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