French: “Top des Mornin à Ya!”
German: “Spitze der Mornin zu Ya!”
Simplified Chinese: “顶部以遐的早晨！

When most people think of translation, they may think of someone flipping through a dictionary and finding a direct substitute. However, a translator who literally translates a document word for word does not necessarily create a readable document.

Translation is more than using a dictionary; it’s also a form of writing. In order to write a clearly understandable document, you must fully understand the nuances of the meaning and the culture into which you’re translating. Then, instead of just looking at one word at a time, you must find a way to convey that same meaning into the second language. This may mean adapting idiomatic expressions, as we saw in “Top of the mornin to ya!”

A different way of seeing the problem is with machine translation programs. A friend of mine used a machine translator and the result often came out laughable. A prime example is her nickname, “Moonshine”. The machine translator communicated it as “Alcool de contrebande”. Yes, this does mean Moonshine in French, but it means the illegal hooch created during Prohibition. We found it much funnier than her usual nickname, which refers to the moonlight.

Another important point is to think of your audience. You may be translating for high-level technical people, in which case a more direct approach might work. However, you may be translating for people who don’t have a great understanding of the subject. In this case, you may need to find a clearer way of stating the subject.

Monterey Language Service specializes in clear and meaningful translation/interpretation.   We can assist you in all your translation and interpretation needs in every language.

By Heidi Ripplinger

An example of the evolution of English can be seen in the spellings of words in Anglo-Saxon, also called Old English.  The following passage from the epic poem Beowulf is an example:

Hwæt! wē Gār-Dena in ġeār-dagum,
þēod-cyninga, þrym ġefrūnon

The words hwæt, dagum and cyninga translate to the Modern English words what, day and king, except that certain letters of course changed.  In fact, there are letters that disappeared entirely from English.  Two such letters in the passage above are æ (ash) and þ (thorn), but others include ð (eth) and ƿ (wynn).  Over time, these letters were replaced with other letters.  For example, “th” represents all interdental sounds in English.

Another notable change in English occurred in verb conjugations.  Until the 1600s, the second-person singular pronoun was thou, with the verb conjugation –(e)st, as in thou knowest.  Then, the pronoun and its conjugation were dropped from English and replaced by you, although it still appears in religious texts and in the works of Shakespeare.

English has evolved since it first arose.  It is classified as a Germanic language, and of course maintains a number of Germanic root words, like gold.  But the language also acquired words like happy from Norse, words like nation from Latin, words like hyperbole from Greek, and words like algebra from Arabic.  During the 20th century, the language added Bolshevik from Russian and mahatma from Sanskrit, in addition to the names of numerous kinds of foods from different cultures.