*RILKE and SAUSAGE and RUDE WORDS IN SPANISH*
Shepherds,

I loved the Rilke “Herbsttag”–listened to the podcast a second time just to hear the poem again. Because I’ve wrestled with translation work in my grad studies and occasionally for work-related reasons, I found Howard’s Translation Challenge a particularly intriguing listen. Any chance you could post online the three translations for us Germanophiles to compare to the original? (One by Bly, one by Howard, and one by his colleague.)

When I was studying in Württemberg (decades ago), I met a student studying at the P.H. who amused himself by translating German idioms literally into English. My favorite was his rendering of “Das ist mir Wurst” (=I don’t care/It doesn’t matter) into “That is me sausage.”

I have to say that until you mentioned it, I never thought about MyChingo having a rude meaning in Spanish. Maybe it’s because I just thought it was one of those hybrid nouveau marketing names (like Accenture or Verizon). In high school, we all learned the “bad” words with glee, so “Ch**** tu madre” was a common one.

Keep up the good work, guys.
Alan

P.S. For a Translation-2 podcast, you could talk about the differences in translation between versions of the Bible, for example, King James vs. NSRV vs. The Good News (or other “modern” recastings). Lots of variation there, partly for the purpose of making language more accessible to modern-day speakers, but what is the cost inherent therein? (That is, what is lost?)

I might actually leave a message if you use Snapvine because I never had a mic on my computer, but I do have a phone to leave you a message that way.

Keep on rocking on!

P.S. It’s weird that you didn’t get my name because I only send you email from my Gmail to your Gmail and my first and last name is what I have it set to show when I send a message. But ah well, it’s not that important.

Carpe diem!

And all you blog readers should be aware that Michael is the mystery man also known as “renaissance247.” We just didn’t recognize his email user ID, because it didn’t come into our Gmail account. Thanks for the topic tip, Michael!

Also, to me the MyChingo off your page (you implied you wanted to)… the Mobatalk.com site isn’t up yet to get an embed code, but it seems it’s a video talking and not audio service… you can try getting Snapvine which a lot of MySpace users have on their page. Everyone can play it and listen to all the suggestions and comments people record on it for you, which I think is a cool thing so we can all experience other listeners feedback.

Just thought I’d let you know, keep on rocking on!

Just a thought.

I just want to add a small correction to the show about Translation.

You said in your last podcast in the “Rude Word” section that the word “shmuck” might come from the polish word “smok” that means “serpent” or “tail”,but it actually means “dragon” .

I love your show!
You’re doing a great job!

Adrian

First, the story about the Chevy Nova not selling in Spanish-speaking countries isn’t true. Yes, it indeed means “no go” when written as two words, but as one, it refers to the same thing in Spanish as in English–a star suddenly increasing in brightness. My Mexican family remembers the Nova selling in Mexico and I’ve even seen a few still on the streets! How’s that for a car that supposedly “doesn’t go”?

Furthermore, Pemex, the Mexican government-owned petroleum company has sold for years (and still sells) a regular grade of gasoline known as Nova, our equivalent of regular unleaded. When I pull up to the pump, I always ask for Nova and my car goes just fine!

One story that truly is funny is the one about Parker Pens. As the story goes, they sold very well in Mexico, especially to young women. Why? The tagline in English was something like, “Because they don’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you.” But the translator mistranslated ‘embarrass’ as ‘embarazar’ which is a false cognate actually meaning ‘to make pregnant!’ So young women snapped up the Parker Pens that don’t leak in your pocket and make you pregnant!

¡Gracias! I love your podcast. Keep up the great work!

mark

I was listening to your description of the challenges of simultaneous interpretation, and could not help but think that as a college student in an ASL-English interpreter training program, I will be doing this every day. As a sign language interpreter, simultaneous interpretation is the rule, not the exception! However, we always prefer consecutive interpretation when possible, as accuracy is greatly improved.

Thanks again; this is still my favorite podcast!

Anna

And as a German-English translator living in Germany, I particularly enjoyed this episode and listening to you talk about Rilke in familiar American accents just as I was passing signs for “Imbisse” and all sorts of other mundane German words all around me – almost surreal.

In general, however, I’d say that it is practically impossible to translate poetry – there is no way to transport all the elements that make up verse into another language. Having said that, I suppose that the same thing can be said for (most) prose, even if it isn’t as striking. When we translate, we tend to recreate a new text based on the original, even as we strive for some sort of equivalency.

For the word schmuck, I would suggest that this could be a case of multisourced etymology. In other words, possibly both source words may have played a role in forming how people perceived and used the word. There is, perhaps surprisingly, a Facebook group dedicated to just this sort of thing: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5659126407

Anyway, thanks again and all the best,

David in Germany