Rethinking sentences: Run-ons, case relations, passivity, and other unpleasant things | E55

While technically distant cousins, to us poor translators faced with the often-distressing task of translating texts from Croatian into English, it frequently seems the two languages are more enemies than kin. The English language’s centuries of “standardization”, its built-in inconsistency, and its many organic inflexibilities are often at loggerheads with Croatian’s elegant Slavic case-based clarity and directness, leaving us scratching our heads when trying to battle with the information-rich “sausage” sentences the language’s very structure allows writers to construct (whether carefully or carelessly). Let’s see if we can make our translating lives a little easier!

Jeremy White was born in the city of Long Beach, California, USA. He graduated in Cognitive Science and Political Science from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in 2003. In 2004, he relocated to Zagreb, where he completed a three-year Croatian language program for foreigners, Croaticum, at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Since 2005, he has been working as an English language teacher in a private school, as well as a freelance editor and translator for the English language. In his fifteen years of work experience, he has collaborated with various public and private institutions, including the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, IBRD, UNDP, the University of Zagreb, the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, the Old Slavic Institute, the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, the Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as various other public and private clients. He has extensive experience in editing scientific texts.

The goal of this seminar is—in the style of the language exercises many may remember with trepidation from university—to examine these differences in the most practical way possible: by taking some of the most fearful sentences we have come across in Croatian and doing our best to make them manageable in English. We will slice up run-on sentences, unravel case-based grammatical relations in Croatian and make them sensible in English, and peer into the dark undercarriage of passive voice, in what will hopefully be a dynamic and entertaining (if not mildly painful) seminar. The seminar will consist of three parts:

PART 1: Breaking up run-on sentences

PART 2: Translating cases with complex Croatian case relations

PART 3: Making passive voice your ally; plus extras

The seminar will be as practical as possible. Attendees will be given a little homework before the seminar. Just a little, we promise! 😊