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Webcomic Translation

od Tidalias, 20. apríla 2008

Príspevky: 16

Jazyk: English

Tidalias (Zobraziť profil) 20. apríla 2008 2:15:23

So, I've taken a crack at translating all of The Abominable Charles Christopher into Esperanto. Others have translated it into Danish, French, German, and Portuguese, so I figured Esperanto could reach an even wider range of languages, if a bit limited in audience numbers.

Trouble is, I'm not terribly confident on how natural or accurate all of my translations sound, since I haven't been speaking Esperanto for too long. I encourage you to go read this amazing comic from the beginning, open my transcript to check as you go, and critique any of the translations that you think could be better. I'd love to make this a very good translation, for Esperantists everywhere to read through.

See the attached file for my transcript.

And for the comic, see:
http://horhaus.com/abominable/2007/06/20/episode-1...

Once I've got what everyone agrees is a pretty good transcript, I'll make my way through translating it graphically and getting the Esperanto mirror site up for everyone to enjoy.

Tidalias (Zobraziť profil) 26. apríla 2008 23:19:40

My previous request may have been a bit hefty for most of your time constraints. Realizing that, I'd just like to ask for help properly translating one specific panel of the comic that's bothering me.

http://horhaus.com/abominable/2007/08/22/09/

I'm not so sure how to translate that "Son of a...!!" into something that people everywhere would be able to understand in Esperanto and which would have the same intended feeling. My transcript's literal translation of "Filo de...!!" seems less than correct for the situation.

Any suggestions for a good near-expletive?

awake (Zobraziť profil) 27. apríla 2008 3:32:24

Tidalias:My previous request may have been a bit hefty for most of your time constraints. Realizing that, I'd just like to ask for help properly translating one specific panel of the comic that's bothering me.

http://horhaus.com/abominable/2007/08/22/09/

I'm not so sure how to translate that "Son of a...!!" into something that people everywhere would be able to understand in Esperanto and which would have the same intended feeling. My transcript's literal translation of "Filo de...!!" seems less than correct for the situation.

Any suggestions for a good near-expletive?
The problem is that translating an idiom is often very difficult. If you say something like "He had to take a leak" you're going to lose the meaning if you translate it word for word. If you translate it as "He had to urinate" or "He had to piss" you communicate the meaning but not the whimsy of the expression. In that sense, some things are simply impossible to translate directly from one language to another with 100% of the nuance and meaning intact. In those cases, it is probably better to strictly translate the meaning.

The problem is that "Son of a bitch" may not be a common idiom in many languages. Certainly the entire insult would be understood, but if you are truncating it you're going to not only lose the nuance, but you'll lose the meaning as well.

The meaning here is shock. It seems to me that any expletive expressing shock would work here.

Diable! (Of the Devil!)

Fek! (Shit!)

maybe even Kristo! (Christ!)

Tidalias (Zobraziť profil) 27. apríla 2008 6:48:32

Yeah, I was figuring a literal translation wouldn't read well into many languages, but I couldn't think of many Esperanto expletives with the right sound to them. I like the sound of "Kristo!" for that particular character/moment. Thanks for taking the time to offer your suggestions- they're much appreciated.

Miland (Zobraziť profil) 27. apríla 2008 11:02:13

Kristo! is culturally localised to the Western world, apart from being impious. 'Fek!' might be more suitable for an international language.
Another solution may be to find out from E-literature what expressions have been used in situations where one character says 'You S.O.B.' to another. I can think of one example: in the Old Testament (1 Sam 20:30) Saul says 'You son of a whore!' (New Living Translation)' or 'You son of a perverse, rebellious woman!' (Older translations) which might be translated dynamically by 'you S.O.B.' Zamenhof put this Ho filo de obstina virino. (The texts just quoted can be looked up and searched freely on-line).

Following these, one possibility might be an expression like putin-ido. Or create another neologismo and see whether it wins acceptance. Swear words often originate from things associated, however it happens, with contempt or other negative emotions. Teroristo is one possibility in the modern word.

erinja (Zobraziť profil) 27. apríla 2008 20:33:58

Tidalias, your text has a lot of grammatical errors in it. I am willing to go through and correct it but it will take some time.

Incidentally, "Ĉarls" is a very rare way of esperantizing a name. Normally, if a name already exists in Esperanto translation, we use the Esperanto version rather than translating the English sound. In this case, the Esperanto name for Charles is Karlo. I would call the guy "Karlo Kristofero" in Esperanto.

Tidalias (Zobraziť profil) 28. apríla 2008 3:25:17

Thank you for your insight, Miland, you make a good point. I believe a simple "Fek!" will be the best compromise for conveying it to as wide an audience as possible, based on what's been said so far.

Erijna, thank you for your willingness to help with the project, if you find the time. I suppose I should've waited until I'd had more experience with Esperanto before diving in to translate something like this, but I'm hoping to learn from it, too, especially when comparing any corrections to what I'd had.

I searched a name list or two for an Esperanto version of Charles to no end, so thank you for the more proper translation. I was figuring Ĉharls was a little on the literal side.

There's no rush on you to help, as any help at all is out of the kindness of your heart. I do hope you'll take a liking to the lovely comic as well, though, if you read through it.

Hauxkins (Zobraziť profil) 15. augusta 2011 16:29:56

I found this old thread searching for a translation for "webcomic", as "reta bild-rakonto" was a little unwieldy..anyone have any ideas?

Anyway, I thought I'd make you aware of some slang my group uses for "take a leak": maldrinki. Hope that's of some use!

erinja (Zobraziť profil) 15. augusta 2011 17:31:15

maltrinki seems common among the junularo

I'd love to know the difference, however, between maltrinki and maldrinki.

You maltrinki, having drunk a cola, and you maldrinki, having had a night out with your mates?

---

I say "retkomikso" for webcomic. It's found in Wikipedia, so I guess I'm not the only one who does this. Komikso is probably an anglismo. But I have occasionally been surprised when talking with Esperantist Europeans, who use terms that I wouldn't normally use myself, and which I would consider anglismoj.

ceigered (Zobraziť profil) 15. augusta 2011 22:35:18

Maldrinki sounds like it could "mal" from a number of locations, knowing how "drinkado" is done nowadays.

For "Filo de...", perhaps half-include the next word, e.g. "Filo de diab-" (I think most would understand "son of a devil" to be pretty insulting or at least insinuating the person is a bit of a rascal, depending on context).

Latter link also says "not found" now.

Nahor