The Gross National Happiness Quotient

Bhutan systematically values its inhabitants' happiness. Take note, rest of the world.

It sounds like irony or wishful thinking, but it’s real: the country of Bhutan puts serious stock in the findings of its Gross National Happiness Commission. This tiny Himalayan country sandwiched between India and China is a promising example of what the blue economy could mean for the world.

Thanks to San-Francisco based Ode Magazine for yet another fascinating, illuminating article to translate.

Make Mine a Beretta 9mm

Thank y'all now, and come again, y'hear?

I’m editing a book previously translated into English by someone else. There have been several infelicities along the way (a la “In the event that you might consider the option of snorkeling,” which I turn into “If you’re thinking of snorkeling”), and a few outright errors (paragraph where section is meant; the Dutch word for section is paragraaf). But this one takes the absolute cake:

 

gunmarketing —> gun marketing

 

Er…that would be thank-you marketing, the giving away of free items to reward customers. Gun marketing would be the promotion of guns for sale. Though I suppose, in a gun shop, the two might coincide…

The Soul of a Poet

Off the beaten path, yes, but beautiful (and nearly error-free). Tissue, anyone?

Lost in Translation: Yo, Judge, You Gettin’ Me Here?

So there, Judge.

I watched the 2007 film Fracture on television last night. In it, Anthony Hopkins plays a man who shoots his wife, then makes life extremely trying for the district attorney who is prosecuting him. The translation was middling, until it turned horrible:

I have no more questions, Your Honor.

Meer vragen zijn er niet, hè?

The general meaning has been preserved in the Dutch translation; it’s the register that has been violated. Grossly. The translation’s tone is this: well, I haven’t got any more questions, now do I?

The Pope’s Champion

Battle Pope image courtesy of Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore.

A recent assignment contained a fleeting reference to a chapter title in an old book: ‘s Pausen Zwitser. The title was not important for the translation, so I could have left it in Dutch without harm. But like every dyed-in-the-wool translator, who is a creature desperately devoted to unraveling the tantalizing mysteries of language, I couldn’t let it pass. I had to figure out what this outdated, metaphorical, and (judging from the Internet) possibly author-invented phrase meant in English.

Let us begin with ‘s Pausen. An old Dutch possessive form, des Pausen, which in modern Dutch becomes van de Paus. In English, of the Pope, or, more usually, the Pope’s. Good. Moving on to Zwitser: Swissman. The Pope’s Swissman.

Er, not quite. The subject of the title, Herman Schaepman, was not Swiss; he was born and bred in Holland. He was a late nineteenth-century Roman Catholic priest turned statesman who campaigned heavily, and successfully, for Catholic representation in the Netherlands’ Protestant political landscape.

Aha. Zwitser is not a literal reference, but a figure of speech.

One no longer employed in modern Dutch.

All right. What do the Swiss have to do with the Pope? Well, they’ve provided his bodyguards for the past five hundred years. On the Vatican website, I learn that the early Swiss were called Helvetians. Ooh! Ooh! The Pope’s Helvetian. No! I say, smacking down my giddy inner vocabulary buff, though it certainly sounds impenetrable enough to match the original. Helvetian only muddies things for the English reader, and – more importantly – it still fails to reflect the actual meaning of ‘s Pausen Zwitser.

But a possible answer has bubbled up. Schaepman, like the Vatican’s Swiss soldiers, safeguarded the interests of the Pope. Schaepman even extended those interests in the Netherlands, propelling Catholics to political power. The Pope’s Crusader? No; the Swiss aren’t generally a symbol of zealous faith-spreading. The Pope’s Soldier? Closer, but still no cigar.

One of the handful of Internet hits on ‘s Pausen Zwitser contains gold. There, I read that Schaepman was unconditionally loyal to his Pope, and that he had a forceful, seductive personality. So I’m looking for something more charismatic, more  take-charge, than soldier.

Yes. That’s it. The Pope’s Champion.

Know the Target Audience, and Translate the Intent

The driveway at the typical middle-class home where I grew up. It's more than twice as long as the driveways of the "impressive experience."

A recent project contained the following sentence:

Uw verblijf is aan een oprijlaan gesitueerd, wat uw aankomst tot een imponerende beleving maakt.

Literally: Your home is situated at the end of a driveway, which makes your arrival an impressive experience.

Now, my job was to translate this for an affluent American audience. There is no affluent – or even middling – American who will be impressed by a simple driveway. So I did what a good translator should do: I dropped the last half of the sentence, then combined the modified first half with the next sentence to preserve the flow:

At the end of your private driveway lies your home, whose architecture…

Forsooth, Do You Grok My Jive?

No matter how hard prescriptives try to keep the language from changing, change it does.

Lost in Translation: Heavy Duty Out of Office

They thought they were getting great service when the translator replied within seconds...

From the BBC article:

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”

It’s tempting to point at the council and laugh, but to me, the fault lies primarily with the in-house translator. In automated responses, a translator should include the message in all his working languages – how else will his clients understand him?

Unfortunate Names: Artfully Chopped Kitty Pie

Oooh, butcher some more language for me, baby. Cartoon courtesy of Allan Cavanagh.

Seen while browsing through Dutch magazines:

applepiepussy.com

and

Design Butchers

I’ll give you a moment to imagine.

The first is a jewelry shop; the second, a clothing designer’s firm. This kind of misnomer is frequent in Dutch; the drive for trendy English names too often builds upon a scanty understanding of the language. Second meanings are overlooked.

Origins: Implicit ‘Go’ in Shakespeare’s English

The Bard left us a treasure trove of late Early Modern English forms.

The April edition of Merriam-Webster’s newsletter lists several extant words used by William Shakespeare in ways since fallen into disuse. Two of these caught my eye:

must verb, archaic meaning: ought to go, is obliged to go
“I must to Coventry”

shall verb, archaic meaning: will go
“he to England shall along with you”

Here, the go is implied rather than explicit. It sounds quaintly old-fashioned, something uttered by a heroine in petticoats, and certainly wrong to our twenty-first century ears, but this phenomenon is still active in standard modern Dutch.

Ik moet echt naar de supermarkt
I really need to go to the grocery store

It’s thus likely a Germanic construction that arose before Early English and Early Dutch split away. Why did English go on to abandon an apparently viable form? Chalk it up to the mysteries of living language.