Comments on: Oops, I Did it Again

By: Brian Barker

Brian Barker — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Good luck to Esperanto

It’s a pity that many people do not know that it has become a living language.

Your readers may be interested in http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8837438938991452670

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

By: Remush

Remush — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:38:53 +0000

“And sadly for Esperanto enthusiasts, we don’t have a common language quite yet, so we have to rely on translators (machines or humans) to make that information understandable for everybody.”

A translator should always translate to his mother language; so he is bound to miss some subtleties in the source language.
Exception to that rule: one always translates to Esperanto from the mother tongue.

A translator who knows Esperanto and the source language well enough, can avoid many pitfalls, provided he has access to the Esperanto version of the source text as well.
This provides the best quality for the smallest amount of work.
A few special cases are handled in http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/translation.htm

Remuŝ

By: Viviana

Viviana — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:55:25 +0000

Your link to “read more” “unbearable” translations doesn’t make too much sense when trying to point to further “bad translations”. Firstly, not everything in that link should be considered a translation. I don’t know if you speak another language but in many countries in Europe and the American continent, the first sign could make a lot of sense among the locals.

The sign reading “WARNING children left unattended will be sold to the circus” it’s a local joke for many native speakers in those continents, where that sign is from. They are speaking local English, with local humour. I guess the ones who have to translate the humour are the foreigners. Not the locals.

I’ve seen thousands of English natives playing smart about translation signs and must say, that it is a shame that although a big number of the signs could indeed, make no sense, others express the locals humour in English. Their English, which is also very valid as long as grammar rules are followed.

Let’s not forget that language is not math.

By: Bill Chapman

Bill Chapman — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:23:36 +0000

You mentioned Esperanto here. The only way for this planned language to become really widespread is for even more ordinary people to start learning and using it.