Lost in Translation
 

We went out to dinner with another couple last night. One of them had been a medical transcriptionist. The doctor dictates and the transcriptionist puts it into the computer. Lots of that stuff is done in India now, but some additional quality control is needed, and my friend did some of that.

For example, it once happened that "jumped off a boat and broke his elbow" became "jacked off a goat and broke his elbow".

I suppose it really does not matter that much - the treatment for the elbow would still be the same.

Goodness!!

When I had retinal hemorrhages about 15 years ago, I ended up seeing a retina specialist. He had a very thick Eastern European accent. When he examined me, the office would be dark except for the instrument light he was shining into my eyeballs, and a hooded desk lamp for the transcriptionist. He spent the whole exam describing what he was seeing in my retinas, in a combination of thickly accented English and thickly accented Latin and medical jargon. I always wondered how much of it she missed.

Translation needed.

Also needed here.

Wouldn't one be RSI and the other some kind of bone trauma? :D

I edit books for a company in Spain. Some books are written in a foreign language and "translated" into English by another person on their staff (or maybe they just use Google Translate, I can't tell); some are written in "English" by foreign-language speakers who think they know English.

You can't imagine the difficulty I have convincing the bossman that the translations/texts are NOT proper English. For example, for the last two weeks, we've been wrangling about my editing a book (about the Japanese Army in WWII) that was written by a "very educated Spaniard" that has been living in the US for 20 years. They just can't believe that he can't write flawless English - they keep telling me he's "very educated and he's lived in the US for 20 years!"

Yeah, well... you know how many people have lived here their entire lives and can't write a proper sentence?

To be fair, this particular author has done an admirable job, but it still ain't right. One tiny example: he doesn't understand the difference between were and where (uses were every time).

And I did enjoy this sentence:
Dismals!

:)

A couple of years ago, I read Spanish translations of The Kite Runner and One Thousand Splendid Suns. They'd obviously been translated by different people as the flow and vocab of the Kite Runner (as far as I can remember) was reallly smooth whereas 1000 Splendid Suns sounded really stilted and translated-there was some vocab which really made me wonder what dictionary they'd been using and how old it was. The same year I read Lost City Radio/Radio Ciudad Perdida which although written by a Peruvian born author was written in English and translated by someone else. (From what I remember) it was the most amazing piece of translated prose. The story was great as well, but had the translation been mediocre or bad, it wouldn't have been nearly as readable.

Two versions of the original poem wherein Jinshu anonymously presents his understanding of the dharma:
1)
The body is the Bodhi tree;
The mind is like a bright mirror standing.
Take care to wipe it all the time,
And allow no dust to cling

2)
Our body is the bodhi tree
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour
And let no dust alight.

And six versions of Huineng's annihilating reply:
1)
There is no bodhi tree
Nor stand of a mirror bright.
Since all is void,
Where can the dust alight?
2)
Bodhi originally has no tree,
The mirror(-like mind) has no stand.
Buddha-nature (emptiness/oneness) is always clean and pure;
Where is there room for dust (to alight)?
3)
Fundamentally no bodhi-tree exists
Nor the frame of a mirror bright.
Since all is voidness from the beginning,
Where can the dust alight?
4)
Enlightenment is basically not a tree
And the clear mirror not a stand.
Fundamentally there is not a single thing --
Where can dust collect?
5)
Fundamentally bodhi is no tree
Nor is the clear mirror a stand.
Since everything is primordially empty,
What is there for dust to cling to?
6)
There never was a bodhi tree
Nor mirror standing bright
Fundamentally not one thing exists
Where can dust alight?

The final translation is by Gary Snyder who is not only a poet, but also a practitioner of Zen. I think his has the most grace and also expresses the dharma.

must be based on something like this:

http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story...Radio-Lifeline

Disgression!!!

Not what the thread is about, really, but...

That's not an AK-47. It's not even a toy AK-47.

Attachment 49454

It ain't no machine gun, neither.

Yeah, everyone knows that's a dreaded assault rifle. :rolleyes:

Can't be, Bruce. EVERYBODY knows assault rifles are black!

You're thinking of welfare queens. :haha:

^BAM!