THE ART OF (MORE HIGHLY ACCOMPLISHED) TRANSLATION: HOW CONTEXTUALLY CORRECT EXPRESSIONS AREN’T ALWAYS ACCEPTED. ARE THERE ANY STANDARD PROCEDURES FOR “FINDING YOURSELF” IN TRANSLATION (AS OPPOSED TO GETTING “LOST IN TRANSLATION”)?
I have to argue that a big part of the art of translation, if it ever existed, is the art of (actually) getting expressions right even if there is good reason to believe that what you would originally say could work for anyone (where anyone does actually mean “anyone”).
You know, I once wrote the following comment in my personal Facebook profile: “The younger you are, the more you remember. The older you are, the more you remember. Which of those statements is true?” It’s easy enough to relate concepts of memory to concepts of imagination – and to relate to both to the act / art of the translation. Even so, as true as it is that a good imagination helps when you are doing translation i.e. trying to do quality translation, like I pledge to do every day as a professional translator, that doesn’t mean that it’s not possible to be misled by nothing but your own imagination and in that way end up a “victim of your own imagination.”
I sent applications to some new translation agencies not too long ago and one of them asked me to do a test that I was so glad to receive. It wasn’t a translation test, but more like editing. I was given nine small quotes and specifically told at the beginning that my task was “to make them make sense in your language so that they do not read like a translation from English”. Here’s one of them now:
“The hotel uses big keys for the room. When you come and go, they take them and keep them underneath the counter of the front desk.”
However easy anyone who’s ever stayed in a hotel may claim that that is to understand… I’ve never said anything like this about a work-related test before but I just genuinely appreciated the opportunity to rewrite these sentences. I rewrote the one above thus:
“The hotel has big keys for its rooms. When you leave the hotel or arrive in it, the staff will take the key for your room and store it underneath the counter of the front desk.”
I mean, to me it’s clear that the agency that gave me this test has a very fervent focus on what it takes to produce proper translations at a professional level. This agency is All Correct Language Solutions, based in Russia https://www.facebook.com/allcorrect, and I know that they’re a good agency because they have a 4.9 rating on the ProZ Blue Board. I looked at their Facebook business page and, although I can’t read or speak Russian, I can see that it has a level of content on it that is comparable with the level of content on my own, which is enough to make believe that they can be vocal enough about proper translation to impress me, and look how vocal I’ve been about proper translation.
So yes, not everyone is apt at producing expressions which “really do work” in this way. I’ve probably said this before, but on the ProZ forums I’ve heard of stories about people who would have us all believe that they are professional translators but they simply don’t deserve to be called professional translators: this is because their work is substandard – I’ve heard of stories of someone giving such people translation work to do and then when they get the translation back, they have no qualms about publicly stating: “It was obvious that this was done using Google Translate.” These days I tend to specifically read comments that are like, “It was obvious that this was done using Google Translate” rather than, “It was obvious that this was done using a machine translator. Of course, I have to balance this against the counter-argument (try reading this aloud a single breath for the right effect):
“But Google Translate is a translation tool that was developed by Google, so it must be a reliable translation tool. I mean, if it was developed by Google, it’s got to be good. If it was developed by Google of all people it’s got to be trustworthy. You know you can put your trust in Google Translate because it was developed by Google…” etc. etc.
Not to mention the fact that it is very, very easy to have a machine translation tool have a wide vocabulary (in both the necessary languages, of course) compared to what it takes to have a human translator to acquire the same.
And I would address this by saying that the translations of Google Translate, or indeed any other machine translation tool, however good they may be, too frequently have too many “typical” traits in them, the result of irresolutely rigid and standardised decisions, which are, of course, always automated. I think of that time I talked about “just having stuff translated” “by magic”, in the first paragraph of my last comment on here. What is there to say about these sub-standard translators who are pathetically dependent on Google Translate in this way? It is tempting for me to say that they can only be described as deliberately obtuse. There’s no real translation without some sort of real appreciation of the “art of explanation” (see that comment of mine), which sort of explains in of itself how important it really is. There is no excuse for blind acceptance of what Google Translate produces – but I mean that in a matter-of-fact, logical sense. These would-be translators are basically not willing to accept any responsibility for their work… and wouldn’t know how. And if professional translators like me won’t help to maintain acceptable standards and help to prevent the deterioration of the reputation of the industry, then who will?
But how does one distinguish the one who brazenly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, who doesn’t care if the information in question is correctly conveyed / represented or not, from the one who falsely believes that they do know what they are talking about but has well-founded reasons for believing that they do? Needless to say, there is no way I’m as bad as the former, but there have been times when I’ve sent marketing material written in French and German only to see them get back to me saying that my writing in French in German is “off” – even of insufficient quality – this despite the fact that I studied French and German at university and everyone who knows me knows it. Even if I use expressions in my marketing material written in French and German that are irregular to native speakers, I simply don’t believe that they’re THAT strange, and certainly not semi-literate or markedly informal or inappropriately chatty-sounding or anything like that, do you know what I mean?
Suppose you spoke one language and you wanted a machine translator to translate something in that language into a language that you did not speak, rather than have the machine translator translate something written in a language that you did not speak into a language you did speak. Which is more common? What do you think? Is there actually ever any point trying to do the former if you haven’t taken the time to understand what is meant by the words in the original, the language that you understand? Lots of people have tried to explain something without actually knowing what they’re talking about, and this includes topics with a language, or even a translation theme. I mean, if you look up “Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?” on Encyclopaedia Dramatica, look at what they say under “Answer” and “Engrish version”. How else is it possible to explain people putting it through a machine translator to translate it from English into another language and then back, as if it really were somehow possible to explain something without actually knowing what you’re talking about with no means necessary other than automated means?
And that is me talking about the hypothetical topic of finding yourself in translation.
Epilogue: I have seen evidence on ProZ.com that there definitely exists something of a veritable “post-editing machine translation” industry, although this is probably thanks to… you guessed it, didn’t you? Those aforementioned “professional translators” who so woefully lean on translation tools like the backs of reclining massage chairs…
PS There is an annex to this particular comment – one that is about understanding of machine translation tools. For I believe that it is very relevant. Watch this space…