Having read Amelie Nothomb’s autobiographic novel entitled “Fear and Trembling” (translated from the French by Adriana Hunter), I reached for the film under the same title. It is directed by Alain Corneau and features Sylvie Tastud as the main character – Amelie, the writer herself.

Though the story takes place in Tokio, it does not leave the perimeters of interiors of a Japanese corporation, where Amelie is hired as a Japanese-French interpreter on a one year’s contract. Her dream job soon turns into nightmare as a sequence of events and cultural misunderstandings put her in conflict with her superiors, particularly, the beautiful but distant, Mori Fubuki, and result in her degradation within the company structure.

I greatly recommend both the book and the film to all linguists, anyone interested in Japanese culture and the East/West divide.

A year ago, while living in Germany, I applied to become a member of the Kuenstlersozialkasse (KSK) – an association of freelance artists, journalists and writers, which supports them financially by subsidising their state health care contributions (a significant expense in Germany) proportionally to their income. From what I heard, translators would normally be included in the ‘Artiste’ category as people who work creatively with language.

Does technical translation belong to the domain of the left brain hemisphere?

As a part-time freelancer, it seemed like a perfect solution for me and so I produced tons of documentation to prove my translator qualifications, professional memberships, samples of work, project history, etc., etc. – as stipulated by the KSK application guidelines. After some 2 months I received a request for some further details, which I duly sent back, and then received another request for even more details one of them being the following question:

What is the % breakdown of the types of translations that you normally carry out:
a) literary texts
b) journalistic/editorial texts
c) specialised texts, manuals, company reports
d) contracts, legal texts, private correspondence as well as interpreting.

Being primarily a technical translator, I marked c) 90% and d) 10% assuming that translation of specialised websites and software would most likely fit in the ‘specialised’ (fachbezogene) category. I do not translate literature nor do I translate for the press.

The reply to this last letter came very quickly. ‘We are very sorry, but we must turn down your application due to the lack of artistic/journalistic quality of your work (fehlender Kunstler-/ Publizisteneigenschaft).

What???

First of all, why didn’t you spare me the several hours it took to put documents together by asking this question sooner rather than later in the application process? Secondly, by asking a tricky question which I could have easily interpreted differently (websites=published (publizistisch) material after all) you disqualified me outright. Not only that, just because I do not translate Joyce or Yeats, you made me feel like my work was mechanical, brainless and had no creative qualities whatsoever.

It still makes me angry when I think about this, and I regret now not contesting this decision. I was so fed up by then that I had no appetite for further correspondence with KSK. It took about 7 months to get to this stage and by then we knew we were leaving Germany back for the UK in autumn, so I just put the letter to the bottom of the drawer and counted it as a lost battle with German bureaucracy.

One of my most bizarre experiences as a translator took place some time ago not so long after my move to the UK. An agency asked me to translate a marriage certificate, which then needed to be certified by an affidavit. I had to check in my dictionary what an ‘affidavit’ is and found out that it is a formal statement sworn in front of a notary public. It seemed so far departed from Poland, where to become a sworn translator you not only need the right qualifications (a relevant degree), but also have to take a rigorous competence exam organised by the Ministry of Justice. After that you receive an official stamp and can certify your own translations, which is required in case of most official documentation (marriage, birth certificates, etc).

Photo courtesy of Kriss Szkurlatowski

I arranged a meeting with a notary public who was also the ‘taker of oaths’ and brought my translation with me not sure what to expect of the whole process. The notary’s office was based in a house which could have been taken out of a Dickens’ novel. I was ushered into a room where I waited for the notary, who soon turned up wearing his black robe and looking rather distracted. He looked at my translation and the original text, marked them as page A and page B and then offered me the Bible (sic!) to put my hand on. Amazing! I felt like in an American court movie, while at the same time thinking that I might as well be swearing on Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’.

He pronounced:
‘Do you swear that the text A is an accurate translation of text B?’
‘I do’ (pharyngeal swallowing sound). He scribbled some sort of signature underneath my translation.
‘OK, please pay £16 at the reception.’
‘But wait a minute! How about some sort of official stamp?’
‘Oh, she wants a stamp. There you go’, he sounded amused, like he was pampering his little niece by letting her play with his stationary.
‘And receipt??’ I really panicked here. I was wondering what evidence there was of me obtaining the ‘certification’ that I could present to the agency who hired me.
‘Oh, the receptionist will give you a receipt. Good bye!’ and he disappeared into the back rooms of the house.

I paid and collected my receipt (which I still have as a keepsake) and left with total confusion and disbelief. The agency was very happy with the translation and they did not question the affidavit. I guess it must have still had the aura of credibility bestowed on it by the notary public’s magical powers to turn a translation into an accurate translation. Cross my heart and hope to die!

This post is now slightly overdue, but just wanted to comment on one aspect of living abroad – voting from abroad.

Back in July this year, we had a presidential election in Poland, obviously quite a serious one following the tragic death of the president and many other high ranking officials in a plane crash in April.

I was listening to the radio on the election day and heard of Polish families living in the United States travelling for hundreds of miles in order to be able to cast their vote in the large US cities. Compared to that my 15 minute bus trip to the Polish Embassy in Berlin was such a trivial affair – not really worth mentioning. It did make me wonder however what I would do in such situation and if my patriotic feelings were strong enough to warrant making a much bigger effort (not to mention the expense). The answer, is no, my emotional attachment to the Polish political machinery has its limitations, and rationally thinking – there is enough Poles living in Poland to allow them to make those decisions themselves.

However, this does not stop me from voting whenever possible – I did vote in London in 2007 when to my horror I discovered the biggest queue ever going round the Polish Embassy building in London. It took me 5 hours to finally get to vote, but somehow once there in the queue with fellow Polish voter-wannabes it felt impossible to back out. Also, it was probably the one time when I really felt part of the Polish community in Great Britain and derived some comfort from that. It felt good to cast my vote that day – particularly as it did bring a change of government – and it reminded me why we shouldn’t take our civil rights lightly or for granted.

The way in which book and film titles are often translated into German has bothered me for some time now, but spotting another such example recently has finally triggered this blog post and an attempt to explain this phenomenon.

I have recently enjoyed reading the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer and while I was trying to purchase the last part (in English) on the Amazon.de I couldn’t help but notice the German translation of the title: Bis(s) zum Morgengrauen. It made me grind my teeth. Bis(s)?? It’s a play on words which turns an innocent preposition into the noun ‘bite’ (der Biss) – as if the book wasn’t already the most hyped vampire story on the market and required hints regarding its content? The English title contains no such puns, so why employ it here? It somehow makes it sound more trivial, gimmicky and lacking elegance. OK, I admit this is no high literature, but still… why would you do that?

So I started thinking of other examples where the translator (or publisher?) decided that the original title wasn’t clear enough and required the inclusion of a ‘plot summary’ to avoid any surprises. The premise seems to be that a reader/viewer must be informed and forewarned, in case they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Ambiguity is clearly unwelcome in Germany.

Below are some classic examples of what I am talking about:

In the case of film titles, it seems that the standard thing is to either keep the original or translated title with the addition of a subtitle, which should come with a spoiler warning! Below I provide the German titles only as it is obvious which films they refer to. The subtitle in each of these cases does not exist in English, but has been added in the German version:

So why does the German audience require this extra information? The answer may be: because of the high Uncertainty Avoidance Index.

This takes us to Geert Hofstede, a Dutch sociologist, who between the years 1967 and 1973, conducted a large scale study of IBM employees in 70 countries to establish the values and beliefs shared on the national level. On the basis of this study, he created four dimensions of culture (later extended to five, each scored as a rating on the scale 0-100), which constituted his model of culture. Despite many criticisms of his approach and conclusions, Hofstede remains to be one of the most frequently quoted cultural anthropologist and his survey was adapted and applied in many other fields, including cross-cultural business relations and marketing.

Based on Hofstede’s study, the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI), also referred to as ambiguity tolerance, reflects the ‘extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertain or unknown situations’ (Hofstede, p.113). Countries with high uncertainty avoidance index tend to have more laws and rules to eliminate what is unpredictable and people tend to avoid risk-taking. Low uncertainty avoidance cultures tend to be more tolerant and open to adventures, and life in such countries tends to be less rule-governed.

Germany, while not at the highest end of the scale – has a UAI score of 65, which is considerably higher than the UK’s score of 35 or the USA’s 46. In terms of language, this would explain the German’s need for disambiguation, clarity and information as all of these eliminate risk. According to a study by Singh & Pereira, the use of local metaphors, puns and idioms is also a result of the rootedness in traditions and ritual, which typifies high uncertainty avoidance cultures (p. 103).

So, are we getting somewhere here? Perhaps yes, perhaps no. This hypothesis still does not explain why in Poland, which has an even higher UAI score (78), title translations do not show a similar tendency as in German and are usually very faithful to the original. Is faithfulness in translation also some expression of risk-avoidance (as opposed to a more creative approach), but in another cultural context? Perhaps this calls for a more in-depth comparative study before we jump to any conclusions. We can however speculate.

Bis(s) später!

Works cited:
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Sage Publications.

Singh, N., & Pereira, A. (2005). The Culturally Customized Web Site. Customizing Web Sites for the Global Marketplace. Butterworth Heinemann.

Several months ago I celebrated a round birthday and decided to spend the gift money wisely – on something concrete and useful. I have to say I am a bit of a sucker for technology, but I couldn’t think of any new gadget that I needed or could justify having, and then I had an ‘Eureka’ moment.

As a translator living abroad I find it necessary to keep in touch with the language back home in as many ways as possible. Regular visits and phone calls with friends and family are useful, but limited. Listening to the Polish radio is another way to keep in touch with the news as well as the language. Until recently, I was always using my laptop to tune in with some Polish radio stations online, but the sound quality did bother me quite a lot as the laptop speakers are usually not very robust. I therefore decided to investigate if there were any standalone devices to receive internet radio using your wireless network at home.

I was really happy to see that there was a wide selection of internet radio players available and so my research to find what I wanted began. The devices I looked at offered some slight variations – some required connection to your computer, some required connection to an amplifier and speakers, some used access to some dedicated servers to receive music, all in all, most of them were not exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to find something that had its own speakers and could play independently of any other equipment, and something that was just that – a wifi radio, not a multi-functional combi device for all multimedia needs and then some. I then came across the brand Sangean – one I was already aware of thanks to my parents FM radio purchase from a few years back. Back then, we marvelled in the shop at the depth and quality of the sound it produced, and were wondering why we had never heard of the manufacturer – a US-based company.

And so I started digging and found that Sangean already has some sort of cult following of radio-fanatics and in general is really well rated. The WFR-20 radio promised to have good sound, as well as a slick design – and it did everything else that I wanted – connected to the wifi network in your home to play any Internet radio station one could dream of. Bingo! Where do I send the money? Amazon. Amazing.

A few months later I love it still as much as the first day it arrived. If I could take one object to a desert island with me – I would take my radio (hoping for some wifi access…). The sound is absolutely fantastic, it is easy to use, looks good and plays all my favourite stations: Polskie Radio 3, ChilliZET, BBC Radio 4, FIP and whatever else my heart desires – reggae, bollywood and blues are just a few turns of the dial away…

Image courtesy of Ian Hayhurst (flicr)

On the 10th of April 2010 the presidential plane crashed while attempting to land in Smolensk, Russia, killing 96 people including the Polish president, Lech Kaczyński, and his wife, Maria Kaczyńska, senior country officials, MPs, the military chiefs and priests. The purpose of the visit in Russia was the 70th anniversary of the Katyń massacre of 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by Soviet forces during WWII.

I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the families of the victims of this terrible crash and to all Polish nationals at home and abroad grieving for the loss of lives and talent. We all unite in mourning – my thoughts are with you.

It took me a little while to realise that Skype has finally introduced a very useful functionality from its version 4.0 onwards – namely, you can run multiple instances of Skype at the same time. This in real terms means that you can simultaneously be logged into more than one Skype account. Why is this useful?

Skype started off for me as a fantastic solution for keeping in touch with my family and friends while living abroad. I can’t even begin to express how much easier living away from home has become, knowing that you can have endless online conversations which don’t cost you a penny. With the popularisation of webcams one can feel even closer and keep up with one’s friends’ hairstyles.

Before I noticed, half of my Skype contacts were business related and soon I started to worry about my Skype status updates and Skype avatar – these were meant for my family’s entertainment and not as a PR tool. I started wondering if there was a way of keeping these two separate, so that I could have my private photos and my live music updates visible to some of my contacts, while at the same time keep the professional façade by displaying my business logo and work-related messages to others. Back then – there was no practical solution to this problem.

I was pleased to find out that this has been now addressed and would like to share my discovery with all other freelancers who want to have a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Skype existence. Please refer to the Skype Help for detailed instructions on how to run two Skype accounts on one computer. This is really simple and allows you to have two accounts and be logged in on both of them and needless to say, each of them can have different contacts and different settings. It just needs a little effort to tidy things up in the first instance, such as sending new details to the Contacts you need to move to the other account, but after that – you are free to be a split personality.

This is now long overdue, back in May I promised a sequel to my earlier post What Poles Could Learn from the Brits, and here it comes – the chance to retaliate and pick on the Brits, or “Angole” – as we call them in Polish slang.

Going through my list of points to mention in relation to this, I can’t help but think that they all seem to revolve around the ‘fun’ department. Now, Poles may be a melancholic and disgruntled folk on an every day basis, but we sure know how to have fun when it comes to it. For example, parties held at home are so much better than pub get-togethers. Yes, you do have to make some effort preparing them and with cleaning up, but the atmosphere is also so much better. And no one worries about catching the last bus at 11pm – that’s when the party really gets going. At 3am, any sofa or armchair is as good as your own bed, so why not stay for breakfast as well…

Polish parties can also be completely spontaneous. You drop in at your friends after work for a quick chat, and before you notice the table magically fills with some nice nibbles and snacks (Poles are good at making party food out of nothing), a chilled bottle of vodka and you find yourself talking until the early hours about life, the universe and the meaning of friendship.

Not far off partying, is dancing. Brits could definitely learn from Poles how to dance. It is one of the most important social skills for every man (particularly for men, as it comes more naturally to women) to learn a few basic dance steps. Guys who can dance (as in, lead their dance partner) are really in high demand amongst women and so they would only be doing themselves a favour by changing their reticent British attitude. It is somehow embarrassing in Britain for men to dance, but excellence in swinging with your beer glass just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Talking of beer, I am a great fan of the British ale, even though it does take some getting used to. But when it comes to lager beer (Polish equivalent of ‘piwo jasne‘) the Brits have just no clue. Carling? Fosters? That’s perhaps good for rinsing your teeth, but surely not for enjoyment as an ‘alcoholic’ drink? Why take a bland beer from Australia (brewed under license in the UK) as one of your staple pub drinks, when you could be importing the best from the masters of brewing on the ‘continent’? Germany, the Czech Republic or Poland would be far better suppliers of good quality lager. The trouble with the Brits is that drinking beer in this country is not about enjoyment, refreshment on a hot sunny day or the quality of taste – it is about the number of pints you can manage per hour. No offence to my British friends, there are of course exceptions.

Another observation that springs to mind, is the question of elegance. Poles tend to be more elegant than Brits in general, but also dress up for many special occasions to mark their importance. Christmases, Easters, birthdays and baptisms all warrant putting on a special dress in a woman’s case, or wearing a suit and a tie in a man’s case. In Britain, the only occasion where I have seen people make a real effort to dress up are weddings. Don’t you all British girls and women just die waiting to show off your evening dresses a bit more often? Is a Christmas family dinner nothing more than yet another meal so ‘I might as well wear the same T-shirt that I had on when washing my car this morning’? Brits should definitely learn how to make special occasions special.

OK, I think I am done with my tirade. Got it off my chest and I feel much better now. I hope none of my British family members and friends take any of what I have said above personally. I love you as you are and you have welcomed me in your country, but as an expat I do miss Polishness and want to celebrate what is good about it. Just like you would miss you baked beans for breakfast in Poland.

As Kasper’s vocabulary is expanding with every week, I thought it would be nice to create a record of his first few words and expressions at the beginning of this New Year – something we can look back upon in the course of the year to remind ourselves how it all began. He is now aged 19 months and since recently has been exposed to German language additionally to the English and Polish he hears at home. Here are the results:

KASPER-ENGLISH GLOSSARY

go-go – this is the universal word for everything that moves – cars, trains, buses, planes etc. It may have originated from a toy car which Kasper got a year ago for Christmas. After pressing a button it said Go, Roary, Go! Not sure, but this is my guess.

go - means ‘gone’. Kasper usually utters it with great sadness and falling intonation looking at his empty plate. Very different to the cheerful ‘go-go’! I think I know who he takes after.

choo-choo – train. Trains are very special for little boys and for Kasper in particular. Both of his grandparents’ houses in Poland and in the UK are located near railway tracks and listening out for passing trains has become a sort of a game. Kasper is also a big fan of Chuggington – a cartoon about trains and likes playing with his toy trains at home. Not to mention listening from the earliest days to the reading of the famous Polish poem about a steam train ‘Lokomotywa’. Yes, trains are very special for little boys.

shoe - no need for interpretation. Kasper knows about shoes and has a lovely habit of bringing us our slippers or shoes and trying to put them on our feet. Victorian mums and dads would be very proud if not jealous.

cheee – cheers. This accompanies the compulsory clinking of glasses. I don’t recall teaching Kasper this, so it must be based on his own observation. Slightly worrying!

daj – this is Polish. Strategic word meaning ‘give’. Is it a coincidence he would be saying this particular word in Polish? Does it suggest mummy as the main ‘giver’ of things? Or simply, is it easier to say than ‘give’? May soon become more and more redundant as Kasper perfects his climbing skills and learns to get things himself rather than relying on bigger people’s mercy.

no - the sweetest ‘no’ I have ever heard. Started off as a Polish ‘nie’, soon replaced by the English equivalent and a source of endless fun in conversation making. “Kasper, do you like sausage? – Nnnnnnnnno. Kasper, do you like chocolate? – Nnnnnnnnno. Kasper, do you like pizza? – Nnnno.” Neddless to say, Kasper loves all of those things. “Kasper, was your lunch nice? – Nnnno. Kasper, was your lunch awful? Nnnnooo.” Phew, finally we are getting somewhere.

mama and dada - for a while, ‘mama’ was a universal word for many things and many people. However, when sad or in trouble, the meaning of ‘mama’ suddenly becomes very precise and specific. Kasper also says ‘mummy’ which makes my heart melt. ‘Dada’ and ‘daddy’ are coming along a bit more shyly, but surely.

hello - one of the earliest words, now used very liberally at every opportunity to greet people and things, even food . Haven’t seen Kasper for 3 minutes – and I get greeted with the most enthusiastic and heartfelt “Hellooooooo!” (So nice to see you, where have you been, haven’t seen you for a while, I missed you so, I’ll give you a hug. Let’s play now!)

halo - this is the Polish way of answering the phone which Kasper uses often when playing with phones, mobiles, bank card readers and calculators (anything that has a keypad on it and fits in a hand). Works well in Germany as it sounds just as the German greeting ‘Hallo’ too. 2 for 1 deal.

choo or tschü - ‘tschüss’ ?? Ok, this I think is Kasper’s first German word and means goodbye. Similar to the first sound of the Polish ‘cześć’ so I think it was easy to understand and very easy to say as it is almost like saying ‘shoe’. Still, I am amazed about Kasper picking this up from the Kindergarten so quickly.

Other words include caʔ for ‘cat’ with a beautiful glottal stop at the end, and Ka-purr for Kasper!