Short Story Translation Project...

[aanon]

Hi all,

I've been thinking of what we could do to push the upper-intermediate/advanced Thai students a bit more. We get lots of single-word and single-sentence queries and I wonder if anyone would like to undertake something a bit more substantial?

The vague idea I have in mind is to take a modern Thai short story (say 2-20 pages), split it into paragraphs or sections of another sort, allocate each section to an interested person to translate, help each other out with sticking points, then put the translated sections together to create a joint work.

As I type this, I have all sorts of hesistant thoughts - how could it work? would it need one thread or many? would it be impossible to finish anything with too many cooks and no chef? how would we know when we were finished? would people get discouraged with re- edits and criticisms? what about stylistic continuity? would there be enough interested people? are there copyright problems with posting a whole short story here?

So this post is not the challenge itself, but an invitation for ideas. Is anyone interested? Has anyone seen a good approach to this kind of joint project in use anywhere else? Will look forward to hearing your ideas.

all the best.

[AjarnP]

Hi all,

I've been thinking of what we could do to push the upper-intermediate/advanced Thai students a bit more. We get lots of single-word and single-sentence queries and I wonder if anyone would like to undertake something a bit more substantial?

The vague idea I have in mind is to take a modern Thai short story (say 2-20 pages), split it into paragraphs or sections of another sort, allocate each section to an interested person to translate, help each other out with sticking points, then put the translated sections together to create a joint work.

As I type this, I have all sorts of hesistant thoughts - how could it work? would it need one thread or many? would it be impossible to finish anything with too many cooks and no chef? how would we know when we were finished? would people get discouraged with re- edits and criticisms? what about stylistic continuity? would there be enough interested people? are there copyright problems with posting a whole short story here?

So this post is not the challenge itself, but an invitation for ideas. Is anyone interested? Has anyone seen a good approach to this kind of joint project in use anywhere else? Will look forward to hearing your ideas.

all the best.

คุณ Aanon ครับ

What a great idea!!!

Would it be best to recruit say ten people to do the translations into english but open them all up for comment by the forum in general.

I would suggest that it will also be important for all translators to be using the same reference library otherwise there will be incessant argument as to which version is correct.

So long as we stay away from Politics, The Royal House and Religion (also taboo after-dinner subjects for my household) then I think it will be fine and would not upset anyone's sensitivities

I'm in,

AjarnP

[DavidHouston]

Aanon and AjarnP,

Seems to me that a Thai to English translation by a non-native-Thai language reader is composed of a least two major steps: first, the translator needs to understand the Thai vocabulary, syntax, context, and flow of the original story or document to understand the meaning of what the author is trying to convey; second, the translator needs to render what he understands into correct, idiomatic English. Depending on the difficulty and sophistication of the source document, for a non-native reader the first step is the greater challenge. Most of our questions in this forum concern this first step. The second step for an native English speaker should be by far the easier since he or she is rendering the original into the language with which he or she is most familiar.

Some might say there are three separate steps: 1) developing an understanding of the original, 2) a rough, fairly literal translation into English of the Thai, 3) a polished English version which renders stage 2 into a version which to the reader appears to have been written originally in English. Personally, through this forum, I am interested in steps one and two; the third step is highly individualistic and teaches me very little about the meaning of the Thai original.

However, note the significant number of occasions in which we squabble about the correct English language term or phrase to use for the Thai which has more to do with style, geographic or regional vocabulary, and education than it does with the Thai original. This forum has been a great learning experience for me as an American to learn vocabulary used by my British and Australian (and other) fellow posters. (I still do not know what the word "dodgy" means, to cite one example. I read contemporary Brtitish fiction and have delved into Dorothy Sayers, for example, but never pursued James Joyce, indicating my personal low level of educational achievement.) But, I suspect that the participants in the short story translation project would be constanting searching and arguing over the minutia of accuracy in rendering the third step. Translation is an unappreciated art form, not widely recognized as such by most; see the multiple translations of Flaubert's Madame Bovary for how French can be translated in multiple ways, to say nothing of the myriad translations of the Iliad or Odyssey.

I wish you luck in your endeavors and I look forward to reading the results of your efforts. From what I have seen of this forum, you have a significant number of very excellent Thai scholars, speakers, and readers who could make your project very rewarding; they certainly have been very helpful to my learning process. Your project would also help me with my Thai language learning process.

[mangkorn]

Khun aanon:

Sounds like a fine idea to me. And David's suggestions are all good and important. As a writer and editor by trade, I wouldn't mind working on Step 3 (plus 1 and 2), if it got that far.

Cheers, and good luck.

[meadish_sweetball]

It does sound like a good idea, I agree.

Obviously I can't hope to compete with you native speakers when it comes to English style, but I'd be happy to participate all the same. I also agree David makes an important point about what he calls stage 3... Since this is partially down to individual preference, it might detract from understanding the Thai, which is more essential for the forum, than to be able to write fully idiomatic English.

As long as we can focus mostly on stage 1 and 2 without getting bogged down in 3, it sounds like a fun project.

[withnail]

I agree it sounds like fun. What puts me off though with any lengthy type of project such as this is having to follow a thread which could quite quickly become 20 to 30 pages long. I think this is one of the reasons why, as you said in your OP, we get lots of single-word and single-sentence queries.

I think to make the project more manageable we could have separate threads for each part of the translation, and perhaps another thread pinned with the final (to be updated by a mod?) to date.

I agree with David's excellent post above that 'stage three' could easily take one person several months depending on the type of document we are dealing with. My suggestions on this are that firstly we don't worry too much about this stage and, secondly, that perhaps to start with we stick to something factual rather than anything too stylistic. A magazine article rather than a novel for example.

Otherwise, I'm in.

[Rikker]

I think this is would be a great experiment, too. If it works, we could do it more. I frequently get the urge to translate things I'm reading, but rarely make the time.

Like withnail, I'm concerned about a forum like this being the best medium. Sounds like a wiki would be more suited, perhaps. Barring someone setting up a wiki to do this, though, withnail's suggestions are good ones. And I think everyone recognizes the danger of "step 3" when we're from such diverse English-speaking backgrounds.

(On an off-topic but related note, I wonder if any of you have ever seen thaisubtitle.com? It's an interesting take on crowdsourced translation. An cool idea, although the quality frequently leaves something to be desired.)