English Lessons!

I'm back with my english lessons! Today, it's a lesson i know you'll benefit from!! Enjoy!

Telephone: language expert

     Multi-word verbs

One thing you can do to improve your telephone skills is to learn some of the multi-word verbs that are commonly used in telephone conversations. Most of them are featured in this module. Hold on means 'wait' – and hang on means 'wait' too. Be careful not to confuse hang on with hang up! Hang up means 'finish the call by breaking the connection' – in other words: 'put the phone down.'
Another phrasal verb with the same meaning as hang up is ring off. The opposite of hang up / ring off is ring up – if you ring somebody up, you make a phone call. And if you pick up the phone, (or pick the phone up) you answer a call when the phone rings.

"Hang on a second..."

If you are talking to a receptionist, secretary or switchboard operator, they may ask you to hang on while they put you through – put through means to connect your call to another telephone. With this verb, the object (you, me, him, her etc.) goes in the middle of the verb: put you through.

But if you can't get through to (contact on the phone) the person you want to talk to, you might be able to leave a message asking them to call you back. Call back means to return a phone call – and if you use an object (you, me, him, her etc.), it goes in the middle of the verb: call you back.

Translating Pushkin!

          (From the website: http://www.pushkins-poems.com/)

In the hope of making Pushkin available to more readers, especially those who have only a slight knowledge of Russian, or none at all, this web site is dedicated to providing a translation of some of his poems. The Russian text is set alongside the translation, to provide easy comparisons for those who wish to make their own efforts. There is very little of Pushkin available on the Internet in English, and this site was, at the time of writing (2001), the only one that provided an English version of Yevgeny (Eugene) Onegin. All of Yevgeny Onegin and a few other poems are currently available, both in Russian and English. The Gypsies has been recently added (Sept 2009). Below is one of Pushkin's well known poems. The Russian text is presented as a photographic image, to obviate the possible difficulty of downloading Russian script.

From April 2010 some early Chekhov short stories have been added. Check the link above to see what is available.

		By A. Pushkin If I walk the noisy streets, Or enter a many thronged church, Or sit among the wild young generation, I give way to my thoughts. I say to myself: the years are fleeting, And however many there seem to be, We must all go under the eternal vault, And someone's hour is already at hand. When I look at a solitary oak I think: the patriarch of the woods. It will outlive my forgotten age As it outlived that of my grandfathers'. If I caress a young child, Immediately I think: farewell! I will yield my place to you, For I must fade while your flower blooms.
		Each day, every hour I habitually follow in my thoughts, Trying to guess from their number The year which brings my death. And where will fate send death to me? In battle, in my travels, or on the seas? Or will the neighbouring valley Receive my chilled ashes? And although to the senseless body It is indifferent wherever it rots, Yet close to my beloved countryside I still would prefer to rest. And let it be, beside the grave's vault That young life forever will be playing, And impartial, indifferent nature Eternally be shining in beauty.
		Views of St. Petersburg in the 19th Century

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. This translation of Yevgeny Onegin was done between January 2000 and February 2001 as a project for the Internet. It is not intended to supercede all other translations. The reality is that very little Pushkin in English was to be found on the Internet at the time of writing. Even the two providers of free texts, Project Gutenberg and the Oxford Text Archive, offer nothing at all of Pushkin's (Jan 2001). [Now however I am glad to say that more is available.] The intention of this web site is to make some of Pushkin's work freely available in English to all who have access to a computer. The English translation offered is provided for those who cannot read the Russian, but who still wish to read Pushkin, and also as an aid to students. It has tried to follow the original fairly closely, so that as far as possible the English reader can see which line of the original the translation derives from. Nevertheless some freedom has been used, in particular by abandoning Pushkin's rhyme scheme. This is impossible to copy in English with any accuracy or fidelity to the sense. Many attempts have been made, and one looks in wonder at the achievements of translators, but I have often felt that the sheer cleverness of English translations distracts from the original and leads one away from Pushkin. This does not mean that I eschew verse and rhyme completely. Indeed I have been happy to pluck rhymes from the air, and I have been happy also to use hidden and oblique rhymes, wherever it improves the flow of language, or helps to suggest the subtlety and vivacity of the original. I have used more freedom in the translation of the closing couplets than elsewhere, as I believe that doing so preserves more of the spirit of Pushkin than could be achieved by adhering to a more wooden and technically accurate translation. The main aim has been to convey as much as possible of Pushkin's liveliness, the sheer abundance of his invention, and the daring unexpectedness of his wit. There is nothing like it in English literature, and non-Russian readers are depriving themselves of a great treasure by ignoring it. I hope this web site will go some way towards remedying this lack. It is of course not possible to please everyone. That would be more than a minor miracle, as no doubt even the original was and is disliked by a few readers. I suspect my translation will appeal more to native English speakers than to Russians, since in some places it is slightly irreverent, although I trust that Pushkin's sense of humour would have ensured that he himself would not have felt offended. I am conscious of inadequacies in the translation, some of which might be remediable, but others which it will probably be impossible to eradicate. Apologies also for any errors in the Russian text. Please keep me informed of these and I will do my best to correct them. The translation is by G. R. Ledger. Best wishes to all. И да поможет Господь всем бесприютным скитальцам. G.R.Ledger. Aug. 2009.

25 ‘Rules’ for Translating Poetry!

25 ‘Rules’ for Translating Poetry from Popescu Shortlistees

David Colmer was born in Adelaide in 1960. Since moving to Amsterdam in the early 1990s, he has published a wide range of translations of Dutch literature, including the brilliant, IMPAC-winning The Twin. He is also a published author of fiction, and in 2009 was awarded the biennial NSW Premier’s Translation Prize. He was shortlisted for his translation of Ramsey Nasr’s Heavenly Life.
I’m not overly fond of rules, and reading other translators’, although enjoyable, tends to make me aware of my own failure to live up to them, even when I think the rules in question are sensible and almost inarguable: things like “only translate from languages you know well” or “always read your translations out loud.” Because of this, I’ll phrase mine as aphorisms rather than rules and only give four. I’ve often heard variations on the first two at translation workshops and readings here in the Netherlands, but after twenty years of translating from Dutch I am still more than capable of making embarrassing errors when I forget them and the less experienced a translator is with the source language, the more crucial they’re likely to be.
1/. A word or phrase of the original that seems peculiar or striking might be a very normal way of putting it.
2/. A word or phrase of the original that seems very normal might be a peculiar or striking way of putting it.
My last two observations relate specifically to something I’ve been pondering a lot lately, the translation or non-translation (or half-translation?) of rhyme in poetry, but I think they can be extrapolated to other situations where form and content clash and demand some kind of compromise. Others might disagree, but for me:
3/. The ugliness of a bad rhyme has more impact than the beauty of a good rhyme;
&
4/. A clever rhyme can’t make up for a bad line.

#

   Judith Wilkinson is a British poet and translator. She grew up in the Netherlands and is fully bilingual. Her translation of Toon Tellegen’s About Love and About Nothing Else was published by Shoestring Press in 2008; her translation of his Raptors, published in February 2011, was shortlisted for the Popescu. You can find her at judithwilkinson.net.

1. Choose poems you love or at least find compelling. This will motivate you to do them justice in translation.
2. Cultivate relaxation, particularly when you hit a brick wall (easier said than done). Your thinking tends to be less linear when you are relaxed, so this can be a time when solutions present themselves. Contradictory as this may sound, it is worth experimenting consciously with relaxing the mind (even without a stiff whisky). If you happen to enjoy meditation, allow a problematic phrase to float through your mind like a mantra, or try out some other relaxation technique soon after obsessing over a knotty problem.
3. Assume that there is a solution (even if there isn’t always such a thing) and that the language into which you are translating is rich enough to yield wonders equal to those of the original poem. Trust can be a catalyst when teasing out solutions. There is always room to manoeuvre in; even a sonnet is a spacious thing.
4. It’s all right to be messy. Sometimes, in the process of tackling different aspects of a poem, you might feel that the poem is being deconstructed to the point of chaos. Allow the chaos, and allow yourself time – Stravinsky once said that he found it was important to ‘know when to wait’ – so that the poem can gradually reassemble itself into an organic whole. It helps to have many poems on the boil simultaneously, so you can be in a quandary in one place and happy in another.
5. Memorise your translation if you are having difficulty with it. In this way you can live with a poem and play around with it at any given time.
6. The musicality of a poem is not an arbitrary embellishment. Try to get a feel for it and let your translation capture it, without being too dogmatic about technique. When you have completed a translation, ask yourself if this is a poem the poet could have written, had he or she been working in the target language.
7. If you are drawn to a poem without fully understanding it, start translating it straightaway. Translation is an excellent way of ‘climbing inside a poem’ and getting to grips with it.
8. Discuss the poem and the translation with as many people as possible. Try out the translation on some native speakers to see if it works as a poem in its own right.
9. Ask yourself if the translation sounds like contemporary spoken language. If the answer is no, then ask yourself if there is good reason for this. Of course poetry is a concentrated or heightened form of language, but it can still be a useful question to ask. There may be times when you are initially satisfied with a translation because it appears to flow well, only to realise later that it has veered too far from everyday spoken language and is unnaturally rhetorical or even archaic.
10. Rhythm has something to do with emphasis, with having the stress fall on key words, and so it doesn’t necessarily matter if the shape of a poem and the length of its lines are different in translation – unless of course you are dealing with strict metres and rhyme schemes, where there are clearer boundaries.
11. Respect the poet’s wishes as well as your own, and don’t expect a working relationship to develop overnight. You’re handling someone else’s baby. If you can’t reach a satisfactory end-result, ditch the translation.

#

  George Messo is a poet, editor and teacher, and a leading translator of Turkish poetry. His many books include From the Pine Observatory (2000), Entrances (2006), and Hearing Still (2009), as well as two books in Turkish: Aradaki Ses (The In-between Voice, 2005) and Avrupa’nın Küçük Tanrıları (The Little Gods of Europe, 2007). His translations include İlhan Berk’s A Leaf about to Fall: Selected Poems (2006), Madrigals (2008), and Berk’s epic poetic trilogy The Book of Things (2009). His anthologies include İkinci Yeni: The Turkish Avant-Garde (2009) and From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets (2010). He has twice been shortlisted for the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize (including this year), and was a Hawthornden Fellow in poetry during 2002. His critical study, Into the Labyrinth: Essays on Modern Turkish Poetry, is forthcoming. Messo is the former editor of Near East Review and in 2008 he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society. He can also be found at http://georgemesso.wordpress.com/.


1. “Untranslatable” — the most alluring, provocative word in the language. Circle it. Prod it. Give it a kick. See if it moves.
2. Respect without reverence. Translation isn’t a faith. It’s not a free lunch either. Believe whatever you like but keep your hands in your pockets.
3. Translation is play. Toy with the poem. Throw it around. Take it apart, even if you haven’t a clue how to put it back together.
4. Slash and burn. Revise your way to the poem. Erase. Re-write. Reduce. Destroy. Begin again. Go on beginning again.
5. Suspect the myths of bilingualism. Trust that the right word in the wrong place still has something to say.
6. Be political. Know the weight and value of what others do in your field. Talk about them. Study them. Write about their work.
7. Nothing is lost. To the reader for whom the source is mute translation is a gift of speech.
8. Own it. You made it, so nurture it.
9. Keep knocking. Shape all the silent energy of a closed door into a knock. Turn pleas into invitations; solicit on the poem’s behalf. Build a case for your poets, for the poems you love.
10. Dig your own well. Where there’s water, don’t stand back for a minute. And drink according to need.

Ten Rules for Translating!

Ten Rules for Translating: Humphrey Davies and Jonathan Wright

Posted on July 5, 2011 by mlynxqualey | 20 Comments

Writers' rules are everywhere. Blah, blah, blah. What about translators?

When I first began gathering “rules for translating,” in the vein of these “rules for writing” (and these), I was expecting newspapers and magazines to elbow each other out of the way for such illuminating material. Really.

So far, no actual elbowing. But it makes little sense for them to hang out in my inbox, although what follows is just a taster: a few rules from two-time Banipal prize winner and “Independent Foreign Fiction Prize” shortlisted translator Humphrey Davies, and Independent Foreign Fiction Prize longlisted Jonathan Wright, the translator of Taxi, Azazel, and Madman of Freedom Square.

Humphrey Davies.

(1) Only translate what you like.
(2) Consult the author about everything you don’t understand, and if s/he’s not alive, consult another native speaker who reads widely and intelligently.
(3) Don’t consult native speakers who don’t read widely and intelligently.
(4) Make three drafts, wait a month, and make a fourth.
(5) Don’t hesitate to make changes at any later stage whatever snide comments you may get from editors.
(6-10) Translate nothing till you have a contract for it.


Jonathan Wright

(1) On your first draft, don’t waste time wondering how to deal with a word or concept that starts coming up and appears problematic. The answer will come to you in a dream before you reach the end of the book.
(2) Don’t calculate how many hours you spent translating the last 1,000 words. It might be depressing. Think of it as a form of recreation, like doing The Times crossword, not as a form of working.
(3) Try to persuade your editors that not all writers in Arabic think that repeating a word is a criminal offence. Sometimes they do so deliberately.
(4) Don’t hesitate to enjoy those moments when you find the author has misconjugated the 3^rd person feminine plural of a doubled verb, for example, or miswritten the hamza on some strange word. Tell yourself that even if you can’t write a novel, your morphology and orthography are impeccable.
(5) Also enjoy those moments when you see that a word has shifted its semantic range in the many decades since they last updated Arabic-Arabic dictionaries. See it as reassuring proof that Arabic is a normal language.
(6) Always ask the author lots of questions, even at the risk of trying their patience. But be diplomatic when the text is clearly deficient in some way.
(7) Since you’ll probably end up working with both British and American publishers, rapidly familiarize yourself with both traditions – not just spelling of course, but punctuation, relative pronouns and the parts of irregular verbs. You can’t fight City Hall, even if everyone around you in your formative years always said ‘smelt’ rather than ‘smelled’.
(8) If you’re feeling philanthropic, record words and usages that are not in the standard dictionaries, preferably with source and date, OED style. One day we will pool them in one central database and save future translators much anguish.
(9) When you have a Quranic passage to translate, be bold and do it yourself. All of the existing translations are seriously flawed stylistically, in one way or another. But Tarif Khalidi’s new translation brings a welcome freshness.
(10) When negotiating terms, remember that an English translation is at least 20 percent more ‘wordy’ than the equivalent Arabic text. Twenty percent is worth bargaining for.