Translation Problems

EXAMPLE 1:

People who are new to Zen practice have all kinds of weird ideas about the state of nonthinking. Some people envision it as some kind of trippy spaced-out sorta thing. I’ve even heard the term mushiryo (“not-thinking”) consciousness thrown around as if it was some waycool and mysterious altered state. Some folks are even scared by the idea. But it ain’t like that, folks. In fact, it feels real nice to stop thinking. And it’s not nearly as difficult as people want to make it seem. You just kind of think not thinking. It’s like this: If you start really paying attention to your own thought process-I’m talking here about the process itself and not just the contents of the individual thoughts that make it up-you’ll notice that thoughts don’t just go on and on continuously. There are little spaces between them. Most of us tend to habitually try and fill these spaces up with more thoughts as fast as we possibly can. But even the best of us can’t fill them all, so there are always little gaps. See, you might say that there are two basic kinds of thought. There are thoughts that pop up unannounced and uninvited in our brains for no reason we’re able to discern. These are just the results of previous thoughts and experiences that have left their traces in the neural pathways of our brains.

(Tricycle Magazine, Fall 2007, page 14)

In this text, the expression “trippy spaced-out sorta thing” is a linguistic matter. I have looked the words up in the Microsoft Student Encarta Dictionary, and I have found out that both “trippy” and “spaced-out” are slangs. In Romanian, the translation would be:

Unii oameni o percep (practica Zen) ca o chestiune psihedelică şi confuză.

EXAMPLE 2:

Up goes the old doe's head. Her alarm communicates itself instantly and all eight are in motion, cantering for the safety of the wood. On the edge they pause for a second, milling about. Then they are gone.

I climb down stiffly and commiserate with Jemima, who saw the quarry vanishing but staunchly sat her ground. No venison for Christmas. No progress towards my season's target.

(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=TNAAT5S4UMA45QFIQMGCFGGAVCBQUIV0?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2007/12/21/eadeer121.xml, January 13, 2008)

The sentence “Up goes the old doe’s head” can be integrated in the linguistic translation problems, because the structure of this sentence is different in Romanian: Bătrâna căprioară îşi ridică dintr-o dată capul.

EXAMPLE 3:

Despre Kosovo şi opţiunea României

Ionuţ Ţene a decis ca, împreună cu alţi câţiva tineri, să meargă în sudul Dunării, să lupte pentru cauza sârbească, împotriva obţinerii independenţei regiunii Kosovo. Îl citează pe Vladimir Putin şi lucrurile astea nu sunt deloc de ici sau de colo. Gestul său este unul, într-adevăr, neobişnuit. Între atâtea spectacole şi lovituri de imagine, anunţul său şi scrisoarea remisă reprezentanţilor statului sârb au nu doar o valoare emoţională, simbolică, ci şi conotaţiile unui gest de tip politic. Nimereşte Ionuţ Ţene într-un contencios internaţional grav. Problemele balcanice de azi nu au nevoie de soluţii de genul acesta. Populaţia albaneză reprezintă 90% din locuitorii regiunii. Albanezii erau acolo la venirea populaţiilor slave, la sfârşitul secolului al VI-lea.

(Informaţia Cluj, nr.34, pagina 1, 13 decembrie 2007)

The colloquial expression “de ici sau de colo” is also a linguistic matter and it can be translated into English as –ordinary, common-.