We stand on the shoulders of giants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We often talk about translators as lone wolves, but, in reality, our job is a team effort<\/strong>. Usually, one professional translates the document, another one reviews it, and a third one proofreads it to find any remaining mistakes all while a project manager watches the whole process. In bigger projects, the text can be divided up among several translators that must coordinate in order to produce a series of accurate and coherent translations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s no easy task. Each translator has his or her own system and will propose different solutions to the same linguistic problems. If we are working on a furniture catalogue, one may use the word \u201ccouch\u201d for what another might call \u201csofa\u201d. But, ok, that\u2019s easy to fix. However, what happens when there are previous translations of the same document?<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is when translation becomes a social phenomenon, where each professional has the ability to affect the work of the rest. That\u2019s how the network that holds up the industry is created. That\u2019s how translation writes its own history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s also where the problems start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Warning! Spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones season six)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Picture Hodor, the simpleton giant that carries Bran Stark on his back for the majority of the TV show Game of Thrones<\/em>. He only says one word. And that word is\u2026 Hodor<\/em>, of course! He stands out from the rest of the cast despite not being as verbally eloquent. Or maybe because of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But why does Hodor say Hodor?<\/strong> Nobody knew until season 6, which was released in 2016. I repeat, 2016. That\u2019s 25 years after the first book was published and the first time Hodor appeared. During that time, nobody knew, besides the author, why Hodor said Hodor. The translators tasked with translating the books into other languages kept the name as is, just as they kept Bran, Tyrion and Arya the same. There was no reason not to do it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But in that season, we finally discover the reason behind his behavior and where the character\u2019s name comes from. You see, it\u2019s more than just a name. Hodor is a contraction of \u201c<\/strong>Hold the door,<\/em><\/strong>\u201d<\/strong> the last order that Bran gave to Hodor. After a main dish of astral travel with a side of time hopping, the Hodor of the future passed the name on to the Hodor of the past. It would have been nice if he had passed it on to the translators too!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because, you know, that\u2019s an issue. You can\u2019t suddenly change his name to something like \u201cSuerta\u201d (\u201cSujeta la Puerta<\/em>\u201d) in the Spanish version. And you can\u2019t just skip that part of the translation altogether. It\u2019s important for the plot! In the end, the translators in Spain decided to go with \u201cAguanta el port\u00f3n<\/em>\u201d and let the voice actor work his magic and transform that into Hodor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keeping all these issues in mind, it\u2019s hard to judge the final result. But if you want to, check out the episode. Or if you want to see how this problem was solved in other languages click\u00a0HERE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s all for today! We\u2019ll be back soon with more on this topic. If you found today\u2019s article interesting, follow\u00a0us on\u00a0LinkedIn,\u00a0Twitter, and\u00a0Facebook\u00a0to find out when future articles will come out. Hasta pronto!<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Hodor Dilemma: When translation writes its own history. For 25 years, translators kept his name as it was\u2014until a single scene changed everything. Discover the fascinating (and stressful) world of literary and TV translation, where “Hold the door” became a global linguistic puzzle, and learn why our job is always a high-stakes team effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sin-categorizar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":787,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exerosoluciones.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Hodor Dilemma<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n