Lost in Translation II - totally lost

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Winston
Luckily, Ata was wise enough to not have me do it.

You lucky bastard!

I put Spanish "for fun", and I completely mistranslated it (notice the radical difference between Kassi's and LOTM's English translations. There have been extremely few translations between these two, but that's the most actue difference between two English versions - that's because of me translating Spanish "for fun" )

Actually, I would say that I could translate from Dutch "for fun" as well, by guessing from German and English But I admit that it kinda goes against the point of Lost in Translation - we're supposed to see hoy a text becomes progressively ravaged in a succession of acceptable translations - not in a couple of terrible ones

[Atahualpa]

I knew you'd mess it up Spiff. I have been in spain for 6 months and know a bit of the language and I also had some french earlier. I really didn't find french to be soo helpful, at first it confused me like hell and then I forgot everything and could only think in spanish.
Anyway, I was curious to see how you do

Winston, of course, I didn't take you seriously when you wrote you could translate from french, italian or spanish after I saw the languages you speak fluently.

As for the next installment of the game, I think it'd be best to translate from a language you speak fluently into your native language. And yes it should be a poem and everyone should make a translation transmitting not the words, but the meaning and the sense into his/her native language.
While hosting the game was fun, it's surely quite a bit of work, so I rather not have one shortly. I'd participating, but someone else should host it.
Btw, the biggest problem I had in setting the path was to find people who could do germanic to latin and people who could do vice versa. There are only a few and most involve german. I'd have liked to see Swedish -> French -> Finnish -> Spanish -> Danish -> Italian -> English -> French -> ... hoping for chinese, japanese is probably too much

[Kassiopeia]

Finnish is not Germanic. It's Ugric, although it is part of the Indo-European languages. In any case, the difference between Romance and Germanic languages and Finnish is so big that it can act as a "buffer" between the two groups, or rather, you can do Swedish->Finnish->German and still have potential heaps of distortion. We had Danish->Finnish->English this time, for instance.

[Robert]

We need more dutch in it

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Finnish is not Germanic. It's Ugric, although it is part of the Indo-European languages.

If it's Ugric, it can't be Indo-European?

[Kassiopeia]

You're right, they're of the Uralic language group. Ha! Finnish is even more distant than I thought!

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Finnish is not Germanic. It's Ugric, although it is part of the Indo-European languages. In any case, the difference between Romance and Germanic languages and Finnish is so big that it can act as a "buffer" between the two groups, or rather, you can do Swedish->Finnish->German and still have potential heaps of distortion. We had Danish->Finnish->English this time, for instance.

Yes, I know about finnish's special status and I used it exactly like a third language group. Same with hungarish (or whatever it is called), which is not similar to other european languages and belongs to the Finno-ugric group as well.

Btw, I entered "hungarish" into google and it asked me: "Do you mean english?" Google

[Winston]

Hungarian.

Haven't you ever heard of the infamous Hungarian-English-Hungarian phrasebook?

"Drop your panties Sir William, I cannot wait till lunchtime."

[Meticulous Man]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Finnish is not Germanic. It's Ugric, although it is part of the Indo-European languages. In any case, the difference between Romance and Germanic languages and Finnish is so big that it can act as a "buffer" between the two groups, or rather, you can do Swedish->Finnish->German and still have potential heaps of distortion. We had Danish->Finnish->English this time, for instance.

The way of thinking about things is pretty similar between Finns and Scandinavians, probably due to Swedes having pwned us for five centuries, so the differences often are only superficial. One thing that can mess translations up, though, is the lack of gender in Finnish... I, for example, had to translate hun ("she") as nainen ("woman") on one occasion, but it seems you guessed this

[Krill]

I could do the English to Latin, if only someone could do the Latin -> Native language

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Winston
Hungarian.

Haven't you ever heard of the infamous Hungarian-English-Hungarian phrasebook?

"Drop your panties Sir William, I cannot wait till lunchtime."

Yes, I've heard of that

[molly bloom]

The famous Danish primer for non-Danish speakers begins with a Dane mournfully intoning:

"All our bases are belong to you. Again."


It's the most common Danish phrase found amongst non-native speakers of Danish....

[Sava]

am I the only one who did not find this funny at all?

[Atahualpa]

You and 200 million english-only americans

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
You and 200 million english-only americans

I thought it was a brilliant idea for a thread- a good idea to use an English poem with the polyglot Polyboard, because English has the advantage of having a foot in the Romance camp and a foot in the Germanic camp.

I love seeing the way the heightened phraseology evolved .


Here's to the next