Translating My Grandfather's Biograpy

Most probably the author knows this but there are some photos and information here [1]. His grandfather is a member of "The Righteous Among the Nations" [2].

[1] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sietsma.html

[2] https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous.html

I’ve got my great-grandfather’s autobiography and one of the striking features is the language. It’s extremely matter of fact with very little prose to connect his life together, just a lot of details like “moved to X in year Y” and “went to school for X between Y and Z years”. It’s got a lot of facts, but little coherent narrative.

If someone is important enough to warrant a biographer they’ll put more work into the narrative but old autobiographies seem to be very mechanical records.

Very interesting. Goed gedaan!

Note the title of the book should be Een Waarlijk Vrije; i.e. the last word has a j.

Curious that DeepL translated "Gaf geen kamp" to "gave a camp", since "geen" means no/none. It seemed to totally ignore it or reverse it's meaning.

Regarding "droving" perhaps "herding" might be a more familiar term. And it might be more accurate; I suspect that long distance herding wasn't a common thing in the Netherlands.

I’ve used AI models a few times, primarily for translating song lyrics for personal enjoyment or translating Facebook posts and other content.

When it comes to translation, context matters a lot. Translating a single paragraph without considering the broader context is often suboptimal. A better approach is to provide additional material that gives the translator more background information and the overarching goal.

One effective method I’ve found is using the Cursor editor:

1. Organize your content in a directory, ideally as Markdown files.

2. Include clear instructions on the style and purpose of the translation. For example, a literal, word-for-word translation differs from one aimed at conveying emotions or artistic intent. A .cursorrules file can provide global context and guidelines. When I edit blog posts, I use this one: https://github.com/stared/stared.github.io/blob/main/.cursor.... For a biography, it would be different.

3. Translate paragraph by paragraph, with some manual oversight, to ensure consistency and quality.

That is an interesting project. I would like to take that to the next level, where translation is the easy part. It's converting old handwritten letters, journals, and texts with now archaic cursive, into text. We have fascinating material from before WWII, in various languages - but trying to decipher it accurately, is a challenge. As the older generations died off, it is hard to find anyone to read that text.

Great read ! My father has published 12 books in his native language, I am in process of converting them in English using chatgpt. This gives me idea !!

Translation has always been interesting to me as I speak Mandarin, Swedish, and English.

I think a lot of subtlety gets lost in translations, even from person to person. Is the more "academically correct" translation better, or is the one that captures the slang and the vibe in modern terms and memes in a way we can feel the speaker more correct?

I think most people who choose the former look at translations as something that is absolute and objective, but I think translations, like most communication, needs to be subjective to both the speaker and the reader.

And just as humans can get each of these "wrong," LLMs can and will, too