Bridging the Language Gap at the United Nations and Translating: the invisible act.

On my nightstand. I'm currently reading Becoming a Translator, by Doug Robinson. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of becoming a translator and also to established professionals. I met Doug Robinson when he came to Brazil circa 1998 or so and I'm pleased to see that many of the ideas he explored in his series of talks are expanded on the book.

From the Literatti, who are discussing the issue of translator visibility so cherished by Venutti, comes this anecdote about Guimarães Rosa in translation:

Contam que Milton Campos, que foi governador de Minas, senador, um homem inteligente e íntegro, encontrou com o escritor e disse:
- Rosa, acabo de ler Grande Sertão em alemão. Que livro magnífico! Eu já havia lido em português, mas não entendi a metade.

Guimarães Rosa is on the translator spotlight these days due to the publication of the correspondence between this foremost Brazilian writer and his Italian translator Edoardo Bizzarri.

Alfredo Bosi says:

Edoardo Bizzarri verteu para o italiano, em 1963, as novelas Corpo de Baile, que saíram no ano seguinte pela editora Feltrinelli. A
correspondência entre o tradutor e Guimarães Rosa - que em boa hora se reedita - dá testemunho de uma bela cooperação intelectual e humana. Bizzarri, humanista vigoroso, de fino gosto literário, debruçou-se sobre o texto do narrador mineiro e crivou-o de perguntas sobre o significado de centenas de palavras sertanejas e arcaicas e de invenções poéticas que fazem de Corpo de baile uma constelação de fantasia e realismo. E Guimarães Rosa, estimulado por um tradutor todo paixão e escrúpulo, responde-lhe abrindo os tesouros da sua sabedoria de naturalista, poliglota e leitor onívoro de literatura e religião. Lendo essas cartas, reconhecemos, uma vez mais, a extrema sansibilidade verbal do criador de Miguilim e aprendemos muito daquele universo a um tempo real e mágico, exato até o nome preciso de cada ervinha do campo e fantástico pela sua arraigada crença no mito e na relação com a transcedência.

A TRADUTORA

tu lês. antes de ti, ela muda as palavras antes dela,
eu escrevo, eu passei por aqui, ela passou por aqui,
tu passas agora por aqui


entendes isto? ela está onde tu estarás, eu estou onde
ela estará. eu corro pelas palavras, ela persegue-me.
tu corres atrás de nós para nos veres correr.


eu escrevo casa e continuo pelas palavras. ela segura
as letras da casa e escreve vida. tu lês vida e entendes casa
e vida. eu não sei o que entendes.


eu corro. ela corre atrás de mim. tu corres atrás dela.
não existimos sózinhos. sorrimos quando paramos,
quando nos encontramos aqui


José Luís Peixto, A Casa, a Escuridão, Temas e Debates, Outubro 2002

On Hold. Ok, before anybody starts to wonder. Estou super ocupada por causa de uma briga tremenda que eclodiu nas listas de tradução sobre a questão da r-e-g-*-lamentação da profissão. Por enquanto não vai dar tempo de blogar mesmo. Estamos fundando uma a-s-s*-ciação de tradutores do Estado de S.Paulo. Mais notícias em breve

There is something magical about waking up early in Piracicaba and unexpectedly watch balloons flying by your window. It's even more fun if you've been in a baloon once, in another lifetime and continent. I'm terrified of heights, but there is something so majestic and dreamlike about ballons, that given another chance, I would hop into the basket at once.

UNESCO's Clearing House for Literary Translation. I was translating around the neighborhood, so I couldn't help checking this link out. The Recommendation on the Legal Protection of Translators and Translations and the Practical Means to Improve the Status of Translators is old as Moses, but it's the first time I ever laid eyes on it. It pleases me that Unesco put this one together for us, even though, como se diz por aqui, "hell is crowded with people with good intentions". Practically speaking, what is the impact this recommendation has had on my career? None whatsoever.

Giornale Nuovo, a lovely blog

via consumptive

Estudo liga expansão de idiomas a invenções da agricultura.
Folha de S.Paulo, May 05, 2003

À exceção de um punhado de idiomas isolados, nenhuma língua da Terra parece remontar suas origens a mais de 10 mil anos atrás. Do ponto de vista temporal, são ondas que mal começaram a quebrar num mar linguístico dezenas de milhares de anos mais velho.

Em quase todas as regiões do planeta, um impulso irresistível parece tê-las levado à posição de domínio que detêm hoje, apagando os idiomas que as precederam. Para arqueólogos, está cada vez mais claro que essa expansão não foi decidida pela cruz ou pela espada, mas pelo arado -o poder demográfico e econômico trazido pela invenção da agricultura.

Os avanços para correlacionar a vitória dos grandes grupos linguísticos com a expansão agrícola, bem como as lacunas nessa teoria que ainda precisam ser preenchidas, acabam de ser mapeados num estudo publicado pela revista norte-americana Science.

(Read more in Portuguese)

Little nips of whisky
Little drops of gin,
Make a lady wonder where on earth she's bin

Ever wondered about the origins of gin?

Towards A More Equitable Pricing Structure: A Translator's Perspective. My nerdy link of the week, an article by Translator X.

I have been a professional translator for over 20 years in Canada, one place in this world where translation is regarded as what it really is: transferring messages between different cultures. In Canada, we have two main official languages, English and French.
In this article, I take issue with certain claims made by translation memory (TM) and content management system (CMS) vendors. In addition to the lingo of "fuzzy matches" and "exact matches," there is the publicity claiming, "Don't pay twice to translate the same word," and "Save up to 80% on your production costs." I beg to diverge on that last one. My figures are a bit different. First, one must understand what is the target, and what can be obtained from it.

And more: What planet are they on?, a translator's wishlist of computing features.

Knights Errant of Literature. Open Letter to the press from a group of literary translators who participate in the discussion list Biblit, demanding greater respect and just recognition for the all-too-often overlooked figure of the translator, "literature's last, true knight errant", according to the epic definition of Fruttero&Lucentini:

«The problem of translating is actually the very same as that of writing, and the translator is at the heart of it perhaps even more so than the author. He is asked [...] to master not just a language, but everything that lies behind it, that is to say, an entire culture, an entire world, an entire way of viewing the world. [...] He is asked to pull off this arduous yet impassioned effort without calling attention to himself. [...] He is asked to consider the fact that the reader isn't even aware of him his greatest triumph [...] an ascetic, an essentially selfless hero, ready to give his all in exchange for very little and to disappear into the twilight, anonymous and sublime, when the epic deed is accomplished. The translator is literature's last, true knight errant».

Click for Italian and Spanish versions of the letter and be sure to add your signature.

US complacency damaging American intellect. "The indifference of American public culture to the experiences of other peoples is reflected in the lack of work translated from foreign languages. Without translations, Americans, who are notoriously monolingual, have access only to the perspectives of those who write and speak in English; thus the ideas of millions are lost to them. (Read more)

Comment Squashed or The Revenge of the Humorless Translators.

It is for questions such as this...that I think a facility for including images to illustrate and support questions would be most beneficial. And I would just like to commend the Asker or the Answerer for including this in the glossary - a truly worthy and useful addition to the body of lexical knowledge on offer. Moreover - can I just take the opportunity to compliment you, LimOnka on a fine pair of lemons (see your picture)!

Os Grandes Sertões, cem anos de um clássico. Exibição online promovida pelo jornal Estado de São Paulo em comemoração a um dos livros mais influentes na formação da teoria do caráter brasileiro. Provavelmente é também um dos mais chatos já escritos em toda a história da humanidade, que não me ouçam os sábios. Ou talvez a minha resistência se deva à leitura de longos trechos mais insossos que picolé de cacto durante as aulas de literatura brasileira no Colégio Rio Branco. Li a Guerra do Fim do Mundo virando as páginas avidamente, mas a minha mula sempre empacou na prosa árida de Euclides da Cunha. A história de Canudos, no entanto, é tema de interesse universal.

GlossPost at ProZ.com. There are still some glitches, for example, the search keyword field is so tiny that mechanical engineering doesn't even fit in. But I spent a good number of hours today drafting the FAQ and thinking out the details and considering the possibilities of this new database of glossary URLs. I am also very pleased to notice that the translators are beginning to talk about it and to post goodies, such as this newly found Turkish Dictionary. It all winds up as more vetting work for me. Honestly, sometimes I don't know how I find the time keep my plates spinning.

Of Moats and High Stonewalls. Folha de S.Paulo published a very interesting feature today about the changes in the urban landscape as the Brazilian middle and upper-middle classes encroach themselves in high-security condominiums to protect themselves against violence. The end result, of course, is that they cut themselves off from the full exercise of citizenship and become the prisioners of their own paranoya.

The feature is called The Architecture of Fear (subscription required or just click here). The feature is truly interesting, with photographs, analysis from sociologists, psychoanalists and archicture students, a glossary of medieval/contemporary security fixtures (surveillance towers, wall-mounted spearheads, moats, etc) and a semiotic analysis of the text of real estate ads from 95 on.

It reminded very much of Marcio Kogan's and Isay Weinfeld's installation on the Bienal de São Paulo, only it was a little more terrifying, because it's not a miniature model, it's a gigantic castle of fears.

In case you're wondering, I am currently apartment-hunting in São Paulo, and trust me, the number of security cameras in the complex is not the standard I go by. And since we're talking home and garden, Lugar Comum a lovely place to start looking for creative ideas for a new living space.