How to Translate to Esperanto

By Sequoia Edwards

Ideas, advice and suggestions for how to translate from various languages to Esperanto, with examples from English, Japanese and Chinook Jargon. 13,000 words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sequoia Edwards
• Release date: Dec 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463763223

Sequoia Edwards

I'm originally from the Pacific Northwest, but moved abroad and started learning languages. Until now I've lived in the US, Iceland, Sweden, Japan and for a brief time Taiwan./ Mi venas el nord-okcidenta Usono sed transloĝis alilanden kaj komencis lerni lingvojn. Ĝis nun loĝis en Usono, Islando, Svedlando, Japano kaj iomete Tajvano.

Book preview

Foreword

This book was originally written in Esperanto and then translated to English. I thought of all the ideas in this book myself, so some are good and some are bad, and which ones you choose to use in your own translations is up to you. In this first edition almost all the example translations come from translating English, because English is my native language, but there are also two translations from Japanese and one from Chinook Jargon.

If you know Esperanto I recommend reading the Esperanto edition of this book, titled "Kiel Traduku Esperanten" (roughly How we should translate to Esperanto). If you know Japanese, I recommend buying エスペラント翻訳のコツ by 山川 修一 from 日本エスペラント協会.

If you'd like for me to translate your writing, comics, films, etc. or any public domain works to/from English, Swedish, Esperanto or (if it's not too difficult) Japanese, let me know and I'll happily do my best.

December 2018, Uppsala, Sweden.

Contact: sequoia @ sedwards . net

Twitter: magipojken

Thanks to: The Sendai, Uppsala and Taoyuan Esperanto clubs.

Other Books by Me:

La Chinuka Interlingvo Per Esperanto,

A textbook, dictionary and grammar for Chinook Jargon.

"Kiel Traduku Esperanten",

This book in its original Esperanto version.

Excerpts translated in this book:

DAZAI Osamu (太宰 治). I can speak, 1939.

https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000035/files/1572_19910.html

DAZAI Osamu. 悶悶日記, 1936.

https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000035/files/1589_18111.html

DOUGLAS Amanda M. A Little Girl in Old Chicago, 1904.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/58410/58410-h/58410-h.htm

EDWARDS Sequoia. La Chinuka Interlingvo Per Esperanto, 2018.

FRIEDENTHAL Lora. Enthalpy of Fusion, 2018. Esperanto title Hejtokiomo de Unuiĝo.

Laylah. Shotgun Wedding, 2009.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/8120

MALORY Syr Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur, the 1400's.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=MaloryWks2

The Human League. Don't You Want Me, 1981.

Thought-Provoking Part

Kindly remember as you read through this book that our language Esperanto wasn't created for beauty or diversity, but for meaning, intention and clarity. In contrast to many other languages, for example English and Japanese, Esperanto doesn't have jumps between polite and impolite, male and female, or ancient and modern language. We do however have differences in our Esperanto according to our mother tongues, meaning which words we say, how we pronounce sounds and how we use the grammar. There's also differences in our Esperanto according to how we learned it (whether from our relatives, Zamenhof's first book, or the internet for example) and how often we speak to young people (whether we say mojosa – cool or interesa – interesting), among other things. We can utilise these differences in order to diversify our translations.

There are always implicit goals when translating, for example:

1. To very precisely inform (ex. translating a textbook on how to perform heart surgery).

2. To entertain, gather interest, make someone feel some kind of beautiful feeling (translating novels, games, poems).

3. To inform just in that moment (clarifying to a friend what the cashier just said – and immediately afterwards you'll both forget).

4. To translate but supplement your translation with additional information or writing (translating dictionaries, language textbooks, materials for an essay).

We often have restrictions when translating as well. For example, when translating movie subtitles the text shown on-screen always needs to be short, so your eyes can successfully finish reading the line of dialogue before the next one begins. Similarly when translating for videogames, the words can't go outside the text boxes and in old games there might be a memory limit (character limit) for the entire game or scene. Maybe when translating a novel, the original author doesn't want that the character or place-names be changed or Esperantified. Maybe the text becomes tedious and uninteresting in Esperanto thanks to the writer's style and repetition (which, in the original language, went more unnoticed due to all the pretty words).

In translating we often have many diverse problems, and this book attempts to explain different routes to solving those problems.

The Words

In many languages we write more beautiful, interesting, intelligent words than our own, or we fill in the gaps to create words our own doesn't have, by borrowing them from