Sunday, February 15, 2015

The Business of Translation




Jean Le Boullenger's French-Illinois dictionary has the following entry under the heading "fendre," which means "split" in French:
                     

                     <<   ta8itan8o    il a la Levre fendue comme un lievre   >>


The French translation says “he has his lip split like a hare,” and it refers of course to a person who has a hare lip. 

The Illinois verb also refers to the same physical condition, but the verb that Illinois uses to express this condition, phonemic taawitanwa, simply means “his mouth is open,” not that his lip is split  (from taaw- 'open' + -itan 'mouth'. The verb final -itan is an allomorph of Illinois -iton 'mouth').
  
So, this is not a case of "situational translating" that I mentioned in an early post.
 

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