Why should we pay you in full if the work provided by ourselves sucks?

[Sapphire Silk]

Most languages (at least the Romance languages like Spanish, Italian, French …) tend to always be longer than the English. Just the fact that we use different articles for different genders and have to inflect nouns and adjectives give us a certain “disadvantage”. Add the fact that there are certain words in English that have no direct translation but need a description in other languages and you have a word/page explosion. Of course I can’t think of an example off the top of my head, but when I’ll stumble upon one, I’ll show you what I mean.

Here's one, in French:

A font = “une police de caractère”

I was friendly with the French professor at university. She was from Paris. I remember a discussion with her about French; I was telling her about the asswipes in Quebec City who wouldn't talk to me because I didn't (still don't) speak French, even though I knew they spoke English (because I overheard them before they came to speak to me).

Her response to that was, "I don't know what language they speak in Quebec, but it's not French."

France has been trying to keep its language pure and avoid Anglicized words. So they turn themselves inside out to convert English words with no clear counter part into pure French. Hence, the example above.

Japan, on the other hand, embraces English words. Japanese is littered with words they've assimilated. It's fairly easy for them, mostly the eliminate certain sounds (like the r sound) and add a vowel. (Japanese is a langauge I did study, though am not fluent in).

[cindybubbles]

Her response to that was, "I don't know what language they speak in Quebec, but it's not French."

Reminds me of the joke where the presidents and/or CEOs of big beer companies order their own brands at a restaurant, while the president of Guinness orders a soda. When asked why, he said "Well, if you're not going to have beer, then neither will I."

[Kit-Ginevra]

I excelled in my German exam by booking a hotel room not for 'drei Naechte'-three nights, but for 'drei Nakte'-three naked people...

[Sleepwalker]

I couldn't roll my rs enough to make my german teacher happy. Ended up switching to Spanish- if anyone gave me a hard time about my Merkin accent I could give them one right back about their Mexican one. California...

[Words4theWorld]

I couldn't roll my rs enough to make my german teacher happy. Ended up switching to Spanish- if anyone gave me a hard time about my Merkin accent I could give them one right back about their Mexican one. California...

I don't know what exactly your German teacher was trying to teach you, but it definitely wasn't German, at least not standard German (Hochdeutsch).
The only (famous) German I can think of off the top of my head, who rolled his rs, is more infamous than famous and you definitely wouldn't want to sound like him. So you were probably doing pretty fine.

Edit: I thought about this and people speaking dialects from the southern parts of Germany tend to roll the r. But when learning German you surely wouldn't want to sound like them.

[wolfie]

The beauty of the lyrics is often lost in translation due to a lot of issues already addressed (no direct translation, different lengths of words not fitting the melody as well as the original, etc.) Translating technical gobbledygook has to be a whole lot more difficult than translating opera.

I've heard the saying that translations are like mistresses - the beautiful ones are not faithful, and the faithful ones are not beautiful. Still, I'd say that translating technical gobbledygook would be less difficult than translating opera (never done either, though). With opera, you need to fit the melody in order for it to "sound right", but for technical stuff all that's necessary is for it to be accurate. Have you read "Out of the Silent Planet" (can't recall author's name)? In the book, there were 3 races on Mars - one race of sculptors, one of poets, and one of scientists. For their common language, they used the poets' language. After all, the sculptors' expression was in their work (no language needed), and the scientists' knowledge was the same in any language, but the poets' work would be lost in translation.

Japan, on the other hand, embraces English words. Japanese is littered with words they've assimilated. It's fairly easy for them, mostly the eliminate certain sounds (like the r sound) and add a vowel. (Japanese is a langauge I did study, though am not fluent in).

So the Japanese are assimilating words from English, which itself is a collection of assimilations from other languages?

[mathnerd]

You get a little more leeway and poetic license in opera. You don't have to keep syntax and grammar perfect, you can draw out a single syllable over multiple notes, you can contract words to make them fit, and if it doesn't make perfect sense, it's not a deal breaker. That's why I thought technical translating has to be more difficult. Plus, if it's something like putting together a crib, you can kill or maim somebody by not getting it perfect. Nobody's gonna die if you mis-translate opera lyrics.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Have you read "Out of the Silent Planet" (can't recall author's name)?

The author is C. S. Lewis and is the first of a trilogy:

1 Out of the Silent Planet
2 Perelandra
3 That Hideous Strength

I read these back in the 70s.

[Sapphire Silk]

So the Japanese are assimilating words from English, which itself is a collection of assimilations from other languages?

Yes, indeed. For example, the Japanese word for computer is computo. They drop the "r" sound in a lot of English words because in Japanese almost every word ends in a vowel (the few words that don't always end with an "n").

If I introduced my self to a Japanese person I would say, "O namae wa Amerika no Norto Carorina no Seriku no kangofu des." This roughly translates to my name is Silk of North Carolina in America, and I am a nurse. My place of origin and surname are more important than my personal name. Silk is hard to translate; there is no "l" sound in Japanese, and so one of the various "r" sounds is substituted.

My Japanese instructor was native to Japan. He told me that shortly after arriving in the US, he was asking a friend if he was going to vote. What he said was, "are you going to the erection?" when he meant to say "are you going to the election?"

[Tama]

I've heard the saying that translations are like mistresses - the beautiful ones are not faithful,

Boy can I agree with this. There's a song, Tu Vas Me Detruire, from the stage version of Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is Frollo's song. It means "You will destroy me" but in English it ends up "Your love will kill me"...which is beautiful, but totally screws up the meaning.

[Words4theWorld]

If possible at all (which is difficult in German television) I always try to watch movies/series in English. Because with the German synchronisation I often come across scenes where I think "Wait, hold on, that doesn't make any sense". And then I think about that they probably did say in English and all of a sudden the joke/pun/catch makes sense when you realize that the person, who did the translation, made a terrible mistake or didn't know about a certain meaning of the word.
One of the most memorable is the last scene from "Bird on a Wire" featuring Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson. They are sailing into the sunset and she says (back-translation from German): "Now we have something old, something new, something borrowed and something extremely sad." Of course originally she says "something extremely blue" and the German translator obviously didn't catch the reference and just made the jump blue -> sad, even though it doesn't make any sense at all for her to say something like that.

[Sapphire Silk]

That's funny.

Of course, one of the problems with English is you can have differences in meaning within the language, which makes it even more hard.

When I was 23, I worked at a summer camp in West Virginia as a counselor. Some of the other counselors were exchange students from various parts of Great Britain (mostly England). One day we're in the Arts and Crafts cabin working on projects when one of the Brits says to me, "Sapphire, love, hand me a rubber, will you?"

Cue and snickering from the 11-13 year old girls.

Me: Wha . . . .

Brit: What? The rubber! It's right there <points near me on the table>

She was pointing to an eraser. Of course my dirty American mind translated it to something else

America and Britain: Two countries separated by a common language (with apologies to David Lloyd George)

[sms001]

the German translator obviously didn't catch the reference and just made the jump blue -> sad, even though it doesn't make any sense

Since we have so many traditions in common, it's kind of odd this one didn't stand out. Is it not a custom in Germany, or do you just not have the catchy phrase for it?

Two countries separated by a common language

There are generational differences as well; people slightly older than me often refer to rubber bands as 'rubbers.'

[Words4theWorld]

Since we have so many traditions in common, it's kind of odd this one didn't stand out. Is it not a custom in Germany, or do you just not have the catchy phrase for it?

It has become a custom in Germany as well, but there is no catchy phrase for it: Etwas altes, etwas neues, etwas gebrauchtes, etwas blaues. There's just no drive in that.

[greek_jester]

Personally I have massive respect for anyone who is fluent in more than one language, such as the op. My worst score at GCSE was a D for Spanish, and I slogged my guts out to get that (I'm partially deaf, so I don't always catch minor pronunciation differences).

Mildly but kind of related (and fun!) I just stumbled across this link to a poem about the sheer breadth of English pronunciation idiosyncrasies.

http://www.tickld.com/x/90-of-people...his-whole-poem

I stumbled at "Terpsichore" but managed the rest. Anyone managed the whole thing?