Did any of you translate
Erin McKean's talk?
For those who haven't,
here is a small extract.
'Lexicographical' is the same pattern
as higgeldy piggeldy.
It’s a fun word to say,
and I get to say it a lot.
I would add to that:
higgeldy-piggeldy is also
a fun word to translate.
In Dutch, I used "olleke bolleke," as in…
Olleke bolleke, rubisolleke,
olleke bolleke, rubisolleke,
olleke bolleke, knol!
Luckily, this nursery rhyme is known
in both of the major regions
where Dutch is spoken.
Dutch is the mother tongue
of 23 million people,
of whom 16 million live
in the Netherlands,
6 mln in the Northern part of Belgium,
also known as Flanders,
and 400.000 in Suriname
in South-America.
We have an official
"Dutch Language Union."
So, where's the problem?
Dutch from the Netherlands
and Dutch from Flanders
sound very different.
If you meet Johan Cruyff
in the morning,
and if you're lucky, he will say
"Goeiemorgen" to you.
Kim Clijsters will say "Goeiemorgen."
In subtitling,
this is of course irrelevant.
So once again: where's the problem?
We also use different words.
A Dutchman will call this a "klokkromme."
In Flanders we call it a "Gauss-curve."
Last but not least, each group has
their set of "typical doubts,"
or deviations from Standard Dutch
that occur more
in one or the other region.
Over the years,
the Dutch have lost their sensitivity
to the gender of Dutch nouns.
And so only a Dutchman might wonder
whether a cow is male or female
… or so we teasingly say in Flanders.
In Belgium, on the other hand,
whether we like it or not,
our language is influenced
by our French-speaking fellow countrymen,
leading to sometimes awkward
constructions borrowed from French.
So there's the problem.
If a reviewer from the Netherlands
reviews the work of a colleague
from Belgium,
she might see a text which she herself
would never have written that way,
and the other way round.
If she starts correcting it,
before she knows it,
she will be caught up
in an endless yes-no-discussion.
It happened to me in my early TED days.
I even confess that
for my very first translation,
I made sure I asked a translator
from my own country
to review it, because I felt uncomfortable
with a review from the "other side."
But I quickly learned that if you stick
to a limited number of ground rules,
you can easily overcome this difficulty.
This is what I want to share
with you today.
The best way to stop discussions
about "who is right,"
is to agree on the standards you use.
For Dutch, that is quite easy.
The official thesaurus,
the main dictionary
and the standard grammar
are all accessible online.
All three are widely used and accepted
in the Netherlands and in Belgium.
If you indicate from the beginning
that you will use these as a standard,
you can avoid a lot of tension
and discussion.
But even if a word exists,
it may be highly unusual
in one of the two regions.
Take the "klokkromme."
It's a word hardly any
Belgian would use,
but on the other hand,
it is not difficult to understand
especially not in context,
as is the case in TED Talks.
There's really no point in replacing it
with a term that no Dutchman
would ever use.
I much rather treat it
as a "word worth spreading."
Of course, if the unusual word
is difficult to understand,
the story is different.
But then again,
rather than replacing the word
with a Flemish one,
I invite my translation partner
to look for an alternative
that is acceptable to both of us.
I would like to end with a few words
about what I try to to keep in mind
when reviewing or translating into Dutch.
First of all, I keep my audience in mind.
I'm writing for people
from different regions.
I might as well try
to step into their shoes
and avoid words or expressions
that I know are confusing.
Secondly, I keep in mind
my translation partner,
especially when reviewing.
In one of my early reviews,
I made the mistake of marking
the translation as reviewed
without having contacted my partner.
After all, I thought I had only
corrected some obvious mistakes.
Since then, I always contact
the translator
and invite them to let me know
whether they agree with my proposals.
Thirdly, I keep in mind
that I translate for TED
in order to help spreading
the interesting ideas of the speakers.
It's not about “winning” discussions
with other translators,
it's about working together
to provide access to TED
to as large an audience as possible.
Last year, a TED Translator
from the Netherlands
asked me whether I thought we should
have separate sets of translations
for Dutch from the Netherlands
and from Belgium.
I told him that to me,
that made no sense at all,
since it would only double the effort
to spread the ideas.
It did spur me to get better
at finding common ground
across the regions.
Last but not least, I can tell you
that translating for TED has been
an immensely enriching experience to me.
My closing thoughts are therefore
for my fellow TED Translators.
I would have liked to create
some kind of "Hans Rosling graph,"
but you will have to do
with a wordle,
in which the size of the name
represents the number of times
I worked with them.
I wish all of you an excellent workshop
and an exciting TED Global 2011.