The translation excerpt here is from a bilingual tourism brochure for Zurich. The excerpt talks about an exhibit in one of Zurich's museums about a collection of photographs documenting changes in Zurich's squares over time.

The above picture is a poster for the exhibit described in my translation (from: tram-museum.ch).

Meeting the Learning Goals:

This translation helped me to better understand how language is received. In translating for tourism, one must always be aware of how the audience receives the language that one uses. For example, a brochure should highlight an event, exhibit, or other attraction in a way that makes it appealing to the visitor. It is also important to keep in mind that English might not be the first language of the reader and therefore, sentences should be keep short and to the point, as well as keeping the vocabulary simple. This sentence especially, "It offers the opportunity to uncover the old or to remember the past and to dive into the history of Zürich’s squares " illustrates how language can be used to make something somewhat banal into something exciting. Words like "uncover" and "dive into" create excitement without becoming overly wordy or the language too hard to understand for non-native speakers. 

Specific Challenge:

The most difficult part of this excerpt for me to translate was "neu zu entdecken." I immediately recognized the meanings of the words individually but it was hard for me to find the correct way of conveying the meaning in English. First I ignored the "neu" because to me it sounded a bit repetitive, like of course when you discover something, it is for the first time. Then I translated as newly discover, but this sounded funny and not quite right. I consulted with my professor and also native English speakers on how to best sum up the meaning of "newly discover" into one word. I also reverse looked it up in an online English dictionary. I came up empty in all fronts. So I turned back to the German and really thought about what "entdecken" means. "Ent" is a prefix which means "away from" and is sort of the equivalent of "de/dis" as in devalue or disrobe. "Decken" means to cover. So to de-cover is to uncover and this is the word I choose to use. I found out that sometimes going back to the true meaning of the German, really taking apart a single word, can give you the best English translation.