Translation Woes Story

 In some ways, it's a bit comical.

So a fair number of Germans watched the Biden inauguration episode in January, and felt hyped-up over the poem 'The Hill We Climb' delivered by Amanda Gorman.  

This group of pro-The Hill We Climb (all Germans of course) felt it needed to be translated over into German.  You know.....from English to German.  

I'd say that around sixty-thousand Germans minimum....probably were qualified to the extent of doing this job, and you could have thrown 3,000 Euro to the majority of them, and they would have done this in ten days.  

If you'd thrown 500 Euro toward me....I have a German translator program on my tab, which I could have put line by line into.....and gotten a A-level translation in German.

Well....'WOKE' occurred and this official translation has turned into a farce, which my regional public TV network (HR) has covered in detail this morning.

First, this Dutch gal (Marieke Lucas Rijneveld)....known around the Netherlands as an accomplished writer....had the 'contract' but gave up because social media described her as a 'white non-binary woman', who apparently had average English talents.  My gut feeling....she was going my route with the translation program doing the majority of work.

Then, a Spanish guy picked up the poem and tried to make an attempt....but social media noted that he was a Catalan guy, and not of the right 'skin' to frame the poem.  So he gave up.

So a German publishing company has taken over the task....hired three women....to meet the translation by Easter weekend. 

To make this work.....the company hired three German women to make the effort.  One is a black German (born in Frankfurt and highly educated)....one is fairly well known for taking the British classic 'Brave New World' and re-translating it from English to German (2013)....and one is a German-Turk gal who has a political science background and fairly educated.  

The social media crowd?  Mostly quiet....they are three women....all highly educated....two of them have immigrant backgrounds but were born in Germany....and the commentary so far is that they've found the poem to be a bit challenging to translate into German, and to have the same meaning/purpose. 

Where this end product will go?  I'm guessing the public TV folks will spend a fair amount of time developing a video and hire out some VIP German (with a migration background) voice female to do a 'show' of the poem. 

My advice....the next time you want to do some hyped-up English to German translation....hire some AI-machine to do it for you and avoid this social justice business.