toad.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Mastodon server operated by David Troy, a tech pioneer and investigative journalist addressing threats to democracy. Thoughtful participation and discussion welcome.

Administered by:

Server stats:

270
active users

#translation

18 posts15 participants3 posts today
Continued thread

#translation is interminable, just as #reading is... both are finite and potentially infinite processes. What then of the claims for the original? Philosophically it's a mistake, (i'll not quote deleuze or jullien here) but still the reason its a mistake is that translation and untranslatable (a single concept really) enable us to advance experimental formats (and so on) in the production and reading of texts... #philosophy

Continued thread

the philosophical (read ideology) belief in the original, is nonsensical because the act of translation is an act of reading, a text a concept, which is no different than reading any text... which is also to say that a given text in another language (for example Hobbes Leviathan) : may need to be translated anew for each generation... will need to be translated for each generation... #translation #philosophy

In the dictionary of untranslatables: there is a Barbara Cassin reference "Cassin had already described the the 'untranslatable' to the interminability of translating: the idea that one can never have done with translating" This relates to the instability of meaning and sense-making, the performative aspects of reading and the temporarality of #translation... #philosophy

After a long day doing parent teacher interviews it’s time to unwind with #ThursdayBooksandBeer. This week I’m reading The Accidentals, the new collection of short stories by Mexican writer (and Paris resident) Guadalupe Nettel (translated by Rosalind Harvey). I really liked her novel Still Born and publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions has never steered me wrong with their books. I’ve accompanied it with a ‘Soon Enough’ Oat Cream IPA from Mountain Culture that couldn’t come soon enough after eight hours of telling parents how well their children are doing in my classes and what they need to do to improve (read more books!). “Before he died, my uncle was in hospital for three weeks. I found out due to a coincidence, or what the surrealists used to call ‘objective chance’, to describe those fortuitous events that seem dictated by our destiny.” #reading #literature #translation #craftbeer

No Song, No Drum

In the still backwater,
a skin of silt breathes quiet protest.
Reeds stand like sentinels —
unspeaking, unaware of time.
Trees lean without urgency.
No footprints remain
on the spongy edge of the world.

A heron may have passed here.
But it left no gospel.

Further on —
a ridge rises like an old knuckle
from the palm of the earth.
The wind has no memory here.
Paths cross, split, converge again,
cutting pale scars
into the green hide of hills.

Beyond:
a blue silence,
too vast for names.

In the hush beneath branches,
a bench lies forgotten,
its wood warped by patience.
Light spills through the leaves
but says nothing.

Two trees lean inward
as though listening,
but there are no voices,
not even your own.

Tony Langmach, 25

#poem #translation

note: translated from German to English by the author himself; the text is about a walk in the countryside.

Continued thread

In all seriousness, people's ability to connect emotionally with ancient cultures is heavily impeded by stuffy academic translations that follow form over meaning. For example, the translation on wikipedia falls for the classic pitfall of being overly invested in the exact units of measurement given, even though "a thousand li" and "a whole dan" are very much vibes-based, not precise measurements in a mathematical treatise.

All translation is interpretation; if someone wants no interpretation between them and the text, then they have to knuckle down and learn the original language (hey, that's what I'm doing right now). Being afraid to actually speak the idiom of your audience in your translation only strangles it into a lifeless lump lying between languages, lacking the spark that drove someone to write it and others to preserve it.

a little light Classical Chinese translation before bed because that’s what I’m like:

Zengzi’s wife was going to the market when their son ran after her, crying. She said “Go home! When I get back, we’ll slaughter a pig.” When she came home, Zengzi went out to catch a pig. His wife stopped him, saying, “I was just joking with the boy!”

Zengzi told her “you can’t joke with children like that. They have no wisdom, only the guidance of their parents. If you deceive him now, what he will learn is deception. If a mother deceives her child, the child no longer trusts their mother, and nothing more can be taught.” Then they had bacon.

(source: the Han Feizi) #translation

"In an interesting—and rather telling—wrinkle to the AI boom story, many translators noted that generative AI didn’t usher in any revolutionary improvement to already-existing technologies that have been used to automate translation for years. Long before AI became the toast of Silicon Valley, corporate clients had been pushing lower-paying machine translation post-editing (MTPE) jobs, or editing the output of AI translation systems, though many translators refused to take them. Others said Google Translate had long been able to essentially what ChatGPT does now.

Yet many describe a dramatic disruption in wages and working conditions over the last two years, coinciding with the rise of OpenAI. Though my sample size is small, these stories fit my thesis that the real AI jobs crisis is that the drumbeat, marketing, and pop culture of "powerful AI” encourages and permits management to replace or degrade jobs they might not otherwise have. More important than the technological change, perhaps, is the change in a social permission structure.

Not one but two accounts detail how many translators dismissed ChatGPT at first, because they’ve heard companies tout many automation technologies over the years, all with limited impact—only to see the floor drop out now. And it’s not that ChatGPT is light years better than previous systems (lots of post-AI translation editing is still required), it’s just that businesses have been hearing months of hype and pontification about the arrival of AGI and mass automation, which has created the cover necessary to justify slashing rates and accepting “good enough” automation output for video games and media products. Everyone else is doing it, after all.

Yet much stands to be lost, even aside from decent wages and the livelihoods of the translators and interpreters who help make our cultures better understood."

bloodinthemachine.com/p/ai-kil

Blood in the Machine · AI Killed My Job: TranslatorsBy Brian Merchant
Continued thread

Clients-to-be, when you think of translation (of documents in different domains) or interpreting (different types of this in various domains) you might think that all agencies handle both.

Not necessarily. Some deal only with translation. Some only handle interpreting and some do both.

Yet others also offer:
- localization
- subtitling and/or dubbing
- mtpe (grrr), even in the pre-ai days.

Too much imo.

Oh and T & I agencies don't usually offer #literary #translation, just so you know.

Continued thread

Oh and also, dear potential clients, it is not that expensive to work with a decent freelance #translator charging what they realistically need to charge to earn a decent living from their work.

It is often dubious #translation agencies overcharging you, while underpaying the translators they find for your work, who cost you money.

Sometimes they don't even pick the right person, costing you even more money, and time.

Not all translation/nterpreting agencies obviously! Some are still decent.