Translations - International glossary of Open Space words and phrases

[Lisa Heft]

Hi, Jennifer and others -

I offer a database for mutual use at my website - an international  
glossary of Open Space terms and phrases.
I have to do a bit of fixing and adding as my website got hacked into  
some time ago and it messed with some of the different-alphabets-than- 
mine languages.
There are also great recent contributions by Raffi (Armenian) and some  
of our other colleagues that I will soon be adding.

By the way, my observation is that the best people to translate Open  
Space terms and phrases are either native-speaker Open Space  
facilitators -or- professional translators who converse about it with  
Open Space folks -or- people with broad and diverse language  
vocabulary who spend thorough time with an Open Space person to  
understand the nuances of these concepts -or- poets.

The nuances of selecting amongst different word choices to carry  
meaning through culture and language (rather than literally  
translating the individual words) is in my experience, essential.

And there are regional differences as well. For example for Spanish it  
is sometimes useful to know which country you may be using the posters  
in - perhaps that is true for some other languages as well.  I will  
illustrate this example by saying that one way to translate the  
'Whoever comes...' guideline in Spanish is fine; however if you use  
that same Spanish translation in at least one Spanish-speaking country  
it has a sexual connotation, which had my colleague Joc Clark's  
meeting break into friendly laughter - a real 'ice-breaker' indeed...

The glossary is at:
http://www.openingspace.net/glossary.shtml


This summer I will refresh my website and add some more resources for  
sharing...

Lisa

  Lisa Heft
Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
Opening Space
lisaheft at openingspace.net
www.openingspace.net



On May 24, 2010, at 3:10 AM, Jenifer Toksvig wrote:

> Is there a database somewhere of the four principles and stuff in  
> various languages? If there is, and if Danish isn’t in it yet, here  
> they are:
>
> Whoever comes is the right people – Hvemsomhelst kommer er de rigtig  
> mennesker
>
> Whatever happens is the only thing that could have – Hvadsomhelst  
> sker er den eneste ting som kunne være sket
>
> Whenever it starts is the right time – Hvornår det begynder er den  
> rigtig tid
>
> When it’s over, it’s over – Når det er færdigt, er det færdigt
>
> The Law of Two Feet: if, during our time together... etc, as per  
> page 95 of the book
> Loven om To Fødder: Hvis, mens vi er sammen, du befinde dig i nogen  
> situation hvor du hverken lære eller bidrage, brug din to fødder og  
> gå et andet sted mere produktiv.
>
> Be prepared to be surprised – Være parat at bliver overrasked
>
> Jenifer Toksvig
> never at acompletelossforwords.com
>
  
*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20100525/5a587b1e/attachment-0015.htm>