At Marcella's

Marcella's been so kind as to host me in her blog. If you read Italian and are interested in translation, have a look first at her post, which triggered mine. And may the New Year uncover your innermost wishes and give you the means to fulfil them! :-)

The aches and pains of references

One of the things that drive me nuts is some authors' carelessness with references - particularly in technical writing. There are specific rules for references, and no matter what system you choose to adopt, you'll need to stick to them. What's the point of providing references, if all one can find in them is a surname and a year? How are we supposed to find out the title of the book you're quoting? By means of mind reading? And when you're quoting author and title, wouldn't it be nice if you could also provide the publisher? Also, mispelling authors' names is not a good idea. Your reader will go out of their minds desperately trying to locate the reference you gave.
Yes, I know, I'm complaining. The thing is, I'm quite tired of patching up other people's mistakes - and it's published material, uh? Stuff source language readers find on their bookshops' shelves and pay for it - and hearing that translation is simply "ferrying across" words from one language to the other. If I ferry across rotting bananas, my customers will complain. So I either carry green bananas, or I find a way to reverse the ripening process. Which is not, strictly speaking, so easy.

Keep it short and clear

A round-up of articles on translation

Check the pulse of translation!

Vitalité de la traduction (FR)
Essor de la littérature étrangère en traduction (FR)
Une génération de traducteurs prometteurs (FR)
Le metier du traducteur (FR)
Art of translation sacrificed (EN)
Las traducciones del catalán se mantienen pero no crecen (ES)

When a pizza is not a pizza

When you're translating a series of recommendations or warnings on healthy eating and in your list of junk food you see "pizza", followed by fries and burgers, well, that pizza is not a pizza. At least if you're translating into Italian.

The problem is that Italian pizza doesn't fall into the junk food category. Not yet, at least. It may be full of calories, it may not be made with the best ingredients, still it's seen as food, not junk food. Pretty much as wine is still wine, not booze.

So how do you solve this language discrepancy, this sort of gastro-cultural clash? One way out is to transform that "pizza" into real junk food, namely what we call "pizzette". Now, I'm fully aware that pizza and pizzette are not the same thing, the latter being some sort of canapé food you would serve in a party. Yet, I feel that the most important piece of meaning to retain here is the idea of "junk", of oily unhealthy food, trans fats, saturated fats, salt and the like. All of which may or may not be found in a pizza, but is undoubtedly present in pizzette. Somehow, pizza still retain that aura that makes it too "artisanal" to be included among junk food.

Big trunk, small tree

After a long journey, including a very pleasant stop in lively Munich for a taste of its famous Christkindlmarkt, a visit to its Rindermarkt and a generous sip of Glühwein while listening to carols being sung at the station, I eventually managed to put down my suitcase and enjoy a bit of peace. Until, of course, I had the silly idea to start fighting with an unsteady plastic tree for which I came up with the following solution:

(Tree still in progress. Yes, it's standing on a log.)

Travelling light?

Time to pack again. Yes, but I'm getting better at it; the more I pack, the lighter it gets! In any case, here I won't need stilettos, I guess. But I'm dreaming of a day when all I carry with me is a backpack. Ok, and a handbag.

I've got no suggestions

If, like me, this morning you switched your computer on and found your search engine was trying (unsuccessfully) to read your mind, here's how to nip this behaviour in the bud.

Work in progress: obstacles

The wondefully refreshing feeling I get whenever I start translating a new book has already crashed into an obstacle: the first chapter was reprinted from another book (by the same author) whose translation rights have already been sold to another Italian publisher, who published the translation a few years ago. And now? :-/

Saving leeks

A savoury shortcrust pie for those sadly perishing leeks in the fridge. The white dots are actually feta cheese (yes, my marinated feta!) crumbles. Shortcrust pastry was made using extravirgin olive oil, instead of butter. I find it tastier when it comes to savoury pies like this. :-9

End quote

As I mentioned elsewhere, quotations are translators’ thorns in their flesh, especially when they are picked up in a quotation site or – even worse – from some unknown web source. Sure enough, these e-sources are very convenient if you urgently need a quotation on a particular subject (let’s say “jealousy”) and you don’t know where you could get one in the vast collection of books you read on the subject before you started writing your book. However, it would be nice if these quotations were also counterchecked, as they might be mistakenly ascribed to an author who actually never said/wrote them. Again, it’s also a matter of editing; and in the end, counterchecking falls upon translators.

(I’m starting to think that we should claim a discount on translation rights of those books whose translation required a substantial editing of its source.)

Feta!

Some freshly made marinated feta. For the marinade I used home grown rosemary (dried and ground), thyme (collected a couple of weeks ago up on the hills), chopped garlic and a bit of dried chili. Extra virgin olive oil, of course. Let's see how it turns out.

Deskmates

Pleasant, friendly, quiet, loyal... A bit stinky, sometimes. When yawning, in fact.