Der verstorbene Regisseur Christoph Schlingensief denkt in seinem Buch Ich weiß, ich war’s über Faultiere nach, die im Baum abhängen. Er schreibt: „Einmal in der Woche gehen sie zum Kacken runter und unten wartet der Jaguar. Fragt sich: Warum macht das Faultier das? Weil es höflich ist? Weil es denkt, ich gehe lieber runter und mache da mein Häufchen, sonst scheiße ich vielleicht jemandem auf den Kopf? Ich glaube ja eher, das Faultier geht runter, weil es ab und zu dem begegnen muss, was ihm Angst macht, um lebendig zu bleiben.“
From NEON, online magazine, 4 April 2017
Translation offered by the translation software:
The late Director Christoph Schlingensief thinking “I know it was me” about sloths in his book, that depend on the tree. He writes: “once in a week, they go to the shit down and down waiting for the Jaguar. The question is: why does the sloth? Because it is polite? Because it thinks I go down better and am doing my poop, else sucks I someone’s head perhaps? I think rather the sloth goes down because it occasionally needs to meet the, what scares him, to stay alive.”
(translation: www.bing.com/translator)
Spotlight translation:
In his book Ich weiß, ich war’s (“I know it was me”), the late German film director Christoph Schlingensief reflects on sloths lazing around in a tree. He writes: “Once a week, they climb down to take a dump, even though the jaguar is waiting down there. One wonders why the sloth does that. Because it is polite? Because it thinks, ‘I’d better climb down to do my business — otherwise I might shit on someone’s head’? Personally, I believe the sloth climbs down because every now and then, it needs to encounter the thing it fears in order to stay alive.”
Analysis
- We left the title in German, since the book has not (yet) been published in English, and we added “German” for readers who might not be familiar with Schlingensief.
- The main difficulty with the first sentence is word order. Standard English word order is subject – verb – object. Adverbial phrases generally go at the beginning or at the end of a sentence.
- However, the translation software didn’t quite manage to figure out what’s what, so the information the unsuspectingahnungslos, arglosunsuspecting reader might glean sth. from sth.hier: etw. aus etw. herauslesenglean from the translation is: Schlingensief is thinking “I know it was me”; sloths featurevorkommenfeature in his book; the book depends on the tree.
- The program doesn’t seem to have separate dictionary entries for abhängen von (“depend on”) and abhängen, so it chose the wrong meaning. “Hang out” is a nice play on words (as sloths literally hang from trees), but “laze around” would be perfect for a lazy Faultier.
- It is incorrect to separate the clauseSatz, Teilsatzclause “that are lazing around in a tree” with a comma, as this is a defining relative clause. Commas are used only around non- defining relative clauses (see Spotlight 11/16 and 12/16). We’ve used a participle construction to replace the relative clause.
- Einmal in der Woche is just “once a week” in English. You’d also say “once a month” and “once a year”, although you’d say “once in a lifetime”.
- As we are not talking about a car here, it’s wrong to capitalize “jaguar”. What’s more, the jaguar is waiting for the sloth, not the other way round, as the translation might suggest.
- “Shit” sounds more vulgar than Kacken; “poop” (or “poo”) is an informal word you might use when talking to children. As English has a nice arrayReihearray of words for doing one’s business, it wasn’t difficult to find alternatives.
- “Why does the sloth?” is not a complete sentence. Here, “does” is the auxiliary verbHilfsverbauxiliary verb needed to form the question. The main verb “do” is missing and so is the object it requires.
- In the last sentence, “the” cannot stand on its own. You have to say something like “the animal that scares him” or “the thing he fears”. In the second sentence, the relative pronoun is not the subject, so it can be left out.
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