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25th translation contest: "Alien first impressions" » English to Croatian

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Source text in English

Imagine dining in a European capital where you do not know the local language. The waiter speaks little English, but by hook or by crook you manage to order something on the menu that you recognise, eat and pay for. Now picture instead that, after a hike goes wrong, you emerge, starving, in an Amazonian village. The people there have no idea what to make of you. You mime chewing sounds, which they mistake for your primitive tongue. When you raise your hands to signify surrender, they think you are launching an attack.

Communicating without a shared context is hard. For example, radioactive sites must be left undisturbed for tens of thousands of years; yet, given that the English of just 1,000 years ago is now unintelligible to most of its modern speakers, agencies have struggled to create warnings to accompany nuclear waste. Committees responsible for doing so have come up with everything from towering concrete spikes, to Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, to plants genetically modified to turn an alarming blue. None is guaranteed to be future-proof.

Some of the same people who worked on these waste-site messages have also been part of an even bigger challenge: communicating with extraterrestrial life. This is the subject of “Extraterrestrial Languages”, a new book by Daniel Oberhaus, a journalist at Wired.

Nothing is known about how extraterrestrials might take in information. A pair of plaques sent in the early 1970s with Pioneer 10 and 11, two spacecraft, show nude human beings and a rough map to find Earth—rudimentary stuff, but even that assumes aliens can see. Since such craft have no more than an infinitesimal chance of being found, radio broadcasts from Earth, travelling at the speed of light, are more likely to make contact. But just as a terrestrial radio must be tuned to the right frequency, so must the interstellar kind. How would aliens happen upon the correct one? The Pioneer plaque gives a hint in the form of a basic diagram of a hydrogen atom, the magnetic polarity of which flips at regular intervals, with a frequency of 1,420MHz. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, the hope is that this sketch might act as a sort of telephone number.

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There were 10 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. Not enough votes were submitted by peers for a winning entry to be determined.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (10 total) Expand all entries

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Entry #31216 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
0000
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Entry4.344.00 (3 ratings)4.67 (3 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 2 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (1 total agree)
posve izgladnjeli nabasate na
Flows well
ipv
+1
naga
Good term selection
ipv
Entry #31165 — Discuss 0 — Variant: standard
Voting points1st2nd3rd
0000
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Entry4.254.00 (4 ratings)4.50 (4 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 2 users entered 3 "like" tags
  • 1 user agreed with "likes" (1 total agree)
objedujete
Flows well
ipv
+1
natuca
Good term selection
Antea Muzic
obnažena
Good term selection
ipv
Entry #31360 — Discuss 0 — Variant: standard
Voting points1st2nd3rd
0000
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Entry3.753.50 (4 ratings)4.00 (4 ratings)
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Entry #31154 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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0000
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Entry3.603.60 (5 ratings)3.60 (5 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 7 "like" tags
  • 1 user disagreed with "likes" (2 total disagrees)
Proizvodite zvukove žvakanja
Good term selection
Emil Šprljan
-1
1
podijeljenog
Flows well
Emil Šprljan
alarmantnu plavu.
Good term selection
Emil Šprljan
još većeg izazova
Good term selection
Emil Šprljan
pločica
Good term selection
Emil Šprljan
mikroskopski sitna vjerojatnost
Good term selection
Emil Šprljan
-1
1
Plaketa
Good term selection
Emil Šprljan
Entry #31102 — Discuss 0 — Variant: standard
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0000
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Entry3.503.67 (3 ratings)3.33 (3 ratings)
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  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
pojma nemaju što bi s vama
Flows well
ipv
Entry #31307 — Discuss 0 — Variant: standard
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0000
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Entry3.503.67 (3 ratings)3.33 (3 ratings)
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  • 2 users entered 3 "like" tags
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
+2
1
natuca engleski,
Good term selection
Antea Muzic
Neki od tih istih ljudi koji su radili na spomenutim porukama za nuklearna odlagališta bili su i dijelom još većeg izazova: komuniciranja s vanzemaljskim životom.
Flows well
Sanjin Grandić
, preostaje nada
Good term selection
Sanjin Grandić
Entry #30970 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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0000
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Entry2.922.67 (6 ratings)3.17 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 7 "like" tags
  • 3 users agreed with "likes" (3 total agrees)
  • 2 users disagreed with "likes" (2 total disagrees)
europskoj prijestolnici
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
+1
sporazumijevajući se rukama i nogama
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
-1
zamislite da vam je izlet otišao nizbrdo
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
-1
na smrt gladni
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
su iznašla sijaset načina
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
+1
zaustavnih betonskih šiljaka
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
+1
Ni jedno od toga ne jamči otpornost na zub vremena
Good term selection
Šime Šprljan
Entry #31205 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
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0000
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Entry2.832.40 (5 ratings)3.25 (4 ratings)
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Entry #30832 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
translatorcro77
translatorcro77
Bosnia and Herzegovina
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0000
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Entry2.502.00 (4 ratings)3.00 (3 ratings)
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Entry #31057 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Nikica Kraljević
Nikica Kraljević
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Voting points1st2nd3rd
0000
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry2.482.20 (5 ratings)2.75 (4 ratings)
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