Translation is a tussle with the impossible. Yet it is fundamental to the word. There is a persistent and misguided conception that translation consists simply of the substitution of words from one language to another.
This is an ignoramus mistake. It misinterprets and fundamentally misunderstands the word. No word can be substituted by a word from another language and match it identically for meaning, influence and association. This disparity in translation is accentuated when one takes on the task of translating between two radically different languages: Nepali and English.
(MYFOX NATIONAL) - Muammar Gaddafi's personal translator broke down towards the end of the Libyan leader's meandering 94-minute UN speech last week and had to be relieved by a UN Arabic speaker, according to the New York Post .
The Libyan interpreter reportedly collapsed from exhaustion after translating about 75 minutes of Gaddafi's speech, which lasted six times longer than the UN's 15-minute time limit.
"I just can’t take it any more," Khadafy's interpreter shouted into the live microphone in Arabic.
(CNN) -- One of the Internet's great promises is that it's the ultimate democratizer. It's open to everyone and allows all people to communicate.
But, so far, there have been several hitches in that plan. Not everyone has access to a computer and a broadband connection. Some governments still censor the Internet. And of course, we don't all speak the same language.
For the World Wide Web to be truly global, shouldn't Chinese speakers be able to chat online with people who only speak Spanish? And why should an English speaker be barred from reading blogs written in Malagasy or Zulu?
Without a doubt this is an exciting sounding feature, but how does the translation actually read to a speaker of that language?
Presumably the translation is handled by the same engine as Google Translate. I recently blogged about this kind of machine translation at "Making Sense" (worldaccent.com/blog) and, more importantly, its dangers. It can be great for getting the gist of something, but is also often way off beam.
