Translation: Marie Antoinette Part 5

Sorry for the delay with this but it's finally online.

The exact translation in this video is probably a bit sloppy. I'm really out of practice with German which feels weird. It's almost like my old Elisabeth days when I had to stop and look things up every five minutes. Okay, in my really old Elisabeth days I had to look things up every five seconds but I digress. I was also rushing with this part to attempt to get it online and finished it at three a.m.. It's been three months since I uploaded the last part and, although I have good excuse, I feel really bad about that.

Claudia, a friend of mine from Austria helped me with a line that was causing me real trouble so thank you to her <3

Also, I still can't get accents to render properly on my hard subbing so some words are missing accents. Of course, this doesn't really affect English but this musical does like to chuck in the odd bit of French (translations below).

Anyway, talking about the video:

Axel has this lovely line where he says 'Wir sind freier als die meisten Menschen.' (We're freer than many people). It's a lovely concept. Although they're unhappy he knows that, in comparison, they're lucky and shouldn't complain. Annoyingly, free isn't commonly seen in a comparative fashion, and I'm unsure if technically it can be as you're either free or not. Apparently, there is a word "freer" so that's the one I used.

Maskenspiel is translated as masque not masquerade. A masque is a kind of big entertainment play dance song thing put on by players (within courts). Traditionally, masks would be worn by the players so this is a big metaphorical thing beyond just saying "we wear masks". A masquerade, is a ball at which people wore masks so slight difference :-)

Translations:

Mainly French, again, with a bit of Latin. My Latin is very rusty as I learned it many years ago so may not be accurate. Axel also 'translates it' in the musical. In fact, my French is getting rusty too but that's a complete other story!

Trés jolie, ne c'est pas? - Very pretty, isn't it?

Oui - Yes

Bon soir, Monsieur Orléans! - Good Evening Mr. Orléans!

Palais Royal - Royal Palace

Non! - No

Bien sur. - For sure.

Bien oui - Well yes

S'il vous plaît! - If you please (also means just "please")

Pour le plaisir - For pleasure. (This is kinda creepy in context!)

Dolore Fortiter - Sorrow bravely (Latin)

Quelle que soit - Whatever

Excuse-moi, chéri - Excuse me, dear.

Nursing an old friend back to health!

This is a blog of good news. Isn't it nice to have a bit of good news once in a while? Yep, I think so too.

Anyway, casual rambling over, lets have some targeted rambling ;-)

So, drum roll please...

I have mended the 'cello!

You might remember that she had a bit of an accident involving my father shoving her behind a wardrobe. It wouldn't do anyone any good to be treated in that way and she ended up quite injured but, thank the gods, not as badly hurt as she could have been. All the same it has taken me quite a lot of work to get her playable again, and she could still do with a new bridge at some point. I'm not complaining though because I didn't think I'd be able to do it. I'm also lucky there wasn't any internal damage because not only would that have been beyond my skills to repair it would also have been in the realms of the expensive.

I made sure she wasn't going to slip (and damage herself again) when
posing for this photo by jamming her spike into the floorboards hehe

I've also, naturally, had a little play with her today. It's weird because I haven't been able to play for over six months now - it's hard to be a nomad while carrying such a big bundle! I want to go back to playing the same as I was before my little break but physically can't do it. I seriously can't remember feeling such a burning feeling in my left fingers and right arm, and certainly not from playing for such a short period. On the plus side, I don't seem to have lost all the technique which was something that concerned me a little bit. I can't wait to get back to playing properly!

The other accomplishment of the day was the uploading of part three of Marie Antoinette, my current subtitling project. Technical problems galore but it's finally online. I won't bore you with ranting about that here but you can read about it on my subtitling livejournal account if you want. I genuinely feel that I've been productive today.

Now I'm going to go and relax with a nice cup of tea!

Names: to translate or not to translate?

Every now and then, translation can pose some problems. Do you translate something literally or change the literal meaning to get more of the implication and flavour? What do you do when there is an obvious rhythm, rhyme, plosive structure that matters but can’t be carried across into English? How do you translate it when someone has been playing with their words? What do you do with names?

Usually, when translating into English I choose to keep the original name. I think that most of the people who are reading my subtitles could work out that, Zsuzsanna, for example, is the Hungarian spelling of Susanna. However, even if this is not the case I think that everyone could learn that when I write Zsuzsanna I am referring to a certain character or person.

However, with the musicals that I translate there are sometimes some additional difficulties with characters being well known or having more unusual character names. Der Tod, for example, is often used by English speaking fans of the musical Elisabeth to refer to the character himself. In Japanese the character is actually called "トート", "Toto", which is derived from his German character name. However, I hardly think that Der Tod’s mother named him that when he was born, and somewhere he probably has a perfectly ordinary name (like Brian), so it’s probably good practice to translate this to Death, in the musical. It’s more a descriptive title than a name.

So what about historical characters? Franz Joseph, for example, seems to appear in most English history books, that I have seen, as Francis Joseph. How should this be written? Quite frankly, it really annoys me to see him referred to as Francis so my choice here was selfish rather than based purely on logic. That said, it’s probably right to keep it in the original German, which is sometimes used in English anyway, especially when Franz Joseph is the name that was used by the Emperor and in the musical. He’s also not the most famous ruler in history – I was a history student and most of my classes hadn’t heard of him - so people are less likely to need to know who he is to enjoy the musical anyway.

However, it’s not always that simple. If I were to ask you to tell me about King Ludwig XVI you are unlikely to be able to tell me much about the gentleman I’m referring to. If I were to ask you about King Louis XVI you will probably be able to tell me a bit more, especially if I also said he was the husband of Marie Antoinette. It seems sensible, therefore, for me to choose to translate Ludwig back to its original French and away from the German version used in the musical of Marie Antoinette. Marie Antoinette herself is known by her French name (which is bizarre considering that, as an Austrian by birth, Maria Antonia’s original name was German anyway) so I also feel there should be some continuity. All the same, I feel really bad deviating from my usual ‘use the name used in the play/musical/text’ resolution.

So here’s the question: Does the translation, or lack of translation, of names into English matter to you? Which do you prefer?

Louis or Ludwig, Marie Antoinette or Maria Antonia, and does it really matter?