infundibulum

again

and i wrote 30 lines of python about it.

$svn co http://ruphus.com/svn/translit/

if you are bored and or curious.

blackbird       melro

canary  canário

crow    corvo

cuckoo  cuco

dove    pomba

duck    pato

eagle   águia

falcon  falcão

flamingo        flamingo

goose   ganso

seagull gaivota

hawk    gavião

jay     gralha

mallard pato-real

ostrich avestruz

owl     coruja

parakeet        periquito

parrot  papagaio

pelican pelicano

penguin pinguim

pheasant        faisão

raven   corvo

rooster galo

sparrow pardal

stork   cegonha

swallow andorinha

swan    cisne

turkey  peru

vulture abutre

woodpecker      pica-pau

wren    carriça
no particular reason whatsoever, except that i tried to learn them.

Tlingit, which should be pronounced something like “Klinkit” according to Wikipedia , is a Na-Dené language spoken in what is now Alaska and British Columbia (same family as Navajo, how about that?) .

That’s a long way from Stratford-on-Avon, but you can go see a version of Macbeth in Tlingit this month at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC:

Perseverance to Do ‘Macbeth’ in Tlingit

But this time the 12-member cast, whose ages range from 15 to 42, has agreed to perform most of the play in Tlingit (pronounced klink-it).

“It’s like running a marathon, without training for it,” said actor Ishmael Hope, who plays Malcolm, the son of King Duncan who is killed by Macbeth. “But we’re doing the work to make it happen.

“None of us is going to sound like a fluent speaker, because no matter how meticulous we are, it’s a difficult language. But we’ll still be able to convey meaning.”

Apparently the actors don’t really “understand” their lines, except insofar as they understand their English equivalents:

“It takes 10 times longer to learn just one line,” said Waid, who plays Macbeth and has performed Shakespeare in theaters worldwide with various production groups since he was a teenager. “As far as the structure of the language and the grammar, it’s still a mystery.”

That’s kind of weird… but when you’re dealing with a languages that has very few fluent speakers, the “publicity” aspect of a project like this is arguably at least as important as the “preservation” aspect. I imagine it would be almost impossible to put a big production like this together exclusively with fluent speakers. How many Tlingit speakers are actors, after all.

I wonder if they will be publishing the text in some form for Tlingit learners.

Some rummaging about for stuff about Tlingit turned up TroubledRaven.com, a site by Lance Twitchell, who is the language consultant for the DC performance and mentioned in the article. He has some nice materials on Tlingit: Lingit X’einaxh’.

There are a few US politicians who speak Spanish fluently, Colorado Democratic Senator Ken Salazar is among them (Mel Martinez is another, I’m sure there are more…). Salazar said something in Spanish which has been translated to English as follows:

Pantagraph.com | News | Durbin, 5 other senators seek dialogue with Bolivia

Sen. Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, said in fluent Spanish to Bolivian reporters that the visit “signals a different direction’’ for U.S.-Bolivian relations, which have been strained under Bolivia’s leftist leader Evo Morales.

“I believe all of us want the same thing, to help lift up the people of Latin America so that they can achieve the human dignity they deserve,’’ Salazar said.

Here’s the original quote in Spanish:

Periodico Opinión

Salazar, demócrata de Colorado, señaló a la prensa antes de la entrevista con Morales, que tanto Estados Unidos como Bolivia, buscan “la misma cosa, que es levantar al pueblo para que la gente pueda realizar la dignidad humana que merecen“.

(Emphases mine.)

I suppose I might be picking at nits, but I wonder if “achieve the dignity they deserve” is an appropriate translation for “realizar la dignidad humana que merecen.”

The distinction seems important to me: “achieve” suggests that the people in question have no human dignity at present, where as Spanish realizar might be equally well translated (in this instance) simply as “realize,” and would suggest that human dignity is (duh) inherent to them, and the goal Salazar is talking about is the expression of that dignity…

Mis dos centavos. Or something.

NOW Magazine - Movies in Toronto, NOVEMBER 23 - 29, 2006

Cruz’s Spanish performances are quicksilver and funny, ever since her first major role in Bigas Luna’s Jam&oactue;n (1992), as a rural girl involved in a passionate affair with Javier Bardem.

After her sojourn in America, it’s a relief to see Cruz back where she belongs. More importantly, it’s a relief to hear her back where she belongs, not trying to wrap her Castilian consonants around English words.

That’s a pretty lame thing to say.

Penelope Cruz can speak in whateeeeeever language she wants, as far as I’m concerned.

Preferably to me.

Oh, and guys? It’s “oacute.”

Kthx.

Here are some language- and translation-related stories for your perusal.

The Telegraph - Calcutta : Metro “The mosquito coil brand being advertised is Maxo, marketed by Jyothi laboratories. It is a national brand and therefore must be having campaigns running in areas other than Bengal. This ad is in Bengali and from all indications it is not a translation of the national campaign. It is an ad conceived and created in the local language.”

The Enquirer - Translator helps patients overcome language barrier “”When you have a child dying, you can barely remember your own language,” Morales said.”

MetroWestDailyNews.com - News & Opinion: Police who speak the language “Just two hours into his shift for the night, Milford Police Officer Carlos Sousa encountered three drivers who spoke little or no English.
Sousa slipped easily into Portuguese to talk with a Brazilian teen whose car was towed from East Main Street because he had no valid license. After pulling over a pickup truck, Sousa broke into Spanish to explain a traffic ticket.
In a town with growing Ecuadorian and Brazilian immigrant populations, Sousa’s fluency in three languages is a valuable skill on the force.”

I put together one of those Google Co-op search engines for sites related to language, translation, linguistics, and stuff like that. Check it out:

Language Search

Site recommendations welcome.

Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, there’s a paper called “El Tiempo Latino.” Which I read because it’s *cough* free. The paper is published by the Washington Post. (Not sure, actually, if it started off that way or was bought…)

A couple days ago, this article caught my attention:

Enseñanza multilingüe: Frente a un pedido oficial, escuelas del área inician clases de español, y otros idiomas, desde la guardería (Multilingual education: In accord with an official requirement, area schools initiate classes in Spanish and other languages, beginning in preschool)

Well anyway, that’s my own translation of the headline and blurb. Since it’s an interesting article in its own right, I figured I’d look it up on the web and translate the key bits. So I googled the author, and lo and behold, the original was in English, at the Washington Post:

Schools Try Elementary Approach To Teaching Foreign Languages

Interestingly, as far as I can tell, there’s no formal indication at all that translation was involved. The English version is probably the original, since it’s much longer (1400 words vs. 400 in Spanish), but no translator’s name is mentioned.

One often comes across newspaper pieces that carry taglines at the end, along the lines of “So-and-so contributed to this article…” Why shouldn’t the translator get any such credit?

I’m sorry, Esperanto world, but I can only laugh when I discover that “bird flu” comes out as “birda gripo” in Esperanto.

OH NO, THE DREADED BIRDA GRIPO.

Right, thank you for reading my immature blog post.

Random bit of English/Welsh text that I found in an unwieldy pdf, just sticking it here so I don’t lose it. Interesting.