This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 49: How translators approach a text. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 49 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about the relationship of the translator and the text. But first, we’re heading into Lingthusiasm anniversary month! This is our fourth anniversary of doing Lingthusiasm, and we’re really excited that we’re still doing this four years later.

Lauren: We love a bit of reflection and nostalgia. The month of November is always an opportunity to be grateful that we have another year of Lingthusiasm. We have a whole 12 great main episodes. We have 12 more bonus episodes. As with every year, if you want to share a link to your favourite episode, November is an especially nice time to do it.

Gretchen: There are still people in this world who don’t know that they could be listening to a fun podcast about linguistics that makes them feel like they’re at a linguistics party instead of doing the dishes. You could help people find them. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth. Every year we’ve done this in November, we see a big spike in people listening to the show and finding the show. If you wanna share on social media, we are very happy to thank you if you tag us in things.

Lauren: If you want to share off social media, please accept our deepest gratitude non-publicly for sharing shows as well.

Gretchen: Or, if you share Lingthusiasm privately and you still wanna be thanked, feel free to tell us about it on social media. We will still give you a little heart thank you comment. Yes, thank you already for all of the support that you’ve given the show over the years.

Lauren: If you like things additional to podcasts, because we are coming up to the holiday season, it’s also a good time to think about some Lingthusiasm merch or a copy of Because Internet. It’s a pretty great book. I like it. It’s available in paperback now. These things make great gifts.

Gretchen: We now also have annual memberships on Patreon. That could make a great gift to gift somebody to listen to more Lingthusiasm episodes as well as access to the Discord for an online linguistics community.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was about honorifics as a way of being polite to someone either through the title you choose or a variety of linguistic strategies.

Gretchen: You get access to the honorifics bonus as well as 43 other bonus episodes and new bonus episodes every month by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, Lauren, I’m gonna talk to you about Beowulf.

Lauren: I know this because you have been messaging me for weeks about how we have to talk about Beowulf.

Gretchen: There’s a new translation of Beowulf. I’m really excited. This made me want to build an entire episode around the translator’s relationship to the text because this new translation of Beowulf does a really cool job of it, and I wanna talk about it.

Keep reading