Re: THEORY: Expanding in translation?

On 7.3.2008 Lars Finsen wrote:
 > Not at all, if he means professional translation. I agree
 > that amateurs tend to expand texts a little, could be
 > about 10%. I have proofread enough samples of amateur
 > attempts to know, and come across some of my own early
 > ones, blushing. But part of the professional job is to
 > avoid such things.

That's my experience too.

 > Of course there are languages that tend to compress or
 > expand a little by themselves. This you must allow for,
 > except if you have space limits, like in software
 > localisation for example (can often be tricky). Looking
 > briefly through my files I don't find any significant
 > difference between, Norwegian, English and French as to
 > number of characters, while the German ones seem to be
 > significantly longer.

Which may have to do with German words being generally
longer in terms of character count rather than phoneme
count. The fact that every /S/ in the language corresponds
to three characters in German, while they are mostly two
characters in the other three. Then there are the often
random vowel doublings and silent h's. Of course English has
its random digraphs too, but german also has a lot of
endings lacking in English. I wonder how much storage silent
-ent in French takes up...

So you do French too, lucky bastard? Is it in high demand?

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
   à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
   ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
   c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)

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