Post by account_disabled on Jan 2, 2024 4:22:01 GMT
A long time ago here on the blog I published a post in which I reflected on the usefulness of internationalized writing . I recommended publishing short stories and ebooks in English to reach a wider audience . Be careful, though: I wasn't talking about writing fiction in English: our knowledge of the language will never be complete enough to allow us to write a story or a novel. However, I had said that an essay, a text different from fiction, could be written in English. Now I don't think like that anymore. A few years ago I wrote 5 articles in English for a Norwegian client, but they were simple texts about travel and tourism. I would never, now, set about translating my posts into English. I tried once, but the problems started right from the first sentences.
What you discover when reading in English I occasionally read American and English novels, mostly children's books, therefore easier to understand for my level. I observe how sentences are Mdpapu$%4 constructed, how dialogue is written, what words are used (and how many I have never seen before!), the phrases and slang terms that sometimes appear in the text. Trust me: we can't write that way. To publish a story in English you need a native translator . The search for the translator The other day I mentioned my Special Data story that I would like to self-publish and the idea of having it translated into English. I would like to test my story abroad. Maybe it is more dangerous, because the available audience is no longer our small state, but the entire planet, so the number of negative comments could reach stratospheric levels. However, it is a step that I want to take: if you want to write, you have to get involved and take risks.
Why look for a native translator? An Italian translator can translate a text from English into Italian: he knows English very well and Italian perfectly, so he can make that text understandable and correct for our language. A native translator knows English perfectly and Italian well, so he will be able to make my text understandable for his language. This is the first step I will take. The compromises of language While writing my story, I realized that it is not possible to make a literal translation , but you even have to change the name of a character and transform an entire sentence for it to make sense in English. The name of that character is invented, even if the word still makes sense in Italian, just not the sense I understood. It is a name derived from a negative term, which however today is used almost jokingly. It is impossible to render it in English. I will have to think with the translator to find a suitable name for that character, in order to make the same sense as it has in Italian (also in agreement with the sentence in which its origin is explained).
What you discover when reading in English I occasionally read American and English novels, mostly children's books, therefore easier to understand for my level. I observe how sentences are Mdpapu$%4 constructed, how dialogue is written, what words are used (and how many I have never seen before!), the phrases and slang terms that sometimes appear in the text. Trust me: we can't write that way. To publish a story in English you need a native translator . The search for the translator The other day I mentioned my Special Data story that I would like to self-publish and the idea of having it translated into English. I would like to test my story abroad. Maybe it is more dangerous, because the available audience is no longer our small state, but the entire planet, so the number of negative comments could reach stratospheric levels. However, it is a step that I want to take: if you want to write, you have to get involved and take risks.
Why look for a native translator? An Italian translator can translate a text from English into Italian: he knows English very well and Italian perfectly, so he can make that text understandable and correct for our language. A native translator knows English perfectly and Italian well, so he will be able to make my text understandable for his language. This is the first step I will take. The compromises of language While writing my story, I realized that it is not possible to make a literal translation , but you even have to change the name of a character and transform an entire sentence for it to make sense in English. The name of that character is invented, even if the word still makes sense in Italian, just not the sense I understood. It is a name derived from a negative term, which however today is used almost jokingly. It is impossible to render it in English. I will have to think with the translator to find a suitable name for that character, in order to make the same sense as it has in Italian (also in agreement with the sentence in which its origin is explained).