Translating "Stakes"
Me and fellow translators kit_kat_2006 and mondenengel decided to talk some about our translations so to improve on our work. So here are a couple of notes on translating "Stakes." I hope this is interesting for those of you who're learning German too
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I will definitely make an entry about your fic because it's a tricky one. I've translated that one already but it needs another thorough edit. Now that I know you're interested, I'll try to phrase it so you'll be able to follow. :)
It took me a long time until I got the full scope of "smirk". At first I thought smirking was a somehow negative reaction to have. I also remember I was surprised to learn that you can smirk in pain. It's a rather complex word. When Gaeta tells Chuckles they need the porn for moral, smirking, you get a sense that he knows his priorities are funny but doesn't care. Instead of the non-existent smirking, German Gaeta does something similar to pressing his lips together (although the phrase really doesn't translate). He's actually serious and maybe a bit annoyed about moral being down because of the porn.
There is a German linguist data base similar to your thesaurus. It searches newspaper articles online and analyzes which words are used in the company of other words automatically. It's very interesting but it only works if it has screened many sources for a term. I remember I tried to use it once when I wrote a paper on the meaning of the German term for "gay" and it informed me that "gay" is usually used accompanied by the words "bishop" and "pope." Apparantly there had been a lot of press attention for a paper claiming that one out of five bishops is gay. :)
Sometimes the meaning has been changed so that the new meaning is the direct opposite of the original one. It's kind of like words out of Shakespeare. :)
That never ceases to fascinate me too. :) There is a word in German - "mondän" - that means "glamorous and rich" and "poor and sleazy" at the same time.
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