Tuesday, March 29, 2016

European hedgehog: John Palfrey's BiblioTech book translated into Italian ... TSWG & Harbin book title translation questions?, "Naked Harbin Ethnography," "For the Italian, the problem is that the structure of Italian is different from that of English ... ," The nudity word in this title, Thanks for your interesting observations about translating the title of my upcoming book "Naked Harbin Ethnography: Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optionality & Virtual Harbin" (and for which Nelson Graburn is writing the Foreword) into Italian, Translation into other languages, Academic Press at WUaS, Planned Universal Translator

John Palfrey's BiblioTech book translated into Italian ...

John Palfrey's translated into Italian
3:12 AM - 28 Mar 2016



https://twitter.com/apacx/status/714394823852220416

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For the Italian, the problem is that the structure of Italian is different from that of English, which allows 'naked Harbin ethnography' to mean both 'naked Harbin' and 'naked ethnography'. Italian doesn't. You have to specify which of these two things is naked. (It's rather embarrassing for me to even mention the concept of nudity because I've been socialised to fear nudity, especially my own - ick ick ick). Also, there's no such construction as 'clothing-optional' or a fortiori 'clothing-optionality', again because of the different structure of the language. English really does permit more concision in many ways than many other languages, I find (and I base this on being a native speaker of another language too: I am equally at home with both and I can therefore perceive the different 'shortcuts' allowed by one or the other in different situations).

By 'piscine calde' do you mean artificially heated pools or natural hot springs? (You know, the volcanic ones etc).

This is referring to the machine translation below, which of course needs to be revised by a human, machine translation still being inadequate as a replacement for human translation, which is why my father can still work for a living:
Ants in Italian? 

Nudo Harbin Etnografia:
Hippies, piscine calde, Controcultura, Abbigliamento-Opzionalità & virtuale Harbin

Can you remind me of the precise original title?

Sorry if I'm scatty, but my brain is mush and I'm rather distracted. I'll get to this when I can.
And I haven't forgotten about the pipes. I do genuinely want to learn them, though it may have to wait until I can be at home during the day, thereby avoiding the danger of making noise in the evening when the normal people find it Inappropriate. (Not that they censor themselves at all when being extremely loud in the early morning during weekends: this is morning privilege).

Ants

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Hi Ants (and All), 

Thanks for your interesting observations about translating the title of my upcoming book "Naked Harbin Ethnography: Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optionality & Virtual Harbin" (and for which Nelson Graburn is writing the Foreword) into Italian. Geothermally heated warm pools aren't everywhere, and while your father is linguistically brilliant and a polyglot living in Italy where you were born, and originally a Scot, he also isn't a native Italian speaker like you are, as a native speaker of two languages, - working for a very short time still at the Italian Cultural Institute of SF near Opera Plaza after which you will be free, free, free to explore music-making and other creativity. (I've always been impressed too that you have a Ph.D. in Persian from the University of Edinburgh, Ants, too:).

And while your "ick, ick, ick" response to the word "naked" in this title, ethnographically construed or otherwise eventually in a Google Street View virtual earth for STEM research, might parallel my sometimes "eek, eek, eek" response to mice, where I sometimes find myself standing on a chair out of utter uncontrollable fear - when they seem to be proliferating in yours and Koh's flat - can be unlearned perhaps. 

And while the prospect of book-translation jobs for example - re a new Academic Press at WUaS ... http://worlduniversityandschool.org/AcademicPress.html - may facilitate this un-learning of "ick" at the word "Naked," such translation difficulties with this title are emerging elsewhere - e.g. Li Fei in the TSWG at UC  Berkeley and I are also having parallel challenges with the word "xūnǐ" meaning virtual in Mandarin, Chinese, but which hasn't yet possibly taken on the new meanings associated with it in the Information age in English, as in "virtual reality" and re in my "Naked Harbin Ethnography"   - and yet such difficulties are also surmountable. 

(Here are the Google Translate title of "Naked Harbin Ethnography" and the Chinese characters for xūnǐ - virtual -


Li Fei and Jie in Mandarin (is the problematic " Xūnǐ " used here?)?

裸哈爾濱民族志：
嬉皮士，暖池，反傳統，服裝，可選性和虛擬哈爾濱 ).


And since Google Translate as a starting place from translating my Harbin book (or a WUaS universal translator -http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/WUaS_Universal_Translator ) doesn't yet support Inukitut or Scots' Gaelic, I haven't yet begun to inquire of Nelson Graburn how he would translate this title into Inukitut or Axel Koehler or Wilson McLeod how they would translate it into Scottish Gaelic for example. 

But here are some related translations into a few other languages, with question marks after them: 

Shahrzad and Ants in Persian / Farsi? 
برهنه هاربین مردم نگاری: هیپی ها، گرم استخرها، ضد، لباس، اختیاری و مجازی هاربین

Abigail in Irish (not medieval Irish at this point)? 
Naked Harbin Eitneagrafaíocht: Hippies, Linnte Te, counterculture, Clothing-roghnaíochta & Fíorúil Harbin

Amir, Rema and Mohamed - in Arabic? 
عارية هاربين الاثنوغرافيا: الهيبيين، حمامات دافئة، الثقافة المضادة، الملابس، Optionality وهاربين الظاهري

Julian in Romanian?
Goala Harbin Etnografie: Hipioții, bazine calde, Gossip, Imbracaminte-Opționalitatea & Virtual Harbin

Here too is a recent blog post of mine with many of the other Google Translate translations of "Naked Harbin Ethnography" into other languages from this email thread - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2016/03/lassen-peak-norwegian-anthropology.html - plus some ideas about sharing my book re UC Berkeley Anthropology and Theodora Kroeber's "Ishi in Two Worlds" as well as 3 great full length "Ishi" films vis-a-vis the Harbin founders' (since 1972) name, Ishvara or Ish ... Harbin is wild and I hope my Harbin ethnography will be read by many in many many languages - http://www.scottmacleod.com/ActualVirtualHarbinBook.html . (There's even a little ethnography of Berkeley Anthropology relationships itself in this). 

Thank you Nelson, for writing the Foreword to the first edition of my book! Dean, would you possibly please write an Afterword to a subsequent edition - also to be translated? :)

And thank you, Ants, for your consideration of translating "Naked Harbin Ethnography: Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture, Clothing-Optionality & Virtual Harbin" into Italian!

Ciao, 
Scott

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivAndSch





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