Fun with Translations
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 - 5:00 PM
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There's been a sudden increase in translation buzz lately, much of it
from me. The
Russian translation is ongoing - the guy's up to chapter 8. He
says he's stalling for a while, though: real life commitments and all
that. Жаль, says I, but I understand. There's rumblings of
German and Spanish versions getting started soon - in fact, this
afternoon I decided I'd start up a thread for the Spanish one to go
forward on. I took my story's title - "The Murloc is Lonely" -
over to an
online translator to see what I could find.
After playing around with different synonyms for "Lonely", I
discovered something that all first-year Spanish students know: "to be"
can be "ser", or "estar". And, apparently, entire
books have been written on the difference between them. Great - I
can't even get my title translated.
It took me some time (and some help from Rhy herself, who still
hasn't read her scenes yet, punk!) to figure out, but it turns out that
the
principle difference between ser and estar is the idea
of inherentness. Are you describing a temporary condition
of something (estar)? Or are you describing an inherent
attribute (ser)? The Murloc is lonely: but is he lonely in
passing? Or is it truly part of who he is? And all of a
sudden, the verb To Be - the most common verb in any language on the
face of the planet - had given me a deep philosophical question about a
character in my story. Cool, at least to me.
(To tell you the truth, I actually answered that question months
ago.)
Anyway, translation stuff hither and thither - hopefully the Spanish
one will be starting up on my forums some time soon. Once it's
well under way, I'm gonna set up an international section on the
Murloc page and link 'em all. You
translators rock!
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