12 September 2012

Swearing. Context: media

Finding equivalents for swearwords can be fun. But when a newspaper users a swearword in a front-page headline and other media want to talk about it, they have a challenge on their hands.

A case in point was "Casse-toi riche con" on the front-page of leading left-wing French daily Libération on 10 September. Slate.fr put out an interesting post.

The New Statesman opted for "Get lost, you rich bastard".

Both the fun and the challenge are summed up by the tweet by trilingual (English, French, Arabic) CNN International anchor Hala Gorani: Ok les bilingues, traduisez-moi l'insulte "con" s'il vous plait. Essayez de ne pas faire trop grossier!

ChatGPT, a drafting aid for translation by emulation

On 17 October 2011, I published the first of two posts summarising my general approach to the type of translation/adaptation services I was ...