Amerikā izdots Ingas Ābeles romāns Paisums

I reviewed this translation as an expert reader for ALTA, finding it full of egregious mistakes and style problems. Words are mistranslated or ‘interpreted’ and are off for the context. The misuse of words is due to Kaija Straumanis’ not really being a native speaker: she spoke only Latvian at home, learned English in kindergarten, was forced to go to Latvian school on weekends and Latvian camp in summers, teaching herself English by watching TV. One would never ‘muscle on’ a jacket; one moving around a room wouldn’t ‘grab onto something, touch on something.’ Going to Riga to see a film is not an event, it’s an occasion. ‘Server’ is ‘waiter,’ a ‘domesticated’ animal is ‘tamed.’ No one would say a girl has ‘horrific’ eyes. Translator Ieva Lesinska, having spent only a few years in America when she was already in her twenties, translated in a poem “fat hung on branches for the birds.” She didn’t know the word suet. Neither has the facility with the English language to translate literature. Straumanis is lazy, substituting words which she thinks mean the same thing for words in the original. The word for ‘spirit’ is ‘gars’, for ‘soul’ is ‘dvesele’, Straumanis uses ‘soul’ repeatedly in a long passage where three times, it should have been ‘spirit.’ The image ‘heavy as marshy land’ is left out; ‘not a single molecule’ of water is lost,’ she’s left the word out, either feeling it unimportant or she didn’t proofread. Pure souls are ‘erased from the memory of the world’ along with their time, not just general time. Atrocious translation, I was in a state of Edvard Munch-like horror.

jāmeklē, kur nopirkt - jāsūta ārzemju draugiem! :D

Inga! No sirds apsveicu!

Ļoti jauki. "Paisums" tulkojumu pelnījis

Latviešu literatūra dodas pasaulē. Apsveicu!

the tide is high but i'm holding on i'm gonna be your number one i'm not the kinda girl who gives up just like that, oh no