Around here, we watch a lot of movies with subtitles, from a wide variety of
countries. There seems to be a lot of F-words. Sometimes I wonder if that was
what was really said in the original language, or if the translator just threw
it in because they think that's what American film-goers expect.

Lavrans

Patricia wrote:

>
>
> This explanation of yours LN (what's the weather like in the Lammasery?)
> - is an acceptable explanation indeed, any offence that I might have
> taken is dispersed because of Alan's and yours too - explanations - well
> I think I might have guessed that the child would be very "open" in his
> speech, and I could have guessed the boy might have been coarse.
> I believe it was making a fairly good translation, in lack of the word
> "serða" being available to me and then this followed by a
> "quasi-correction" that implied I coulda-woulda-shoulda used a coarse
> expression rather than my euphemism of "having-sex" - a fourletter word
> is not acceptable to me - choose how anyone will - I do so not use them,
> I have a dislike of causing dissension and I hope I have not done so.
> But, I abide by my decision, and will infuture check possible
> modifications of the vowel like from the 'o' to the 'e' etc
> Thanks
> Kveðja
> Patricia
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: llama_nom <mailto:600cell@...>
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com <mailto:norse_course@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, July 15, 2006 2:11 PM
> Subject: [norse_course] Translating taboos
>
>
>
> 'sorðið' is the Modern Icelandic spelling of 'sorðit', the supine
> (=neuter past participle) of the verb "serða", which does indeed mean
> "to have sex with", just as you said, Patricia. MM and HP translate
> it as "intercourse". But Alan has a good point about it being
> considered blunt term, to say the least; the little boy is too young
> to realise how tactless he's being. There's an interesting article by
> Ármann Jakobsson "Troublesome children in the Sagas of the Icelanders"
> (Saga-Book XXVII, 2003), which discusses this very scene: "These boys
> are a classic example of naive impertenance [...] They are able to
> say what other people may well be thinking, but are too cautious or
> too polite to put into words." He likens the incident to the fable of
> The Emperor's New Clothes, and to other examples of marginal figures
> in sagas, beggars, servants, children, who comment on the action a
> little too directly for some people's comfort.
>
> Incidentally, I think Zoega's cryptic comment on 'serða' "...(esp. a
> male)" refers to the fact that it's often used to mean "sodomise(d)",
> and as such was was considered a very insulting word. Both the
> Icelandic lawbook Grágás and the Norwegian Gulaþing lawcode have
> penalties for accusing a man of having been 'sorðinn'.
>
> This does raise some interesting issues for the translator. If the
> word seemed offensive to people at the time, an honest translation
> ought to reflect that, but presumably the use of an equivalent crude
> word even in fiction was felt to be inadmissable at the time when the
> 19th and 20th century translations we've looked at were made. That
> doesn't necessarily mean that these translations weren't "honest";
> they might be excused on the grounds that to break the taboos of their
> own readers expectations would create a jarring effect that wasn't
> present for the saga's original audience. Unfortunately, no one knows
> for sure exactly how the original readers would have felt about this,
> or what their expectations would have been. Though the word was
> extremely offensive in one context, as the lawcodes show, it may not
> have been such a big deal to read it in a story, spoken in character.
> The use of the word in other sagas adds to the impression that it
> wasn't so shocking to use it in literature.
>
> But mores change, and a translator nowadays probably has more leaway
> to recreate the effect of putting a crude word into the mouth of a
> character than translators did in the 19th or early 20th century, even
> given that academic works might lag behind fiction in general in this
> respect (I notice that MM and HP's translation of Njáls saga was
> published the year after The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs!). On
> the other hand, the 20th c. translators may have wanted to avoid taboo
> words, not so much because of their potential to upset people, but to
> avoid the danger of using a word or expression that would quickly
> become dated. What was mildly offensive in 1960, might seem quaint
> and ridiculous to many readers in 2006, but a neutral term is more
> likely to stay constant, even if this loses something of the effect of
> the original. A translator also has to take care to avoid too much
> local colour, e.g. words that an American reader would associate
> strongly with Britain.
>
> Another difficulty is the fact that the taboos of one culture rarely
> map exactly onto the taboos of another. While English has lots of
> words that overlap partly with ON serða, there probably aren't any
> that have the exact range of conotations or the exact role in our
> culture. Still, it might be possible to achieve the same effect, of
> suggesting children at play saying things that embarrass their elders,
> even if the English and Old Norse terms don't match up on every point.
> I suppose what word you chose depends on taste as well, and who one's
> intended readership is.
>
> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:norse_course%40yahoogroups.com>, "Patricia"
> <originalpatricia@...>
> wrote:
> >
> > Saell Alan
> > The word used in the Old Norse version was not found in any of my
> > dictionaries , so I used the version that had been employed in the
> Five
> > Volume set of the Sagas of the Icelanders - and that seemed well
> enough to
> > me -
> >
> > Finna það til foráttu að þú hafir eigi sorðið hana." there is no
> word in
> > any of the dictionaries that I use that seems to resemble the one
> "sorðið"
> > used , how else can I determine what it means but by referring to an
> > established translation - which I used - seeing it as accurate enough
> > Patricia

>