Two Ways to Live, the simple gospel summary that you can find right here, is now available in Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.
These translations have taken quite a while to come. But there are all sorts of tricky things to be considered here when working for a publisher of small financial means. One of them is, how do you know your translation is really getting across the exact meaning you intend, when you don't speak the target language and you receive sometimes varied advice from those who actually know what they're talking about? I haven't envied Ian Carmichael or Emma this job one little bit.
I live in mortal fear of the day (and so, I think, do Ian and Emma) when an outraged Hungarian picks up the phone to issue a death threat against us for putting out a Hungarian Two Ways to Live that actually says, in translation, "May your underpants be infested with the offspring of a thousand Ethiopian leeches."
Hmm. Perhaps before we put out that translation I'll consult with my good friend and relic of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Andrew Katay.
Though these days, can I even trust Katay? ;-)
5 comments:
TWTL should be released on a Creative Commons Licence, to allow people to freely copy and sell it.
I think it would do more good for the Gospel to allow it to spread in this way rather than controlling the copyright.
You'd have the tract in an easy-to-download pdf file available from Matthias Media. Churches, organisations and individuals could download it and use it to print off or photocopy.
Talk to Phil about this.
OSO, this is fairly close to what happens in reality. Of course, people do knock-offs all the time and we fairly much pay no attention to it unless they attempt to say it's their own work, or (more often) are just unaware of the source, in which case we like to let them know. If it happens in a book, we would usually ask them to correct any mistakes or failures of attribution in second and subsequent editions of the book.
If people contact us with a translation into outer Limpopolian, we generally invite them to send us a copy which we put in our files, and wish them every blessing. In that case, as long as there's *no* attribution to Matthias Media, once again we're usually happy, especially if we know and trust the individual concerned.
What I'm saying here isn't official Matthias Media policy, by the way, it's just a rough indication. If anyone wants to get the real deal on this, then they can e-mail Ian Carmichael on icarmichaelATmatthiasmedia.com.au (replacing AT with @)
The thing is that a CC licence makes it official and clear. Moreover it encourages it.
So what happened with the Chinese translation that has now been recalled?
How did that get through quality control?
Its not like there aren't any Chinese Christians in Sydney that you could get to check it...
A sad story there, but one I don't think I'll share on this blog.
Post a Comment