Lloyd Bingham runs Capital Translations in Cardiff, UK. A former in-house translator, he works from German, Dutch, French and Spanish into English, specialising in business, marketing and education. Lloyd is a qualified member of the UK’s Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) and Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL). He is also a tutor on ITI’s Starting Up as a Freelance Translator course and a committee member of ITI Cymru Wales. In addition to a linguistic curiosity about English interference in other languages, Lloyd takes a keen interest in online presence-building and professional conduct for freelance translators.
Dealing with Denglish & other source language interference
Denglish, Dunglish, Franglais, Spanglish… they can all be deceptive. Especially when you find out that your friend’s new “beamer” is not a BMW, but a projector. Taking source language terms borrowed from English at face value is a rookie mistake, with often hilarious yet catastrophic consequences. While it might be cool to drop English words into other languages, the meaning is often corrupted, leaving us translators scratching our heads. This presentation will first look at how other languages have given English words new meanings that you won’t find in the dictionary, and how translators can translate them.
Then we’ll look at ways to avoid source language interference from a style point of view and how to opt for more idiomatic formulations. Real-life examples will be taken from German and Dutch into English translations, but translators of other language combinations will be able to take away ideas to make their texts sound more natural in terms of both terminology and style.
