Lingua inglese II - appunti prof Wardle

USE LETTERS, NO NUMBERS

- a pochi metri da me/alcuni metri più aventi 6

- a quindici metri di distanza/a una quindicina di metri

- a meno di venti metri/a una ventina di metri

Stereotypes

- What does it say at the top of an Irish ladder ? « STOP ». To British, Irish are

stupid.

A fish called Wanda → Italian has a beautiful sound, Russian doesn’t.

In the Italian version, the contrast is between Spanish and French

20/03/2018

Quinta lezione

Supermarkets, Freakonomics

Sterotypes

Gosford Park – second world war in an aristocratic environment. There is a lot of

social contrast between « upstairs » and « downstairs »

The woman is upset and her husband says : “Do stop snivelling. Anyone would

Italian!”

think you were Italian → exaggerated sentimentality.

Stiff upper lip: labbro superiore rigido (flemma britannica). In italiano “smettila!

Penseranno che sei tu la vedova”.

The Great Gastby - 1925 Fourth of July,

« It was a few days before the and a gray, scrawny (malnutrito)

Italian child was setting.. »

In French, the Fourth of July becomes « La Fête Nationale », this is called

explicitation, in the original the meaning was implicit, while here it’s explicit.

Italian remains Italian.

Censorship in translation during Fascism, even if the meaning is just slightly

negative, it must be changed.

Cesare Giardini translation 1936 was made from French, so he probably didn’t see

Festa Nazionale

Fourth of july but just Fête Nationale that becomes and italien

spagnuolo

becomes

Changing nationality

The Aristocats

The film is set in France, there are various French words

Backyard: in American English, il giardino che sta sul retro. Yard in British English

può essere il cortile

To roam: vagabondare

Stray/Alley cat: gatto randagio

From English to Italian we lose the sophisticate characterization. It becomes a

Roman cat who is in France.

Specific contraints:

Theatre translation can be divided into two main areas: printed versions and

versions to be produced on stage. The one that has to be translated for the

theatre is commissioned by the director of the play. A translator prepares an

almost literal version of the play, the director adapts it. Often the director doesn’t

speak the source language but he appears as the main translator « translation

of.. » even if he just adapts it.

Performability : you have to avoid tonguetwists. 7

Speakability : sounds that are distincts so that people can understand them

clearly

Opera (lirica)/musical (on stage) translation:

Part of the narrative is in the songs

Singability more than speakability.

When performance is not translated :

Surtitles « sopratitoli » with the translation in the local language. E.g. Italian

musical in England

In some new cinemas, behind the seats there are some small screen with subtitles.

Other forms of contraint:

Excescise de style

Raymond Queneau (1947). In the story there are a lot of

onomatopee

The same action in different languages has different onomatopoeias

Twovel

Neil Gaiman, (Twitter + Novel), 2009. He started writing a story on Twitter

and his followers had to continue that in order to create a story.

253,

Geoff Ryman 1996. A novel set on the train of London undergound : 251

passengers, a pidgeon and the driver. For each person, the text was 253 words.

Constraints based on the length of the text

Subtitles:

In general they are produced for deaf and hard-of-hearing (intralingual translation).

It’s not just a case of copying the spoken text. We can’t read as fast as we can

listen, especially if we have to look at the images as well. There are some statistics

that say that people who are deaf from birth read 1/3 slower than others.

The main constraint is the amount of text you can show on screen.

e.g. « there’s nothing more naked than your handwriting ». traduzione letterale

“non vi è nulla di più chiaro della tua scrittura”; shorter “la tua scrittura è molto

rivelatrice”.

Another constraint is the space occupied, it has to go with the image.

e.g. « But he was there with someone ». literally “ma era lì con qualcuno”, shorter

“non era solo”.

There are different ways to represent more than one person speaking. E.g. a little

dash (-) at the beginning, different colours per non andare a capo.

Noises (intralingual) accents

- Voice : SHOUTING, (italics), sarcasm!, #sing.

- Music, songs, lyrics. Do they need to be translated? Not always, often the solution

is to leave the music in the original language and to subtitle the meaning of the

song.

- Break in line (interruzione sulle righe di testo): normally no more than 36

characters on each line, including spaces.

“mio padre dovrebbe assumerti come

capo contabile”

“mio padre dovrebbe assumerti

come capo contabile” → divisione per unità di senso.

“mio padre dovrebbe assumerti

come capo contabile” → your eye doesn’t have to travel so far if your text is

centered rather than justified on the left.

Dubbing:

dubbing countries, Italy is one of them with a huge tradition, mostly because of

Fascism when there was a political desire not to import Hollywood films. 8

Scandinavian countries have small populations, so small audience who pays, they

often just subtitle films because it’s cheaper

Cartoons for very young children have to be dubbed because they can’t read.

In the UK films are mainly subtitled, not dubbed.

09/04/2018

Sesta lezione

AVT audio visual translation

Constraint: you have to deal with the visual elements

Overlapping levels:

Accents or dialects on screen

Cultural references from the past

Wordplay in song: recreate the humour, the rhyme, gestures

Language in film → you: tu, lei or voi? You choose according to the hierarchical

relationship among the characters. Among children tu, professional people lei, to a

group voi, etc. It’s up to the translator to decide when lei becomes tu. Moreover, in

English there are more polite forms than in Italian: would you mind, please,

etc. in Italian we could use the conditional. It’s a constant decision the translator

has to make in order to make it sound as natural as possible.

Functional subtitles: there are functional subt. Quite often in musicals, etc. There is

no effort to replicate the rhyme, they make it easier to understand what the song

text says

Young Frankenstein Frankenstein Junior

(1974) – in Italian (1974) 9

Retelling of Frankenstein’s story

Howling: ululare; werewolf: lupo mannaro

(howling)

Inga: werewolf – lupu ululà

Freddy: werewolf? – lupo ululà?

Igor: there! (he indicates with his arm, again overlapping of gestures and words) –

là!

Freddy: What? – cosa?

Igor: There wolf, there castle. – lupu ululà e castello ululì.

Freddy: Why are you talking that way? – ma come diavolo parli?

Igor: I thought you wanted to. – è lei che ha cominciato.

Freddy: No, I don’t want to. – no, non è vero.

Igor: Suit yourself, I’m easy. – non insisto, è lei padrone.

Igor usa il lei e Frankenstein il tu.

Friends

Monica: how about Mockolate mousse? (she has to invent some recipes. First

difficult: translate Mockolate. Mock exam means “simulazione”, non the real one.

Not real chocolate, a kind of synthetic product like chocolate) – mousse di

Mocholata?

Phoebe: it’s not very Thanksgiving-y – non è da festa del Ringraziamento.

M: how about Pilgrim Mockolate mousse? – e allora mousse di carnevale.

P: what makes it pilgrim? – perché carnevale?

M: we’ll put buckles on. (buckles are one of the typical features one would

associate to the Pilgrim Fathers) – per i coriandoli.

Audio description

Programmes for people who can’t see. Description on top of the dialogue

(intralinguistic translation - explanation): it’s night, there is no light, etc.

Video games: within the area of IT (Information Technology). Lots of different

elements: character who speak, etc.

Software translation: open close, tables, insert, etc. but also you have to translate

some of the features of the programme e.g. if I write “i” in lover case it is

automatically switched into a capital I (it depends on the language I’m writing, in

this case English).

Localization: in IT we don’t talk about translation but about localization. It is paid

more than, for example, literature. L10N (localization, L iniziale, N finale e 10

lettere al centro)

Globalization: G11N

Internationalization: I18N

GILT (dorato) Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, Translation. They

often go together

You have a company like Mc Donald’s. the product must be internationalized, it

cannot be produced the same way everywhere for cultural and linguistic reasons.

When they localize, they present themselves in a different way. If you go to an

Italian Mc and to a British one, you won’t probably notice any difference. But, if

you go to an Indian one, you’ll notice that they do not sell cow meat because cow

is sacred in India. You don’t sell the same product everywhere and, if you do, you

don’t do it the same way; you localize.

Word-processing programmes 10

Glossaries: if you work as a professional translator, glossaries are in important part

of your job (apart from literature). Some basic glossaries (per un ambito

particolare) can be found online. The vast majority of translation is specialized,

literature is just about 4% and it is not so well paid.

MT: machine translation (traduzione automatica) software programmes that are

increasingly sophisticated, they are not perfect, but they translate well enough to

give you an idea of the meaning of the text. In the institution of the UE, the cost of

translation or interpreting is the highest. Bridge languages, English, French,

Spanish and German, are used. Often machine translations are used and then they

are given to translator in order to remove ambiguities, idiomatic expression, etc.

and to make it sound natural (post editing). È più veloce e meno costoso fare così.

TA: traduzione automatica Systran, software di traduzione usato su tutto, Google

translate

CAT: computer-assisted translation. Translation tools (trados, déjà vu, wordfast). If I

translate for Fiat, they give me the handbook in a digital format to translate into

English, I open it on my computer, I take the first sentence of the handbook and

there is a similar one, the translator tool suggests me that I just need to change a

couple