unforum

[Tenchizard]

[ARTIFACT]Babel Syndrome

[Chid12]

It's difficult. To properly translate the documents would need someone who is fluent in Esperanto. I've studied languages - though never Esperanto - and the documents are tricky to translate for several reasons:

- They use complex verb conjugations;
- There are mis-spellings in the Esperanto;
- Accents are often missed out in the Esperanto;
- They use phrases and words which aren't proper Esperanto, but are translated from an original language into an Esperanto equivalent (take 'tut-kosmologiistoj' for example).

So even a native Esperanto speaker wouldn't be able to translate the documents with absolute ease.

When I translate the Chapters into English, I use three different online translating tools, my own (limited) knowledge of Esperanto, and my (fairly good) understanding of Latin languages. The translations I produce won't be perfect, although I think that they're better than the ones on the wiki.

One big problem - and this is a problem for any translator - is how far to stray from the literal translation. Literally translating the Esperanto to English (as the wiki translations seem to be) often means it's difficult to understand the English, but the more you change it, the more you re-arrange the words and use synonyms so the final text sounds and feels more English, the more you stray from the original meaning. So it's a delicate balancing act.

A perfect translation would, as I say, require a native Esperanto speaker. I'm not sure we have one. But as you said, some time and care helps tremendously. I hope that my translations make sense. Where I simply cannot translate/understand a phrase, I try and make it clear.

I'm not really suggesting ideas here am I! What would be great would be a group of people coming together to discuss the translation of each document sentence by sentence. But that takes time and organisation. But it would be useful.

[brodie]

chid12, isn't Esperanto a created language? Ergo, there are no native speakers. Except, I guess, the creator?

[Elizabeth123]

Chid12, I want to nominate you as our Esperanto translator of choice! You've done an excellent job. I don't think Tenchizard was talking about your translations at all, but others who don't do it as well. I don't know...Maybe we should just all agree not to post translations on the wiki until a couple people agree it's in as good a shape as it's going to be?

[Aerith]

I agree with you both. And I also think that your translations are better than the ones on the wiki. Your's are easier to follow and no words are missing.
When reading the translations on the wiki I had the feeling that words were missing and it made it difficult for me to read.
Nevertheless I appreciate the work of ALL translators.

I aslo agree to your point that a group working together on a translation and discussing sentence by sentence is a proper way to make sure that the translations are almost perfect. But yeah...lots of time and organization is needed.

I liked the way Brenna and I did it with the translation of Markus' diary. I'm a native german speaker and she's a native english speaker with knowledge of german and french.
I was translating from english into german and she did the "fine tuning". Besides that her own translations from german into english are great. Just to bring it back to the group translation work, I think it helped alot to have more eyes looking on one single translation to make sure the translation is easily understandable to everyone.

I know it's not an esperanto translation and we have few people translation from esperanto but I think such work would be possible here too.

*Aerith*

[thebruce]

by all means - the wiki is collaborative, editable by all - if you see an alternate, potentially better translation or content, make the change.

[GeekDream]

Im glad you brought this up cause its something im finding frustrating as well...

I go to the wiki and there is a ton of things not translated... like i posted elsewhere on this forum... I WANT to know what markus's diary says... and after almost a week its done...

Sure we have a lot of translators... but im pretty sure they dont want to spend hours of every day translating all these things out.... If there is a rough translation that goes up... that everyone can get at least an idea of whats going on.... then in my opinion thats better than a big white box that says 'translation'..

Of course Bablefish and such is not a good translator.. thats why they are free... and the people who are fluent.. should be able to much more quickly skim between the two and translate out obviously bad words (dresses= clothes comes to mind)....

Is it not better that there is a rough idea of translation as appose to nothing?

[GeekDream]

[Aerith]

[limako]

Esperanto

[limako]

Denaskaj parolantoj

[Elizabeth123]

[Chid12]

Give me an hour OK? :p

[Elizabeth123]

Sorry, Chid! You're usually so fast, when you didn't post something within the first few hours I assumed you were worn out from all your other translating. Take your time!

[AUZ505]

my 2 cents as someone translating from english into german. As Chid12 already said, the problem is the balance between literal translation and correct (understandable) German (in my case).

Actually I speculate that there are chapters, where a more free translation is not that bad, because a more or less general story is told. On the other side, there are some chapters where explicit things are explained, e.g. the rules of the game. Perhaps those chapters need careful revision.

If there ís someone around who can translate Esperanto to German, I would be very glad to discuss the translations with him (or even better: let him/her do the work ).

There is a discussion page for every wiki page, which could be used for such a purpose.

One last remark: I think one problem with the "I am the fastest"-translations is that same words are translated differently in different chapters, e.g. "synchroneous labyrinth" and "simulataneous labyrinth". So at least the translator should look up how a word has been translated in the former chapters before "inventing" a new one!