"The main job of editors regarding translations is to make sure they are clearly identified as such, so that the distinction between exact and translated title can be made. For example, at MLK we had the following: Answer: _Huis Clos_ English: _No Exit_ which makes it perfectly clear that "No Exit" is a translation and then moderator judgments can be made accordingly." ====================== Actually, this is a very *bad* example of this rule in action. In no sense is "no exit" a translation of "huis clos"; "huis clos" is used in French only in the expression "A huis clos," which literally means "in camera"; the best possible translation to English then becomes "(Behind) Closed Doors." Equivalently, one runs into problems in a lot of cases because the original title of a work is in a foreign language, and therefore prepositions can become dicey. For example, Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody had the original French(!) title "Rapsodie sur un thme de Paganini"; the "de Paganini" could be translated variously as "of Paganini" or "by Paganini." So, wouldn't the fairest (and simplest) solution be to provide (at least) *three* possible answers: the exact original title in the original language, its commonly accepted English title, and its translated title (word-for-word, or idiomatically)? This would probably spare the players and moderators a little grief, at the expense of an extra minutes' work on the part of question writers or packet editors. --AEI P.S. In response to the question "Why not just give the exact title in the original language?", it helps to consider some of the titles that are asked about--for example, many people will stumble over things such as "Die Dreigroschenopfer" (The Three-penny opera)--and you can pretty much write off people trying to answer in Persian, Arabic, Swahili, etc.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:45 AM EST EST