On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 04:38:49PM +0100, Hendrik Sattler wrote:
> Zitat von Marc Haber <mh+debian-de...@zugschlus.de>:
>
> Directly from www.debian.org (english, then German, then translated back):
> "it comes with over 25000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a
> nice format for easy installation on your machine."
> -> "Es enthält mehr als 25000 Softwarepakete, vorkompilierte Software in
> einfach zu installierenden Paketen."
> -> "It contains more than 25000 software packages, precompiled software
> in easily installable packages."
>
> From a good translation, I'd expect that the reverse is the original
> text in some form.
That is an unfounded expectation. It's a well known effect that
translations tend to be more explicit than the original text.
See
http://www.linguateca.pt/documentos/Frankenberg-Garcia2004.doc
for an analysis (especially table 6).
> Additionally, the translations often sound too formal to a native
> speaker:
> "Debian ist ein freies Betriebssystem (OS) für Ihren Rechner."
> Although "Ihren" is the formal translation of "your" (which has a formal
> and a non-formal translation in German), capitalizing that word is very
> formal (e.g. used in directly addressed letters). To avoid that, it is
> way more common to not address the reader directly.
$ lynx --dump http://www.duden.de/firmenloesungen/index.php?nid=15 | grep Ihren
For non-german readers: the 'Duden' is usually considered to be *the*
reference for spelling in Germany.
But ignoring that, how do you avoid addressing the reader when
translating the snippet "for your computer" and at the same time keep
your expectation above that the reverse translation should come really
close to the original text?
If you don't address the reader in the translation, there's no way to
get the 'addressing' back in the reverse translation, is there?
And these are exactly the kind of problems translators have.
Thomas
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