How would you translate "spaghetti western?"

[animal world]

I don't have an especially strong need to know this but am just curious. A good translation not only conveys the meaning of the original writing but also its nuance and intent. Its flavor, if you will.

For those who might not know: a spaghetti western is a low-budget western movie shot in Italy (later on some were also made in Spain). Clint Eastwood played in a number of them. It's tongue-in-cheek how the idea of Italy got captured by food; and not even the all-inclusive pasta but ... just ole plain spaghetti ;)

I just checked at nciku that gave 意大利电影界拍摄的（美国）西部片 but it lacks the humor and irreverence behind the term in English. How would you translate it?

[imron]

意大利面影 (or perhaps just 面影 for short)

Seriously though, it's things like this that you really can't translate well with just a single word. If you really wanted to do it, probably the best thing would be to coin a term like the one above and include a footnote explaining it in detail the first time it was used.

[animal world]

Another famous Italian food is gelati. How about 杰拉蒂的西部片? It has 杰; it's sweet and, unlike 面, is probably not well-known in China. Correct me if i'm wrong. Would you consider that translated too loosely?

[imron]

I think it's just as sterile a term as the nciku translation and contains none of the humour and irreverence. Whatever term you choose is going to require some amount of explanation and 面 at least partly conveys that sense of humor because it sounds similar to, and puns on 电.

That said, I don't think there is only going to be one acceptable way to translate this, and due to the nature of the term being translated, it will depend a lot on the particular translator.

[Guoke]

Pick one:

意彩西部片 （异彩，意大利色彩）

意色西部片 （异色，意大利特色）

意流西部片 （一流，意大利潮流）

意风西部片 （意大利风格）

意面西部片 （意大利面）

意式西部片 （意大利式）

or

意面牛仔片 ........This would be my favo(u)rite.

Edited September 29, 2009 at 05:40 AM by Guoke

[crazy-meiguoren]

肉球嘴直。

[carle]

That is 意大利摄美式西部片

[animal world]

My preference is 意面西部片.

Actually, i don't give a hoot about spaghetti westerns but brought this up as an illustration of the difficulty in translating. I suppose many/most languages have words and expressions that cannot quite be captured in another language without losing their charm.

Edited September 29, 2009 at 03:49 PM by animal world

[crazy-meiguoren]

I suppose many/most languages have words and expressions that cannot quite be captured in another language with losing their charm.

Too true. Some expressions cannot be adequately translated unless one has experienced the concept or sees it through the cultural eyes of the native speaker. That uniqueness adds to the richness of a nation's culture.

[tooironic]

I know this is just a language exercise, but I feel as if we've forgotten a few things.

As we've seen, without a context this term could be translated in a dozen different ways. This is because, to my knowledge, Chinese and English as language systems have never mutually interacted with this particular film genre. So in a real-life translation project, the term would probably be left in its original English form, perhaps with some parenthesis explanation added for coherence.

It's similar to Chinese concepts which have no equivalence in English - e.g. dim sum, tai chi, kowtow, etc. Just like spaghetti western, to translate any of these literally would probably not work in most real-life contexts.

[imron]

There's one major difference though. Words like Taichi, dim sum, kowtow aren't in their original form and at a minimum have been altered to conform to the same writing style as other English words (e.g. they use the Latin alphabet, not Chinese characters).

I think it's actually a failure on the part of the translator if an English term like this was left in situ in the original document. It's ok to have the original in a footnote, or in some other form of explanation, but just to leave it as is in English is bad form because it is jarring to anyone unfamiliar with English and the reader is left with no easy way to identify or pronounce the word. This is especially true if the word is used multiple times, and even more especially if it's used multiple times but perhaps many pages apart.

A mix of both needs to take place. You need to come up with an adequate transformation of the term into the native writing system of the target language, and (as mentioned in my original post), on first usage you should provide an explanation of what this term means.

[tooironic]

There's no 'should' about it. It all comes down to the function of the translation. If the text was a briefing for a Chinese director, keeping the original English (with or without explanation) would be entirely appropriate; in fact, putting in some strange Chinese literal translation without explanation would be just plain silly ("意大利面電影" brings up 136 results on Google; "意大利面影" brings up 5 results, one of them being this very page). Moreover, English words in written texts (and indeed, spoken ones too) are extremely common, and wouldn't necessarily pose a problem (although, again, you would have to look at the context, which no one here it seems is willing to do).

[imron]

putting in some strange Chinese literal translation without explanation would be just plain silly

Where did I ever say it should be without explanation? If you look at what I wrote, I clearly mentioned that an explanation should be provided after selecting an appropriate Chinese version (where appropriate is determined by the translator based on context).

Anyway, I agree it depends largely on context and your audience, for example it would not be appropriate if the aforementioned Chinese director didn't have a good grasp of English (not an uncommon situation). Also English words in Chinese aren't nearly as common as you are making out - with the exception of simple acronyms like DVD, CD, CEO, IPO etc. You are more likely to see a translation or transliteration rather than direct English. You do see English words a lot more in informal writing (online forums and the like), but only seldomly in anything more formal.

Picture it the other way and it becomes a lot clearer. Imagine you were translating something from Chinese to English. If you come across a word that doesn't really have an analogue in English do you just leave the Chinese characters there in their original form for the reader to make sense of, or at a minimum do you provide a romanised form to make it easier for the user to read and absorb? Ok, yes, once again it comes down to context and audience, but only in a minority of situations does it make sense to do the former. The majority of the time you'll want to provide a term in the target writing system as a minimum courtesy to the reader. I know if I had ever left Chinese characters for words with no real English equivalent "as is" in documents and reports I've translated to English, I would have been quickly taken to task.

[animal world]

Thanks, Imron, for being such an excellent spokesperson. I'd envision an attempt at translating the word into Chinese with a footnote. The very first time i heard the word i was at a loss, too, as to its meaning.

Yes, there will be instances that it may be desired to leave a word in the original language but in general i favor the approach of finding a suitable word in the language of use. One of the ways to keep a language thriving is to introduce new words into it to reflect changes in society and technology. A few examples off the top of my head in English: spin, soccer mom, pescatarian (a vegetarian who also eats fish; this word is now accepted in the dictionary). Regrettably, sometimes words become common because of general, sloppy, misuse. Examples of this in English are "like" instead of "as," the word "of" instead of "have" and "anyways" instead of "anyway."

Because of the influence of English, many words of that language have been adopted wholesale by other languages. In France, this has given rise to "franglais" to reflect the frequent use of English words in the French language and similar trends in other languages. Or an English word has been mostly adopted by another language to a degree that it makes no sense at all. It's also comical to hear a French person resorting to English words without knowing how to pronounce them while speaking French. Ditto when Americans use foreign terms, such as "déjà vu."

I'm an advocate of finding an adequate translation for any word whenever possible when using another language so that the local audience will have a "feel" for this word. A world in which everyone uses a bastardized English and a preponderance of text-messaging lingo has not much appeal, imho. Gr8 if u agree w me.

[James Johnston]

there will be instances that it may be desired to leave a word in the original language but in general i favor the approach of finding a suitable word in the language of use. One of the ways to keep a language thriving is to introduce new words into it to reflect changes in society and technology.

To a very large extent, English is just a collection of words borrowed from other languages. It certainly doesn't stop it from being thriving. I think it's fine for English speakers to use the word 'spaghetti', and it would be equally fine for the Chinese. The problem here is that to do so would exclude the majority of Chinese who couldn't understand or even pronounce the word. For me, it a pragmatic issue not one of language ethics or aesthetics.

My limited exposure to Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese suggests that you see more words and names in the Roman alphabet, presumably as the intended audiences are more familiar with the pronunciation. Japanese is also able to transliterate loan words phonetically more accurately than Chinese.

[animal world]

I think it's fine for English speakers to use the word 'spaghetti'

You got me. Touché!

My feeble defense: the word "spaghetti" is in the dictionary; its usage started in the US around 1850 and, hence, has some age to it.

[imron]

Japanese is also able to transliterate loan words phonetically more accurately than Chinese.

This I think is the key difference. I'm not saying that you need to translate (as opposed to transliterate) everything and can't use words from a different language - just that you need to find a way to render those words in the writing system of the target language. 'Spaghetti' works just fine in English because it uses the Latin alphabet, but imagine if spaghetti originated from an Arabic country. I find it hardly likely that people would find writing إسباغيتي as an acceptable substitute. Instead, the term would first be converted to the target writing system in some way (either transliteration or translation) and then used.

[crazy-meiguoren]

I wouldn't worry too much about trying to figure out any deep-rooted meaning behind the term. If you were to communicate with me, a direct translation would be sufficient. The word "spaghetti" was attached to the term "western" most likely because spaghetti is perceived amongst Americans as the most dominant Italian dish - it certainly is in America. Somehow, "tortellini Western", "ravioli Western", or "scampi Western" just doesn't sound right. It doesn't pack the same punch - spaghetti is common, and accessible, while the others sound like items from the Olive Garden's gourmet menu.

[DecafLat]

Incidentally, "spaghetti western" is called Western all'italiana in Italian. Does that give you any clue?