This is a very interesting read about how Trump's speaking style, tough enough to understand in English, causes problems in translation.
An excerpt:
Bérengère Viennot, a professional French translator, said in a recent interview with the LA Review of Books that Trump’s broken syntax, often limited vocabulary and repetition of phrases makes it difficult to create texts that read coherently in French, a very structured and logical language.
“Most of the time, when he speaks he seems not to know quite where he’s going,” Viennot said. “It’s as if he had thematic clouds in his head that he would pick from with no need of a logical thread to link them.”
She is left with a dilemma: either translate Trump exactly as he speaks — and let French readers struggle with the content — or keep the content, but smooth out the style, “so that it is a little bit more intelligible, leading non-English speakers to believe that Trump is an ordinary politician who speaks properly.”
...One aspect of the translating dilemma for Viennot, the French translator, might be exacerbated by culture, as Viennot herself explained. In France, she said, “We are used to hearing or reading people who take a lot of care in what they say — and when they don’t, when they utter something with a double meaning or that could be misinterpreted, everybody sees it.”
“So you can imagine that if Trump’s culture is already very different from your ‘average’ politician in the United States, it is light-years away from ours,” she added.
washingtonpost.com |
