austraLasia #3341
MELBOURNE 3 January 2013 -- Consider, for a moment:
'This end up!' was a serious temptation as a title for a work dealing with 'getting it right' in the translation game, but in the end one has to write what one believes to be true, and this writer believes that translation is a glorious task! It is not a view that everyone shares, so here is yet another reason for skimming through the pages until you light upon something that strikes home. And something will, that's for sure.
This is a serious work, not without its humour, for translation readily lends itself to this - unwittingly sometimes, embarrassingly at other times. Italian-English may be more prone to 'false friends' than almost any other language pair you can think of. 'Autostop' is simply hitch-hiking; men can wear 'slips' believe it or not; Italians don't lose their footing - they go 'footing'; you don't throw Italian 'confetti' around, you eat them; and - beware 'casinos'!
But it does get really serious when it comes to how we handle our charism in translation, for this touches us at the core of our Salesian being, obviously. Consider the following:
The dense formulations of volitional texts (Strenna) or programmatic texts (Chapter theme) are one kind of challenge. An even more demanding one, and fortunately it comes around less frequently, is how to adequately translate prescriptive texts, such as constitutions and regulations. But maybe it comes around even too infrequently! This essay takes the view that 40 years are about as long as the translation of the Salesian Constitutions and Regulations can stand without closer scrutiny and in view of several factors: intervening General Chapters have added, adjusted or subtracted items; the extensive investigation into Don Bosco's thinking and praxis over recent years has brought new understanding of what he meant when he said certain things; language changes; cultural circumstances change. There may be additional motives to these, but seen together they are sufficient to warrant another look at the existing translation which dates back to the early 1980s.
You see, for many individuals in the English-speaking world (by which I mean English spoken as a first or other language by Salesians on a regular basis), the only constitutions and regulations they may know are in English. For them it is not even considered as a translation but as an original. There is nothing strange about this. Authenticated translations of prescriptive texts are widely regarded (e.g. in the legal world, or in a context like the European Union) as being as inviolate as the original texts.
The essay (it is Chapter 6 in fact of a 9 Chapter work) then goes on to look closely at any number of articles of the Constitutions and Regulations that are crying out for revision. It also tackles the challenge of Strenna and Chapter statements. These are issues probably not listed anywhere in GC27 tasks - but one hopes that they will be listed at some stage either during or after, or we are in a certain amount of trouble!
The book is serious too in its first chapter - skip that if you are not interested in the theory. Don't worry, it soon gets down to practice.
We have itinerari, cammini, percorsi galore and endless accompagnamento to say nothing of animzaione, but most of these terms can lead the English-speaking reader up the garden path unless we are careful. In fact itinerario and its synonyms is an emerging metaphor set in Salesian language.
For a lighter view of things, consider how Ernest Hemingway exploited Italo-English in his Farewell to Arms. There is much we Salesians can learn from it. Chapter 2, 'Glory with guts', will let you in on a few secrets of that kind.
Did you know that if you put la mela ha mangiato il ragazzo into Google Translate, it will give you the correct English translation? Is Google that smart? In fact it is, or rather, the whole question of online translation is going through a paradigm change and it can only get better. But beware, just the same! Nobody or almost nobody today would translate with pen and paper. We can use digital aids to do what they can do best and make our task easier. Read Chapter 8, Digital-e(a)se.
The work concludes with a 'Translators Style Guide' that should be of help to anybody who even casually needs to translate something or tidy up a translation, and there is also an extensive index if you need to look up a term.
In the end A Glorious Thing takes the view that the task of the Salesian translator is about 'priestly, tireless dedication to getting it right', a divine mission.
A Glorious Thing is available in PDF. It is 130 pages and about 2.6 Mb. http://sdl.sdb.org/cgi-bin/library?e=d-00000-00---off-0english-italian%2cportugues%2cespanol%2cenglish-01-2----0-10-0---0---0direct-10---4-------0-1l--10-EN-50---20-about---00-3-1-00-0--4--0--0-0-01-10-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&c=english&cl=CL4.11.3
MELBOURNE 3 January 2013 -- Consider, for a moment:
- 'Non capovolgere' - Do not turn over??
- Dear God, will this sentence never end? ... A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work and the semicolon is one to watch out for!
- Getting to grips with education: formazione professionale, educatore ...
- We can have many kinds of friends in Italian ... but beware of falsi amici (false friends)!
- When the notizie are not the news
- 'Genreflections' - hagiography and other genres of holiness.
'This end up!' was a serious temptation as a title for a work dealing with 'getting it right' in the translation game, but in the end one has to write what one believes to be true, and this writer believes that translation is a glorious task! It is not a view that everyone shares, so here is yet another reason for skimming through the pages until you light upon something that strikes home. And something will, that's for sure.
This is a serious work, not without its humour, for translation readily lends itself to this - unwittingly sometimes, embarrassingly at other times. Italian-English may be more prone to 'false friends' than almost any other language pair you can think of. 'Autostop' is simply hitch-hiking; men can wear 'slips' believe it or not; Italians don't lose their footing - they go 'footing'; you don't throw Italian 'confetti' around, you eat them; and - beware 'casinos'!
But it does get really serious when it comes to how we handle our charism in translation, for this touches us at the core of our Salesian being, obviously. Consider the following:
The dense formulations of volitional texts (Strenna) or programmatic texts (Chapter theme) are one kind of challenge. An even more demanding one, and fortunately it comes around less frequently, is how to adequately translate prescriptive texts, such as constitutions and regulations. But maybe it comes around even too infrequently! This essay takes the view that 40 years are about as long as the translation of the Salesian Constitutions and Regulations can stand without closer scrutiny and in view of several factors: intervening General Chapters have added, adjusted or subtracted items; the extensive investigation into Don Bosco's thinking and praxis over recent years has brought new understanding of what he meant when he said certain things; language changes; cultural circumstances change. There may be additional motives to these, but seen together they are sufficient to warrant another look at the existing translation which dates back to the early 1980s.
You see, for many individuals in the English-speaking world (by which I mean English spoken as a first or other language by Salesians on a regular basis), the only constitutions and regulations they may know are in English. For them it is not even considered as a translation but as an original. There is nothing strange about this. Authenticated translations of prescriptive texts are widely regarded (e.g. in the legal world, or in a context like the European Union) as being as inviolate as the original texts.
The essay (it is Chapter 6 in fact of a 9 Chapter work) then goes on to look closely at any number of articles of the Constitutions and Regulations that are crying out for revision. It also tackles the challenge of Strenna and Chapter statements. These are issues probably not listed anywhere in GC27 tasks - but one hopes that they will be listed at some stage either during or after, or we are in a certain amount of trouble!
The book is serious too in its first chapter - skip that if you are not interested in the theory. Don't worry, it soon gets down to practice.
We have itinerari, cammini, percorsi galore and endless accompagnamento to say nothing of animzaione, but most of these terms can lead the English-speaking reader up the garden path unless we are careful. In fact itinerario and its synonyms is an emerging metaphor set in Salesian language.
For a lighter view of things, consider how Ernest Hemingway exploited Italo-English in his Farewell to Arms. There is much we Salesians can learn from it. Chapter 2, 'Glory with guts', will let you in on a few secrets of that kind.
Did you know that if you put la mela ha mangiato il ragazzo into Google Translate, it will give you the correct English translation? Is Google that smart? In fact it is, or rather, the whole question of online translation is going through a paradigm change and it can only get better. But beware, just the same! Nobody or almost nobody today would translate with pen and paper. We can use digital aids to do what they can do best and make our task easier. Read Chapter 8, Digital-e(a)se.
The work concludes with a 'Translators Style Guide' that should be of help to anybody who even casually needs to translate something or tidy up a translation, and there is also an extensive index if you need to look up a term.
In the end A Glorious Thing takes the view that the task of the Salesian translator is about 'priestly, tireless dedication to getting it right', a divine mission.
A Glorious Thing is available in PDF. It is 130 pages and about 2.6 Mb. http://sdl.sdb.org/cgi-bin/library?e=d-00000-00---off-0english-italian%2cportugues%2cespanol%2cenglish-01-2----0-10-0---0---0direct-10---4-------0-1l--10-EN-50---20-about---00-3-1-00-0--4--0--0-0-01-10-0utfZz-8-00&a=d&c=english&cl=CL4.11.3
