Her education taught her to try to grasp “by whom, for whom and about whom is written”, and the complex histories explored at the Limburgs Museum really put that in context. When dealing with “really major players in French and Dutch history”, the translations have to carefully reflect the political topic. Throughout history, various countries, empires, and monarchies have claimed the area, giving cities like Maastricht and Venlo complicated narratives. Image: Michiel1972 via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)Īt the Limburgs Museum in Venlo, she was working on texts that reflected the contested nature of the border region. Julia notes that this is reflected in heritage institutions when they commission translations: “You really see a difference between the heritage fields and their relationship to translation and other fields.” Limburgs Museum. We’ve all seen bizarre literal translations that turn out as nonsense, and it’s even more important when it comes to heritage. “You have to translate from one world vision to another world vision, rather than from a sentence to another sentence”, Julia explains. Taking someone else’s narrative and shaping it into something equivalent is complex. “You have to be aware of who’s speaking about whom and for whom.” “It’s nice to be aware of that and to be aware that there are a lot of different things you need to know before translating a heritage narrative into another language.” The acknowledgment that it will not be perfect might cause curators some concern, but it’s the cost of accessibility or international coverage.Īside from language mastery, she starts her translations by figuring out what is actually being said: “you need to have a basic grasp of the topic you’re dealing with and the underlying biases.” Understanding heritage translations begins with knowledge and research, but also with people. But it’s never going to be perfect and that’s okay”, she admits. To translate heritage narratives into another language is no easy task, but Julia is optimistic. Translation became one of the few ways in which she could have a fulfilling and useful job in a sector that suffered greatly during the early months of a pandemic. She was inspired by her Master’s degree in Amsterdam which showed her “how univocal, culturally insensitive and exclusionary many English exhibition translations are in the Netherlands.” The economic situation when she graduated was also a concern, with opportunities few and far between for heritage graduates in 2020. While this may come across as humorous, it’s attached to very real issues. Where did this career path begin? “It became a hobby of mine to take pictures of ‘poor’ translations and think about ways to improve them”, Julia notes. Sometimes, it’s only a few paragraphs, but in other cases, she’s been tasked with entire exhibitions. Julia began her own heritage translation company at the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, and since then has worked on nearly 20 translation projects, mostly in the Netherlands. Now after living and working in the Netherlands for four years, adding Dutch to her linguistic talents, she is starting a PhD in partnership with Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and Heidelberg University in Germany. She also picked up German from a young age, while developing it further during her studies in Berlin. She grew up bilingual in French and English. The difference in worldview is something she has experienced first-hand. The flashing light and download buttons do not currently work when in "Telegraph" mode.“When you use the word, that opens up a different world vision and then a different vision of heritage as well”, says Julia. The "Configure" button reveals advanced options to control the frequency and speed and switch between telegraph and radio sound styles. You can choose between hearing the sound, seeing a flashing light, or having your phone vibrate using the "Sound", "Light" and "Vibrate" checkboxes. The "Play", "Pause", "Stop" and "Repeat" buttons control the playback. If a letter cannot be translated a "#" will appear in the output. The text translation will appear in the bottom box. Letters are separated by spaces and words by "/". You can type Morse code into the top box using "." for a dot and "-" or "_" for a dash. This is not a great tool for learning Morse code as looking at the dots and dashes does not help. Just type letters, numbers and punctuation into the top box and the Morse code will appear in the bottom box with a "#" if the character cannot be translated.
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