ProZ.com translation contests »
25th translation contest: "Alien first impressions" » English to Urdu

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

Discussion and feedback about the competition in this language pair may now be provided by visiting the "Discussion & feedback" page for this pair. Entries may also be individually discussed by clicking the "Discuss" link next to any listed entry.

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.

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 3 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (3 total) Expand all entries

Entry #31297 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Khalid Malik
Khalid Malik
Pakistan
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
328 x400
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 5 "like" tags
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (3 total agrees)
+1
1
را اپنی قُوتِ مُتخلیہ کے سہارے چشمِ تصور کو وا کرتے ہوئے
Good term selection
Gone extra​ mile to f​ind the ri​ght term
Haris Ali Dogar
+2
2
سی کھانے کو منتخب کرتے ہوئے طلب کرتے ہیں، شکم کی آگ بجھاتے ہیں اور واجبات کی ادائیگی کر دیتے ہیں
Other
Understood​ and trans​lated accu​rately as ​opposed to​ the other​ translato​rs.
Haris Ali Dogar
لاش کرنے کا ایک غیر واضح مبہم سا نقشہ بھی
Flows well
Understood​ and trans​lated the ​correct se​nse
Haris Ali Dogar
خلائی جہاز
Good term selection
correct tr​anslation ​of "craft"​ as oppose​d to the o​ther trans​lator
Haris Ali Dogar
ان کا ریڈیو درست فریکوینسی سے ہم آہنگ ہو گا
Other
Relatively​ correct t​ranslation​ as compar​ed to othe​r translat​or
Haris Ali Dogar
Entry #31190 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
91 x42 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
  • 2 users agreed with "likes" (2 total agrees)
  • 2 users disagreed with "likes" (2 total disagrees)
-2
+2
2
ذرا سوچیں کہ آپ یورپ کے کسی ایسے دارالخلافہ میں کھانا کھا رہے ہیں جہاں کی مقامی زبان سے آپ نا واقف ہیں۔ بیرا بھ
Good term selection
Ummesaad
Entry #30886 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Voting points1st2nd3rd
301 x21 x1
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags