Hello, I have been translating world news from Mladá Fronta Dnes and blesk. I will be posting some questions from time to time hoping that someone will be kind enough to help with my translation. dopady: not sure what this word means Papež v Izraeli: Je tragické, že židovský národ prožil hrozivé dopady ideologií, které popírají základní důstojnost každé lidské bytosti. The Pope in Israel: It is tragic, that the Jewish people lived through menacing repercussions(?) from ideologies that deny the elemental dignity of every human being.
It is a tragedy that the Czech journalists' style is very bad especially in MDF (Blesk is a tabloid). Papa dixit: “Tragically, the Jewish people have experienced the terrible consequences of ideologies that deny the fundamental dignity of every human person. It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah, and to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude. Sadly, anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world. This totally unacceptable. Every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism wherever it is found, and to promote respect and esteem for the members of every people, tribe, language and nation across the globe.”
I am really havng trouble finding good Czech reading practice online. The articles of radio praha are a bit too advanced for me: I find myself checking the dictionary way too often. idnes.cz is too advanced. MFD and blesk have an easier vocabulary (it matches my comprehension), but the writing style can be consufing... but then again, the journalistic writing style in the US is horrible. I feel sorry for any foreigner that is trying to learn English by reading American newspapers As far as vocab and reading comprehension, I think that MFD and blesk are my best match.
Those times when the journalists were also excellent writers and real masters of the language are passed away.
This is more about translation skills than about writing skills. “Prožil hrozivé dopady” is really bad style.
Translation is so damned hard though! I proofread a lot of translations and I need to read each page a couple of times to catch all the mistakes in English, because after a while you can't trust your ear (sense) of what is right and wrong grammatically anymore. It's even worse when you're trying to think in two languages, because of course the grammar of one is going to start affecting the other. I don't think I could ever be a translator. It's a very different skill to being able to speak a language, even now at elementary level my teacher often asks me to say something in English in order to check my understanding, and often even though i know the word perfectly well (for example i could draw it if it was a proper noun) I cannot think of the English word for it immediately.
Speaking of bad writing style (as in today's newspapers), Richard Feynman once wrote a great article on this: http://abicko.avcr.cz/cs/2006/10/13/saying-it-on-paper-8.html (It's just an article about said article, I couldn't find the original.)
