Do you (still) translate for fun?

MaV

I know we all love our work (or at least I hope so). But how does it make you feel outside of working hours? For example, when I interpret, I spend the rest of the day translating EVERY SINGLE WORD that is said to me back and forth in my head. It’s annoying. Same thing with subtitles: working for cinema and theatre means that | can’t watch a movie without getting very impressed or very annoyed by the translation.

That said, I don’t seem to get tired of translating. These days, I’ve been entertaining the project of making a site, or a small edition, or whatever I manage to do with translations of shorter and lesser known texts of Scottish authors into Portuguese. Especially RL Stevenson, who is very very entertaining. I will be doing it for fun, on my free time, with no special audience in mind but hoping it will be useful to people I don’t know yet.

What about you? Do you have side projects that include translation when you are not working “officially”?

annagiuliam

MaV Same thing with subtitles: working for cinema and theatre means that | can’t watch a movie without getting very impressed or very annoyed by the translation

Same thing here! I only watch movies/series and read books in original language because I can't stop asking myself why a certain word was translated that way or what the original sentence was. I think it's just a professional habit.

As far as translating during my free time, I absolutely don't ?
I like my job but I think spending all day in front of the computer for work is enough and in my free time I try to do something more active, like having a walk or going to the gym.

Fadwa

Hi MaV, this is an interesting topic for me. I do translate for fun because there are a lot of amazing articles in English and English is not a second language in my country so I try my best to make them accessible in Arabic.

Unfortunately, I am too busy and I do not do this as much as I want to but I try to collect any good piece I read to translate in my free time. However, I do publish them on other websites and blogs which have the same goal or on my LinkedIn page.

ninadepalma

I do volunteer translations for a human-rights nonprofit. :-) Since going full-time freelance, I've scaled back my contributions to ~500 words/wk, but yeah, I do that, and I really enjoy it.

MaV

That's pretty cool, Fadwa. Do you do it the other way too, from Arabic into English?

coveredweb

I practice translating from new languages. I get some articles from Wikipedia. here

MaV

Now that's a nice idea!

erikasbat

Yeah, I do translate for fun. I really enjoy translating, that's why I shifted from Law to this area. Actually, I have a project like the one you're creating/intend to create, since 2012, but it's about Russian literature. I see you're a Portuguese speaker, so you can check out the Blog/Facebook page/Instagram of the project, it's named "Literatura Russa para Brasileiros". I do some non-profit (TED Talks and a bible site, currently). When I have time, I want to keep translating song lyrics too, it has helped me a lot when learning the languages I studied.

MaV

Yes, songs are amazing when it comes to learning languages!
And I'll check your site. In Portugal, Russian literature is translated by one and the same couple. It is a bit better than a few years ago, when it was translated from French, but it's still not enough, I'd think. So I will certainly search your project. Thanks for sharing it!