Translating is a true skill – a good translator makes tiny modifications to the text they're working with to make it as good as it can be, taking into consideration audience, culture, and context.
"Translating is a first step toward civilization".
Translating sex scenes can be a tricky business and surely, like most translating, is usually something of a solitary pursuit.
Translating is the playwright's job; he must transcribe and shape what one character's soul says to another.
"He was an honorable man in a nation where honor in translating is neither encouraged, necessary, nor profitable".
By Andrea DenHoed February 7 , 2012"He was an honorable man in a nation where honor in translating is neither encouraged, necessary, nor profitable".
Frequently we know that a paragraph has been cut short, because the next one begins "No... .. or "Stop it", or (Shields's favourite paragraph opener) "But... .. Danielle Westerman, the famous feminist intellectual whose works Reta has been translating, is the opposite.
Now, surely even those who think translating is for anoraks can appreciate that translating sex might be rather fun, and it's even more fun if you have to defend your choice of words – your gasps and grunts, your cocks, etc – in the face of someone else's similar but oh-so-different version.
"The young woman from Saudi who translates something to Arabic, what she's translating is language that's been vetted, but it's not being handed over to a State Department translator, who's handing it over to State Department public affairs, who's approving it.
For me, freelance translating is the wave of the future.
An interesting overview of the history of translating is given in Stokhof 2007.
