An excellent article by Miranda France: Here’s a translator’s tale: it’s early morning and I’m working on a scene from an Argentinian thriller. A woman has discovered her husband’s infidelity and leaves him a chilling message on the mirror written in rouge. In rouge. That doesn’t sound right. Although I’ve never tried it, I think… Continue reading The twists and turns of literary translation
Month: March 2019
I’m slightly acidic
While cleaning out a desk drawer I found these amusing machine translation errors I’d noted down months ago. So here they are (sorry about the line breaks within words): Mensch das ist super lieb. Human that is super nice. Man, that’s really nice. Ich war nur ehrlich und habe jetzt den Salat. I was just… Continue reading I’m slightly acidic
Let’s Go: tenth-century Germany
Long before Berlitz, Lonely Planet and Let’s Go – long even before Baedeker – there was this handy German phrasebook for travelers from Francia, with the German translated into Vulgar Latin: I can show you all this thanks to Wilhelm Braune’s Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, which is in the public domain. You might think this doesn’t look… Continue reading Let’s Go: tenth-century Germany