SEELANGS Digest - 29 Nov 2007 to 30 Nov 2007 - Special issue (#2007-277)

[Nora Favorov]

Dear SEELANGERS,
As a busy professional translator I tend to delete my SEELANGS digest after
a brief glance, but I have followed recent discussions on the art and
practice of translation with interest. Thanks to Josh Wilson for taking the
time to type out the sort of thought process we translators go through
several times per paragraph, mentally weighing meaning vs. style, dictionary
definition vs. usage, alliterative effect/repetitiveness/register vs.
literal accuracy, authorial intent vs. reader expectation, etc.. And to his
wife for her thoughtful comment. And to others, including Olga Meerson for
her words on the client-translator relationship and her well-taken point
about Garnett & Dostoevsky, part of another discussion that has been treated
thoughtfully in recent reviews of the new P/V War & Peace (did anyone post a
link to Orlando Riges review in the NY Review of Books?
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20810 - worth reading!). 

Three more points:

1. Congratulations to Paul G. for having his "trinity" so nicely christened
by Josh. Your place in the annals of translation theory and practice is now
secure.
2. On average my translation *word* counts expand by 20-25% (R to E), and
that even with a tightening-up of the text. In addition to the articles and
ofs, one reason for this is a frequent need to spell out acronyms of
otherwise clarify some bit of Russian realia. I wonder why here in the US we
don't use the method Josh mentioned. Using characters vs. words to price
translations seems to make a lot of sense to me. 
3. RE: the posting by Igor Horvat (which seems to have a sort of non-linear
relevance to the translation discussion). Not wishing to pick on him in
particular, it is my experience that "proofreading" is a bit of a misnomer
(to put it mildly) when something written by a non-native speaker requires
editing. As someone who has done a lot of this, I can attest that assisting
non-native speakers prepare manuscripts or other texts can be extremely
interesting and rewarding, but it usually takes longer than it would have to
just translate the text from the writer's native language. I'm sure that Mr.
Horvat can be forgiven for his choice of words, but often agencies hire
translators for "proofreading" of translations by non-native speakers so
they can pay the proofreading rate rather than the
retranslate-the-whole-#&%*$#-thing rate.

Now I'll go back to my lurking.

Cheers,
Nora

Nora Seligman Favorov
100 Village Lane
Chapel Hill, NC  27514
Tel. 919-960-6871
Fax 919-969-6628
Mobile  919-923-2772
Skype:  nora.favorov
ATA Certified (Russian into English)

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