My Personal Goal
While working on this translation project with Professor Lisa Anderson in her course "Advanced German Language through Translation" I also had a personal goal that reached beyond the texts posted on this site. Through this project I was able to achieve my goal of successfully translating quotations from various German texts to use in my honors thesis history paper that I wrote in the fall of 2015. The paper was on a prominent German literary and political figure named Anna Seghers. Because of the skills I gained through learning about translation, I was able to include some citations originally in German in my paper in English.
Through the fall semester of 2015 I improved my translation skills by working on different types of texts, all of which are posted on this site. After having gone through this process I felt more prepared to translate quotations from a variety texts for my thesis paper. I also believe that this process helped me to better understand and interpret texts as well, which benefits my research in many ways. The citations that I included in my paper have various functions. One source I am working closely with is a biography of Seghers by Christiane Zehl Romero. One important thing about the citations is that they needed to accurately capture what is being said about Seghers herself, but also needed to retain the voice of the biographer. Translating the newspaper article taught me the importance of getting all the facts and information right, while the literary texts showed me the necessity of keeping the original author's style and intention.
The following line from Seghers' biography is one that I included in the paper because I believe it captures both something essential about Seghers as a complicated and decisive individual as well as reveals something about the way Romero, as an historian and biographer, understands who Seghers was:
“Ungerechtigkeit auf der eigenen Seite still und im Dienst der größeren »Sache« zu ertragen war für sie ein Opfer, das an Masochismus grenzte." (Christiane Zehl Romero. Anna Seghers: eine Biographie. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. 143.)
Here is my translation of this sentence that I included in my paper:
To silently endure injustices on her own and in service of the greater "cause" was for her a sacrifice that bordered on masochism.
This sentence demonstrates some of my translation skills such as the decision to keep the original syntax instead of changing it-- I think that it maintains the meaning better than writing, for example: "....was a sacrifice that for her bordered on masochism." This option might sound a little smoother in English, but I think that it is important that the "sacrifice" was a sacrifice "for her" and not necessarily a sacrifice in Romero's eyes.
I hope to continue using and improving my translation skills as I work on future papers and projects and in other areas of my life as well!
Through the fall semester of 2015 I improved my translation skills by working on different types of texts, all of which are posted on this site. After having gone through this process I felt more prepared to translate quotations from a variety texts for my thesis paper. I also believe that this process helped me to better understand and interpret texts as well, which benefits my research in many ways. The citations that I included in my paper have various functions. One source I am working closely with is a biography of Seghers by Christiane Zehl Romero. One important thing about the citations is that they needed to accurately capture what is being said about Seghers herself, but also needed to retain the voice of the biographer. Translating the newspaper article taught me the importance of getting all the facts and information right, while the literary texts showed me the necessity of keeping the original author's style and intention.
The following line from Seghers' biography is one that I included in the paper because I believe it captures both something essential about Seghers as a complicated and decisive individual as well as reveals something about the way Romero, as an historian and biographer, understands who Seghers was:
“Ungerechtigkeit auf der eigenen Seite still und im Dienst der größeren »Sache« zu ertragen war für sie ein Opfer, das an Masochismus grenzte." (Christiane Zehl Romero. Anna Seghers: eine Biographie. Berlin: Aufbau, 2000. 143.)
Here is my translation of this sentence that I included in my paper:
To silently endure injustices on her own and in service of the greater "cause" was for her a sacrifice that bordered on masochism.
This sentence demonstrates some of my translation skills such as the decision to keep the original syntax instead of changing it-- I think that it maintains the meaning better than writing, for example: "....was a sacrifice that for her bordered on masochism." This option might sound a little smoother in English, but I think that it is important that the "sacrifice" was a sacrifice "for her" and not necessarily a sacrifice in Romero's eyes.
I hope to continue using and improving my translation skills as I work on future papers and projects and in other areas of my life as well!