PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION IS SELDOM SMOOTH-GOING (WHATEVER YOU MIGHT THINK ABOUT IT). BUT I ALWAYS FIND WAYS TO APPRECIATE IT, AND THAT’S THE MAIN THING.
I just looked at the latest entries in my list of translation business-related anecdotes. Wouldn’t it be great if I somehow attained a condition whereby I would never have to worry about making a mistake in my work again? And if I did – which I consider unlikely – I would never have to worry about ending up confused again, right? But my life is my life, and I should accept it for what it is. That said, in this comment I list my latest bunch of “translation business-related anecdotes” which are comprised of language-related issues of various natures that I have noted in recent professional translation projects…
In a recent French-to-English translation project, I saw this in the original: “Recherche de nouveaux aciers et amélioration des procédés de transformation, notamment pour l’allégement des véhicules”. And I can swear that I instantly found myself asking this: does “allégement” really mean relief (as in reducing the burden that the vehicles have to bear), or making vehicles lighter (figuratively speaking)?
In some proofreading work I did earlier this month, I read this in the original version: “Of course, we are worried about the situation in Syria and around it”. I agreed with conviction that the last three words effectively meant “in the surrounding area” i.e. the area around Syria, rather than “around the situation” – I thought “in the surrounding area” even if I was just so quick to agree that the original was written by someone whose mother tongue was not English, even though, I have to admit, the original was written in very masterful English for a foreigner. In the same project, I read this: “On the contrary, we wish to involve all the countries of the region into our joint work to overcome the problems based on mutual respect, consideration of interests and legal concerns of everybody, respect for principles of international law”, where I was proud of myself for thinking of and applying the expression “on a basis of mutual respect”.
In one German-to-English translation project I did recently, I learned that the German word “bequem” can mean “convenient” rather than “comfortable”. Fair enough.
I am currently doing some proofreading work which needs to be submitted by Monday next week. In the unedited original version of the file in question I read this: “Slovakia supports small-scale farmers in some regions of Kenya and contributes to improving food security”. And I was just so quick to wonder: security or safety? Are we actually talking about the availability of food (in which case choose „security“) or food hygiene (in which case choose „safety“?
And I know that I’m not the only one who has ever felt like telling the world about these things – even educated people get madly misled sometimes; as an example, just look at the Sheng Long fiasco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_Long
Like I said in the beginning, my life is my life, and I should accept it for what it is. So is it possible to reject the frustrations you know in everyday life “the tough way” and still “love yourself”?
Maybe I should have realised it a long time ago, but in business, “correct” and “right” are not always the same thing. This is as true in professional translation as it is in professional anything else (well, I think it is, anyway).
I have known a few occasions where, after I submitted a piece of translation work I had every reason to be confident about and no reason to be doubtful about, the project manager of the project in question got back to me for the purpose of pointing out something I wrote which they… just couldn’t agree with. The thing in question was not necessarily unequivocally and embarrassingly wrong (and, to be fair to these project managers, sometimes what they wrote in their correspondence back to me in such cases made it sound like they appreciated that this was the case) but it was “wrong” in some way, and while they failed to offer any improvement suggestions they had no idea how to respond to it at all except to be awkward about it with me until I “did something about it” (with all due respect). And I suppose that, on some level, there is no excuse for denying that that’s perfectly understandable: whether I’m right or wrong, it’s easier (often far easier) to ask someone about a conviction that they (should) remember than to guess what they’re talking about; and I think most of us would agree that, when it comes to the general concept of making sense out of translations (if I may call it that), there are no boundaries to the potential valid hypothesising. Think about it.
And that’s why I was so delighted to learn of this website, which features sentences which, however weird and awkward they may be, are still grammatical in every sense of the wordhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/49238/7-sentences-s… . I’m sure there are loads of other sites just like it. I may be eager to talk about this sort of thing with family and friends in the pub but I won’t hesitate to reproduce it here. I have to admit, I sometimes had to have the reasons explained to me; for example, I knew that a buffalo is an animal like a big bull and that Buffalo is a place in America (it’s in New York), but I didn’t know that there is a verb “buffalo”.
I finish this comment thus, discussing something which I believe to be pertinent to the topic at hand: consider the sentence, “The man was killed for his act of high treason” and understand that I can imagine that some people might respond to it like, “That should be written: ‘The man was put to death for his act of high treason.’!” As far as I’m concerned, it’s just that, with “The man was killed for his act of high treason”, there is no more reason to believe that there is any secrecy or denial in connection with the man’s death than there would be with “The man was put to death for his act of high treason”. And that’s the reason why I could understand “The man was put to death for his act of high treason” being “miswritten” as “The man was killed for his act of high treason”; and this is something entirely made up by me. I could speculate and say that, with “The man was killed for his act of high treason”, this man was killed by someone other than the country’s authorities for whatever he did – whether or not that is another story as might be suggested, I think of this as an example of the “art of explanation” – I haven’t forgotten my comment about translation and explanation on here (dated 19th July 2013).
Thank you for reading.