WHETHER I’M RIGHT OR WRONG IN MY TRANSLATION WORK, MY LIFE GOES ON – BUT DOES IT MATTER? RATHER THAN LEAVE MYSELF GUESSING – AND FOR WHAT? – I WOULD RATHER MAKE IT MATTER.
Well, now that I am officially in my sixth year of professional translating on a self-employed basis, I’ve noticed a voice in my head telling me that the average man or woman on the street might find it surprisingly easy to ask (or at least wonder) just how satisfied I am in this job. When people say that there is no such thing as a typical foster carer, they do it for a reason, but that must apply to just about any profession; indeed, in one of my most recent past comments on here I specifically commented that I was not aware of any translator stereotypes. Why do you think I did that?
So, what is the truth of the matter? I can’t lament my earnings that much (even I am unhappy with how much of it ends up spent on business marketing – and not everything I do when it comes to business marketing proves to be all that worth it, despite what the people who sell me it say. Are you reading this, Andy and Arran?). And while it is so easy to regard what I do as boring (as opposed to glamorous or anything like that), some people out there must envy me at least a little bit for how accomplished I am when it comes to foreign languages, let alone translating “for real” in any articulate (or inarticulate) sense of the expression. But I’m not into boasting “for the sake of it”. I believe modesty is important. Even Tyler Durden said that you are not your job. So how much can I talk about myself as a professional translator when it really matters? For all the success I’ve made of my work… what about me? It’s a matter of plain and unquestionable truth that there’s simply no dissociating me (of all things) from George Trail Translation Services, huh?
I think that it’s a good thing that I am as willing to post translation blogs as ever, so I’ll continue with this one. How about this: “The art of translation”… I am divided when it comes to the question of whether or not translation is a real art. When people write a book or paint a picture or do something like that, knowing that it is “art”, one gets to see them essentially expressing themselves; and it’s likely that if they knew that they were really good at what they do, then there’s every reason to believe that an at least fair portion of their audience would soon be influenced by the conscious artistic intentions within what they are doing, whether or not the artist had identified / understood such intentions. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, a big part of it is creativity – and I do mean REAL creativity; and in the what I believe is likely event that you don’t know what I’m talking about (no offence): as an example, while there are plenty of genuinely creative Downfall parodies on Youtube, I don’t consider “Hitler is informed he is sitting down” to be a product of real creativity on the grounds that it seems like it was only a matter of time before someone would have that idea. But the “art of translation”? Whenever someone undertakes a translation task, the “intention” of said task is basically always the conveying of the intended message of the original material in a new language (and nothing but) and this is always something in particular (even if the author didn’t know what they were talking about); it wouldn’t pay for the translator to sell anything in their work if what they were saying were incorrect or invalid. On the other hand, I have never been able to ignore the challenge of aligning my own understanding / interpretation / feeling of what I read in an original product that is to be translated with what I understand would be someone else’s understanding / interpretation / feeling of what they will read which is (will be / would be) my (in-progress) translation of it. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t be at all surprised to know that some people label translation as an art; not when the task of getting it right can be so anything but straightforward at points. This is just one argument in point: the fact that words sometimes get given new meanings from time to time, or their meaning just changes from one thing to another; for example, in Shakespeare’s time, calling someone “naughty” would have indicated that there is something deeply repugnant about them, compared to today when you might see someone call their young son or daughter “naughty” with a quite mild tone of voice. On their website, the translation company ASAP Language Services (in Pasadena, California) outline it in such a way that I couldn’t have done it better myself: “Almost anyone can speak, but not everyone can communicate.”
At any rate, in all efforts to sound sincere, when it comes to language, expression and communication, and the never-ending debate of what does work and not, I can willingly acknowledge and make a point of remembering that which is “wrong” (be it incorrect or just plain substandard) every bit as much as I can willingly acknowledge that which is “right” or indeed that which is not just right, it can only be described as a touch of brilliance. Of course I sometimes come across problems for which I just might find a suggestion that is not only right but veritably likely to impress (no matter how ignorant the person reading it was) – the product of more insightful or intuitive thinking – but translating is a job where to “get it right”, more often than not, means to independently understand one or more things that you are supposed to understand even if there’s a fair chance that you just won’t be briefed about it / them beforehand; woe betide anyone who believes that they will be successful doing the “sleep-working” thing in professional translation work (see comment dated 12th July 2013). Ultimately, I am indeed not without pride as far as my job is concerned. But let me elaborate: it is not the kind of pride that comes with doing / achieving anything indisputably “great” and making no secret of expecting credit for it, but it’s not the opposite either i.e. the kind of pride that comes from doing something you claim to be “humble” while knowing deep down that it is more important than (you find that) many other people will admit. I guess it is the kind of pride that stems from devoted unfaltering consideration of things, ideas, concepts, hypotheses, values and attitudes that not everyone knows how to elaborate confidently (but that doesn’t make them “stupid”). For better or worse, it seems to serve me well when I resolve to satisfy or appease customers as much as I would have them believe that I’m ready to do so.
So… what am I talking about here? Well, I did make it quite clear in the first sentence of the first paragraph that I was talking about translating, and how I make a living doing it; just like (nearly) all my comments on here, really. As such, what follows is another of these work-related anecdotes of mine:
In one project I did recently – a translation project from German to English – the first thing I saw was the word “Reisebericht” in the title of the document in question. And when I saw that I originally thought, “Well, whatever the exact English expression the customer might – might – use, what it will be in English is pretty much certainly something like ‘Travel report’ or ‘Journey report’.” The catch: as I proceeded through the job, it became very clear that the subject matter was nothing to do with travelling or tourism or anything of the sort; for this document related to a certain kind of machine which used a conveyor belt. So I changed what I originally translated “Reisebericht” as, to “Itinerary report”. If it’s not clear enough what is meant by that – well, what is supposed to meant by it – although I never knew the full details for what it signified in this particular case, “itinerary report” here is supposed to indicate a case of a company or group sending one of their lot to compile a report of something off their premises – as opposed to an “on-site report” which can be done in this company’s / group’s own offices, if you will.
Let me also impart some memories from this proofreading work project I did recently. I read this in the original: “The history has no subjunctive mood and all we have is to regret about those prospects, which would open up if the ideas included in the Memorandum implemented: to stop conflict on the Dniester and to bring its parties to active and fruitful cooperation”. When I sent my revised version back I had changed this passage to: “We cannot allow history to be shaped by opportunism or fate; we can but regret those prospects which would have been open to us had the ideas included in the Memorandum been implemented: namely, to stop conflict on the Dniester and to bring its parties to active and fruitful cooperation”. I was particularly proud of how I rewrote the first bit as “The history has no subjunctive mood more coherent”; I think I got it right – what do you think? In the same project, I came across “As a result of this round it was agreed to complete the preparation for the Conference at/during the next trilateral meeting on the 20 December in Geneva”. Should I have used “at” or “during” as the preposition? Isn’t “during” a word that (is supposed to) always refer to something that happens in the past, while “at” is a word that (is supposed to) always refer to something that will happen in the future? Personally, it reminded me of that time I was taught the difference between “puisque”, “car” and one or two similar expressions meaning “because” in French during my time at the University of Poitiers in France, during which I was like 20 years old.
In a second proofreading project, where my job was merely to tweak the English in certain places, I read “Moreover, no column names (first line) and no time stamp (final line) should be included, because otherwise the External Table of it will be entered in the ‘Bad’ Files”, but the thing is that someone who had worked on this beforehand openly said this in connection with it: “Ok, I can understand what is this all about, but it sounds weird.” I sympathise, because I’ve felt like writing that myself from time to time… but when it comes to translation, what do you call sentences / phrases like that?
In one recent German-to-English translation project I saw “Projektgewinnung” in the original and wondered: is “project acquisition” the same as “project winning”?
Also: while I was in town on Monday – I took time off work in the afternoon to have a haircut – I noticed someone advertising something in a piece of marketing which mentioned, “excellant rates”. “Excellant” is an incorrect spelling of the word (adjective) “excellent”, which I mention even though you probably don’t need it explaining to you. But when I saw it, one of the first things that went through my mind was how “dependent” and “dependant” are both real words in English: “dependent” being the adjective and “dependant” being a noun which basically means “someone / something which / who is dependent on something else.” More specifically, what I was thinking here was, how long before people start writing “excellant”, deliberately spelling it as such, as a noun which is essentially supposed to mean “a thing that is excellent”?
That’s the mind of a translator / professional linguist for you. What can I say?