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Lost and found in translation
It was a snowy day on the Elmwood Strip, but the wireless network in the coffee shop was rocking. "Egads!" shouted Peter, looking up from his laptop at Chris, who was sitting across from him. "Listen to this:
"Do I the boy, hang cannot never not learn anything? Isn't it played me enough of the turns as that so that I look at outside for him by this time? But the old imbeciles is the largest imbeciles there is. Cannot learn from an old man of new turns dog, because the stating is."
"Is that Shakespeare you're reading?" pondered Chris.
"No!" snapped Peter. "It's a few lines from the first page of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer." I found the full-text book in NetLibrary http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/netlibrary.html and then I put the first page into Babel Fish http:// babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/tr, one of many Web-based translation tools. I had to read it in French for a class assignment, but after Babel Fish translated it, I had it translated back into English. But listen, this was the original passage:
"Do I hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is."
"Well, you're right next door to a bookstore," reassured Chris. "Why don't you just buy the French translation of 'Tom Sawyer?'"
"You have to be kidding," groaned Peter. "There are almost no foreign-language books in American bookstores! ("The U.S. Translation Blues: Despite High Quality (Nobel Laureates!) and Cheap Rights, U.S. Houses Struggle With Foreign Lit" by Natasha Wimmer, Publishers Weekly, May 21, 2001, p. 71, available in InfoTrac http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/eai.html. And anyway, I'll bet you a doppio espresso that that book was never translated into French!"
"You're on," said Chris, accepting the challenge, "Go to the Index Translationum http://www.unesco.org/culture/xtrans/html_eng/index_en.shtml. It's an international bibliography from UNESCO of translated books published in the world. The statistics page indicates that Mark Twain is one of the top 50 translated authors and "Tom Sawyer" WAS translated into French. The introduction to the index http://www. ethnologue.com/country_index.asp ponders the history and philosophy of translation and the amazing multiplicity of languages in the world."
"Oh, wait a minute," exclaimed Peter. "I have an urgent email message from a friend of mine in Albania. Let me get my palm translator out http://www. tranexp.com/win/PalmTran.htm. Good news—she has a job offer; bad news—she doesn't understand the contract."
"A lawyer wrote it," quipped Chris.
"Well maybe, but it's written in Arabic and she only understands Albanian. Do you think I should turn her on to Babel Fish?"
"Not if she's your friend. You know, machine translation only gives you the gist of the original text http://www.economist.com/printedition/PrinterFriendly. cfm?Story_ID=1020823. For a triple latte, I'll tell you what to do," offered Chris. "Advise her to hire a professional translator to do the job http://www. atanet.org/Getting_it_right.pdf."
"No way," insisted Peter. "I don't know about Albania, but according to the U.S. government there's a shortage of translators in our country http://www.cal.org/resources/langlink/deccurrent2.html."
"Tell her to go to Translation Journal http://accurapid.com/ journal/, which features Translators' On-Line Resources http://accurapid. com/journal/links.htm with links to many useful sites, including translators' organizations. The American Translators Association is one of many that has a searchable directory of translators http:// www.americantranslators.org/tsd_listings."
"By the way," added Chris, "ask her if she wants to meet me in Barcelona next year. I've just decided to enroll in translation school http://pages. nyu.edu/~rb28/t-schools.html. There's a future in this."
—Nina Cascio and Rick McRae, University Libraries