home

data

team

native

personal

PREVOĐENJE

TRANSLATION

To je moj posao. Prevodeći sam naučila više o životu nego što sam želela da znam. Naučila sam više o politici prevodeći nego gledajući televiziju. Nisam zaista znala šta znači besmisao dok nisam morala da ga prevedem. Nema šta se ne može reći i napisati, primeri su svuda. Ali, da bi preveo rečenicu, prevodilac mora da razume misao koja je u njoj sadržana. Kada misli nema, prevodilac mora da nađe načina da u drugom jeziku postigne isto: da sakrije odsustvo značenja. To se plaća.

That's what I do for a living. In the course of my work I've learned more about life than I ever wanted to know. I've learned more about politics translating than watching television. I didn't really know what nonsense was until I was asked to translate it. Anything can be said and written, and often is. In order to translate a sentence, it's necessary to understand the thought it contains. If there isn't any thought, the translator has to find a way of hiding that fact in the new language. It's dirty work, but someone's got to do it.

OBRAZOVANJE

EDUCATION

Na mojoj diplomi piše "profesor engleskog jezika" i ja to jesam, kad god nađem dobrog đaka. Nemam nerava za nezainteresovane đake, kakvi su uglavnom oni čije roditelje brinu školske ocene. Prevođenje je nešto drugo. Tu najčešće sve zavisi od mene, bilo da mi daju potrebne materijale ili ne. Ako ih nemam, samo moram više da lutam i tražim.

My diploma says "teacher of English", and so I am, whenever I find an interesting student. I can't be bothered teaching reluctant schoolchildren. As Dorothy Parker said, "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think". Translation is something else. The motivation's up to me alone, whether I'm given adequate references or not. Without them it takes more research and a lot more patience.

MATERNJI JEZIK

MOTHER TONGUE

Kad sam progovorila, imala sam jedan maternji jezik, kao većina dece. Zvao se srpskohrvatski ili hrvatskosrpski, zavisno od lokacije, pokoj mu duši, jeziku mislim, a lokacijama spokoj. Poslednjih godina taj jezik se pocepao u dva, odnosno tri zasebna jezika (do sada, ali već su u toku radovi na isecanju četvrtog), i umro na operacionom stolu. Tako ja sad imam dva maternja jezika koji su mlađi od mene: srpski i hrvatski. Skoro celog života živela sam u Beogradu, a sada živim u Hrvatskoj jer mojoj majci treba svakodnevna pomoć, a ona tamo živi. Moja dva maternja jezika se veoma brzo menjaju jer se svaki trudi da postane što različitiji od onog drugog, ali ja uspevam da pohvatam razlike brže. Brže nego tvorci rečnika, u svakom slučaju. Nije to neki problem, u stvari. Svi mi savršeno razumemo jedni druge, kao i ranije, samo sada ima pojedinaca koji sa uživanjem "ne razumeju" ovu ili onu reč. Što više neka reč zvuči "nedvojbeno tuđinski", to se bolje razume, bojim se.

When I first learned to speak I had one mother tongue, like most children. It was called SerboCroatian or CroatoSerbian, depending on the location. May they all rest in peace, the locations and the language, I mean. In recent years it has divided into two or three different languages (so far, with a fourth on the way), and died in the process. Now I subscribe to two mother tongues younger than myself: Serbian and Croatian. I lived most of my life in Belgrade, and now I live in Croatia because my mother needs constant care and that's where she lives. My two native languages are changing rapidly, each striving to be as different from the other as possible, but I'm still faster keeping abreast of the changes, certainly faster than the lexicographers. It's no big deal, really. We all understand one another perfectly, just as we always did, except that now there are individuals who like to pretend that they don't understand this or that word. The more "clearly foreign" it sounds, the better it's understood, I'm afraid.

ISKUSTVO

EXPERIENCE

Ukupno dvadesetčetiri godine. Šesnaest godina sam provela u kancelariji jedne spoljnotrgovinske firme i prevodila na engleski i sa engleskog. Da nisam pritom čitala knjige i radila prevode sa strane, mogla sam zaboraviti oba jezika, i maternji i engleski. Da li ste ikada videli akreditiv? Mogla sam da ga prevedem vezanih očiju a da nikad ne shvatim šta tačno znače te fraze na bilo kojem jeziku. Ne prevodim više akreditive, pre svega zato što takve stvari u mojoj zemlji više ne postoje (da ne pominjem da ni zemlja u kojoj sam rođena više ne postoji), a zatim i zato što tražim drugačije poslove sad kad sam slobodan strelac.

Osim poslovnih i ekonomskih tekstova, prevodila sam više mašinskih, medicinskih i matematičkih tekstova nego što mi je milo da se setim. Kad je međunarodna zajednica uvela sankcije protiv jedinog preostalog dela Jugoslavije koji u tom trenutku nije bio granatiran, izgubila sam posao. Tačnije, engleska firma za koju sam radila morala je da zatvori radnju pod pretnjom ozbiljne kazne, pa nas je sve pustila kući. Neću vam pričati šta sam radila dosta dugo posle toga, ili bar neću ovde, gde je prevođenje tema. Prvi prevodilački posao koji sam našla kao sredovečna nezaposlena raga bio je softverski priručnik. Od tada sam uradila mnogo prevoda u vezi s kompjuterima, kako na srpski, tako i na hrvatski jezik. Mogla bih vam detaljno pričati o problemu prevođenja termina "printer cartridge" na hrvatski, o čemu se razvila duga strasna rasprava između sedam ljudi, ali neću. Da li sam pomenula profesionalne biografije? Mnogo komada sam napravila jer je skoro svako koga sam poznavala pokušao da dobije useljeničku vizu neke od tzv. normalnih zemalja, a mnogima je i uspelo.

Twenty-four years altogether. I spent sixteen years in a foreign trade office doing translations from and into English. Had I not kept reading books and doing literary translations on the side, I would have forgotten both my native language and English. Have you ever seen a Letter of Credit? I could translate one blindfolded without understanding a word of it in any language. I don't do Letters of Credit any more, partly because such things no longer exist in the country of my birth (which doesn't exist itself, come to that), and partly because now, as a freelancer, I have the luxury of choosing the kind of work I do.

Apart from business and economic stuff, I've done more engineering, medicine and mathematics than I care to remember. When international sanctions were imposed on what was left of Yugoslavia (the part that wasn't actually being destroyed by shelling), I lost my job. To be more precise, the British company I worked for could no longer operate legally in Belgrade, so we all went home. What I did to survive is something I'd rather not talk about, at least not here on my translation page. Finally, feeling like a middle-aged, unemployed destitute, I got my first freelance translation job, a software manual. I've done a lot of computer related translation since, both into Serbian and into Croatian. I shan't elaborate on the problem of translating "printer cartridge" into Croatian, which involved a lengthy and heated discussion among seven people. Have I mentioned CVs? I did a lot of those, as almost everybody I knew was trying to get immigration papers to anywhere else in the world. Many of them succeeded.

EJ, DA MI JE...

LOVE JOBS

Najviše sam volela da prevodim književne kritike dok nisam srela Stiva. Tada sam ponovo otkrila svoju ljubav za pozorište, i po prvi put otkrila umetnost prevođenja. Stiv je umetnik. Od onog što on uradi sa engleskom rečenicom koju sam ja smatrala dobrom bilo bi me sramota, kad ne bih bila oduševljena rezultatom. Hvala ti, Stiv. Želim ti da se više baviš režijom i glumom nego engleskim prevodima, jer je to ono što zaista želiš da radiš, ali se nadam da ću sa tobom prevesti još mnogo vrednih tekstova.

Literary criticism was one of my favourite fields, until I met Steve. Then I rediscovered my love for theatre, and discovered translation as an art for the first time. Steve is an artist. What he does with English sentences I considered good would put me to shame if I weren't so thrilled with the result. Thank you, Steve. I wish you'd do more directing than editing English, because that's your real profession but, in the meantime, I'm glad it's me you work with.

REALNOST

REALITY

Mada prevodilačke usluge tima Stiv & Lipa reklamiram brošurom u kojoj je moj prevod precrtan kao nedovoljno dobar, jer shvatam koliko je važno da konačni tekst zvuči izvorno, i dalje radim prevode na engleski samostalno jer je za većinu poslodavaca "svaki engleski dobar", a usluge engleskog lektora treba posebno platiti. Obećavam da ću odbiti da samostalno prevodim na engleski čim se toliko obogatim da mogu da se opustim i radim samo ono što mi prija.

Although I've been looking for translation work for Steve and me with a brochure in which my own translation is crossed out as not good enough, because I understand the importance of native speaker quality in the finished work, I still do translations into English by myself because for most employers "any English is OK", and native speaker editing costs extra. I promise to stop doing it as soon as I'm wealthy enough to relax and do only what I enjoy.

home

data

team

native

personal