Translators are having a hard time with Trump

[Bald1]

Never thought of this, but I can see the point. Trump is constantly repeating himself, takes pauses, has no rhythm, exaggerates, mixes colonialisms and formal terms, takes liberties with meanings and has a habit of sprinkling humour and a bit of sarcasm into his speeches. While I like his style because it shows how he's not a political robot, I'd have a real pita time translating what he said into coherent sentences.

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

Well, in some languages, they will have to add to the translation to interpret for the audience that he literally doesn't mean China is sexually assaulting US, etc. and for most legit translators, this is not a good thing. You're supposed to just translate everything, word for word, without any kind of added interpretation so that it doesn't seem like you're swaying the conversation towards your own opinion. A translator is not supposed to have an opinion on what they're interpreting.

I think the spanish lady got a bad example though, in Portuguese at least, raping can mean what trump was trying to say in both the Mexico and China case, although it's not a very respectful thing to say.

China is raping the USA in foreign commerce.
A China está estuprando os EUA no comércio exterior.

Sounds pretty good.

People should be smarter, if they are doing live translation it's hard but it's expected to be a bit flawed.

 

[SRN]

Didn't say Trump is bad.

I didn't say that you did bud.

 

[Cuauhtemoc]

They do. But it can be really difficult to explain it through translation.

I use translators fairly often, and as a rule I try to avoid using colloquial phrases because they are not going to be understood well and, even if they are explained well, it completely breaks up the matter.



But that's besides the point. This country has one language. English. If Trump can't speak it, he should GTFO!!!1

Live translation or written translation? I've worked translating texts from english to portuguese, but translation live(interpreting) is pretty damn hard.

 

[Lord Commander Palis]

http://usuncut.com/news/rubbish-translators-struggling-interpret-trumps-unforgivably-bad-english/

Translators are struggling to interpret Trump’s unforgivably bad English

As US media struggles to catch President Donald Trump in the same room with a fact, international listeners can’t tell the difference between the truth and a tall tale for a totally different reason — Trump’s use of English is almost too bizarre to translate.

An example:

As US media struggles to catch President Donald Trump in the same room with a fact, international listeners can’t tell the difference between the truth and a tall tale for a totally different reason — Trump’s use of English is almost too bizarre to translate.


Soraya Caicedo, executive producer of SBS’s Spanish language radio broadcast, says it isn’t that the words Trump uses are hard to interpret, it’s that he uses many words arbitrarily for different things

“When he says Mexicans are rapists, he’s talking about crime,” Caicedo said, “but when he says China is raping America, he’s talking about economics.”

“We cannot translate it literally as ‘China is sexually abusing America,” she added.

http://usuncut.com/news/rubbish-translators-struggling-interpret-trumps-unforgivably-bad-english/

Wow this thread was tremendously bad--You literally repeated the same thing and not only that, you think some foreigner speaks better English than our President. Truly disgusting.

 

[Seano]

Im no professional but the example they gave makes the translators look retarded

I think Chinese people sexually assaulting our country is unacceptable!

 

[ncordless]

Live translation or written translation? I've worked translating texts from english to portuguese, but translation live(interpreting) is pretty damn hard.

Live. Sworn testimony. It is pretty damn hard. Much harder if I ask whether it was as cold as a "witch's titty in Nebraska" rather than simply asking how cold was it. Even if the translator knows what I meant (and that's a pretty regional colloquialism), making the translator try to interpret it is harmful to the translation.

I've had to object many times where I ask a simple yes/no question, the translator says something to the witness, the witness says something back, the translator says something else, the witness says something very long back, and the translator tells me she said "yes."

 

[jeffk]

I should have started with the McWhorter article. It is more interesting.

It is bizarre to me how protective people on here of Trump.

Quick summary of McWhorter:

Trump talks the way he does because he does a lot of talking. He probably hasn't committed himself to do a lot of writing. He has never had to. Spoken language is much less formal. Trump talking style makes him seem more real. A lot of people couldn't relate to a guy like Romney because he wasn't able to let it all hang out.

 

[ncordless]

Wow this thread was tremendously bad--You literally repeated the same thing and not only that, you think some foreigner speaks better English than our President. Truly disgusting.

I would bet a great many foreigners speak better English that Chump. He's pretty bad at it.

 

[panamaican]

Not surprising. Translating slang and euphemisms have to be one of the hardest things to do as a translator. I got things wrong all the time with my Hispanic clients because the slang varied from one country to another and there was no way to predict which speaker was from Mexico or the DR or Colombia until after they'd slipped in some phrase that made no sense to me.

Trump uses a lot of imprecise language so I can see the difficulty.

 

[Lord Commander Palis]

I would bet a great many foreigners speak better English that Chump. He's pretty bad at it.

You're no Melania yourself there champ. Might want to brush up on your English typing skills first. Maybe form better sentence structure. Also simple sentences like your last one really tell us that you may need to go back to school and work on that GED.

 

[TSO]

Am I the only one that's gonna notice the article says trump said Mexicans are rapists? He never did, he said illegal's are rapists and they do tend to do a lion share of the raping.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Well shit, even us English speakers argue over what the fuck the guy means when he speaks.

 

[Seano]

Well shit, even us English speakers argue over what the fuck the guy means when he speaks.

Apparently what we all heard as "bigly" is actually "big league."

 

[Butterbean]

Live. Sworn testimony. It is pretty damn hard. Much harder if I ask whether it was as cold as a "witch's titty in Nebraska" rather than simply asking how cold was it. Even if the translator knows what I meant (and that's a pretty regional colloquialism), making the translator try to interpret it is harmful to the translation.

I've had to object many times where I ask a simple yes/no question, the translator says something to the witness, the witness says something back, the translator says something else, the witness says something very long back, and the translator tells me she said "yes."

 

[Hans Gercmiov]

Make translations great again.

 

[Pwent]

sounds like theyre terrible at their job if theyre getting stumped by figurative language and metaphors

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

Apparently what we all heard as "bigly" is actually "big league."

I'm totally clueless as to where that originated. Half kinda wondered and half didn't give a shit.

 

[AviatorShades]

fake news tabloid website

always click before bothering to respond

 

[freaky]

lmao these translators are translating his speech word for word. hahahaha. How hard is it to paraphrase? You can say China is ripping America off or America is losing money/job/economy to China. These are bad translators. I'm trilingual and no language I know can be translated word for word. Usually it's the opposite, in terms of Grammar. "How are you" would be "you are how" in most Asian countries.