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Category Archives: Doc Byrne’s Miscellany

A truly multilingual web?

A unanimous decision last night by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers which regulates the naming system for websites, to permit domain names to be written in scripts other than English, is being heralded as a new era of international web use.

Traditionally, domain names have been restricted to 26 characters in the Latin alphabet and could include ten numerals and a hyphen. Critics have long argued that this was unfair on groups whose languages did not use English characters. In many ways this is true – is it really fair to expect someone in China with a Chinese keyboard to figure out how to input English characters so that they could visit a website in their own country? Absolutely not. Similarly, it is hard to justify forcing someone in Israel or in Saudi Arabia to transliterate the names of companies or organisations just so that they can get a website.

Promotional video from ICANN explaining internationalised domain names (Source: http://tinyurl.com/y8oehy3).

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Who’d have thought dictionaries could be sexy?

I take it back, not all dictionaries are bad. Without a word of a lie, not half an hour after I posted my last piece about dictionaries and how over-rated they can be, a book (an unsolicited one I might add) landed on my desk which made me wonder whether dictionaries really can be useful after all. I’m a little hesitant to say what this book is about partly because I know I will be swamped by dozens of comment spammers offering me all manner of filth and potions, and partly because I don’t think anyone will believe me. It’s a dictionary of sex terms. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up.

Ooh the things I found out in that book!

Ooh, it goes where?!

Respected German publisher of dictionaries Langenscheidt has teamed up with leading “sexperts” Erika Berger and Lilo Wanders to give us its latest novelty dictionary, “Langenscheidt Sex-Deutsch/Deutsch-Sex” – a pocket-sized, 128 page dictionary explaining the various terms and jargon one might encounter. All I can say is that – sweet and innocent soul that I am – it very nearly turned my hair white reading all of those dirty words. Now it’s written in German but if heavy metal is a good reason to learn a new language, then carnal gymnastics might  be too. Without going into too much detail for obvious reasons, it explains things like how the word “English” in Germany is used as a euphemism for S&M and what “Pornflakes” and “Clinton Monogamy” are – I won’t write it for fear of traumatising those of a more sensitive disposition.

In fairness, it’s a tiny little book and it’s probably not enough to corrupt the youth of our nation (no, hold on, it might actually) but – and this is important – it does actually perform a public service. Can you imagine trying to find translations and definitions for various coitus-related concepts for yourself? No matter how legitimate and pure your intentions, typing these words into Google will open up a whole world of nastiness right there on your monitor. Get it wrong and you could end up unemployed, divorced or on some sort of international register of sex offenders.

So yes, dictionaries can be useful but more than that, they can be quite funny too.

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Time to throw away your dictionaries?

One of the great myths of technical translation is that it is all about specialised terminology. It isn’t that surprising really because it is one of the first things that strikes most people when they look at a technical text. But is it really such a problem? Peter Newmark once said that terminology accounts for a mere 5-10% of a typical technical text. I recently spoke to a senior translator from the World Intellectual Property Organization who said that their analyses of patent abstracts showed a 50% terminology content but I would say that, given the specialised and highly specific function of these texts, this is probably the exception rather than the rule.

"Damn you to hell bulky over-priced dictionaries. I've got me an Internet!"

A more practical use for dictionaries?

But anyway, assuming that Newmark’s estimate is true and even taking into account the myriad types of texts where the proportion of terminology may vary slightly, you have to ask the question: So what? What’s the big deal with terminology? Continue reading →

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The devil is a great language teacher

Technically I was learning Spanish here with my band Mortuum

Technically I was learning Spanish here with my band Mortuum

I was toying with calling this post “The devil made me do it” or “Heavy metal made me what I am” but I was a little concerned about the kind of people that would attract to the site. Anyway, what I’m trying to get across is that in this day and age of global English and what many people regard as cultural homogenisation, heavy metal is one of the few remaining bastions where it’s actually okay not to be a “world citizen” speaking (and singing) in some clichéd mid-Atlantic variety of English.

This might sound like some pathetic exercise in jingoistic fist-waving at all things global but it’s really not. Spend more than a few minutes looking through the Myspace pages of various metal bands and you’ll notice something strangely curious. Lots of them are singing in their own languages. Even the people who speak languages that aren’t considered to be “beautiful” in the traditional sense. It doesn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense, but for some strange reason it does. Continue reading →

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Weird translation request of the week

I got an enquiry from a client I work for on a regular basis asking whether I would be available to do a translation review for them. I’m pretty busy at the moment and can’t really take on any more work just yet but I thought I’d have a look at it and see if there was any way of tweaking my schedule to fit it in. The email arrives with all of the files attached. Looking through the English texts first I noticed a few “odd” formulations and some generally unidiomatic expressions here and there. This is nothing surprising – most things need to be proofed and this is why people have translations reviewed and edited.

But when I went to open the source file to get a feel for the project I realised that there was no source file. Thinking that this must have been an oversight on the part of the PM I went back to the email whereupon I spotted the following: “This is a translation from Chinese. The client won’t give us the source text but we’re pretty sure that the translation is factually correct”.

Needless to say the prospect of trying to edit a translation without benefit of a source text for clarification didn’t appeal and certainly would have taken more time than I had to spare. Now this probably isn’t worth a post all of its own but I love the comedy value of an Irish translator, living in England who translates from German and Spanish into English being asked to review a translation from Chinese, a language he doesn’t speak. You really do have to love translation sometimes.

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