Posts tagged translation
mysteriouslyunlikelycloud:
kinsey3furry300:
prokopetz:
An incomplete taxonomy of esoteric texts:
- This text is discussing esoteric subject matter
- This text is being deliberately obscure because its author knows they don’t have a coherent thesis and they’re blowing smoke
- This text is written in earnest, but its author has very poor communication skills
- This text’s translator has misunderstood something that was meant completely literally as a complex metaphor
- This text is actually perfectly straightforward in its native language, but every available translation fucking sucks
6. The author is a troll, and is fucking with a very specific target audience, who would have been well aware they are being fucked with.
You are not the target audience, and thus are missing the joke.
7. This text was reasonably accessible in the context it was written in. It has been removed from that context and is now completely impossible to understand.
The book you are advised to read to understand what this book is going on about has not been digitised. There is a reference copy available at a library 800 miles away. An eBay seller based in Russia is selling a copy for £300, there is no picture of the book included in the listing.
“Over the years, the European institutions have developed a vocabulary that differs from that of any recognised form of English. It includes words that do not exist or are relatively unknown to native English speakers outside the EU institutions and often even to standard spellcheckers/grammar checkers (‘planification’, ’to precise’ or ’telematics’ for example) and words that are used with a meaning, often derived from other languages, that is not usually found in English dictionaries (‘coherent ’ being a case in point). Some words are used with more or less the correct meaning, but in contexts where they would not be used by native speakers (‘homogenise’, for example). Finally, there is a group of words, many relating to modern technology, where users (including many native speakers) ‘prefer ’ a local term (often an English word or acronym) to the one normally used in English-speaking countries, which they may not actually know, even passively (’GPS’ or ’navigator’ for ‘satnav ’, ’SMS’ for ’text’, ’to send an SMS to’ for ’to text’, ’GSM’ or even ’Handy’ for ’mobile’ or ’cell phone’, internet ’key’, ’pen’ or ’stick’ for ’dongle’, ’recharge’ for ’top-up/top up’, ’beamer’ for video projector etc).”
–Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications. European Court of Auditors, Secretariat General Translation Directorate.
speculative biscuits
