Photography by Robert Demeter Our New Positive Message Translation into French, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian Have you ever thought about sense of living? Why do we live our lives on this huge, lonely planet in the middle of nowhere? Maybe, there is no sense in this at all? Maybe, we just need to help each other feel loved and important in this life? Maybe, we just need to be happy and make everything we can to have no regrets when we are old and grey. As long as people on this planet share love, become friends, and inspire each other we can be absolutely sure that we are doing everything right. Be an example for the people around you, motivate them, help them improve and become better, make sure your life is inspiring! Help LingoStar translate this amazing message into different languages and share it with everybody! This life is so beautiful. Sometimes all we need is somebody to help us see this and not forget. Don’t hesitate to contact us and send your translations! We are looking forward to hearing from you! Positive Message in English: Your life is your message to the world. Make sure it is inspiring. Positive Message Translation into French: Ta vie est ton message au monde. Assures-toi que ce soit inspirant. Positive Message Translation into Italian: La tua vita è il tuo messaggio al mondo. Assicurati che sia d’ispirazione agli altri. Positive Message Translation into Russian: Ваша жизнь – это Ваше послание миру. Убедитесь в том, что оно вдохновляет. Positive Message Translation into Japanese: あなたの人生そのものが世界へのメッセージとなる。感動的なものにしよう。 Positive Message Translation into Slovak: Svojím...
Language, Translation, and Culture Today, the field of Translation Studies is more popular and successful then it has ever been before. Translation, just like language and culture, has always been a major topic of discussion; however, the most attention to this subject arose in the twentieth century and over the last two or three decades translation has become more visible and more attractive than ever before. What happened? What made Translation Studies such an important and respectable industry? Harish Trivedi, Professor of English at the University of Delhi, claims that there were three distinct moments in the twentieth century that served as reasons for the current translation boom. The first reason, according to Professor Trivedi, was the movement of translating Russian fiction into English. It began in the 1890s and continued until the 1930s, and it revealed for the English-speaking readers a whole new world of writings that were absolutely different from traditional Western literature. This movement resulted in the so called ‘Russian fever’ and the new tendency of translating works of numerous Russian writers and poets. The other two movements started at the end of the twentieth century when much attention was paid to previously disregarded parts of the world: Latin America and the countries of the Eastern Europe. Obviously, Translation Studies is such a developed industry today that we expect to have an access to the most sophisticated works of literature from all over the world. Unfortunately, it is not so easy. Despite the fact that book stores shelves are full of brilliantly translated foreign literature, a lot of truly fantastic authors are just inaccessible to us...
Positive Message Translations into 7 Languages There is a very good expression which says that we should never, ever give up on our way to something we really want just because it is difficult to wait. Why? The answer is that it is even more difficult to regret having given up. That’s true. Maybe, it doesn’t sound very optimistic, but it is much better to fail knowing that you have done whatever you could than not to try at all. Nobody likes to fail. However, failure is not the end. On the contrary, it gives you a chance to start all over again and to avoid those mistakes that you have made before. Look at it from a different angle and you will see that every single dream, every goal is worth trying and working hard. No one says it will be easy. But how fantastic you will feel when your goal is finally achieved. What we should do is to support, motivate, and inspire each other. Together we can make all our dreams come true! Don’t forget to inspire the people you love! Let’s share this beautiful message with as many people as possible. Don’t hesitate to contact us and send us your translations of today’s positive message. Good luck, friends! The Positive Message in English: If the plan doesn’t work, change the plan. But never the goal. The Positive Message Translation into French: Si le plan ne fonctionne pas, change le plan, jamais le but. The Positive Message Translation into Italian: Se un piano non funziona, cambia il piano, mai l’obiettivo. The Positive Message Translation into Russian:...
The Most Mysterious Manuscript in the World The world is full of secrets and mysterious things people cannot find adequate explanations for. Languages are not an exception. Today, there exist several manuscripts that linguists simply cannot translate! One of such texts is the Voynich manuscript which has become one of the most mysterious objects in history and can be found today in one of the libraries at Yale University. So what exactly is the Voynich manuscript? It is an illustrated codex handwritten in an unknown writing system which was discovered by a book dealer Wilfred M. Voynich outside of Rome in 1912. This unique book that the world’s best cryptographers and linguists have been trying to decipher for decades dates back to 15th century (or even 13th, as many scientists believe). This book is 235 pages long, full of coloured images of astrological charts, different plants, and living cells that look as if they were observed with the help of a microscope. Who wrote it? Some lost civilization? Was it human beings that created the book? Therefore is there any message that we cannot understand? What Became The Most Mysterious Manuscript Today many scholars are working on this book, and they argue about its possible origins. For instance, Stephen Bax, professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Bedfordshire, claims that he managed to decipher some words. His main goal was to focus on the proper names in the text – the method used for successful deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs. So, he has deciphered such proper names as Taurus, Coriander, Cotton, Juniper, Centaurea, Chiron, Hellebore Nigella Sativa, and Kesar....
Hamlet Translation for West African Tribal Elders One of the questions which many scholars have been trying to answer is whether people from different corners of the world share the same ideas and have the same values despite their cultures and languages. This subject was raised by anthropologists, philosophers, linguists and translators. One of these translators is Laura Bohannan, who translated Shakespearean Hamlet for a group of West African tribal elders. According to Bohannan just before she left Oxford, she protested that human nature is the same over the world and that the general plot and motivation of great tragedies will be clear everywhere. To translate the tragedy for the elders she had to take into account many cultural nuances; for example, the notion of ghosts does not exist in the culture of those tribes as they do not believe in the post-death survival of people. That is why the concept of ghosts became an omen sent by a witch to their culture. After the play was performed, the chiefs discussed it and disagreed on several moments. For instance, they thought that Hamlet had no right to investigate the reasons of his father’s death as it was his uncle’s business. One more thing that they noticed was that Claudius had to marry Gertrude in order to protect his family patrimony, etc. These examples demonstrate that not all cultures share the same assumptions. Hamlet turned out to be very exotic for West African tribes, and only certain moments were clear to them. If you are looking for a reliable translation agency to have your document translated into a language that...
Photo by Robert Demeter, taken from http://www.robertdemeterphotography.com/ Positive Message Translation into Italian, French, Russian, Japanese, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian The easiest thing to do is to say that you cannot do anything. ‘I just can’t…’ How many times have you heard or said it? Have you ever tried to prove you wrong and actually DO it! LingoStar team believes that there are no impossible things to do. All that you are required to do is to start working! Certainly, great success doesn’t come to people who say they can’t; it comes to those who work hard to say ‘I could, and I did it!’. Don’t be afraid of anything because fear doesn’t help us become better and stronger. Don’t focus on problems and remember: every problem can be solved. Have hopes, have dreams, have plans, and they will motivate you! We hope you will enjoy this week’s positive message and help LingoStar translate it into more languages. We are very happy to receive your translations and add them to the list. Don’t hesitate to contact us. Let’s have fun together! The Positive Message in English: When you focus on problems, you’ll have more problems. When you focus on possibilities, you’ll have more opportunities. The Positive Message Translation into French: Si te concentres sur les problèmes, tu n’auras que plus de problèmes. Si, au contraire, tu te concentres sur le possibilités, tu auras plus de opportunités. The Positive Message Translation into Italian: Se ti concentri sui problemi, avrai solo più problemi. Se, invece, ti concentri sulle possibilità, avrai più opportunità. The Positive Message Translation into Russian: Как только вы сосредоточитесь...
Successful Translations of Sitcoms Successful translations are extremely important when it comes to written text of scientific genre. This is true: all kinds of written material are problematic. It is important to find the right equivalents for the unique terminology and to make the translation clear and adequate. However, what usually makes even very good translators struggle is humor. If you are a native English speaker, you are lucky enough to watch the world’s most popular sitcoms such as Seinfeld, Friends, or The Big bang Theory in the original language and to be able to enjoy all the creative jokes. But, some people don’t speak English at all, and nevertheless they somehow manage to fall in love with these shows. This is a sign of successful translation and localization. Certainly, it is not a big problem to translate universal jokes that are clear out of the context and will sound almost the same in every language. But, what about linguistic and cultural jokes? For instance, when one of the main characters of Friends, Phoebe, gets married (season 10, episode 12), she doesn’t want to put anything on top of her light wedding dress, although they have an outside wedding, and it is freezing cold. So her friend, Chandler, asks her if she won’t get cold, and Phoebe replies: ‘I don’t care. I’ll be something blue’. There is no need to explain the meaning of this joke for people of the culture where it is a tradition for a woman to have something new, something blue, and something borrowed on when they get married. However, some cultures just do not have this...
The Positive Message Translation into Italian, French, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, and Slovak What does it really mean to be the best? Does it mean to be the strongest or the smartest or the most good-looking person in the world? The problem is that every day the smartest and the strongest man gets a chance to meet somebody who is smarter or stronger. We shouldn’t focus on being better than someone else. Every day we should have a goal: to become better people than we already are. As long as you move towards this goal this life will make sense and will get even more and more interesting. Enjoy being yourselves! Check out LingoStar’s translations of today’s positive message. Don’t hesitate to send us your translations. Let’s share this message with everyone! The Positive Message in English: It’s not about being the best. It’s about being better than you were yesterday. The Positive Message Translation into Italian: L’importante non è essere i migliori, ma essere migliori di quanto si era ieri. The Positive Message Translation into French: L’important ce n’est pas d’être le meilleur, mais d’être meilleur de ce qu’on était hier. The Positive Message Translation into Russian: Дело не в том, чтобы быть лучшим. Дело в том, чтобы стать лучше, чем вы были вчера. The Positive Message Translation into Japanese: 一番でいることではなく、昨日の自分より成長していることが大事なのだ。 The Positive Message Translation into Slovak: Nie je dôležité byť najlepším, ale lepším ako včera. The Positive Message Translation into Ukrainian: Річ ну в тім, щоб бути найкращим. Річ у тім, щоб стати краще, ніж ви були вчора. The Positive Message Translation into Czech: Nejde o to být nejlepší....
Spanish Translation The increase of the Spanish speaking population in North America has resulted in an increased demand for professional Spanish translation and interpretation, especially in the legal and medical fields. Certainly, a translator has to have native or near-native fluency in one of the two languages if he or she wants to work with English – Spanish language pair. Excellent grammar and wide vocabulary are a couple traits that will make someone a good professional translator. However, these skills are just not enough to provide high-quality translation, especially in such important fields as medicine and law. To provide successful legal translation from Spanish to English, it is necessary to be familiar with nuances of all the legal procedures, otherwise you risk getting confused while translating. These include for instance, Spanish and English cognates. Read the following example: Las partes han acordado celebrar el presente contrato con el fin de construir un puente. The parties have agreed to celebrate this contract for the purpose of building a bridge. Do you think this is an incorrect translation? It looks quite adequate. However, in the case of contracts translation, such a translation is unacceptable. As this sentence refers to the formation of the contract, the word ‘celebrate’ is not appropriate, and a translator should use the word ‘enter into’ instead. This verb will denote the actual meaning of the sentence, and the result we will get will be more professional: The parties have agreed to enter into this contract for the purpose of building a bridge. It is also very important to know how to localize the text into English from...
Translation of Proper Names There is a common misconception that proper names are never translated. However, if you ever paid attention to various newspaper articles in foreign language or to some magazines, you may have noticed that, for instance, Queen Elizabeth II is translated as Reina Isabel II and Alliance Française is translated as Instituto Británico in Spanish. Translators actually do a lot of things with proper names. Sometimes they keep proper names non-translated, which leads to different pronunciation in a target language; sometimes they use transcription and transliteration, cultural adaptation, substitution, and so on. As you can see, there are a lot of ways to translate a proper name, and it requires very sensitive decision-making on the part of a translator. Besides, it depends on the type of translation. If one is specializing in the certified translation of official documents, one is unlikely to look for the meaning of the client’s name and just use transliteration to make it sound the same in the target language as it does in the source language. However, in literature we can often find examples of successfully (and unsuccessfully) translated proper names that have the same effect on the target audience as the original name does. For example, the most controversial and one of the most interesting characters of the Harry Potter book series – Severus Snape – doesn’t have the same name in other languages. In Romanian he is Severus Plesneală, in Hungarian – Perselus Piton, in Italian – Severus Piton, in French – Severus Rogue, and in Russian – Северус Снегг (Severus Snegg). For many translators it was more important...
