eXchanges, “the University of Iowa’s online literary magazine devoted to translation,” has a new issue called “Hackwork,” featuring Mémoires of Translation by Lawrence Venuti as well as translations from Latin (the Aeneid), Romanian (Dan Sociu), Chamorro (translating Chamorro translations of the Psalms!), and Spanish. I got this, as I get so many interesting links, from wood s lot, whose proprietor is going on a well-deserved vacation for a couple of weeks—bon voyage, Mark, and come back refreshed!
Update (Sept. 2025). Time for me to vent about the crappy website maintenance of universities! You would think those repositories of knowledge would be at the cutting edge of electronic preservation, but no, the idea of keeping links working seems to be foreign to them. Whenever I see an .edu link in an old post, I sigh and brace myself for finding an archived version; academics just don’t seem to care that their (presumably) thoughtfully designed websites will vanish into dust the next time some bureaucrat decides to Change Things. If Languagehat can be exported to a new site and maintain all its internal links (thanks to the volunteer work of the invaluable Songdog), why can’t colleges manage it? At any rate, even though eXchanges still exists and is updated, none of my links worked any more. Furthermore, even though I finally found the Issue Archive page (itself an archived one!), when I clicked on the Hackwork – Spring ’10 link I got “This page has not been archived here.” WTF, Iowa? Do better! Of course the thrice-blessed Internet Archive provided the links I needed, but damn, that pisses me off.
Over the past 10-20 years, I have gained the impression that the status of translators into German is stronger in German publishing than it used to be – at least as regards legal rights. The translator’s name now appears on the title page along with that of the author. Previously, if the translator was identified at all it was in the small print on the back of the title page, down among the publishing history and copyright notices.
That’s good; I hope it represents a general trend.
It seems odd that the Chamorro-to-English translation of the Psalms would translate Jeova as “the Landlord”. The translator’s note says that translation came into Chamorro through a 1907 translation from Spanish.
Y Salmo Sija
Hat, is that not the case in the States ? Are translators still unsung on title pages there ?
Y Salmo Sija–ah, I see, it’s not a translation but an original poem loosely based on the Psalms. The author’s website has the same idiosyncratic approach to lower case letters.
Are translators still unsung on title pages there ?
No, they’re usually named, and the more famous ones are mentioned fairly prominently.
See the Update for my rant about the crappy website maintenance of universities; I also want to mention that when I was getting an archived wood s lot link, I noticed “One of several photography books by the voice of Idiotic Hat,” and of course was intrigued. When I investigated, I discovered that Idiotic Hat not only still exists but is still regularly updated, and the latest post, Nisi Dominus Frustra…, is singing my song:
There follows much interesting discussion. You tell ’em, fellow Hat!
Universities tend to allow staff to put important documents on their personal “webspace” (the /~username/ part of the URL is a dead giveaway) and said staff may have been told once (I will say this only once) that said webspace will be removed when they retire. But do they care for future generations? Do they?
That’s why Wikipedia has a robot running around poking archive.com to fetch articles that are referenced, and fix the links. We have Hat.
But I’m not talking about such personal webspaces, I’m talking about normal university sites that give every appearance of having been normal parts of their web presence when they were created. At some point some admin/bureaucrat/poohbah decided to change the branding/formatting/whateverthefuck and broke the previous links, and while of course they took care to provide a spiffy new look for the university main page and important departments, they let unimportant things like literary magazines slip into oblivion without a backward look. Grr.
Most often from university.edu/stuff to stuff.university.edu or vice versa. These things are fashions.
Edit: huh. The vanished link was exchanges.uiowa.edu, so I went to uiowa.edu and found… total inconsistency: there’s uiowa.edu/stuff, nonetheless a bunch of stuff.uiowa.edu, and even http://www.maui.uiowa.edu. Maybe some departments followed some fashion and others didn’t…
I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.
A large fraction of (maybe even almost everything on) a university Web site is personal Web space. Most pages are managed by the faculty or staff individually responsible for the programs and projects they describe. Certainly the Web page of a literary magazine would be maintained this way. Depending on how easy the site-wide templates are to use, individual pages might or might not look anything like the main pages managed by the administration.
“Fashions are stupid and blind” (Karl R. Popper)
Of course the simple thing to do if you refashion a website’s URLs is to change the webserver config so all requests for the old URLs are automatically redirected to the new URL. Not doing that is simply incompetence.
Let me guess: during the redesign the university found out that it would cost more than budgeted and stopped the redesign.
@Brett: Exchanges (as it’s written now) seems to be unusual in being run by grad students. I don’t see a faculty adviser’s name or a Webmaster contact anywhere at their site. The editorials and all the emails I’ve gotten from them (none of which has contained good news for me, but they shall hear from me again!) are just signed by the Editors.
It doesn’t look like other U. of Iowa pages, which I think is as it should be, since students working on an on-line lit mag should be getting experience in designing it or at least in using a site that was designed as a lit mag.
Of course the simple thing to do if you refashion a website’s URLs is to change the webserver config so all requests for the old URLs are automatically redirected to the new URL. Not doing that is simply incompetence.
Exactly as I suspected!
students working on an on-line lit mag should be getting experience in designing it or at least in using a site that was designed as a lit mag.
Makes sense, but they should also be getting experience in preserving the archives!
…which is, in contexts like these, at least as widespread as basic competence.
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it
I watched the whole thing — wonderful, and makes me wish I were a Hasid! (If I were a Hasid… Ya ba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dibba dum…)
@Jerry Friedman: Sure, I should have noted that a certain amount of Web content is created and maintained by students. That just makes it more prone to atrophy and disappearance, relative to Web pages handled by faculty.
they should also be getting experience in preserving the archives!
I agree. In this case, the archives are stored by the university library, which widens the fields of possible explanations and of people to blame.
The error message says
…they labo[u]r in vain… / If I were a Hasid
that is lovely! especially for such a cleaned-up approach; i tend to prefer the traditional wide unison, and the harmonies and timbres it encourages – here, for example, or in velvel pasternak’s recordings (none nearly so a propos as D.O.’s contribution; i’m just being opinionated).
Some faculty web pages are kept permanently even after they have left the university or this world, if they were significant or beloved or both.
…significant to, or beloved by, the webmasters or maybe their bosses.
…or, of course, if the webmasters just don’t get around to deleting them. That, too, happens.
Just imagine if medieval universities had chucked out all the manuscripts that didn’t meet their current needs.