Literaire aandelen

Vertaalbureau MOTTE vernam dat Bob van Laerhoven een apart initiatief nam om enkele van zijn romans te laten vertalen: hij schrijft aandelen uit.
Je kunt een of meerdere aandelen kopen om de vertaling van een of twee titels te financieren, nl. "De wraak van Baudelaire" en "Terug naar Hiroshima", twee romans die we durven aanbevelen..
We vonden het een gedurfd initatief en besloten het te steunen.
Alle regels i.v.m. het initiatief kun je via onze website Vertaalbureau MOTTE vinden..

Ikigami: een nieuwe mangareeks

Vanaf deze week ligt een nieuwe mangareeks in de winkel waaraan we hebben meegewerkt.
Het is de knap getekende stripreeks Ikigami van Motorô Mase.

Ikigami past niet in het rijtje kinderstrips zoals Jommeke, Kiekeboes, Suske & Wiske en Kuifje.
Het is een "hardere" strip, zoals vroeger Bernard Prince dat was. Net als "De valstrik" van Blake & Mortimer wordt hier niet de kaart getrokken van de aangename utopie.

Motorô Mase beheerst zowel zijn tekenpen als zijn verhalenpen.
Hij bedenkt emotioneel sterke verhalen, die ondanks de merkwaardige uitgangspunten en stevige consequenties geen holle verzinsels zijn.

Tussen de massa's manga die de laatste jaren in het Nederlands op de markt werden gebracht, ontbraken echt volwassen reeksen, en er werd dan ook uitgekeken naar iets als Ikigami.
Het is een gok: volwassen stripreeksen zijn niet het grote succes, niet in het minst doordat ouders het niks voor hun kroost vinden.
Maar door die houding staat de volwassen lezer vaak in de kou. Uitgevers durven soms immers geen risico meer nemen.
Gelukkig heeft Kana dat wel gedurfd, en hopelijk wordt dat gehonoreerd. Het zou het begin kunnen zijn van een nieuwe golf strips die andere wegen durven inslaan.

Taalprobleem: weg

FOUT We vandaag de baan op moet, zal voorzichtig moeten zijn.
FOUT We vandaag de weg op moet, zal voorzichtig moeten zijn.

VERKLARING
Een "baan" is onder meer een plaats die voor bepaalde activiteiten wordt benut: glijbaan, kegelbaan, renbaan, tennisbaan, wielerbaan, startbaan.
Verwarrend is dat in de verkeersterminologie de "rijbaan" het gedeelte van de weg is waarop wordt gereden.

Taalprobleem: uitkomen op

FOUT: Die deur geeft uit op de keuken.
GOED: Die deur komt uit op de keuken.

VERKLARING
"uitgeven op" en "uitgeven in" in de betekenis van "uikomen op" zijn gallicismen afgeleid van "donner sur".
Een van de mogelijkheden is "uitkomen op".

ProZ.com Freelance Translator Virtual Conference - Translation3

I attended the ProZ.com Freelance Translator Virtual Conference - Translation³.

J'étais au ProZ.com Freelance Translator Virtual Conference - Translation³.

Ik was op de ProZ.com Freelance Translator Virtual Conference - Translation³.

Translators must have tricks up their sleeves!

Okay: everybody will agree that translating demands creativity from time to time.
But sometimes...
A few years ago I got a French to Dutch translation, mainly about... shoes. Sport shoes, that is.
It was filled to the brim with words I didn't find in any dictionnaries, not in my new cd-rom dictionnaries, not in my older paper dictionnaries, and not in web dictionnaires. I didn't even find them anywhere on the internet!
But then it occured to me that the text was mostly describing American brands.
So, I thought, could it be that... ?
And, yes: using my everyday English dictionnary I discovered there had been an English-French translator at work, who simplied replaced the English suffixes with French suffixes, thinking that was sufficient to come up with genuine French words!
Do you also recall odd ways to make a translation?

Translating from English to a Dutch/Flemish dialect

Translating titles like "The Dark Invasion" (or anything else, for that matter) to dialect is sometimes a hustle, and writing them down very often leads to unsatisfactory results.

Take "The Dark Invasion", for instance. Does dialect has a word for "invasion"? Actually, no. At least: I don't think so. "Inval" sounds me to be much more suitable as a dialect word than "invasie" does. "Invasie" is the normal Standard Dutch word, but it is, well, "neat". There isn't anything "dialectical" about it.So, it's a bit counter-intuitive to regard "invasie" as a dialect word.

However, is "inval" more suitable?

The fact is that the idea of an invasion is as such not expressed very often in our dialect. At least: not in this time and age. Indeed it was different 70 years ago.

What would people have said in those days?

It's quite clear that they would have said... "invasie".

Fact is that dialects themselves don't have such a big vocabulary, whatever dialect fans might maintain. That is because real dialects are limited to the everyday words for the everyday world. That also explains why they have such a lot of old words: real everyday words very often are part of the "core vocabulary" of a language, and that vocabulary dates from time immemorial. And words like "computer" aren't exactly the kind of words our ancestors would have used, are they?

On the other hand, just as any other language dialects are very flexible, and if the need arises, they lend words rather easily from other languages. As a matter of fact, they lend words even easier from other languages than standard languages themselves do, because dialects aren't limited by imposed rules. Standard languages very often are in a straightjacket of rules learned at school, which limits people's creativity while using standard language, especially when they want to adopt new words. It makes a standard language user a bit less of a daredevil.

So: is "Den donkeren inval" a good translation of "The Dark Invasion"?

Yes, it is, as "inval" can be used as a translation of "invasion".

But no, it isn't, because if there would be a "dark invasion", television journals and other reports would be in the standard language, and they would use "invasie". And dialect speakers would just copy that word.

However, the word would be inserted in the dialect system, and the title would not come out exactly the same as it would in Standard Dutch.

The Standard Dutch translation would be "De donkere invasie".

The dialect version, however, would be: "De donker invasie".

I would actually prefer to write it like this: "De donker'invasie", because the disapperaance of the final -e of "donkere" is caused by the connection of the adjective and the noun, because of which the noun-group sounds more like one word. That is: there is only one very clear accent, namely on "va" of "invasie". The Standard Dutch version, however, carries two accents: on "dong" of "donkere" (no spelling mistake: the "n" sound has a "g" element; quite tricky to explain, just believe me), and an accent on "va" of "invasie".

Why? Well: the final -e of "donkere" forces the words to be more clearly separated. Each word has its own word accent. If the words are more distinctly separated, the accents are more distinct too.

The dialect, however, tends to smash the words together - not unusual in spoken language. Unstressed syllables lose there force, and sometimes dissappear completely. The final result is that in dialect "donker'invasie" tends to be spoken as if it was one word: one gets a primary stress on "va" of "invasie", and only a secondary stress on "dong" of "donkere".

That's why I would like to write it as "donker'invasie", to mark the fact that those two words ares smashed together. Of course, they remain two words. The dialect speaker will always regard them as two words, not as one word in which "donker" has become a prefix.

That smashing up of word bounderies is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to write down Dutch dialects, and that adds to the vocabulary problems.