We include here two notes of interest that pertain to translation, with permission from, and thanks to, Stephen Dodson and his site, Language Hat. We begin with Note no.1:
ENSIMISMADA
October 29, 2017
Carina del Valle Schorske, a writer and translator and a doctoral candidate in comparative literature, has an interesting piece in the October 25th, NY Times Magazine about the struggles of translation:
Of course ensimismada is perfectly translatable, depending on context; here you could say, for example, “wrapped up in her own thoughts.” But the implications of translation are always worth paying attention to.
ENSIMISMADA
October 29, 2017
Carina del Valle Schorske, a writer and translator and a doctoral candidate in comparative literature, has an interesting piece in the October 25th, NY Times Magazine about the struggles of translation:
Of course ensimismada is perfectly translatable, depending on context; here you could say, for example, “wrapped up in her own thoughts.” But the implications of translation are always worth paying attention to.
It’s telling that the Puerto Rican poet I’m drawn to most — Marigloria Palma — is known for her mystery. Here is my translation of Norma Valle Ferrer’s account of seeing her on the streets of San Juan: “We were nearly neighbors and I used to see her walking the old city: tall, slim, almost always dressed in a black pencil skirt and bright patterned blouse, and shoes with very low heels. … It pains me that I never approached her, but she always seemed so ensimismada.”
In every process of translation, there’s always a word — or 10 — I don’t really want to translate. Sometimes English swallows these words whole, no italics necessary: “déjà vu,” “karaoke,” “schadenfreude.” I nominate “ensimismada” as an addition: its rumor of M’s and S’s, the way it snakes around itself then locks — “da” — like a necklace. If I translate it as “self-involved,” we lose this music and come face to face with all the negative judgments the music keeps at bay, too close for my comfort to“selfish” and “stuck up.” “Ensimismada” is really just the feminine adjectival form of “en si mismo,” meaning “in itself.” […] Ensimismada is the way someone else sees you: You’ve been caught in a reverie, and now your very relationship with yourself becomes the object of someone else’s interpretation. Is she tired? Why doesn’t she smile? Who is she, where is she going, why is she here? Maybe you’re the sort of person — a female person, a migrant person, a brown person — who is not encouraged to have a relationship with yourself. The look on your face translates as unacceptably distant, as almost foreign. |
Of course ensimismada is perfectly translatable, depending on context; here you could say, for example, “wrapped up in her own thoughts.” But the implications of translation are always worth paying attention to. For the full article written by Valle Schorske, see NYTimes Magazine.
“I’d like to return a curtain rod that I recently ordered.”
“That should be no problem. If you just give me your order number, I can email you a pre-paid postal label and we can credit your account.” “Perfect. My order number is D as in dog, B as in boy, P as in prince, ten seventy thirteen.” “To confirm, sir, that’s D as in Delhi, B as in Bangalore, P as in Punjab ten seventy thirteen.” “Yes, Delhi Bangalore Punjab ten seventy thirteen.” “Thank you, sir. I have generated that label and sent it to you. Is there anything else I can help you with?" - Hardy Griffin I’ll never forget, I was in Washington Square Park with my father. Around eight years old. It was fall and the leaves were blowing around like crazy, and there was Adolf Hitler sitting on a bench, looking very old and crazy, feeding pigeons, but he didn’t have his heart in it.
It began to drizzle and my father looked up at the sky. I glanced over at Garibaldi to see if he noticed. But his sword remained fixed midway between sheathed and brandished. This guy wasn’t going to lop off Hitler’s head, that’s for sure. I nudged my father and nodded quick toward the Great Dictator. But Jack looked through him and tracked the pretty girl legging it under the arch, her coat blown open. I wondered what Bea was cooking for dinner: creamed chicken on rice, I hoped. Then my father said: So what are you going to be for Halloween? And it all clicked into place. I don’t know, I said. Only next morning, crossing the park to school, I saw Hitler’s head stuck on top of a spike at the northwest corner by the hanging elm. And it wasn’t a rubber mask, it was real. So help me. — Eric Darton |
From Stephen Dodson and his site, Language Hat. Note no.2:
LUNFARDO
October 23, 2017
Bridget Gleeson writes for BBC Travel about a subject close to my heart: the characteristic local slang of Buenos Aires called lunfardo (whose name Wikipedia says is “from the Italian lumbardo or inhabitant of Lombardy in the local dialect”). She says that when the Argentine police first heard it, they assumed that it was “a sort of criminal jargon”
LUNFARDO
October 23, 2017
Bridget Gleeson writes for BBC Travel about a subject close to my heart: the characteristic local slang of Buenos Aires called lunfardo (whose name Wikipedia says is “from the Italian lumbardo or inhabitant of Lombardy in the local dialect”). She says that when the Argentine police first heard it, they assumed that it was “a sort of criminal jargon”
But according to Oscar Conde, an Argentinian professor who’s written two books on the subject, the cops were wrong.
“The birth of lunfardo is not related with criminality,” Conde writes, “but with European immigration to Argentina between 1880 and the beginning of World War I.” During those years, four million people, mostly Italians and Spaniards, arrived in Buenos Aires. The city became, as Conde puts it, “a real-life Babel”. In Buenos Aires at the turn of the 20th Century, Italian words were quickly adopted into everyday speech, sometimes with slight modifications. The Italian word femmina (woman), for instance, was shortened to mina; fiacco (laziness) became fiaca. Similarly, bacán (of or relating to the good life), biaba (hair dye or perfume) and laburar (to work) all have a basis in Italian. José Gobello, 20th-Century Argentinian writer and founder of the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo, a non-profit institution dedicated to the study of colloquial speech in Argentina, suggested that pibe (Fermin’s nickname for his friends) comes from the Italian word pivello, meaning ‘youngster’ or ‘novice’, or perhaps from pive, a word in the Genoese dialect that means ‘apprentice’. Spanish wordplay – particularly vesre, a form of language modification in which the last syllable of a word is moved to the start – also contributed to the development of lunfardo. The word ‘vesre’ itself is a play on the Spanish word revés, meaning reverse. Amigo (friend) became gomía, café (coffee) became feca and leche (milk) became chele. |
Gleeson goes on to discuss the history of tango (whose “lyrics were filled with lunfardo”) and provide some great anecdotes; not only the photos but the very word pibe fill me with nostalgia for my years in that great city.
On the rear window of the vehicle in front of us: "VIDA funerales." Charon, who is ferrying me home, snorts. Vida? We burst out laughing, juntos; and then, as we stall on Calle Styx, I digitize. Entry number 3 on my iPhone's Real Academia Dictionario of (European) Spanish, a tautology—"Viva: hecho de estar vivo"— though there are 17 more possiblities on its page. Not to be outdone, the phone's English to Spanish dictionary mutters: an obscenity, slang, argot, something to do with "puta." Oh, come now! "Vida airada: desordenada, licenciosa o violenta..." Purgatorio? The Grand Penal? Ah, dear Secularist, some believe life is eternal and that what's on the other side—presuming of course that you put down your anchor in the right place—is eternal bliss where Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry, Holy, Holy— No entropy. No se cambia. Eternity's traffic jam.
— Bronwyn Mills
— Bronwyn Mills