Assignment 11 (Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones' Diary)

Sinoć, oko 8.45, dok sam uživala u opuštajućoj kupki i pijuckala čaj od kamilice, začuo se alarm u kolima. Vodila sam kampanju u našoj ulici protiv ovih alarma koji su bili nepodnošljivi i bez ikakvog efekta s obzirom na to da je veća šansa bila da vam auto obije iznerviran komšija dok pokušava da ga ugasi nego provalnik.

Ovog puta, ipak, umesto da šizim i zovem policiju, samo sam duboku udahnula kroz proširene nozdrve i promrmljala: „samo staloženo”. Začulo se zvono. Javila sam se na interfon. Nadmen glas blejao je poput ovce: “On me jebeno vara”. Potom se začulo histerično jecanje. Pojurila sam dole i zatekla Magdu van zgrade, kako u bari suza čačka nešto ispod volana Džeremijevog Saab kabrioleta, iz kojeg je neopisivo glasno dolazio zavijajući zvuk, sva svetla su bila upaljena a na sedištu auta beba je plakala kao da je kolje komšijska mačka.

Ugasi to!- neko je vikao sa gornjeg prozora.

Jebeno ne mogu! – uzviknula je Magda dok je vukla haubu.

“Džerers!” – vikala je u telefon. “Džerers ti jebeno preljubničko djubre! Kako otvaraš ovu haubu Saaba!“

Helen Fielding (born 19 February 1958) is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones. Her novels Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason have been published in forty countries and sold over 15 million copies.

Bridget Jones's Diary is a 1996 novel. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. Bridget is a self-involved woman concerned with her weight, appearance and securing a boyfriend. The book is written as a diary and tracks Bridget's life during a twelve-month span, beginning with her New Year's Resolutions. Caught between her Singleton friends, who are all convinced they will end up dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian, and the Smug Marrieds, whose dinner parties offer ever-new opportunities for humiliation, Bridget struggles to keep her life on an even keel (or at least afloat). Through it all, she will have her readers helpless with laughter and shouting, 'Bridget Jones is me!

In the passage that we are given as a part of our study week assignment, Bridget describes one night in her life, when everything seemed to go wrong: she was having a bubble bath when she got a hysterical call from her friend Magda, who just found out that her husband is cheating on her.

Before starting my translation, I read a passage two times. It did not seem hard, except certain set expressions, false friends and some bad language which needed to be adjusted. During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Wikipedia.com and Google.com. I found explanations for all unfamiliar words in the dictionary but for some pieces of information, like Saab convertible, I had to look up on the internet. Here are my solutions:

"counter-productive" – bez ikakvog efekta ( I think that this translation is more suitable than kontra-produktivni, which would be a literal translation)

"inner poise"- samo mirno/staloženo. She was trying to calm down, not to let herself be annoyed by an outside noise.

"A very posh sheep voice bleated" this was quite a challenge because of words posh and sheep voice which appear within the same structure. My translation of this sentence is Nadmen glas blejao je poput ovce.

"Saab convertible" – Luckily, from the context I figured out that this is a type of car. I looked up on the internet I found that Saab is a company that produces car, just like Fiat, Mercedes, etc. So I kept its name in the translation. Convertible, however, refers to the type of car whose roof can be either folded down or taken off. So my translation is Saab kabriolet.

"A dowee-dowee-dowee sound" – car emits this sound once someone breaks into it. It was not easy finding its corresponding equivalent in Serbian and the only thing that came into my mind is zavijajući zvuk.

Some swearing words were also very interesting for translation:

"Jerrers, you fucking adulterous bastard" – Džerers, ti jebeno preljubničko djubre!

"He is having a fucking affair" On me jebeno vara!. 

Once I finished my translation, I read it two times to see whether I made some mistakes and to make sure every sentence was meaningful. I didn’t make any changes. The text itself was very interesting for translation and not very hard. So I will grade it 3/10. 

Assignment 10 ( Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter)

Već osam godina zaredom, svakog 12. avgusta, Rut Jang bi izgubila svoj glas. Prvi put se to dogodilo kad se preselila u Artov stan u San Francisku. Nekoliko dana, Rut je mogla samo da pišti poput zaboravljenog  čajnika.  Mislila je da je u pitanju virus, ili mozda alergija na neku vrstu budji u zgradi.

Kad je ponovo izgubila glas, na prvu godišnjicu njihovog zajedničkog života, Art se našalio da je njen laringitis psihosomatske prirode. Rut se zapitala da li je Art u pravu. Kad je bila dete, izgubila je glas nakon što je slomila ruku. Zbog čega? Na njihovu drugu godišnjicu, Art i ona su otišli na Grand Teton da posmatraju zvezde. Prema pamfletu tog nacionalnog parka < Oko 12. Avgusta, kad aktivnost Perseidskog roja dostiže vrhunac, svakog sata na stotine zvezda padalica projure nebom. One predstavljaju delove meteora koje prodiru u zemljinu atmosferu i sagorevaju pre nego sto padnu. >

U Artovom društvu, Rut se u tišini divila igri svetlosti na tamno-baršunastom nebeskom svodu. Nije verovala da je njen laringitis izmalerisan kao ni da kiša meteora ima bilo kakve veze sa njenom nemogućnošću da govori. Mada, njena majka joj je često u detinjstvu govorila da su zvezde padalice u stvari “istopljena tela duhova” i da je loš znak videti ih, jer bi to značilo da neki duh pokušava da razgovara sa tobom. 

Amy Tan was born in Oakland (California) on February 19, 1952. She is an American writer of Chinese origin. Her complex relationship with her mother has been inspiration for many of her works.

The Bonesetter's Daughter, published in 2001, is Amy's fourth novel. Like much of her work, this novel deals with the relationship between an American-born Chinese woman and her immigrant mother.

The novel is divided into two major stories. The first is about Ruth, a Chinese-American woman living in San Francisco. She worries that her elderly mother, Lu Ling, is gradually becoming more and more demented. Lu Ling seems increasingly forgetful, and makes bizarre comments about her family and her own past. The second major story is that of Lu Ling herself, as written for Ruth. Several years earlier, Lu Ling had written out her life story in Chinese. Ruth arranges to have the document translated, and learns the truth about her mother's life in China.

Set in contemporary San Francisco and in a Chinese village where Peking Man is being unearthed, The Bonesetter's Daughter is an excavation of the human spirit: the past, its deepest wounds, its most profound hopes. Over the course of one fog-shrouded year, between one season of falling stars and the next, mother and daughter find what they share in their bones through heredity, history, and inexpressible qualities of love.

Before starting a translation, I read an excerpt two times. In this passage that we got as a part of our study week assignment, Ruth, the main character talks about her mysterious inability to talk on some specific occasions and describes her second anniversary with Art, spent on a mountain.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Wikipedia.com and Google.com. All unfamiliar words I managed to find in the dictionary. What I found little problematic were some set expressions, lack of knowledge when it comes to Grand Teton National Park and long sentences which needed to be translated without omitting anything important. Here are my solutions:

“For several days, Ruth could only hiss like an untended teakettle” Nekoliko dana, Rut je mogla samo da pišti poput zaboravljenog čajnika.

"Art joked that her laryngitis must be psychosomatic" Art se našalio da je njen laringitis psihosomatske prirode.

"During the peak of the Perseids, around August 12th, hundreds of 'shooting' or 'falling' stars streak the sky every hour" In order to translate this sentence I had to do a little research on the Internet. Grand Teton is the highest point of the Teton Range, and the second highest peak in the U.S. state of Wyoming. It is one of the best places for stargazing and observing the Perseids, or meteor shower, when they are most likely to be seen, from July to August. As mentioned in the passage, around August 12^th, hundreds of shooting stars streak the sky every hour. Oko 12. avgusta, kad aktivnost Perseidskog roja dostiže vrhunac, na stotine zvezda padalica projure nebom svakih sat vremena. 

"light show" igra svetlosti (although in many books we can see lajt šou. In my personal opinion, transcription in this case is not an option).

"star-crossed" – dict. def: not able to be happy because of bad luck or fate. I translated it as izmalerisan, izbaksuziran

"Against the velvet blackness"  na tamno-baršunastom nebeskom svodu

After I finished my translation, I read it two times to make sure everything had sense. I didn’t change anything. The text was not hard to translate, it just took some time for research and connecting structures. My grade for this task is 3/10.

 

Assignment 9 ( Mariel Hemingway, 2009, Mariel's Kitchen)

Mariel Hadley Hemingway, born on November 22, 1961 in California, is well known American actress. But besides being an actress, she also found herself in writing, which is no wonder since she is a granddaughter of famous writer Ernest Hemingway.

In 2009, she published a cookbook known as Mariel’s Kitchen: Simple Ingredients for a Delicious and Satisfying Life. Filled with exciting and beautiful photographs and easy-to-follow instructions, Mariel’s Kitchen includes seventy-five sensational, doable recipes that are tasty enough to repeat.  With wide set of recipes suitable for every occasion, Mariel’s Kitchen is a new kind of American cookbook designed to help you and all those you cook for eat better , fresher and more delicious foods, day in and day out.

In the excerpt we got as a part of our homework, Mariel talks about the season shift- as cold winter is coming to an end with beautiful spring replacing its place, it is time for some changes on our dining table. She talks about the changes in the nature and brings that feeling into the kitchen.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Wikipedia.com, Google Images, Marielhemingway.com and the notes from the class. Our task was to translate this excerpt but also to see how difficult translation can be when we have some words characteristic for certain culture: it is a real challenge when it comes to finding corresponding equivalents. Dictionary did not help me a lot since for some types of vegetables and ingredients I had to look up for an image, so for this task, Google Images was of greatest help.

 “ Come springtime, I want to feel new” – the second part was little problematic for translation as I knew that I shouldn’t translate it as …želim da se osećam novo as it didn’t sound as something we would say in our language. After some thinking I decided to translate it as Kad dodje proleće, želim da se osećam drugačije (as she later explains why).

" cress salad " – For me, this was the most interesting word in the whole passage. I have never heard of this type of salad before and I did some research on the Internet. I found out that this type of salad originates from Russia and that there are several corresponding equivalents in our language: kres salata, potočac, etc.

" The watery feel of cucumber " - After a discussion we had in class, we agreed that watery shouldn’t be translated as vodnjikav ili vodenast as it has negative connotation. I decided to translate it Sočan (osvežavajući) ukus krastavca.

" bok choy" - kineski kupus

"tiny curls of new plant life " – I didn’t want to translate it as uvojci as it didn’t sound natural to me (this word is usually related to hair), so I translated it …golicaju jezik svojim mladim listićima.

When I finished my translation I read it two times to see whether it makes sense. I didn’t make any changes. The most difficult part of translation were the names of food but in the end I worked it out. The text was very interesting, however, not easy to translate, so i will grade it 5.   

Assignment 8 ( Heidi W. Durrow, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky)

Heidi W. Durrow, born June 21^st 1969, is an American writer and the author of a novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, a novel that brought Heidi Barbara Kingsolver Bellwether Prize for Literature of Social Change (2008).

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either white or black. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is a novel that reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking “Must race confine us and define us?”

Before starting my translation I read an excerpt two times. Once I read it, it was not hard to conclude what it was about: Rachel, a little girl, retells the situation in which she found herself one day. Tamika Washington doesn’t like Rachel and constantly pulls her hair and threatens to beat her up. In the second paragraph we find out that people tell Rachel all kinds of staff about black people (she is uncertain whether she is white or black) and she learns that she herself is black. Text is very interesting as we have child as a main character. In order to make the translation as effective as the original, we have to find appropriate equivalents to illustrate the image the author was trying to create.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Wikipedia.com, HeidiWDurrow.com and the notes from the class. There weren’t many unfamiliar words, those that were, I found in the dictionary. Much bigger problem was adjusting Rachel’s and Tamika’s speech as it needed to look transparent and obvious to the reader that two little girls are talking. Here are some problems that I had:

Mor - upon the first reading I wasn’t sure what this word means. I thought it was the name of her friend or cousin. Fortunately, the notes from the class made me do a little research and I found out that Mor is a Danish word for mother (suddenly everything made sense) so I translated the entire sentence Ni mama nije znala. 

As I already mentioned, Tamika’s speech did cause me a lot of troubles during the translation but I managed to find appropriate equivalents in Serbian and here they are:

“ You think you so cute” – Mis’iš da si mnogo slatka a?

“ I am fixin to kick your ass”  Ima da te prebijem!

“ Dang”  - this was a little bit problematic. Dictionary definition of this word is: a mild swear word used instead of damn. I did not want to translate it as Dodjavola or Prokletstvo as it didn’t sound as something that child would say. So I think that more appropriate translation would be: E svašta!

“ I am light-skinned-ed” This is a good example of how children are speaking. Various things came to my mind as options for this translation: Ja sam belokožac. or  Belpurasta sam.

“ I put all these new facts into the new girl” – I sva ova nova otkrića će da budu deo nove devojčice. or I sve ovo novo će da bude jedna nova devojčica.

Before posting my translation I read everything twice. I didn’t make any changes. I enjoyed translating the text as it was very interesting and I didn’t find it hard at all. Therefore, my final grade would be 3. 

Assignment 7 ( Iain Banks, The Bridge)

The Bridge is a novel written by Scottish author Iain Banks. It was published in 1986. and it represents one of the best Iain’s works. On the surface, The Bridge is a novel about three different protagonists: John Orr, The Barbarian and Alex. The reader is not told his full name but it is hinted to be Alexander Lennox, a troubled man who crashes his car while gazing at the Forth Bridge and goes into a coma. What reader will later realize is that all the characters are the same character, Alexander Lennox, who, while lying in a coma, revisits memories of his life up until the moment of the crash. Mixing realities, the concept of doppelganger, different allusions, etc. don’t make this book a fast paced one but Banks instead offers the reader the chance to literally enter the mind of the character – an opportunity that must not be missed.

Before starting my translation, I read an excerpt two times. It wasn’t hard to conclude what the text is about. We are given a dialogue between Mr John Orr and Mr Lynch. Upon my first reading I realized that the two persons, having a conversation, are from different social class: Mr John being a more sophisticated and educated one and Mr Lynch being a less educated one, perhaps from the lower, working class. The task was to adjust these two dialects, to translate the text in a way that reader realizes that these two persons are two different worlds. While reading, the difference between them needs to be obvious. This made the task a little bit challenging but also interesting.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Google.com and Wikipedia.com. Dictionary solved all my doubts when it comes to unfamiliar words but I mostly relied on my notes from the class and focused on finding corresponding equivalents.

Lynchy’s part of dialogue caused me a lot of troubles as I tried really hard to illustrate and present him in the way Iain Banks presented him in the original. Here are some problems that I had:

“ Scuse me, pal. New here, aren’t ye”    Izvin’te druže. Nov li si ovde? – I think that word Novajlija is also possible in the 2^nd sentence.

“Nothin’ just bein’ neighbourly. Wondered if there was anythin’ ye wanted”.  Niš’, samo pokušavam da budem ljubazan. Reko da vidim treba li ti što.

“his not-recently-washed face”  ne baš često prano lice or ne-skoro-oprano lice

“ Chucked ye out, just like that, eh?” I tek tako te izbaciše?

“Them doctors” Oni lekari?! or Ti lekari.

Before posting my translation I read it two times; it seemed quite right to me so I didn’t change anything. The text was definitely very interesting and not hard at all so I’ll grade it with 2. 

Assignment 6 ( Marilynne Robinson, Home)

Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. She was born in 1943 and grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho.  She has emerged as one of the America’s greatest contemporary novelists, with a career characterized by surprise and singularity. So far, she has written three highly acclaimed novels: Housekeeping (1980), Gilead (2004) and Home (2008).

Home is an unusual exercise: a companion to Gilead, not sequel but sibling, narrating the same, rather uneventful, events as that novel, but in a context of a different family history and from different perspectives.

Home retells Jack Boughton's story from the point of view of his younger sister, Glory, who has reluctantly returned to Gilead at the age of 38 to care for her dying father, a Presbyterian minister and John Ames's best friend. Jack, the family's black sheep, an alcoholic with a dishonourable past, returns for reasons that he will only intimate (they are more fully disclosed in Gilead). Glory has secrets of her own: she was humiliated by a man to whom she thought she was engaged, but who turned out to be married. Home is a novel of secrets: the three Boughtons withhold most of what they are thinking and feeling from each other, as they reside uneasily under the same roof.

Before starting my translation, I read the text twice. It wasn’t hard to conclude what the text is about. We are given a description of the house in which the Boughton family used to live. Children of the Reverend Robert Boughton returned to the house and we see them reviving their memories all over again.  But it is not just a simple description of the house- the house is personified, and from the description we come to conclusion that it is treated as a human being, an important member of the family Boughton, rather than an object.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th ed.), Merriam-Webster Online, Google Translate, Wikipedia.com and Guardian.co.uk

Even though the text is not hard to understand, one must be very careful when translating it as the main point is to make the house a living object- reader must get an impression that it is alive in order to realize what that house represents for its inhabitants. Problems that may appear during the translation:

“ Well, it’s a good house” – this is the 1^st sentence in the text. I myself would translate it as “Pa, dobra je to kuća”. What might be confusing is the word Well, which most of us would replace with Serbian equivalent Pa. After the discussion we had in class I think that the more suitable translation would be Dobra je to kuća, znaš.

“ …with a flat face and a flattened roof and peaked brows over the windows”   This is a description of the house which I found little confusing. After the discussion we had in class, it was obvious that the house is, as I already mentioned, personified. It was essential to find Serbian equivalents which won’t spoil the image that the author was trying to create. I translated it as: “…neukrašena, spljoštenog krova i šiljatih lukova iznad prozora nalik na obrve”

“Italianate” The father was probably referring to the style of the house, the way it was built. If that is the case than a proper translation would be “Prava italijanska” or “Italijanski stil gradnje”.

“Such times you had!” Obviously, this sentence can’t be translated literally. I had several solutions: “Eh, kakva su to vremena bila” “Ala ste se lepo provodili” “Bila su to dobra vremena”

Before posting my translation I read it several times to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes and to make sure everything had sense. I didn’t change anything. The notes from the class sure did help me a lot- if it weren’t for them, I might have misunderstood something and translated it differently. As I already mentioned the text is not hard to translate, we did some more complicated texts, so I will grade it with 4. 

Assignment 5 ( Iain Banks, The Bridge)

The Bridge is a novel written by Scottish author Iain Banks. It was published in 1986. and it represents one of the best Iain’s works. On the surface, The Bridge is a novel about three different protagonists: John Orr, The Barbarian and Alex. The reader is not told his full name but it is hinted to be Alexander Lennox, a troubled man who crashes his car while gazing at the Forth Bridge and goes into a coma. What reader will later realize is that all the characters are the same character, Alexander Lennox, who, while lying in a coma, revisits memories of his life up until the moment of the crash. Mixing realities, the concept of doppelganger, different allusions, etc. don’t make this book a fast paced one but Banks instead offers the reader the chance to literally enter the mind of the character – an opportunity that must not be missed.

Before starting my translation I read an excerpt three times (some sentences even more than three times). Upon my first reading I figured out the main idea of the text. We are given a very detailed description of a place around the character- the dark station, its surrounding, noises,…Since the text is full of adjective phrases it was really hard including all of them in my translation but as the text insists on gradation of images I did my best  to adapt my translation to the original version.

During the translation I used Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (8^th edition), Wikipedia.com, Google.com. I didn’t find all the answers in them but I must say, notes from the class did help me a lot. 

Problems: 

•  "The dark station, shuttered and empty, echoed to the distant, fading whistle of the departing train." The first sentence of the paragraph seemed as a quiet a challenge. The entire sentence represents the gradation of adjectives. It was really hard including all of them in a translation. The sentence has to be meaningful and putting adjectives, one by one, was not a solution. So I divided this large sentence into two smaller ones and it sounded like this: Mračna stanica, prazna I pusta. U daljini odjekivao je jenjavajući zvižduk voza koji je odlazio.
•  "I wanted to hear its panting breath, the busy clatter of its pistoned hearts, the chatter of is valves and slides." This construction was one of the hardest in the text for me. These are all the noises of the locomotive. As I don’t know much about trains, its parts and the noises it makes I looked on the internet, but my search wasn’t successful. I didn’t manage to find corresponding expressions in Serbian so I translated them, more or less, freely, in a descriptive way. Hteo sam da čujem njen brekćući dah, vredno klepetanje srca njenih klipova, torokanje ventila i klizača.
• "Some wisps of steam or smoke, only slowly dispatching in the valley’s moist, chill air, hung above the black slate and soot-darkened bricks." The first problem here was finding a corresponding equivalent to construction some wisps of steam or smoke which I in the end translated as pramičci pare ili dima. But I think it could also be translated as oblačak,. Another problem for me was to figure out what black slate is. After reading this sentence several times and browsing through my notes I concluded it was a material, used for covering roofs, or, in Serbian: crepovi. So my translation of this sentence is: Poneki pramičci pare ili dima, tek polako su se prostirali kroz vlažan, hladan vazduh u dolini, I visili nad crnim crepovima I počađavelim ciglama.

 f    Before posting my translation I read it twice to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. I made a few corrections but translation remained the same. Notes and discussions we had on our previous class really helped me a lot and made my translation easier. This was definitely the hardest text we did so far so I will grade it with 9 ( in case there is one even harder).

#s