Since I came across a story about procrastination on the BBC Magazine page, I have, of course, been putting off blogging about it.
There’s so much there that I could comment on that I hardly know where to begin. Instead, I’ve been following links to other stories and generally wasting time.
I would like to get this posted today, though, so have finally selected three points to focus on.
Continue reading “where (how? when?) to begin?”
I’m currently working on a translation project to produce an English version of the voice-over script for a dance video. The original is not precisely poetry, but it’s certainly not standard prose and it does depend on multiple meanings and interpretations.
This is the sort of project I love, as it offers all sorts of creative potential – as long as the person you’re working with doesn’t demand that the translation say exactly the same as the original.
To begin with, there’s no way I can find a word in English like the Spanish word tiempo, which can be used for ‘verb tense’, ‘weather’, ‘time’ and ‘time signature’, plus a few other unrelated concepts.
This, of course, is one reason it’s fun being a ‘creative translator’. It probably also accounts for the fact that my thesaurus is falling apart.
Translating an article on Brazilian beaches, I’ve just learned a new word in Spanish:
carioca.
1. adj. Natural de Río de Janeiro. U. t. c. s.
2. adj. Perteneciente o relativo a esta ciudad del Brasil o a su provincia.
(definition from the Diccionario de la Lengua Española.)
I suppose it’s my lousy accent than makes me connect it to karaoke. It does mean, though, that I should find it relatively easy to remember carioca by picturing the Rio carnival procession all singing karaoke as they dance the samba.
Actually, that’s such a dreadful image that I hope I don’t have much call to talk about the people and activities of Rio in Spanish.
don't confuse the narrator 