Colorado in the Fall

These are the colors of Colorado in the fall...

L'Infinito

In Italian schools they used to have students memorize poems - tons of them, beginning with easy ones in elementary school, going up to long sections of the Divine Comedy by the time you were in high school. 

At the time, I resented having to repeatedly read and recite verse, but now that I've long forgotten most of the poems I had memorized, the few that remain have become treasured possessions.

Here is one of the best of them: Giacomo Leopardi's L'Infinito

L'Infinito

Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,

e questa siepe, che da tanta parte

dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.

Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati

spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani

silenzi, e profondissima quïete

io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco

il cor non si spaura. E come il vento

odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello

infinito silenzio a questa voce

vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,

e le morte stagioni, e la presente

e viva, e il suon di lei. Così tra questa

immensità s'annega il pensier mio:

e il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

Giacomo Leopardi

What I've been doing instead of blogging

This year I've been blogging a lot less than in the past few years. Part of the reason was blogging fatigue, but mostly because I've been working on a special project for the Italian Language Division of the ATA: our new revamped website.

I started out thinking it would be a quick job of selecting a nice template and adding some updated content, and I ended up by hand-coding or tweaking all the pages and creating some special graphics for the site (such as the banner image of the home page).

In addition to that the ILD Twitter account is now active: @ATA_ILD, and of course, Tradurre (the ILD's blog) has been active for years.

Comment spam

In the last couple of weeks this blog has been on the receiving end of a real tsunami of comment spam, mostly from one sort or another of sleazy term paper mills, but also from sundry fly-by-night translation agencies that have somehow got the (mistaken) idea that sending contentless comments here (and, I've no doubt, to many other blogs as well) would somehow increase their web presence and lead to translation wealth.

This means I've had to delete dozens of comments, both from the (fairly efficient) Blogger spam folder, but also from the automatically published comments.

If in doing so I have inadvertently deleted a real comment of yours, I'm sorry, and I apologize.

How to spend a fortune and not learn anything

I've noticed that much of the most recent comment spam arriving here (and nicely caught by Blogger's spam filter) is from sites that sell research papers and other shortcuts of very dubious ethical value to lazy students. All of it seems tailored to the American market.

I've also noticed (teaching online at DU), that the use of paid-for essays, plagiarism and such must be on the rise: until last year, for example, students were only required to subscribe to the university's ethical policy. Now not only they have to do that, but their papers also are scanned using a software program that flags suspected plagiarism.

So: these students are paying for university (normally, paying a lot: university is expensive here), then they pay extra for someone to do their homework for them. Don't they realize that this way they are short-charging themselves, and that this way they will not really learn from what university has to offer?

P.S. This is not aimed at my students: I know they are doing their best in my classes - it's just a general comment prompted by too many spam comments purporting to sell "cheap essays".

Early-bird deadline for the ATA Conference

Friday, September 20 is the last day you can register for the ATA Conference at the discounted early-bird rate.

In their reminder e-mail, the ATA give ten good reasons to attend the ATA annual Conference:

1. MORE THAN 200 SEMINARS, SESSIONS, AND EVENTS
   Practical education from translators, interpreters, and company owners
2. FACE-TO-FACE NETWORKING
   More than 1,800 attendees to meet at this year's Annual Conference
3. TOOL TUTORIALS
   Three days of translation tool workshops and presentations
4. LATEST SOFTWARE, BOOKS, TECHNOLOGY
   Meet vendors and try a little hands-on experience in the Exhibit Hall
5. MOBILE "APPING." NEW THIS YEAR!
   Program, handouts, and more from smart phone, tablet, or laptop
6. ATA DIVISION EVENTS
   Some of the best one-on-one information networking
7. ASSOCIATION MEETINGS
   Find out more about ATA's goals and how you can be part of them
8. TIME TO HAVE FUN
   Things to do, places to go, and fun to be had
9. THE GREAT DEBATE
   Tweet, email, or post your comments online in debate of T&I issues
10. IDEAS, MOTIVATION, AND ENTHUSIASM
    Learn from others, be inspired, and remember what makes your career so great
    
    Review the complete ATA Annual Conference Program now. 

But in addition to that, this year is particularly special for the Italian Language Division: we have more sessions than ever before, and two very special guest speakers: Italian best selling author Beppe Severgnini, and his English translator, Giles Watson.

You can see more details about the Italian Language Divsion events in the ILD's new website.

See you in San Diego!

Great post on how to be a good commenter

John Scalzi, a popular SF author, and, with his 14-year-old "Whatever", one of the first and best bloggers around, has just published a great post with guidelines about how and when to comment, with ten questions each commenter should ask himself or herself before commenting. It will be useful for anybody who comments on blogs or contributes to online discussion threads.

The first three points are:

1. Do I actually have anything to say?
2. Is what I have to say actually on topic?
3. Does what I write actually stay on topic?

There are ten in all and each with a cogent and persuasive explanation, in Scalzi's usual snarky style.

Go and see the post for yourself, and, if you are a blogger, spread the word.

Anti-translator idea of the week

A translator has recently seriously proposed on ProZ a "blueboard for translators" (scroll down until the second post by "Mirellauk"):

There is a growing need for a tool that allows outsourcers to blacklist or at least publicly comment on unreliable translators. Each translation company has its own grading system but, generally, information is not shared. Dealing with unprofessional translators is costly, time consuming and can have serious reputation consequences for a translation company if and when corrective steps are not pursued.

It is fundamental that such tool is created through the cooperation between agencies and freelancers, for instance on a site like Proz, and I am convinced that professional translators would benefit from it.

There are many things wrong with this, from the fact that such a system is morally repugnant (given, among other things, the power disparity between translators and agencies, as a wiser colleague points out in the same thread) to the certainty that it would be abused by unscrupulous agencies, and to the completely unwarranted facile assumption that "professional translators would benefit from it".

Even if one wanted to look at this from the point of view of a translation agency, such a system would signify a complete abdication of the translation agency's own responsibility: "dealing with unprofessional translators is costly, time consuming and can have serious reputation consequences for a translation company" - yes, selecting unsuitable translators would damage a translation company's reputation - and that's precisely why translation companies should take full personal responsibility for the whole selection process, without trying to fend off all or part of the selection to an unethical and unprofessional idea such as this.

Take advantage of the multilingual features of Wikipedia

Although Wikipedia should always be taken with a grain of salt, the information it provides is usually a valuable help when we translate. One feature you can find particularly useful is the list of multilingual links that often accompany a Wikipedia page.

If, for example, you are looking for information of what "surge limit" means in a compressor, you won't find an article specifically devoted to it in the English Wikipedia, but you'll find an explanation of "compressor surge" under the Wikipedia article on Compressor stall. This page links to the articles devoted to the same subject in several other languages. Even if your language is not among the direct links (Italian is not, in this case), checking the articles in other languages may supply you with useful hints to arrive at the correct translation.

In this case, the French and Spanish pages for "Compressor stall" are titled in a similar way: "Pompage" in French, and "Pompaje" in Spanish. This was a critical clue: the Italian Wikipedia does not have an articled simply titled "Pompaggio", but, in the article on "Compressore" you can find a section about the differences between "condizione di stallo" and "condizione di pompaggio" - which, in turn, leads to an article on "limite di pompaggio" that specifically mentions that "limite di pompaggio" is, in English, "surge limit". I thus confirmed that I could use "limite di pompaggio" in my translation.

As you can see, the way to arrive to the correct translation is often roundabout, but learning to make good use of what Wikipedia has to offer for us yields goods results.

From BOMB magazine: An interview with Mary Jo Bang, poet and translator

Mary Jo Bang recently published a new translation of Dante's Inferno - a modernized translation that seems to have caused quite a stir.

Zachary Lazar interviewed the translator for BOMB magazine:

Imagine a contemporary translation of Dante that includes references to Pink Floyd, South Park, Donald Rumsfeld, and Star Trek. Now imagine that this isn’t gimmicky—this is the hardest but most important part to imagine. Imagine instead that the old warhorse is now scary again, and perversely funny, and lyrical and faux-lyrical in a way that sounds sometimes like Auden, sometimes like Nabokov, but always like Mary Jo Bang. 

The article also links to the entire translation of Canto XXXIV.

A very brief excerpt (verses 61-69):

"Quell'anima là sù c'ha maggior pena", disse 'l maestro, "è Giuda Scarïotto, che 'l capo ha dentro e fuor le gambe mena.	“That soul up there suffers the worst,” My teacher said. “Judas Iscariot. His head stays inside, while his kicking feet stick out.
De li altri due c'hanno il capo di sotto, quel che pende dal nero ceffo è Bruto: vedi come si storce, e non fa motto!;	Those other two whose heads hang down, The one dangling from the dark mug is Brutus— Look how he thrashes without uttering a word—
e l'altro è Cassio, che par sì membruto. Ma la notte risurge, e oramai è da partir, ché tutto avem veduto".	The other is Cassius, who looks much more muscular Without his skin. But night’s coming again And we have to go. We’ve seen all there is to see.”