"O Dionysus, appear
With men and maenads headlong
And dance the world to rights.
Be the necklace fire of stars,
The cauterising lightning.
Bewilder us with good."

from 'The Burial At Thebes', Sophocles (translated by Seamus Heaney)

#GreekTragedy #Poetry #Translation

I translated a text with deepl today. It isn't very good, but I noticed that translating my corrections back into the original language often made the original text better. The translator thus showed me how to become my own editor. Maybe this is the true value of #LLMs . They have no reasoning ability, no curiosity. They prefer to make mistakes than to work out implications. They are pure collective language oracles, the quintessential proof-readers.

#translation #LLM #AI #writing

19th century British folktale translators be like

*Native bird name* = Pidgeon
*Native songbird name* = Blackbird
*Native raptor name* = Eagle
*Native antelope name* = Deer
*Native name for jackal* = Clever Fox
*Native name for any feline* = Tiger

🤦‍♀️

#folklore #folktales #storytelling #translation

The more research I do for this #WomensEpics reading project, the more epics I find out about that need English translations a.s.a.p. Like. Seriously.

#epics #folklore #translation #translator #AmReading #bookstodon

So by the way, the epic of Princess Fatima was an amazing read. But sadly the longest English translation to date only includes 11 episodes out of 455. And even those in an abridged version.

Who do we talk to about getting a fuller translation?...

#epics #WomensEpics #translation #literature #AmReading #folklore #women

Also, while on the topic of King Arthur legends:

Please for the love of god someone translate Escanor to English!

We have an actual Arthurian love-hate romance for grumpy Sir Kay. How is this not a thing yet?!

#storytelling #KingArthur #translation #medieval #histodons #literature

Update. I missed this from last year: "We broadly review the advantages and limitations of…machine #translation…and propose that translation can serve as both a short- and a long-term solution for making science more…accessible, globally representative, and impactful beyond the academy. We outline actions that individuals and institutions can take to support multilingual science."
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/72/10/988/6653151

#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch

For those who want to read sites in Russian, Arabic, Spanish, French, German and many other languages.
#translation #extensions for #firefox or #chrome