I need some help with some words and expression. For an exam I have to translate the first chapter of an awful book written by a madwoman who moved to Italy from the USA... I will spare you from what I think of the book, which I didnt even manage to read beyond the 4th chapter... Anyway I thought I'd ask for help of natives so that I get some explanations of some words or expression so that I get to understand them well enough to find a valid way to translate them.
I also wanted to open a discussion about translation: how do you feel about it, what's your experience? I've always been aware of it being somehow a betrayal of the real text and a couple of years ago I adopted the rule of reading in original langauge everything I can possibly read in original. Anyway, one of my possible thoughts of future job was the translator-stuff. But this course I did at Uni discouraged me completely, making me realise how it is even harder than I expected, and how much it modifies the original text...it's terrible. And I'm experimenting it in 2 languages, English and Italian, that are relatively similar in some aspect, I mean what does it feel like to translate, let's say, from Chinese to Hungarian? From swahili to Bulgarian? From Korean to Albanian? It really freaks me out if I think about it too much.
Moreover, this book I am working on is extremely abstract so not really easy as a first try of serious translation (my previous experience of translation is songs, and a few of my own poems when I wanted to post them here). Honestly, it doesnt make sense...some sentences dont seem to make sense, it doesnt depend on my English, they just don't work. All the people in my course have serious doubts about the IQ of this writer (which btw we met...you don't wanna know).
You can find the book at your local bookstore anyway If you're American, that is...it took ages to get it shipped here, and it wasnt particularly cheap.
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I had a list of stuff to ask, anyway let's start with some:
what the hell means Ho-gauge? I googled it and it seemed related to stuff like toy trains... but I didnt really understand.
Do you have another word for enabler? Would you explain me this sentence? She's talking of her dog saying that "She has a round of eternal feeders [...] The worst enabler from our vantage point is Mrs..." The enabler and the vantage point are driving me mad, I need to be more sure of what this all means to put it in Italian.
Is there a difference between curious and searching, used as an adjective?
And between chisel and carve?
What's the diffirence between fade and wash out?
I also found the phone receiver referred to as the grey receiver. Is it some sort of fixed espression? That grey there doesnt make much sense to me, telephones can have different colours...