Euronews.com – Translation
Task
Recently
our teacher Frank recommended watching a video on euronews.com and then
listening to the German and Arabic (it should be your second foreign language –
in my case Arabic) version while trying to translate them a little bit.
Well,
first I want to share a couple of words about euronews.com! After all, I can
say that I’m really glad that our teacher told us about it. Until now, I knew
euronews only from their news channel on TV. Their website, however, is a real
gift for students of translation studies. At least I don’t know any other one,
where you can watch every video and read every article (actually you can
translate the whole website) in overall 14 languages including: English,
Russian, Turkish, French, Hungarian, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic,
Persian, Greek, Polish and another Soviet language which I can’t transcribe as
they are written in their native script.
Euronews
covers a wide range of topics separated into many categories like
Europe-topics, business, sports, culture, travel etc. What’s more, you can
either watch euronews LIVE or listen to euronews RADIO, both again in any of
the 14 languages you like. Every video is completely transcribed as well.It’s just perfect if you want to train your listening or translating skills in either of the languages you study. I really recommend taking a look.
Well,
the video that I chose for this task is called Unchain my language or Lasst
meine Sprache frei! in German and
الترجمة: جسر لعبور النص الأدبي الى العالم أجمع
in Arabic.
The video is about the struggle with writing in special languages, in this case in Latvian, as the chances that your book becomes a bestseller internationally or at least sells internationally shrinks the more extravagant your language is (extravagant in terms of it’s not spoken by many people and mostly only in one country). Even if the book is exceptionally good and a fine piece of literature it always depends where and in which language you write it.
The Latvian author in the video Inga Zolude describes her native literature as unique, specific and of high quality. However, apparently it’s not English thus it won’t get much attention, as e.g. “English readers tend not to read translated literature” (according to an English translator in the video). The major problem for these authors is to find and afford an appropriate translator from these special languages into English.
To help such authors to reach a broader audience, the EU has created the European Prize for Literature, one of whose winner is Inga.
First
I listened to the vid in English and then in German (the German speaker has
such a depressive voice it’s horrible – German speakers in euronews in general
sadly). It’s funny how some translations are nearly word for word translations
while others are completely different from the (mainly) English model.
Concerning Arabic, it was just the regular procedure of listening and screaming out loud if you understood one particular word – it’s always funny though.
Well,
since I can’t paste videos of euronews in here, this identic version of youtube
will have to fit. Here is the link to the webpage in euronews, though!
Have fun trying this task
as well!
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