Theatrical Term Translations

[porkchop]

I ran across an interesting piece of software called Digital Theatre Words. In the applications they have just under 2000 terms translated into 18 different languages including English, Spanish, Dutch, Czech, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese. I believe the point of the endeavor is that strict translation of words rarely conveys the same meaning so this dictionary is meant to translate the meaning behind the terms. Not all languages have the full dictionary, but there is a lot there. I am far from multilingual, but from my experience working in Spanish speaking countries the translations seem reasonable.

For those like me that don't like to give our their contact details to random forms I registered with the software as Me Me at [email protected] from Algeria and denied the software the ability to send an email. It threw an error message, but then let me into the software with no issues.

As a side note, the software is said to be in beta and is a little clunky and hasn't seen a public update since 2014. An ambitious student looking for a non-performance capstone project might contact OISTAT to see if they could help contribute or modernize the software.

 

[Butch!]

Years ago my wife toured with Martha Graham in Europe as the Lighting Designer. At a stop in France the locally hired translator didn't show up. Luckily my wife had some High School French and had found and bought a 'theater phrases' translation book before leaving the U.S. She figured out who the local crew chief was, walked up to him, butchered an introduction and said "I have this book". For the rest of the day the local guys would come up to her and ask for the book and point to English words as they asked questions in French. It all worked out and the crew even invited the touring staff to lunch at a local place. My wife's willingness to try to speak their language went a long way towards bridging the culture gap and created a great relationship will all the local crew.

 

[porkchop]

Years ago my wife toured with Martha Graham in Europe as the Lighting Designer. At a stop in France the locally hired translator didn't show up. Luckily my wife had some High School French and had found and bought a 'theater phrases' translation book before leaving the U.S. She figured out who the local crew chief was, walked up to him, butchered an introduction and said "I have this book". For the rest of the day the local guys would come up to her and ask for the book and point to English words as they asked questions in French. It all worked out and the crew even invited the touring staff to lunch at a local place. My wife's willingness to try to speak their language went a long way towards bridging the culture gap and created a great relationship will all the local crew.

That was largely my experiance as well. The promoters I worked with had a tenancy to hire local university students that were studying English as translators. They generally knew both languages, but had no idea how theatre worked. I would tell them to just translate everything as strictly as they could and to let me try to interpret the meaning. I would pick up the necessary terms to express what I wanted in the local language and if their were issues or questions then we'd fall back on the college student.

Worked pretty well minus one time when we rented a 400A total generator instead of a 400A per leg generator. There was so much yelling to poor translator never stood a chance, but after the gen tech wipped open the access panel and pointed to the glowing orange turbo there weren't a whole lot of words necessary to express what the problem was.