| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | Words that you hate translating Thread poster: Michael Mestre
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Crystal Jiang (X)
China
Local time: 16:58
English to Chinese
+ ...
| English-Chinese | May 10, 2010 |
Yes, some words may just drive you mad, and I find I have encountered many of your lists.
Following are some occuring to me at this moment:
for (and together with many prep. words linking nouns to form a long sentence ),
access,
item,
offer (this is a good words in writing English though),
visibility,
setup
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| | | | XXXphxxx (X) 
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:58
Portuguese to English
+ ...
[quote]Michael Mestre wrote:
And I am not convinced that even British English speakers understand what "community" means exactly. (Question to UK English speakers: do you ?).
To me it's just a group of people. So you can have a 'marketing community' - a group of people who work in marketing or 'the community' which is the society that immediately surrounds you, e.g. 'There is nobody in our community who would vote Conservative' )
| | | | | words I hate | May 10, 2010 |
I really, really hate translating the word "conjunto" from ES>EN. So many meanings, so many different contexs, so few really accurate equivalents in English.
| | | | Carole Paquis
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:58
Member (2007)
English to French
Eng>Fr
business
impact (as a verb)
deliverable (noun)
deliver
Carole
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nrdawe2 (X)
Local time: 10:58
Italian to English
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| Italian - English | May 10, 2010 |
My pet hates:
struttura
realtà
Any words that can be rendered using one word but are instead made more complex and longwinded, making it all seem more complicated than it really is! (istituto ospedaliero, attività lavorativa, realtà aziendale).
| | | | | Meaning is relational not absolute | May 11, 2010 |
Michael Mestre wrote:
And I am not convinced that even British English speakers understand what "community" means exactly. (Question to UK English speakers: do you ?).
To me it's just a group of people.
Yes, it's a group of people, but so is a junta, a gang,
a political party, or a worshipping congregation.
Meaning always depends on context,
which is why some things are so
much harder to translate than others.
Social terms have is no exact meaning in the
way that we define yellow light as 570 nm (but
we still tend to see sodium vapour light as yellow,
although the frequency of that light is one nanometre
less than orange (590 nm). How can you say exactly
what a community is? And why would you want to?
To me, community usually implies a degree of consensus
or shared ethical, or even epistemological, orientation.
Being in a community gives both a sense of belonging
and sense of distinctness from other communities.
Face-to-face interaction also comes into the picture.
Some members of globally distributed communities meet
occasionally at trade fairs, conferences, retreats, and other events.
Maybe community also does not imply any pressure
to belong. You are in by virtue of sociality connected with
what you do and/or where you live.
People often want to imply huggy feeliness
when they use community.
Community is as easy or as hard to understand as other
chameleon words, another one of which is love.
| | | | IreneP
Greece
Local time: 11:58
English to Greek
Yes, what a mess some words are, especially if you translate from English to Greek...
Words in Greek have more than one meaning...
| | | | Cedomir Pusica
Serbia
Local time: 10:58
Member (2009)
English to Serbian
+ ...
is one of the first words that popped up, followed by the "make sure", then "deliverables", "embed"; then, there are various names of professions that have the "manager" extention...
I could list another 100, but these were off the top of my head.
Cheers!
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Milos Prudek
Czech Republic
Local time: 10:58
English to Czech
+ ...
| Most hated: baseball references | May 11, 2010 |
I assume that translators hate source language words that are difficult to translate into the target language. So the hate list will be different for each language pair.
In English, I hate baseball/American football references ("home run", "touch base"), and any phrases that indicate that the copywriter did not consider international audience at all.
In Czech I hate the ridiculously formal language that uses five complicated words to say stuff that can be expressed in ... See more I assume that translators hate source language words that are difficult to translate into the target language. So the hate list will be different for each language pair.
In English, I hate baseball/American football references ("home run", "touch base"), and any phrases that indicate that the copywriter did not consider international audience at all.
In Czech I hate the ridiculously formal language that uses five complicated words to say stuff that can be expressed in two simple words. Many Czechs believe they should use such language in writing.
However I feel that the best translator must be able to cope with all of these problems. ▲ Collapse
| | | | nrdawe2 (X)
Local time: 10:58
Italian to English
+ ...
I have thought of some others! I hate words like curare, garantire, etc. when used in expressions like "curarne il rilascio". At the moment I am in the middle of doing a translation with the word "funzione" which is another one of my pet hates! I find that hard to translate.
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