[Links]
[links] Link salad stares down the barrel of another week
Doing the hard work – fitness and writing — Though provoking stuff, especially for those just starting in as novelists.
Harlan Ellison vs. Hitler — ZOMG this is funny and bizarre.
The Real American Pie — Being the true and accurate history of mincemeat pie. Also, funny as hell.
20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words from Around the World — “Jayus” is the cool one. (Thanks to Blake Hutchins.)
The animal world has its junkies too — Reindeer getting high. (Via lt260.)
The Year’s Best Tech Products — A roundup of the most significant technologies to come to market in 2010. It sort of amazes me how many of these I haven’t heard of or don’t want. Must be getting old.
The Almighty Dollar — Correlating professed religious belief and income tiers. (Via danjite.)
Don’t spin the Civil War — The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart. Why not? Lying works so in politics.
?otD: When was Leo G. Carroll over a barrel?
12/27/2010
Writing time yesterday: 4.0 hours (Sunspin outline development, a bit more WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 247.8
Currently reading: Between books
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Posted: 6:55 am Mon December 27 2010 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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Comments
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Regarding the allegedly untranslatable words, “Schadenfreude” has a perfectly acceptable translation in the English word “gloat”. Okay, so one is a verb and the other a noun, but the meanings match very well. “Torschlusspanik” is a bit trickier, but by no means impossible.
In fact, speaking as a translator myself, the words that give me the most trouble are usually some very unglamorous terms for organizations, laws and regulations, etc… that have no direct equivalent in the target language. THW (German federal disaster relief and technical aid organization) and TÜV (organization which inspects vehicles and other machinery for faults at regular intervals) have probably given me more trouble than anything else.
German words that have no direct equivalent in English are “Heimat” (“home” doesn’t quite capture the meaning) and its compounds such as “Heimatfilm” or “Heimatroman”. “Spießer” (a very conservative, square and dull person) and the adjective form “spießig” have no direct equivalent either, which is annoying, because it’s such a beautifully concise word.
Some beautifully concise English (both British and American) words which have no direct equivalent in German are “cliffhanger”, “blockbuster” (there is a very old-fashioned term “Straßenfeger” which vaguely fits), “bodiceripper”, “posh”, “chav” and “f*ckbuddy”.
Another one that regularly confounds translators is “slut”. There actually are two German equivalents, but both are much stronger and considered taboo language, so you get 15-year-old highschool kids in a dubbed American film calling another girl by the really old-fashioned term “Flittchen”, a word no teenager would use in real life.