A while back, user Sudanglo would occasionally challenge forum members to translate excerpts from English texts, most of which were quite difficult and required a certain ingenuity. I really enjoyed these "challenges" and now want to resurrect them.

So what I'd like to do in this thread is to submit, about once a week, a few paragraphs from high-level English prose and encourage readers to post their own translations into Esperanto. The English excerpts should come from well-written sources, be diverse in vocabulary, and make some use of colloquialisms, idioms, or other lingvaĵoj that do not lend themselves well to literal translation, and instead require the translator to use his imagination and draw on his skills to render a natural-sounding esperantigo. I hope this will help people expand their vocabulary and get away from the occasional tendency to "speak Esperanto while thinking in English".

Here's an excerpt to get started:

Someone said he had a friend who liked to shoot model airplane glue. No one else had heard of that. Sniffing glue, yes; but not shooting it. They had heard of people doing something to paregoric and shoe polish and then shooting it, but the high was reported to be no good. Heroin, of course, was the best. Heroin and a bombita [amphetamine mixture]. It gave the best high, completely relaxed, not a problem in the world.

"But that's not really the best high," one addict said. "Do you know what the best high really is?" The voice was serious. Everyone turned and stayed very quiet to hear, maybe, of a new kind of high that was better than heroin, better than anything else.

"The best high" - the voice was low and somber - "is death."

Silence. "Man, that's outta sight, that's somethin' else. Yeah, no feelin' at all." Everyone agreed. The best high of all was death.

(from James Mills, The World of the Needle Park, Life, February 26, 1965)

If the task were, for example, to translate the passage into French, then equivalents would be sought in French from the language use in the junkie sub-culture in French speaking countries, the bulk of the passage presenting no particular syntactic problems.

However, no such culture, with its attendant jargon, exists in the Esperanto-speaking community. Therefore any translation into Esperanto would necessarily lack the validity that a translation into a major national language might have.

The terminological problems are quite different to, say, finding an Esperanto expression for 'styrofoam plastic cup' or 'model aeroplane glue' where a consensus about what constitutes a good translation is achievable.

The representation of what the linguists call register is problematic in Esperanto - which is not to say that we shouldn't rise to the challenge, but it is to say that the suggestions must be of a essentially just literary merit.

I think that this is an EXCELLENT idea, and I'm so glad we're doing it. However, since most of us are busy people, please don't mistake a slow response for a lack of interest. This could spin off into several hearty (and informative) discussions about the best ways to render various meanings. I could even see a case evetually being made for a separate thread being included in the forums for translation practice. Personally, I fully intend to take advantage of this, but as I indicated, it may take a few days.

Thank you for doing this!

The representation of what the linguists call register is problematic in Esperanto - which is not to say that we shouldn't rise to the challenge, but it is to say that the suggestions must be of a essentially just literary merit.

This is actually what I was striving for: a creative, literary-style translation. Perhaps I should have been clearer.

I'm aware that there aren't any hard-and-fast equivalents for a lot of subculture terminology and slang. Part of what I'm aiming for is a convincing interpretation of how these terms, along with the more general language use and "register" that goes along with them, would look like. Hence why I said the translator should use his imagination.

I'm aware that the provided text was not easy, and that this might have put some people off. I'll provide my own translation of the excerpt if no one else is interested or willing. Next time I might find something with a bit less jargon (though, again, I'm looking to avoid "bookish" or instruction-manual-like texts, and instead select something that challenges the translator to be creative).

Thank you for doing this!

Thanks for the encouragement!

I'm comically underqualified in Esperanto (one day...) but I think this is an excellent idea. At uni, once we had a fairly decent comment of the language, we were given texts in English and Russian each week to translate and ge marked. It also formed a significant portion of our exams. It was challenging but man, did you learn. The one I have the most vivid memory of was when we were given a passage of Wodehoue to translate. 20 years old, less than two years of the language, and attempting to turn Jeeves and Wooster into a piece of Russian literature.

Needless to say, I'm fairly sure none of us did a sterling job, but we learned a heck of a lot trying!

My attempt (since this has been slow to start):

----
Iu diris, ke li havis amikon, al kiu plaĉis injekti aeroplanmodelan gluon. Neniu pri tio aŭdis. Pri glusnufado, jes - sed pri injektado, ne. Oni aŭdis pri homoj umantaj ion kun paregoriko kaj ŝupoluraĵo, injektonte ĝin, sed laŭraporte la rezultanta eŭforio nebonis. Heroino, kompreneble, estis la plej bona. Heroino kun bombito. [1] Ĝi donis la sentegojn plej bonajn, tute trankviligajn, sen ajna problemo en la tutmondo.

"Sed tio ne vere estas la plej bona eŭforio," diris unu maniulo. "Ĉu vi scias, kiu eŭforio vere estas la plej bona?" La voĉo seriozis. Ĉiuj turniĝis kaj restis tre silentaj por aŭdi pri nova eŭforio, eble pli bona ol la heroina, eble pli bona ol
ĉio alia.

"La plej bona eŭforio" - la voĉo mallaŭtis kaj sombris - "estas morto."

Silentado. "Ha! Jen mirigaĵo, jen io aparta. Ja, neniu sento entute!" Kaj ĉiuj konsentis: la plej bona eŭforio estis morto.

[1] Miksaĵo de amfetaminoj.

[EDIT: replace quotebox with italics]

Tempodivalse:A while back, user Sudanglo would occasionally challenge forum members to translate excerpts from English texts, most of which were quite difficult and required a certain ingenuity. I really enjoyed these "challenges" and now want to resurrect them.

So what I'd like to do in this thread is to submit, about once a week, a few paragraphs from high-level English prose and encourage readers to post their own translations into Esperanto. The English excerpts should come from well-written sources, be diverse in vocabulary, and make some use of colloquialisms, idioms, or other lingvaĵoj that do not lend themselves well to literal translation, and instead require the translator to use his imagination and draw on his skills to render a natural-sounding esperantigo. I hope this will help people expand their vocabulary and get away from the occasional tendency to "speak Esperanto while thinking in English".

Here's an excerpt to get started:

Someone said he had a friend who liked to shoot model airplane glue. No one else had heard of that. Sniffing glue, yes; but not shooting it. They had heard of people doing something to paregoric and shoe polish and then shooting it, but the high was reported to be no good. Heroin, of course, was the best. Heroin and a bombita [amphetamine mixture]. It gave the best high, completely relaxed, not a problem in the world.

"But that's not really the best high," one addict said. "Do you know what the best high really is?" The voice was serious. Everyone turned and stayed very quiet to hear, maybe, of a new kind of high that was better than heroin, better than anything else.

"The best high" - the voice was low and somber - "is death."

Silence. "Man, that's outta sight, that's somethin' else. Yeah, no feelin' at all." Everyone agreed. The best high of all was death.

(from James Mills, The World of the Needle Park, Life, February 26, 1965)

This sounds awesome! I hope to have my contribution before I go to bed. (I say now.)

No one else had heard of that - Neniu en la grupo estis aŭdinta pri tio/ antaŭe aŭdis pri tio/ ĝis tiam aŭdis pri tio.

Oni aŭdis pri homoj umantaj ion kun paregoriko kaj ŝupoluraĵo, injektonte ĝin.

Tempo I found this confusing, not immediately seeing how the 'injektonte' related. And why 'ont'?

Also why 'oni' when it is those people present who had heard of that?

I would prefer something like 'Ili jam aŭdis pri homoj kiuj fabrikis ion el ŝupoluraĵo kaj paregoriko kaj (tiam) injektis la miksaĵon.

sudanglo:No one else had heard of that - Neniu en la grupo estis aŭdinta pri tio/ antaŭe aŭdis pri tio/ ĝis tiam aŭdis pri tio.

Oni aŭdis pri homoj umantaj ion kun paregoriko kaj ŝupoluraĵo, injektonte ĝin.

Tempo I found this confusing, not immediately seeing how the 'injektonte' related. And why 'ont'?

Also why 'oni' when it is those people present who had heard of that?

I would prefer something like 'Ili jam aŭdis pri homoj kiuj fabrikis ion el ŝupoluraĵo kaj paregoriko kaj (tiam) injektis la miksaĵon.

Thanks for the feedback. I think I "tried too hard" to make a pithy translation, and clarity suffered.

Good point about antaŭe aŭdis. I forgot about the need to indicate a past perfect. Is el la grupo really necessary, though? Assuming this is an excerpt out of a larger text, it seems the appropriate qualification for neniu would already be implicit.

As for -onte - well, I thought the sequence of actions was clear enough - one mixes the paregoriko and ŝupoluraĵo, about to (in order to) inject the mixture. (I agree that miksaĵon is clearer than ĝin.) I suppose it would be more typical to say kaj poste injektis, or kaj tiam injektis.

But is -onte strictly inappropriate? After all, if it had been kaj samtempe injektis or post kiam injektis instead of kaj poste injektis, nobody would raise an eyebrow at the alternative injektante and injektinte, respectively. It would seem -onte is the equivalent for future events, e.g. kaj (tuj/baldaŭ) poste. So why is it so confusing here? Is it just the ĝin?

Years of writing philosophical papers have trained me to be vortŝparema. Hence I prefer to use adverbial participles instead of correlatives to express time/sequence of events, and adjectival participles instead of "[substantivo], kiu [verbas]".

I personally find this improves readability and make texts look "cleaner", though others, mostly speakers of English and Romance languages (in which adverbial and adjectival participles are not often used in everyday conversation) have consequently found my Esperanto "foreign" or heavy. Perhaps this results from Slavic influence. (Russian is big on participles!)

BTW - here's a new thread I started that relates to my above confusion about -onte:

http://en.lernu.net/komunikado/forumo/temo.php?t=1...