Advertisement for a birthday party venue

[nakriian]

I saw an advertisement for a birthday party venue, so I stopped an attempted to read it. Even with my Thai dictionary, I still had trouble. Here are the sentences (there may be some errors). The online translator was not able to give me a good translation.

ถึงจะโตขึ้นอีกที่ปี จินตนาการความสดใสก็ไม่มีวันสิ้นสุด สนุกเต็มที่กับปาร์ตี้วันเกิด

Even though they (your kids) will grow up another year
Imagine cheerfulness that never ends
Fun filled birthday party

My translation is just to give you an idea of my initial thoughts. Would like to have a better translation than the one I came up with.

[nakriian]

I made a mistake in my translation. The advertisement was referring to the reader (not to their kids). It was saying...

Even though you grow older. Your vivid imagination never ends. Enjoy a birthday party.

So I think it means, there is a kid in all of us, regardless of our age. So we should enjoy a birthday party. Kind of like saying we are never too old to wear a birthday hat and blow out the candles. This is what I think is the meaning, but I may or may not be correct.

[Tod-Daniels]

Well, you pretty got it on the second attempt (or got close enough that it's not worth me suggesting anything of value to what you came up with). It is interesting to note how differently you can interpret the first and second attempts.

Even from this simple example you can see that goin' from Thai to English is totally subjective. A lot of it is up to the person translating the Thai and what they "read into it".

As a test I took a paragraph in Thai to several different "professional translators" around the Bangkok area. Now I already knew what it should say in English, but I wanted to see what they’d gimme back. The results were so varied and so different, that I believe most professional translation companies aren't all that good except for "boiler plate" translating (marriage documents, passports, etc).

Live people and NOT programs on the internet, can give very different results. As far as online translators, the biggest problem is they don't take into account the many compound words in Thai or modifiers to words which precede or follow a main word. Often times when two Thai words are combined to form compounds often the meaning isn't anything close to the base meaning of the individual words themselves.

There's a sign like that at the Mc-D's near my house about how people can do b-days there for their kids.

You've obviously got a fairly decent grasp of Thai and what's more important is; you've got the curiosity to actually stop, read something, look it up, and see if you can figure it out.

That "drive" is what separates the people who say they can't learn Thai from the ones who just get on with the learning of it. .

Good Luck

[nakriian]

Tod-Daniels, I appreciate the energetic reply, you put a lot of work into that and I was able to gain a better understanding of how I should view translation in general now.

Thais (on occassion, not all the time) have made me feel my translation was wrong, when, in fact, it was correct. Thai people mean well, they are not looking to correct a farang just for fun (well, most are not). The Thai people that do speak English, I do not believe many of them understand English well enough to translate a Thai sentence into English. They shouldn't be obligated to either, they are Thai, I am American. They speak Thai. I speak English. I am just saying that it is up to me to get the meaning using the resources I have. I can't depend on one Thai person to give me the Thai translation, because they are only giving me their interpretation, which is always right (from their position) (doesn't mean it is what the writer intended us to get from the sentence).

Sometimes, I think I got it figured out. I read billboards, take the bus, take the boat, take the train, read everything I see. Then, out of no where, I see a sign and can't read it (maybe one word) and then it makes me feel like I haven't made any progress. I look at Thai people (don't seem like they are most clever people and I know I probably shouldn't say that), but I think they must be smarter than they look, because they can speak Thai and easily understand one another, even understand a speaker from Laos.

I guess what I am trying to say is that if they can do it, then I can do it.

[djaidee]

But that is what you will find in any other Language as well- it's all about Interpretation, nobody can look into the Head of the Writer of the Original Sentence, therefore only the Writer himself can know if the Interpretation is right or wrong.

All we can do is try to get a very close Interpretation which seems to make sense (from our point of view), but still our Translation might be totally wrong and others will translate it different.

Ask 10 people to translate a Sentence and you might get 10 different Translations which differ a little bit, but the Main Statement might be transported by every Translation.

[Tod-Daniels]

Those are some interesting observations "นักเรียน".

Actually what finally got me motivated to teach myself to read Thai is; after traveling the length and breadth of this country I realized there were 64+ million people in this country who could read Central Thai (ภาษากลาง, the government approved "version" of Thai). It came to me that they all couldn't ALL be that much smarter than I am. Granted I'm sure some are, but not every last one of 'em is.

Lookin' at it now, perhaps that was the wrong motivation to learn to read, write and speak something which resembles Thai enough so that Thais respond to me in kind.

Sometimes I jokingly tell people I learned Thai to spite the Thais, to show them their language isn't a secret code, nor something they can hide behind when they talk about us in our presence. In reality; I learned it because they suck so badly at English that I needed the “skill-set” to so I could really “live” here as opposed to just “exist” here. Still it worked. As far as I'm concerned, what ever works as your inner motivation isn't a bad thing.

My hat is off to you. You certainly are putting in the effort, pushing yourself, continually tryin' to acquire the tools which will let you apply the skills you've learned in your use of Thai.

Good Luck.

I'm sorry if I post in a very blunt, cynical and acerbic way. Sadly, it's how I speak both American English and Thai too, I guess I am who I am, writing or speaking.

I hope you know I mean no disrespect to you in my posts.