A reporter for the German TV channel Phoenix was caught on a hot mic expressing his frustration during live coverage of Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday.
I’ve heard it’s actually really difficult, because a good translator doesn’t do it literally.
They’re supposed to say something which gets the same meaning across, which often isnt what you’d get just by translating each word.
That leaves people translating trump with a problem: you can’t generally turn his long rambling speeches into something with a clearly understandable meaning without putting words into his mouth, or summarising so aggressively that you’d only say a couple of sentences for every few minutes of speech
This is not just an issue in translation. Anybody who summarises his speeches in English will struggle to extract the meaning. Reporting should always mention this issue in the first line. A disclaimer like: «it’s difficult to make heads or tails from Trumps speech do to his incoherent speech. Below is our best attempt.» should be a preface to all reporting.
I’ve heard it’s actually really difficult, because a good translator doesn’t do it literally.
They’re supposed to say something which gets the same meaning across, which often isnt what you’d get just by translating each word.
That leaves people translating trump with a problem: you can’t generally turn his long rambling speeches into something with a clearly understandable meaning without putting words into his mouth, or summarising so aggressively that you’d only say a couple of sentences for every few minutes of speech
This is not just an issue in translation. Anybody who summarises his speeches in English will struggle to extract the meaning. Reporting should always mention this issue in the first line. A disclaimer like: «it’s difficult to make heads or tails from Trumps speech do to his incoherent speech. Below is our best attempt.» should be a preface to all reporting.