Translations for Peace

On Sundays, we read the paper of record. This week's New York Times held a special surprise.

On page 29, there was a full-page ad with one line of text, in varying fonts and sizes (and alphabets, for that matter) stating: Imagine peace. The English line was surrounded by more than 20 other languages, many of which we can't identify. We found our other three languages (Spanish, German, French): all perfectly translated.



We had a hunch who might have taken out this fantastic peace-promoting ad during the holiday season where sometimes materialism and stress take over a time that should be peaceful and harmonious. Two simple words, all in lower case, at the bottom of the page confirmed our intuition. It simply reads"love, yoko". We have never been more touched by a simple line of translated text and the sentiment that followed it. John Lennon would be proud.

Happy holidays, indeed!


4 comments:

Unknown on December 21, 2008 at 11:58 PM said...

Do you think you could scan it or take a picture of it with your digital camera and post the image? I would love to see it. Thanks in advance.

Judy Jenner and Dagmar Jenner on December 22, 2008 at 12:27 AM said...

Sure, we will gladly try. It's huge -- a full page -- but we will give it a shot. It's a pretty moving piece of newspaper.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for scanning this. The Japanese version is really good. It's like something Yoko would say -- but I guess we'd expect that. :)

tolmatsch on December 29, 2008 at 7:25 AM said...

In Russian it sounds also good.
Thanks for posting this!

Join the conversation! Commenting is a great way to become part of the translation and interpretation community. Your comments don’t have to be overly academic to get published. We usually publish all comments that aren't spam, self-promotional or offensive to others. Agreeing or not agreeing with the issue at hand and stating why is a good way to start. Social media is all about interaction, so don’t limit yourself to reading and start commenting! We very much look forward to your comments and insight. Let's learn from each other and continue these important conversations.

Subscribe by email:

 

Twitter update


Site Info

The entrepreneurial linguists and translating twins blog about the business of translation from Las Vegas and Vienna.

Translation Times