larmoyante]

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (via larmoyante)

[joyinberlin]

"[The benefits of reading in translation] are the same as the benefits to traveling: it broadens the mind. It’s obviously possible to encounter adventure within one’s own neighborhood, but when you find yourself in another country, everything automatically becomes adventure…" - Marc Lowenthal of Wakefield Press

From an interview with Wakefield, an amazing press for neglected works in translation. Marc’s red thread as a publisher: find the eccentric neglected classics!

(via joyinberlin)

[linguistikforum]

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native language. Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

Benjamin Lee Whorf; Language, Thought and Reality (1956)

[linguisten]

"Subtitles"

The semantics and pragmatics of parent-child communication

(to be continued)

[ohfantine]

”[…] The right to the alphabet, that is where the beginning must be made. The primary school imposed on all, the secondary school offered to all, that is the law. From an identical school, an identical society will spring. Yes, instruction! light! light! everything comes from light, and to it everything returns. Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy.”

[ohfantine]

Chiostri illustrations in no particular order [4/?]

[scleriepensieri-deactivated2026]

TEXTS don’t translate themselves (by OrigamiVideography)

[scleriepensieri-deactivated2026]

[stochasticvariable-deactivated2]

[derfreelancer]

Yes