Sour Service

29.5.09

As an American, I have become accustomed to excellent service. Salespeople are always eager to get you another size or help you in any way they can. This is not the case in Europe. The service is very unfriendly. There's no "hello, how are you today" or smile or "have a good day" or anything. But that's just how the culture is. There's a generally emotionless quality or distance when it comes to service. It may be the culture, but to me it seems the salespeople are not just unfriendly, but outright rude. They snatch whatever item you're looking at out of your hands the moment it seems it may be a bit too pricey or they seem incredibly insulted when you ask them to describe what is in a dish at a restaurant, as if service had nothing to do with their job description.

But it's hard to decipher if they're singling us out or not. There's a lot of animosity against foreigners and the service workers treat you very differently when they see that you're foreign and not a native Austrian, even if you speak German. They want Austria to revert back to its pure roots and will certainly not lift a finger to assist a foreigner like myself in any way...at least not when it comes to shopping.

This whole unfriendly approach to the Austrian (or maybe European) service industry makes me question even further how translation is even possible.  If you're translating a brochure or advertisement for a store, let's say Express because it's my favorite, there are sure to be sayings that would never occur in the other language. The English advertisement might in some way welcome a client into the store with a warm greeting. But in Austria, they don't give warm greetings. So how do you translate it? Do you keep it as a sort of greeting but just turn the warmth factor down to negative thirty, thereby accommodating the culture change? Or do you try to keep it close to the source text? Even if it doesn't quite make as much sense in the target language? It's all very confusing, but I just know that I can't wait to go shopping in America again where people smile when you say hello.

Language Diversity and Multilingualism in the European Union

28.5.09

Today we went to the European Union and sat in on a presentation regarding language diversity and multilingualism in the European Union.  There are currently 23 official languages of the European Union and 800 translators.  Getting a law passed is a long and involved process within the EU. It can be summarized with three general steps: communication within an organization, communication between organizations, communication from an organization to the people it supports.  It was also discussed how one might acquire a position within the European Union.  The EU is always searching for people who have a wide array of knowledge to supplement their language. For example, a translator is more marketable if he/she also has a degree in medicine because you then have a specific set of vocabulary at your disposal and you don’t have to look up every scientific word.

Translating Jokes

27.5.09

Today we talked about jokes and comedic sayings and the difficulties that come with translating them.  Freud was very interested in analyzing jokes and how they relate to the unconscious. He concluded that the pleasure one receives from hearing a joke is “due to the suspension of the expenditure of energy upon maintaining repression”[1]  But the definition of what is funny differs between social groups and genders. What is hilarious to a man might be offensive to a woman and what is funny to a Caucasian person may be offensive to an African American.  This creates difficulties when translating a joke because it is being converted into a different culture and mindset.  “The very structure of the joke embodies the distancing of existing attitudes and their replacement by a new language of science.”[2]  The function of Jewish jokes was to provide an escape from anti-Semitism by laughing at it.[3]  Does this go to say that a Jewish joke will never be fully understood by someone who is not Jewish? Maybe so.  Most of understanding a joke lies in the experiences and perception one has of the culture from which the joke stems. 

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[1] Viennese Laughter, 107

[2] Viennese Laughter, 113

[3] Camilla Nielsen, lecture 27.5.09

Cafe's

27.5.09

Coffee houses in Vienna differ greatly from those in America. They have a much more leisurely atmosphere about them. In America, if you sit at a table for more than an hour a waiter usually asks if you want anything else or in some way indicates that you should leave. Often they give you the bill just moments after getting your food and say “whenever you’re ready” but really they mean sooner rather than later. In Vienna the concept of a coffee house is completely different.  No one is going to ask you to leave after a while.  In fact, people often spend the entire day in a single coffee house. It is a place where one can go to read the newspaper or read a book.  In the past, there were even showers available because travelers would often come and want a place to freshen up and relax.

Freud Museum

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Today after class a few of us went to the Donau Insel because it was going to be the last hot day for a while and we wanted to enjoy the weather.  It was interesting to see how uninhibited the people here are when it comes to baring their bodies, especially the old people. They’re just so comfortable with showing skin.

After the Donau, we went to the Freud Museum for a group excursion.  The Freud Museum is where Freud actually lived for about fifty years before moving to London in his final years. It was a very large apartment for the time, and even still is now. There were 19 rooms! But besides him and his wife there were six children, so I’m sure they appreciated the space.  He held his practice within his home so I got to see where the famous couch would have been (the couch is kept at the museum in London).

Difficulties of Translating Freud

26.5.09

Sigmund Freud was a very complex individual and reading his works is difficult enough but translating them presents a whole new slew of complications. He used a lot of scientific words (some of which were coined by him) but spoke about them in a very artistic fashion.  The words he chose also have specific meanings that might not be reached when only looking in a dictionary.  It is important to look at the context of the text – who was writing, what was that’s individual’s lexicon – what was the period flavor and literary style.  There are many things to take under consideration.  When Freud talked about “die Seele” he more likely meant “the psyche” rather than “the soul” which is typically associated with the word “Seele.”  Similarly, Freud used the word “die Kranke” to refer to the patient, not someone who was ill.

Word for Word

25.5.09

It has been said that there is no such thing as an untranslatable text. Everything should be able to be expressed in each language in some form or another. But I think it’s safe to say that a translation will not always match the same format as that of the source text. For example we can examine the German word “Vergangenheitsbewältigung.”  There is no one word in the English language that sums up the sense of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” but in general it means “(the process of) coming to terms with the past.” So sometimes the translator must take a few liberties with the text to obtain the overall sense of the word/phrase/text, since sometimes a word for word translation is just not possible.