Like-Blog
Presenting you the most interesting translation solutions
Why Like-Blog? Now, first of all, this blog is a blog that you should like (and read regularly) – at least, if you are interested in translation. Then, the topic discussed here is one in which the meaningful likeness between a text and its translation in the language pair English-German plays a key role. On this page, I will take a close look at some interesting translation solutions that I have come across in the course of my work as a translator and translation scholar.
A translation solution is only as good as the arguments that support it. This means that any translation criticism, whether positive or negative, needs to be justified. The quality of a translation solution shows only when we compare it to other possible translation solutions in a given translation situation. Therefore, a translation critic should not only say why a translation solution is bad, but also demonstrate what a better solution might look like. I will try to stick to these principles of translation criticism. So if you have any questions regarding my line of argument or if you disagree, please, let me know your opinion by phone at +49 4171 6086525 or by e-mail to bittner@businessenglish-hamburg.de. So much for the introduction. I hope you’ll enjoy reading this blog!
From Beijing to Tehran (April 2023)
“If you think you’re sometimes spoiled for choice, consider the lot of a news editor on the first weekend of June 1989. On the afternoon of Saturday, June 3, the condition of Ayatullah [sic] Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, began to rapidly deteriorate. Just before midnight, Khomeini, 86, died, his death announced [sic] on the radio a few hours later. Tehran is 3½ hours behind Beijing, so at just the time the crowds in Iran were taking to the streets in extraordinary expressions of grief, the people of Beijing, no less in shock, were coming to terms with what had happened in the early hours of that Sunday morning. Troops of the People’s Liberation Army had cleared the remnants of student protests in Tiananmen Square, shooting into the crowds as they did so.” This is the beginning of “Shifting On Its Pivot”, an article written by Michael Elliott and published on Time.com on 18 June 2009.
In a German translation, the sentence in the middle – “Tehran is 3½ hours behind Beijing [...] in the early hours of that Sunday morning” – is rendered as follows: “Teheran liegt dreieinhalb Stunden hinter Peking, und während sich die Menschenmengen im Iran als Zeichen von außerordentlicher Trauer auf die Straßen begaben, standen (zur selben Zeit) die Menschen in Peking nicht weniger unter Schock und versuchten zu begreifen, was in den frühen Stunden dieses Sonntagmorgens passiert war.” The translation is quite elegant. Still, there is a problem here. Have you discovered it yet?
We are talking about the subordinate clause “während sich die Menschenmengen im Iran als Zeichen von außerordentlicher Trauer auf die Straßen begaben”, which is rather inconspicuous at a first glance, but which, at a closer look, does not really make sense. For taking to the streets is not in itself already an expression of grief, “as an extraordinary expression of grief” not the same as “in extraordinary expressions of grief”. A remedy would be to substitute “gezeichnet von” for “als Zeichen von”.
To conclude, an elegant translation is not automatically a correct translation. This is an important insight, especially, when we consider the increasing influence of machine translation.