OK… LiLo? Wanna explain to me why my BUTT muscles are sore from squash? (And don’t make any sick jokes, LOL… I’m serious… it HURTS! Hahaha!)
So, hi. The weather has been so weird today – snow and hail and rain – but the sun has been shining! LOL! You never can predict this Dutch weather…
I went to translating class this morning and the teacher came to me and said, “Jess? …This is going to be difficult, isn’t it?” meaning the class for me. (I’d tried to tell her…) So we talked for a while and she made a joke about me needing an editor, but basically said that she’d still rather have my own work than stuff that my friends help me with, even if it’s not entirely correct, because then she knows what level I’m on. Her concern was whether or not I could understand the Dutch well enough to know what was ‘meant’, or something… to know how I should translate it… so I assured her that I had absolutely no problem understanding what was meant in Dutch as long as the words are already there, but that I still had problems with producing ‘spontaneous’ Dutch (to use a linguistics term). The translation we had for today was Doornroosje, that thing I stuck in the entry yesterday, and that was really easy for me and I told her so.
So she said okay, and then asked me how long I was going to be here. “Indefinitely?” She apparently didn’t know I was an exchange student. So I told her I’d be here until July and she asked me how long I’d been here already. I said “Six months” and her whole attitude changed. “Six months! I thought you’d been here a few years!” Suddenly she couldn’t do enough to help me. LOL! We have a ‘big’ translation we have to do in a few weeks, where we pick some big American literary work and translate part of it to Dutch, then find an ‘accepted’ Dutch translation of it and compare them and write notes on how they compare. That’s part of our exam grade, if I understand properly. Anyway, so she offered to let me translate from Dutch to English instead, which is, needless to say, WAY better. So now what I need to know is, what’s acceptable?
Pauline, I think you’d be a big help on this one… I asked what sort of things would be okay and she told me I could translate something from Mulisch, for example… so do you think she’d also be okay with Renate Dorrestein? I still have that book of yours, Het Hemelse Gerecht (forgot about it for a while, but I’ve just about finished it now) and I just ‘felt like it’ this afternoon, so I translated a piece of that of the appropriate length, just to see how it would go… and I can translate that very ‘invisibly’, to use a ‘professional’ term, haha… I mean I can do it in a way so that if you’re reading it in English, it doesn’t feel like a translation. So I’d really like to do that, but is she considered one of the ‘respected’ writers like Mulisch, someone who would be in the “canon of Anglo-American literature” if it were in English, or do you think I need to find something else? Can anybody answer this so I don’t waste any more effort on that piece? (I just happened to think, I don’t even know if that book is available in an English translation… it better be…) And: English names that sound like Ange, Irthe, and Gilles would be nice… can anyone help? :)
Anyway, so today when the teacher chose people to read their (English) translations of Doornroosje, I was the first one she picked (of course, just like I will be on Friday when we have another English one, LOL), and she really liked mine, especially the phrase ‘palace psychiatrist’. Even when she read her own translation, she asked me a couple of times, “Jess, what did you say here?” So I think she’s reassured now that I CAN do this… I’m just as good as everybody else in the class, better even; I just need the same ‘advantage’ that they have, of going to my own native language.
Anyway, I’ve really been in a writing mood this afternoon – Tristan got me inspired to write my “life story” haha… except that it’s already six pages in Word and I haven’t even started on Stanton yet, LOL! But the childhood part is cool…
Okay, well, I have another assignment to do, for Dutch Present-Day Society, so I’m gonna go now.
So, hi. The weather has been so weird today – snow and hail and rain – but the sun has been shining! LOL! You never can predict this Dutch weather…
I went to translating class this morning and the teacher came to me and said, “Jess? …This is going to be difficult, isn’t it?” meaning the class for me. (I’d tried to tell her…) So we talked for a while and she made a joke about me needing an editor, but basically said that she’d still rather have my own work than stuff that my friends help me with, even if it’s not entirely correct, because then she knows what level I’m on. Her concern was whether or not I could understand the Dutch well enough to know what was ‘meant’, or something… to know how I should translate it… so I assured her that I had absolutely no problem understanding what was meant in Dutch as long as the words are already there, but that I still had problems with producing ‘spontaneous’ Dutch (to use a linguistics term). The translation we had for today was Doornroosje, that thing I stuck in the entry yesterday, and that was really easy for me and I told her so.
So she said okay, and then asked me how long I was going to be here. “Indefinitely?” She apparently didn’t know I was an exchange student. So I told her I’d be here until July and she asked me how long I’d been here already. I said “Six months” and her whole attitude changed. “Six months! I thought you’d been here a few years!” Suddenly she couldn’t do enough to help me. LOL! We have a ‘big’ translation we have to do in a few weeks, where we pick some big American literary work and translate part of it to Dutch, then find an ‘accepted’ Dutch translation of it and compare them and write notes on how they compare. That’s part of our exam grade, if I understand properly. Anyway, so she offered to let me translate from Dutch to English instead, which is, needless to say, WAY better. So now what I need to know is, what’s acceptable?
Pauline, I think you’d be a big help on this one… I asked what sort of things would be okay and she told me I could translate something from Mulisch, for example… so do you think she’d also be okay with Renate Dorrestein? I still have that book of yours, Het Hemelse Gerecht (forgot about it for a while, but I’ve just about finished it now) and I just ‘felt like it’ this afternoon, so I translated a piece of that of the appropriate length, just to see how it would go… and I can translate that very ‘invisibly’, to use a ‘professional’ term, haha… I mean I can do it in a way so that if you’re reading it in English, it doesn’t feel like a translation. So I’d really like to do that, but is she considered one of the ‘respected’ writers like Mulisch, someone who would be in the “canon of Anglo-American literature” if it were in English, or do you think I need to find something else? Can anybody answer this so I don’t waste any more effort on that piece? (I just happened to think, I don’t even know if that book is available in an English translation… it better be…) And: English names that sound like Ange, Irthe, and Gilles would be nice… can anyone help? :)
Anyway, so today when the teacher chose people to read their (English) translations of Doornroosje, I was the first one she picked (of course, just like I will be on Friday when we have another English one, LOL), and she really liked mine, especially the phrase ‘palace psychiatrist’. Even when she read her own translation, she asked me a couple of times, “Jess, what did you say here?” So I think she’s reassured now that I CAN do this… I’m just as good as everybody else in the class, better even; I just need the same ‘advantage’ that they have, of going to my own native language.
Anyway, I’ve really been in a writing mood this afternoon – Tristan got me inspired to write my “life story” haha… except that it’s already six pages in Word and I haven’t even started on Stanton yet, LOL! But the childhood part is cool…
Okay, well, I have another assignment to do, for Dutch Present-Day Society, so I’m gonna go now.
stormed at 13:38
0 Comments:
Een reactie posten
<< Home