Charlie Bavington United Kingdom Local time: 20:59 French to English
Disaster
Mar 30, 2009
Narasimhan Raghavan wrote:
I once again express my thanks to all those who expressed their opinion that my original Almah posting was not offensive but was rather to the point of concerning the mistranslations leading to disaster.
And what was the disaster that resulted from this mistranslation?
Please answer without breaking any forum rules on religion or politics
I speak as one who found the linguistic point you made re: Almah interesting. I am not sure that your implication, by posting in a thread with this title, that the translation has led to disaster, is a view that necessarily conforms with the rule about refraining from religious discussion.
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Charlie Bavington United Kingdom Local time: 20:59 French to English
If you are going to quote me
Mar 30, 2009
.... please quote the whole relevant section - you missed the bit about doing so without breaking forum rules.
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Charlie Bavington wrote:
Narasimhan Raghavan wrote:
I once again express my thanks to all those who expressed their opinion that my original Almah posting was not offensive but was rather to the point of concerning the mistranslations leading to disaster.
And what was the disaster that resulted from this mistranslation?
I am no expert at all (just a member of one of the religions involved), but to me the disaster is quite clear: the discussion of the divinity of Jesus, the son of Mary, and therefore the importance of whether Mary was a virgin or not, i.e. whether a miracle took place. For Jews, the miracle did NOT take place, thus making Jesus just a mere prophet and disputing whatever Christians sustained about Jesus' divinity. I think 2,000 years of conflict between Jews and Christians on this particular of Jesus' divinity have seen plenty of torture, death and hate. Isn't that a disaster?
"Postings which are political, religious or otherwise controversial in nature... will be removed." So let's see what happens.
"Disaster"? hmmmm. No comment to add to what I said yesterday on that issue. Certainly not ideal from the persepctive of either side, I imagine. On the other hand, many millions of people have found what they were looking for, on both sides. And in any event, I was always given to understand that the difference is much more than merely Mary's physiological condition.
I can see two angles to the Almah/virgin discussion with regard to this thread:
1. It is, as you state, directly and solely responsible for the rift between two major religions, in whch case it falls foul of the site rules, since surely one cannot describe the rift as a disaster without breaking the rule I typed out above. There are a thousand wesbites where you can argue about this kind of stuff until your fingers bleed.
2. The Almah/virgin (mis)translation is a mere ancillary aspect to the said rift, in which case it did not cause the disaster, and it has no place in this thread.
QED
[Edited at 2009-03-30 10:28 GMT]
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Lingua 5B Bosnia and Herzegovina Local time: 21:59 Member (2009) English to Croatian + ...
Misinterpretation vs mistranslation
Mar 30, 2009
Now, I've read this thread, and I just want to add that specifically in the Bible, I believe many of these issues have been a subject to misinterpretation, as much as mistranslation.
Many theologists, historians, theorists, etc, gave various interpretations that may differ to a smaller or bigger degree, and I think they may be the result of misinterpretation ( or simply a unique perceptive interpretation ), as much as mistranslation . These are two different mental processes.
Misinterpretation can happen within the scope of a same language, e.g. when two native speakers converse in the same language, let alone two different languages. That's how tricky the language and its ways are.
a young unmarried woman = + implicit meaning a virgin ( considering the context when the Bible was written)
virgin = + explicit meaning
And on topic : Yes, ideologies MAY create disasters. And this is not my subjective opinion, but a historical fact.
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Laurent KRAULAND France Local time: 21:59 Member (2007) French to German + ...
Any more explanations needed?
Mar 30, 2009
Lingua 5B wrote:
And on topic : Yes, ideologies MAY create disasters. And this is not my subjective opinion, but a historical fact.
Exactly my point of view (as the sole member & representative of my own creed)
Laurent K.
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xxxEric Hahn France Local time: 21:59 French to German + ...
Religion, politics etc.
Mar 30, 2009
Alex Lago wrote:
When i said censore I meant it broke the forum rules and therefore should be cut from Proz, there are forums for religious discussion and this is not one of them. Proz is about translation not religion.
This is not deemed to be a religious discussion, but a discussion about mistranslations in this field. Our intellect should be able to make this differenciation ...
[Edited at 2009-03-30 12:47 GMT]
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 21:59 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
The OP's big mistake
Mar 30, 2009
Charlie Bavington wrote:
And what was the disaster that resulted from this mistranslation? ... Almah interesting. I am not sure that your implication, by posting in a thread with this title, that the translation has led to disaster, is a view that necessarily conforms with the rule about refraining from religious discussion.
I think the problem of this thread is that the original poster failed to properly define "disaster". I fact, I find her original post quite confusing because it speaks of disaster but then gives as an example a case where people merely felt offended. Giving offense to a minority group is hardly a disaster, in my opinion.
Here's what happened in the "disaster" quoted by the original poster: There was a photo exhibition of aboriginal tattoos and this exhibition had a brochure. The brochure was translated into English. At one of the many, many photographs, a translation error slipped in in the description. The word "adulthood" was translated "adultery". Then, according to a government official who is himself an aboriginal, all hell broke loose, and half a million aboriginals in Taiwan are gravely offended by what they regard as a deliberate attempt to ridicule and stigmatise their culture. I smell a rat. But even if there is no rat, surely this is only a disaster for the museum's own PR department.
[edited title to remove name]
[Edited at 2009-03-30 12:10 GMT]
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Charlie Bavington United Kingdom Local time: 20:59 French to English
And mistranslation
Mar 30, 2009
Samuel Murray wrote:
I think the problem of this thread is that the original poster failed to properly define "disaster". I fact, I find her original post quite confusing because it speaks of disaster but then gives as an example a case where people merely felt offended. Giving offense to a minority group is hardly a disaster, in my opinion.
Indeed.
Not only that, but one of her own subsequent postings had nothing to do with mistranslation either (the one about the comma).
I think perhaps I'll just shuffle away from this thread, looking a bit perplexed.....
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 21:59 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
A disaster is an event
Mar 30, 2009
Lingua 5B wrote:
Yes, ideologies MAY create disasters. And this is not my subjective opinion, but a historical fact.
This depends on your definition of "disaster".
Having consulted a number of dictionaries, I think a disaster is specifically an event, and specifically something that occurs suddenly or builds up to a climax over a relatively short period of time, regardless of whether certain factors that contributed to the disaster may have been long in coming, and usually unplanned. A disaster is also massive in scale, though what is massive may be relative.
Disaster strikes. It doesn't creep in. Many bad and unfortunate things happen, but they're not all disasters. And saying that something is not a disaster is not an attempt to belittle its importance or impact either.
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 21:59 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
The one about the comma
Mar 30, 2009
Charlie Bavington wrote:
Not only that, but one of her own subsequent postings had nothing to do with mistranslation either (the one about the comma).
The comma story certainly is interesting, though. It is not a mistranslation, but it shows how a small error can have large repercussions. I'll wager one typically does not find it often that mistranslation of contracts lead to legal battles, as legal agreements usually specify one language version as being superior to the other in cases of dispute. In other areas where agreement-making wording is important, an E&OE often applies (eg in advertisements).
If the comma incident is kosher, then perhaps blunders using decimals or imperial units are also on topic here. Like the rocket that failed to stop on time before crashing into Mars because one of the subcontractors ignored NASA's requirement to use SI units. Or the several stories about air planes that ran out of fuel because the ground crew filled up in pounds while the air crew read it off in kilograms.
And we might as well mention urban legends like the Japanese surrender telegram.
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT Spain Local time: 21:59 Member (2005) English to Spanish + ...
Can you please elaborate?
Mar 30, 2009
Charlie Bavington wrote:
"Disaster"? hmmmm. No comment to add to what I said yesterday on that issue. Certainly not ideal from the persepctive of either side, I imagine. On the other hand, many millions of people have found what they were looking for, on both sides. And in any event, I was always given to understand that the difference is much more than merely Mary's physiological condition.
Can you please explain what you meant in the bolded sentence? Thanks!
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xxxEric Hahn France Local time: 21:59 French to German + ...
Astronomic numbers
Mar 30, 2009
In the well-known french newspaper "Le Monde", I recently read that the US budgetary deficit would attain "2 milliards de dollars" this year. I thougt this was all but a disaster, but in fact, they meant "2.000 de milliards". In Germany, they say 2 Billion, in the USA, 2 trillions.
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ViktoriaG wrote:
So far, this discussion has been peaceful and respectful (I am actually pleasantly surprised).
ViktoriaG wrote this earlier in the thread, but even at that point, 16 posts (from 9 different posters) had already been removed for having strayed from the topic of translation. By now, a total of 28 posts from 13 posters has been removed. At least five moderators have been involved. A number of members, too, have tried to redirect discussion to the original topic. Thanks for your efforts, folks.
At this point, in the interest of keeping things orderly (so that our moderators can do their own work, too!), I am closing the thread.
Eric Hahn wrote:
Our intellect should be able to make this differenciation ...
One would have hoped. Some day!
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