Tuesday, December 19, 2006
No Pleasing Some People
Mel Gibson makes a movie in a dead Indian language and gets a list of complaints ("The Sober Racism of Mel Gibson's Apocalypto") for his trouble:
As a cultural anthropologist who has worked for thirteen years among different Maya peoples of Mesoamerica and who speaks the Q'eqchi' Maya language fluently, I found Apocalypto to be deeply racist. The Maya in the film bore no resemblance to the hardworking farmers, teachers, lawyers, doctors, businessmen and women of Maya descent that I know personally and consider among my closest friends.
Central America was not exactly overrun with Mayan lawyers in 1492. In fact, the movie takes place a long time ago.
To me, these actors didn't look or sound Maya at all. Their Yucatec diction was terrible and lacked the real lyric cadence of Maya languages. If someone exploited local labor to make a cheap film about gang-violence in Brooklyn and employed heavily-accented Australian and British actors, would critics still praise it as "authentic" simply because the actors are speaking English?
In the film about Jesus of Nazareth, King of Kings, John Wayne says, in John Wayne style rather than Roman Latin, "Surely this was the Son of God." Germans in WWII movies speak English with an English accent to provide a "foreign" contrast with American English. And so on. In Hollywood, close enough counts.
Read the rest of this "article" and marvel.
|posted by Jim on 11:30 PM|
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An Interesting Spanish Translation Discussion
Began on our Martinez Watch blog, but I am moving it here because of its more general applicability to the official English issue.
The short version of the debate is that Benjamin Zimmer took exception to a link to the Language Log website from StopMartinez.com web site. He had his say. I had mine. Now he has had another go and, to his credit, conceded one of my major points.
His entire post, which is primarily one of complaining that my use of the Language Log's original translation debate link was a bit of a reach in the Martinez context (fair enough -- there are better examples of the translation problems caused by multilingual government) and opposition to the official English cause (not quite so fair), is well worth reading. I am adding a link to it at StopMartinez.com, in addition to the link under dispute.
The relevant excerpt (broken up into shorter paragraphs for your reading ease) follows:
[Update: I will concede one point to Mr. Boulet. It's true that any cross-linguistic rendering can be critiqued for accuracy, especially among the discerning readers of Language Log. Here is Matthew Stuckwisch's take on the translation of Martinez's speech that appeared in the Congressional Record:
Whilst Martínez says "esta gran nación" (this great N/nation), the Congressional record states "our Nation". Perhaps to add parallelism in the English the simple term "niños" (children) was changed to "schoolchildren". The remaining structure of the next sentence has been rather distorted, substantially changing the meaning IMO. He then says "Debemos reconocer" (We must recognise), an indicative statement, whereas the translation uses the imperative "Let us acknowledge". Oddly "sobre todo" (above all) was changed to "especially", even though above all is a common expression with the same meaning in English. The English translation quite curiously added the adjective "petty" (non-existent in the Spanish) to "politicking". ...
[H]ere is Alexander Jabbari's assessment of the speeches and their transcriptions:
After reading your recent Language Log post, I thought you might be interested to hear that the transcriptions of both Jim Inhofe's and Mel Martinez's Spanish speeches are riddled with orthographical mistakes, and furthermore that Inhofe's use of Spanish in his Nov. 12 speech is not very good and sounds like it was translated directly from English by someone who is not a native speaker of Spanish, whereas Martinez's Spanish is perfect.
I'm sure that's not surprising, as Martinez speaks Spanish as a first language and Inhofe evidently doesn't, but what was mostly surprising to me was the transcription.
The transcription of Inhofe's speech contains spelling errors ("descrácia" instead of desgracia), misuse of diacritics ("senádo" instead of "senado," along with many other words containing diacritics where they don't belong), and an error in capitalization ("Hispános" instead of hispanos), not to mention the translation glosses "hispanos" as "Hispanic Americans," though the term refers to Hispanics of any country.
Although Martinez's Spanish is impeccable, the transcription of his Spanish is not. It also contains a few capitalization errors (such as "estudiantes de Derecho" instead of estudiantes de derecho) and contains no diacritics whatsoever (except "ñ"), though many words in his speech should be written with diacritics (such as nación, which is written as "nacion" in the transcription).
It is my understanding that a Senator who uses a language other than English on the Senate floor provides the English translation. I will look into the transcription issue.
There was another fascinating point in the post: "[T]here's an interesting usage note for the Spanish hyphen. Whilst in English it is generally known as a joiner, in Spanish it's generally consider a divider."
Signals of this sort to readers of a given text are another aspect of translation that most nonspecialists never consider.
Thank you, Language Log.
|posted by Jim on 10:48 PM|
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Going the Distance
Via ESPN's Bill Simmons (December 7, 2001):
The key to any great sports movie? The quality of the Chill Scenes, those scenes
that give you goosebumps on top of your goosebumps. And Rocky was loaded with them:
...
The entire fight scene, basically a 10-minute Chill Scene (special emphasis on the
part when Adrian walks into the stadium just as Rocky gets knocked down in the 14th,
and then Rocky gets up and Creed, astounded, drops his shoulders in disbelief --
another 10.0 on the CFS, as well as my favorite moment in any Rocky movie).
Mine too. His trainer is yelling "Stay down, stay down" and Rocky gets up anyway, looks through eyes nearly shut from the beating his opponent has been giving him and still he gestures for Creed to try to hit him some more. His arm gesture said "this fight is not over," even though no one else would have faulted Rocky for giving up.
Proving to an opponent you simply will not give up has incredibile utility in legislative battles. Here at English First, Rocky Balboa is a role model for what we try to do every single day.
(Note: This item crossposted at Martinez Watch.)
|posted by Jim on 2:19 PM|
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Friday, December 08, 2006
Britian Starts to "Get It"
Via NRO's Andrew Stuttaford: "Tony Blair formally declared Britain's multiculturalist experiment over today as he told immigrants they had "a duty" to integrate with the mainstream of society."
|posted by Jim on 3:19 PM|
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R.I.P. Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Kirkpatrick died today. This extrordinary woman served as Ronald Reagan's Ambassador to the United Nations. I was actually present to hear her famous 1984 speech to the Republican National Convention.
Much on Kirkpatrick via National Review Online today. I recommend this item.
My own favorite Kirkpatrick moment took place right after the Sovet shootdown of an unarmed civilian airliner, KAL 007.
Kirkpatrick famously demanded of the Soviet Union's UN ambassador, "Don't wait for the translation. Answer the question." (This memorable moment was actually repeated in the movie Star Trek VI.)
|posted by Jim on 2:47 PM|
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Thursday, December 07, 2006
Indian language indoctrination bill passes
But only after a vital colloquy thanks to U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK):
Mr. COBURN. I rise for the purpose of engaging Senator MCCAIN, who is managing H.R. 4766, in a colloquy over a certain aspect of the bill. ... I would like to know if it is the intent of this legislation that the Administration for native Americans, in administering the provisions of this bill, require that grants for Native language survival schools require parental permission for the student to participate in the program and also that the students participating in the program demonstrate adequate progress in English proficiency according to grade level?
Mr. MCCAIN: The Senator from Oklahoma is correct. That is the intent of the bill.
Congressional Record, December 6, 2006, page S11314.
|posted by Jim on 3:58 PM|
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