Yeah, and I agree that this problem stinks. I have contact thus far with two ISPs who do this -- for them, and them only, I relay through my ISP's SMTP server. Meanwhile, I have also asked the people I was trying to contact to complain. No good thus far, but....
ORDB offers such a service, actually -- they run quite a variety of tests against servers to see if they fall for any of a number of forms of relaying tricks. I, thankfully, fell into the opposite hole -- I couldn't relay from anywhere when I set up qmail, so I had to go back and figure out how to enable relaying for localhost and the local network.;-) I ran the ORDB test set against my server once I thought it was up, and again a month or so ago when I had a scare which *looked* as if someone had sent a mail through my server. (Turned out it was a different mistake, and not a relay issue at all.)
I had the wonderful opportunity to take a linguistic history class a little over a year ago. It's true, certainly, that new words and usages are introduced by individual speakers. However, when that was the only force at play, that gave rise to the times when you literally could not travel more than 50 miles before the other people who supposedly spoke your language spoke something completely incomprehensible to you.
It was the introduction of dictionaries, grammars, and the legal mandating of a certain linguistic set that has brought us to the languages in use today. Yes, we have minor vocabulary differences, such as "pop" vs. "soda" vs. "soft drink", but we speak the same language. Liberty and equality cannot coexist without limits -- to have the equality of mutual comprehension, we have to surrender a little bit of our freedom to speak however we want.
Where we (and the French especially, I would say) have gone wrong is that we're not only making the effort to standardize, but to stifle. I don't argue with the idea that we should all agree on the spelling and meaning of a word, for the purposes of mutual comprehension. However, what the French government has done is "outlaw" those words which drift in from other languages -- we've done precisely that for centuries. Since the beginning of linguistic standardization, there has almost always been a component of society idolizing the language of the previous century for its purity, and cursing all recently-introduced changes.
French culture is not dead -- but the French government does what linguists have frequently done. They forget that language is dynamic, and cannot be locked into last decade's dictionary for the next century.
A better way to deal with it than The Bourne Identity used -- one character, attempting to gather info from a Parisian newspaper declares, "My French sucks -- I can't read this very well." In the dubbed version, she complains that the newspaper gives few details. A minor detail change, but still....
True, one must be willing to accept that you're reading in a different language. At the same time, how many fantasy books take liberties with the language? They're setting the story world in the tongue of the author's choice, complete with accidental cultural references -- unless you're willing to eternally restrict yourself to your own culture, or learn and use another tongue, a story will almost never coincide with its language. Translating a British story set in English to another language is just a little more obvious about the same thing.
I agree, you do mess some things up -- and I'm insatiably curious how the French version of The Matrix Reloaded will deal with the references to and dialogue in French. But really, you're suspending your disbelief about the power of a wand -- can you do that, and yet be incapable of suspending your disbelief about English versus another language?
As I understand it, it stems from paranoia about copies getting out too early -- supposedly, the translators get the English copy no earlier than the English-speaking fans do. They then scramble to do the translation. That seems rather silly, to me -- the English audiobook came out at the same time as the text copy, so obviously the narrator has had his copy for some time. Translators should be treated the same.
I'm told we'll have the French edition in a couple months -- supposedly, the translator can translate a maximum of 10 pages per day. So if everyone is putting in a total of a half-day's work, they'll certainly manage to finish a lot faster.
They might be missing something, though -- in French, at least, they don't do a straight translation. Rowling makes so many word-plays that a word-for-word translation wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable. The French translator is allowed the liberty of rearranging the games to work out properly in French. My absolute favorite is the Sorting Hat, translated to Le Choixpeau (sounds like "the hat," but words mean "choose-skin."). Also, Tom Riddle became Tom Elvis Jedusor, where Jedusor looks like "game of chance" or "game of spells" and the full name rearranges to Je Suis Voldemort. The houses of Poudlard become Gryffondor, Serpentard, Serdaigle, et Poufsouffle. In the collective translation, I'm sure we'll see some creative input on the word-plays -- but can they be consistent? I somewhat doubt it.
One thing the translators may be seeking to avoid is the over-(ab)use of this translator's power. A friend who had read the English version first threw her copy of Coupe de Feu across the room after one chapter toward the end. The translator had "corrected" something that Mme. Rowling wrote and reportedly has said in interviews that she wrote it intentionally. One surmises the twist may play a role in future books, though it hasn't thus far in Order of the Phoenix.
No, that particular incident was in Rome. As I just said in reply to another post, I'm not claiming this was a universal attitude, merely one that does occur and needs to be considered.
I had not heard (or did not remember) that incident with the Marine, but I can see where that could reasonably cause some negative opinions.
I beg to differ. While I'll certainly agree that this is not universal, it exists frequently enough that the travelling American needs to be aware of the possibility. I had friends in Belgium tell me that they tended to dislike Americans until the individual proves otherwise. Several recommended trying to pass for British or Canadian when I couldn't avoid using English.
There was a definite difference when it was just a language barrier, and I found that as well. That was mostly surmounted by the fact I had used as much of the local language as I knew to express what languages I could actually speak. In situations where it was established that we had no common language, but both had tried, things took a moment to get across, but with no delays or lacks in service. The fact of the effort on both parts was enough for mutual respect, and thus patience.
I know.... I've spent enough time overseas to see many of my countrymen display stupidity like a banner. As a result, "Americans!" is as easily an exclamation of disgust from me as anything else. I'm proud to be an American, but many of us are absolute jerks when we're abroad.
While I was in Belgium, I didn't have much of a problem. In the francophone areas, I speak French decently and thus got by with no problems. Other places.... Well, English gets by pretty well with the Flemish and Dutch, since in Bruxelles especially it's lingua franca between all the different languages that mingle there.
In Italy, however.... Whew. I had a couple occasions where I was not well-received as an American. I quickly learned that, while my French will never cry anything but "English-speaker" to a native French speaker, it's marvelously convincing to most others. Since, at the time, I could honestly say I was a Belgian student, I passed for belge whenever I could.
Had a situation at a restaurant that makes the perfect example. Slooow to get anyone to seat me. Took forever to get anything brought to the table. Ages before they brought me a menu. Once I had the menu, when the waiter came back, he found me with the menu open to the page in French, and I asked him in Italian if he spoke French. Service was flawless from that point on.
And it made things rather difficult for me over there -- I lived in Belgium for around six months. Didn't think it was long enough to be worth getting a Proton, but not having one got in the way of paying at some places!
In Belgium, it's not a cash-replacement as yet, merely another option to carry amounts up to 100, and already it was causing problems. If we switch to a mostly or totally cashless society, how will that affect people visiting for tourism or the like? Will there be provisions to support cash cards from other countries?
English isn't the only language to be facing that, though -- SMS messages have been doing it to other languages likewise.
In my History of French class last semester, our teacher mentioned that some linguists think the widespread use of abbreviations such as "kelk1" for "quelqu'un" may be a force that will alter spelling over the next generation or so. We'll see -- while in some cases, I would be glad for the simplification, in most I think it's needlessly destroying the words.
The instant official spellings of ordinary words start including numbers is the instant I renounce the language that's doing it....
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Yeah, and I agree that this problem stinks. I have contact thus far with two ISPs who do this -- for them, and them only, I relay through my ISP's SMTP server. Meanwhile, I have also asked the people I was trying to contact to complain. No good thus far, but....
ORDB offers such a service, actually -- they run quite a variety of tests against servers to see if they fall for any of a number of forms of relaying tricks. I, thankfully, fell into the opposite hole -- I couldn't relay from anywhere when I set up qmail, so I had to go back and figure out how to enable relaying for localhost and the local network. ;-) I ran the ORDB test set against my server once I thought it was up, and again a month or so ago when I had a scare which *looked* as if someone had sent a mail through my server. (Turned out it was a different mistake, and not a relay issue at all.)
Really? Can't say I'd agree entirely.
I had the wonderful opportunity to take a linguistic history class a little over a year ago. It's true, certainly, that new words and usages are introduced by individual speakers. However, when that was the only force at play, that gave rise to the times when you literally could not travel more than 50 miles before the other people who supposedly spoke your language spoke something completely incomprehensible to you.
It was the introduction of dictionaries, grammars, and the legal mandating of a certain linguistic set that has brought us to the languages in use today. Yes, we have minor vocabulary differences, such as "pop" vs. "soda" vs. "soft drink", but we speak the same language. Liberty and equality cannot coexist without limits -- to have the equality of mutual comprehension, we have to surrender a little bit of our freedom to speak however we want.
Where we (and the French especially, I would say) have gone wrong is that we're not only making the effort to standardize, but to stifle. I don't argue with the idea that we should all agree on the spelling and meaning of a word, for the purposes of mutual comprehension. However, what the French government has done is "outlaw" those words which drift in from other languages -- we've done precisely that for centuries. Since the beginning of linguistic standardization, there has almost always been a component of society idolizing the language of the previous century for its purity, and cursing all recently-introduced changes.
French culture is not dead -- but the French government does what linguists have frequently done. They forget that language is dynamic, and cannot be locked into last decade's dictionary for the next century.
A better way to deal with it than The Bourne Identity used -- one character, attempting to gather info from a Parisian newspaper declares, "My French sucks -- I can't read this very well." In the dubbed version, she complains that the newspaper gives few details. A minor detail change, but still....
True, one must be willing to accept that you're reading in a different language. At the same time, how many fantasy books take liberties with the language? They're setting the story world in the tongue of the author's choice, complete with accidental cultural references -- unless you're willing to eternally restrict yourself to your own culture, or learn and use another tongue, a story will almost never coincide with its language. Translating a British story set in English to another language is just a little more obvious about the same thing. I agree, you do mess some things up -- and I'm insatiably curious how the French version of The Matrix Reloaded will deal with the references to and dialogue in French. But really, you're suspending your disbelief about the power of a wand -- can you do that, and yet be incapable of suspending your disbelief about English versus another language?
As I understand it, it stems from paranoia about copies getting out too early -- supposedly, the translators get the English copy no earlier than the English-speaking fans do. They then scramble to do the translation. That seems rather silly, to me -- the English audiobook came out at the same time as the text copy, so obviously the narrator has had his copy for some time. Translators should be treated the same.
They might be missing something, though -- in French, at least, they don't do a straight translation. Rowling makes so many word-plays that a word-for-word translation wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable. The French translator is allowed the liberty of rearranging the games to work out properly in French. My absolute favorite is the Sorting Hat, translated to Le Choixpeau (sounds like "the hat," but words mean "choose-skin."). Also, Tom Riddle became Tom Elvis Jedusor, where Jedusor looks like "game of chance" or "game of spells" and the full name rearranges to Je Suis Voldemort. The houses of Poudlard become Gryffondor, Serpentard, Serdaigle, et Poufsouffle. In the collective translation, I'm sure we'll see some creative input on the word-plays -- but can they be consistent? I somewhat doubt it.
One thing the translators may be seeking to avoid is the over-(ab)use of this translator's power. A friend who had read the English version first threw her copy of Coupe de Feu across the room after one chapter toward the end. The translator had "corrected" something that Mme. Rowling wrote and reportedly has said in interviews that she wrote it intentionally. One surmises the twist may play a role in future books, though it hasn't thus far in Order of the Phoenix.
No, that particular incident was in Rome. As I just said in reply to another post, I'm not claiming this was a universal attitude, merely one that does occur and needs to be considered.
I had not heard (or did not remember) that incident with the Marine, but I can see where that could reasonably cause some negative opinions.
I beg to differ. While I'll certainly agree that this is not universal, it exists frequently enough that the travelling American needs to be aware of the possibility. I had friends in Belgium tell me that they tended to dislike Americans until the individual proves otherwise. Several recommended trying to pass for British or Canadian when I couldn't avoid using English.
There was a definite difference when it was just a language barrier, and I found that as well. That was mostly surmounted by the fact I had used as much of the local language as I knew to express what languages I could actually speak. In situations where it was established that we had no common language, but both had tried, things took a moment to get across, but with no delays or lacks in service. The fact of the effort on both parts was enough for mutual respect, and thus patience.
I know.... I've spent enough time overseas to see many of my countrymen display stupidity like a banner. As a result, "Americans!" is as easily an exclamation of disgust from me as anything else. I'm proud to be an American, but many of us are absolute jerks when we're abroad.
And you probably think you're kidding, too.... ;-)
While I was in Belgium, I didn't have much of a problem. In the francophone areas, I speak French decently and thus got by with no problems. Other places.... Well, English gets by pretty well with the Flemish and Dutch, since in Bruxelles especially it's lingua franca between all the different languages that mingle there.
In Italy, however.... Whew. I had a couple occasions where I was not well-received as an American. I quickly learned that, while my French will never cry anything but "English-speaker" to a native French speaker, it's marvelously convincing to most others. Since, at the time, I could honestly say I was a Belgian student, I passed for belge whenever I could.
Had a situation at a restaurant that makes the perfect example. Slooow to get anyone to seat me. Took forever to get anything brought to the table. Ages before they brought me a menu. Once I had the menu, when the waiter came back, he found me with the menu open to the page in French, and I asked him in Italian if he spoke French. Service was flawless from that point on.
And it made things rather difficult for me over there -- I lived in Belgium for around six months. Didn't think it was long enough to be worth getting a Proton, but not having one got in the way of paying at some places!
In Belgium, it's not a cash-replacement as yet, merely another option to carry amounts up to 100, and already it was causing problems. If we switch to a mostly or totally cashless society, how will that affect people visiting for tourism or the like? Will there be provisions to support cash cards from other countries?
English isn't the only language to be facing that, though -- SMS messages have been doing it to other languages likewise.
In my History of French class last semester, our teacher mentioned that some linguists think the widespread use of abbreviations such as "kelk1" for "quelqu'un" may be a force that will alter spelling over the next generation or so. We'll see -- while in some cases, I would be glad for the simplification, in most I think it's needlessly destroying the words.
The instant official spellings of ordinary words start including numbers is the instant I renounce the language that's doing it....