WEBVTT 00:00:01.080 --> 00:00:06.320 Did any of you translate Erin McKean's talk? For those who haven't, here's a small extract. 00:00:06.320 --> 00:00:10.160 'Lexicographical' is the same pattern as higgeldy piggeldy. 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:12.360 Right? It’s a fun word to say, and I get to say it a lot. 00:00:12.360 --> 00:00:17.080 I would add to that: higgeldy-piggeldy is also a fun word to translate. 00:00:17.080 --> 00:00:21.320 In Dutch, I used 'olleke bolleke', as in… 00:00:21.320 --> 00:00:24.000 Olleke bolleke, rubisolleke, 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:27.240 olleke bolleke, rubisolleke, olleke bolleke, knol! 00:00:27.240 --> 00:00:30.880 Luckily, this nursery rhyme is known 00:00:30.880 --> 00:00:33.640 in both of the major regions where Dutch is spoken. 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:37.600 Dutch is the mother tongue of 23 million people, 00:00:37.600 --> 00:00:40.280 of whom 16 million live in the Netherlands, 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:44.720 6 million in the Northern part of Belgium, also known as Flanders, 00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:48.480 and 400.000 in Suriname, in South-America. 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:51.840 We have an official 'Dutch Language Union'. 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:53.920 So where's the problem? 00:00:53.920 --> 00:00:57.200 Dutch from the Netherlands and Dutch from Flanders 00:00:57.200 --> 00:00:58.880 sound very different. 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:01.680 If you meet Johan Cruyff in the morning, 00:01:01.680 --> 00:01:06.080 and if you're lucky, he will say 'Goeiemorgen' to you. 00:01:06.080 --> 00:01:09.160 Kim Clijsters will say 'Goeiemorgen'. 00:01:09.160 --> 00:01:12.280 In subtitling, this is of course irrelevant. 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:15.560 So once again: where's the problem? 00:01:15.560 --> 00:01:18.120 We also use different words. 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:20.880 A Dutchman will call this a 'klokkromme'. 00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:23.760 In Flanders we call it a 'Gauss-curve'. 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:28.560 Last but not least, each group has their set of 'typical doubts', 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:30.920 or deviations from Standard Dutch 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:33.800 that occur more in one or the other region. 00:01:33.800 --> 00:01:37.720 Over the years, the Dutch have lost their sensitivity 00:01:37.720 --> 00:01:39.520 to the gender of Dutch nouns. 00:01:39.520 --> 00:01:42.840 And so only a Dutchman might wonder 00:01:42.840 --> 00:01:45.040 whether a cow is male or female 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:47.800 … or so we teasingly say, in Flanders. 00:01:47.800 --> 00:01:51.720 In Belgium, on the other hand, whether we like it or not, 00:01:51.720 --> 00:01:55.920 our language is influenced by our French-speaking fellow countrymen, 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:59.920 leading to sometimes awkward constructions borrowed from French. 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:02.760 So there's the problem: 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:04.760 if a reviewer from the Netherlands 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:07.320 reviews the work of a colleague from Belgium, 00:02:07.320 --> 00:02:10.000 she might see a text which she herself 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:12.080 would never have written that way, 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:13.720 and the other way round. 00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:15.720 If she starts correcting it, 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:17.840 before she knows it, she will be caught up 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:19.640 in an endless yes-no-discussion. 00:02:19.640 --> 00:02:22.800 It happened to me in my early TED days. 00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:26.560 I even confess that for my very first translation, 00:02:26.560 --> 00:02:29.840 I made sure I asked a translator from my own country 00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:32.640 to review it, because I felt uncomfortable 00:02:32.640 --> 00:02:34.640 with a review from the 'other side'. 00:02:34.640 --> 00:02:37.120 But I quickly learned that if you stick 00:02:37.120 --> 00:02:39.320 to a limited number of ground rules, 00:02:39.320 --> 00:02:42.200 you can easily overcome this difficulty. 00:02:42.200 --> 00:02:45.520 This is what I want to share with you today. 00:02:45.520 --> 00:02:49.240 The best way to stop discussions about 'who is right', 00:02:49.240 --> 00:02:51.720 is to agree on the standards you use. 00:02:51.720 --> 00:02:53.920 For Dutch, that is quite easy. 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:56.760 The official thesaurus, the main dictionary 00:02:56.760 --> 00:03:00.520 and the standard grammar are all accessible online. 00:03:00.520 --> 00:03:03.400 All three are widely used and accepted 00:03:03.400 --> 00:03:05.080 in the Netherlands and in Belgium. 00:03:05.080 --> 00:03:07.400 If you indicate from the beginning 00:03:07.400 --> 00:03:09.640 that you will use these as a standard, 00:03:09.640 --> 00:03:12.400 you can avoid a lot of tension and discussion. 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:14.480 But even if a word 'exists', 00:03:14.480 --> 00:03:16.920 it may be highly unusual in one of the two regions. 00:03:16.920 --> 00:03:19.480 Take the 'klokkromme'. 00:03:19.480 --> 00:03:22.040 It's a word hardly any Belgian would use, 00:03:22.040 --> 00:03:24.760 but on the other hand it is not difficult to understand 00:03:24.760 --> 00:03:27.160 -- especially not in context, 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:29.480 as is the case in TED Talks. 00:03:29.480 --> 00:03:31.840 There's really no point in replacing it 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:34.280 with a term that no Dutchman would ever use. 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:36.280 I much rather treat it 00:03:36.280 --> 00:03:38.400 as a 'word worth spreading'. 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:41.240 Of course, if the unusual word is difficult 00:03:41.240 --> 00:03:43.520 to understand, the story is different. 00:03:43.520 --> 00:03:44.720 But then again, 00:03:44.720 --> 00:03:47.600 rather than replacing the word with a Flemish one, 00:03:47.600 --> 00:03:50.120 I invite my translation partner 00:03:50.120 --> 00:03:51.360 to look for an alternative 00:03:51.360 --> 00:03:53.840 that is acceptable to both of us. 00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:55.880 I would like to end with a few words 00:03:55.880 --> 00:03:57.480 about what I try to to keep in mind 00:03:57.480 --> 00:03:59.920 when reviewing or translating into Dutch. 00:03:59.920 --> 00:04:03.160 First of all, I keep my audience in mind. 00:04:03.160 --> 00:04:05.880 I am writing for people from different regions. 00:04:05.880 --> 00:04:08.360 I might as well try to step into their shoes 00:04:08.360 --> 00:04:10.280 and avoid words or expressions 00:04:10.280 --> 00:04:12.400 that I know are confusing. 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:15.280 Secondly, I keep in mind my translation partner, 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:17.160 especially when reviewing. 00:04:17.160 --> 00:04:18.880 In one of my early reviews, 00:04:18.880 --> 00:04:21.720 I made the mistake of marking the translation as reviewed 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:24.440 without having contacted my partner. 00:04:24.440 --> 00:04:27.080 After all, I thought I had only 00:04:27.080 --> 00:04:29.680 corrected some obvious mistakes. 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:32.720 Since then, I always contact the translator 00:04:32.720 --> 00:04:34.040 and invite them to let me know 00:04:34.040 --> 00:04:35.800 whether they agree with my proposals. 00:04:35.800 --> 00:04:39.320 Thirdly, I keep in mind that I translate for TED 00:04:39.320 --> 00:04:40.720 in order to help spreading 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:43.000 the interesting ideas of the speakers. 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:45.280 It's not about “winning” discussions 00:04:45.280 --> 00:04:46.360 with other translators, 00:04:46.360 --> 00:04:48.760 it's about working together 00:04:48.760 --> 00:04:50.600 to provide access to TED 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:52.960 to as large an audience as possible. 00:04:52.960 --> 00:04:56.520 Last year, a TED Translator from the Netherlands 00:04:56.520 --> 00:04:58.560 asked me whether I thought we should 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:00.440 have separate sets of translations 00:05:00.440 --> 00:05:02.920 for Dutch from the Netherlands and from Belgium. 00:05:02.920 --> 00:05:04.920 I told him that to me 00:05:04.920 --> 00:05:06.400 that made no sense at all, 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:08.600 since it would only double the effort 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:10.320 to spread the ideas. 00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:12.480 It did spur me to get better 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:15.200 at finding common ground across the regions. 00:05:15.200 --> 00:05:17.360 Last but not least, I can tell you 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:19.200 that translating for TED has been 00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:21.600 an immensely enriching experience to me. 00:05:21.600 --> 00:05:23.760 My closing thoughts are therefore 00:05:23.760 --> 00:05:25.280 for my fellow TED Translators. 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:27.440 I would have liked to create 00:05:27.440 --> 00:05:29.440 some kind of ‘Hans Rosling’ graph, 00:05:29.440 --> 00:05:30.840 but you will have to do 00:05:30.840 --> 00:05:32.120 with a wordle 00:05:32.120 --> 00:05:33.840 in which the size of the name 00:05:33.840 --> 00:05:36.800 represents the number of times I worked with them. 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:40.520 I wish all of you an excellent workshop 00:05:40.520 --> 99:59:59.999 and an exciting TED Global 2011.