Tempus Fugit

Tempus fugit is actually the Latin for “Time flees” and not “Time flies”. You may not think there’s much of a difference but rest assured the difference is quite important. “To flee” is to run away quickly usually from something or some sort of danger. “To fly” is simply to run away quickly. The difference may be in the nuance but that is surely the point. A ripple starts off as a tiny point in the ocean, the wings of a butterfly… etc. Nuances are what make different languages. Semantic ripples are what distinguish a superlative translation from an average one. Yes, “Time flies” does sound better than “Time flees”, but does that mean that the former is a better translation than the latter?

Trifles

Grandiloquent. Now there’s a fine word. Lofty, hifalutin, highfaluting. Wonderful stuff. Words that are particularly marked semantically seem to be quite easy to translate. Words mark with great emotion find parallels in all languages, but are these parallels accurately mirrored in all languages. In Polish you could say górnolotny but is this exactly the same as grandiloquent. Hmm? I’d say that górnolotny is more hifalutin than grandiloquent. Some might say that these are all trifles, but come on (!), this is what good translation is all about. It’s getting those shades of meaning pinned down. It’s like catching a fly by its wings with a pair of chopsticks, having a good look at it and then letting it go. Not easy…

Bits and Bobs

Odds and sods and all that. Drobiazgi as they say in Polish. What an odd phrase. I might also talk about words like thingummy, thingamajig, whachamacallit all words like that. Every languages possesses words and phrases which - on the surface - mean nothing at all but in reality are important discourse devices, fillers that allow one to discuss abstract notions or non-signified objects with a generic tag. Brilliant!

Tres

“The Lust Tram”… oh the wonders of back-translation. “The Lust Tram” is, of course, “A Streetcar named Desire”, but how many times do we walk into examples of bizarre translation? Rhetorical, of course… But back to back-translation… Back-translation is an amusing intellectual past time in itself. It’s amusing to take a well-known phrase and attempt to translate it back and forth from one language to the other to see what happens. A particularly amusing site which is used for the amusement of the translational masses is: http://www.tashian.com/multibabel/ 

Enjoy!