Translation the context game

TRANSLATION: THE CONTEXT GAME

Foreword: “context” is a thoroughly abstract concept, I agree. But linguistic context and subject matter context are of equal importance in language matters, whether or not there’s any translation involved. Think about that one.

To the average person capable of doing translation, there are many, many subjects that they may be able to do translation work in only without feeling some sort of cosy / nice / endearing / appealing (“personal”) attachment to them (especially if it’s a subject close to them in their own personal comfort zone), where this means that any sort of liberal approach to getting the job done is instantly dismissed as less than advisable. In practice – to define it properly – it surely requires “thinking outside the box” (comfort zone, indeed), and the need for educated guessing is probably never made completely redundant. It’s for all the times when a “workable” translation just isn’t good enough. Indeed, different viewpoints related to any given “non-simple stuff” (i.e. any broad subject with an emphasised role in society in the real world) are by no means unlikely to play a role in anyone understanding them more deeply. I think of the Will Rogers quote “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so”. In other words, it’s all about context.

But this blog, for its purpose of promoting me as a professional translator, is supposed to be about languages and translation. And I’ve seen plenty of foreigners speak and / or write English. Now, from my experience, some foreign people seem to get a bit annoyed when you comment on their English out of the blue, even if you’re commending it (as if it’s only too easy a thing to do) – they would rather treat it as an awkward matter (certainly if you can’t resist imitating their accent because you claim that it appeals to you. Chinese accents in particular can sound comical to British ears, if I may say so). But seriously, I do find it pleasing to see a foreigner speak or write English well – they may say a few odd-sounding things which are only semi-correct linguistically but are otherwise entirely understandable, but they usually do manage it well if they do it confidently. But you can’t truly master a language (at fluency level) merely by the kind of obdurately logical thinking that is conducive to understanding things like scientific fields or algorithms. Hence, one should be prepared to play the context game when doing translation work, or even just cementing their understanding of some aspect of a foreign language as correct.

Here’s a linguistic context case study. I was doing a German to English translation project fairly recently in which I saw the word “Abnahme” in the original, whereupon I proceeded to look it up just to be SURE of using the most optimal word in the English translation and not just the first word that came to mind. I was then reminded that it can mean both “acceptance” and “decline”, even though “accept” and “decline” are only too easy to regard (correctly) as antonyms! And that’s not even it. There were more English words in the list of English suggestions that this word can be translated into, including “purchase”, “inspection”, “slackening” and “amputation” (no doubt a kind of “removal”, which was yet another word on the list) – just ask anyone whose mother tongue is German and can also speak good English. You could say that I was playing “the context game” back then.

To me, taking a word out of a context indeed isn’t limited to momentarily isolating it from whatever individual text in which it is found – whether or not such a text should be recognised as categorised in any way, shape or form, and whether or not the purpose behind it all is clear from the start or you fully agree that it would actually take some time to define it properly. If you are serious about good translation, it’s a good idea to ponder the other words in the sentence / entire text in which you saw it, and ask yourself if that sentence / entire text includes any other words whose existence (use) in it can be the only sensible explanation for seeing a given word (hypothetically) “taken out of context” in the text at all. That’s what I think. It’s only one argument to support my case, anyway.

But what is context anyway? I don’t agree that a dictionary definition is enough; I would insist on elaborating on known existing examples for the sake of a solid and confident grasp / understanding. An arena for concepts, specific or vague, definite or abstract, in connection with any given interest or subject? At any rate, in professional translation you may be expected to deal with material with a legal context, or a technical context, or a medical context and so on. By contrast, there is no context worth the name to speak of in, say, an offhand game I once played while I was waiting for my plane to land when I was on holiday once, where I decided to make the longest sentence I could where I could use every letter of the alphabet but no more than once. I remember once asking at university what was the longest word anyone could think of in which you could use every letter of the alphabet but no more than once – someone said “uncopyrightable”, which is even better than “ambidextrously” – and so I decided to take it to the level of whole sentences (with no concern as to whether or not they make sense – it’s like backmasking, and there are definitely videos of that on Youtube). I thought of “Quartz flew by his dog” and “Why do brazen pigs fuck?” (if you will pardon my language there) among other things; but what I’m saying is that there is no truly engaging CONTEXT to speak of in connection with the game because, however much of an interest one may show in it, at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the sole rule of not being allowed to use any letter in the alphabet more than once (and what you can come up with when you play it, of course).

Rather, I’ve been translating for seven and a half years now and I still feel put at ease against what I do and the challenges I have to face in it every time I see a case of a note included alongside what is a translation of something done by someone else – a note which might read something like, “This is a rather literal translation – think of word X in the sense of whatever and word Y in the sense of whatever”, or “This translation may seem a little odd but it’s very likely that, in the original, the speaker wanted to imply sarcasm (or whatever) at point X.” […] I certainly don’t need reminding that languages function differently, or that there are certain words in certain languages for which there simply isn’t a ready equivalent in English, or anything else like that – but, frankly speaking, a lot of people don’t have the insight or inquisitiveness (or the patience) to go into too much depth in such topics. At any rate, being able to swiftly come up with a good, optimally fitting translation of something then forget the matter forever can be but a forlorn hope in my eyes sometimes – or is that too easy for me to say considering how much of my life I have spent translating “non-simple” stuff from French and German into English these days?

I suppose the big question is: what do you do when you’re translating and there’s no context that you can determine (assuming that there is any specific one which can / is just waiting to be determined)? Do you agree that there are times when translating with confidence specifically hinges on you assigning a context to this or that word or phrase? And if you can’t, invent one, so to speak? For I believe that there are occasions when it’s best to make an attempt to assign a self-formulated – and always (indisputably) honest! – context to a translation if it will help it to work as well as it should, or to validate / reinforce its overall quality, if that makes sense. Would you endeavour to play the context game as a first step to trying to make sense of a bad translation?

I’ve never watched The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I know enough that vogon poetry (widely accepted as “the third worst in the universe”, apparently) is associated with it, in particular the following poem:

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
On a lurgid bee
That mordiously hath blurted out
Its earted jurtles
Into a rancid festering confectious organ squealer.
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustules
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrurts
And living glupules frart and slipulate
Like jowling meated liverslime.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turling dromes,
And hooptiously drangle me
With crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or else I shall rend thee in the gobberwurts with my blurglecruncheon.
See if I don’t.

Of course, it leaves us scratching our heads and guessing at every turn. Then again – of course, indeed! – this is just a nonsensical concoction in a piece of fiction, so who’s going to dismiss the idea that such guessing would be in vain and pointless? And why not? What would be the point of trying to get anyone to “take it seriously”? There’s certainly no context to work with if we are seriously considering (supposedly) deciphering it in any way, shape or form. Still, that never stopped the human race from translating The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy into foreign languages, this including vogon poetry:

Good for whoever did that – I’m assuming they were Czech. But that said, here I have decided to set myself the goal of delivering a good French translation of the piece of vogon poetry above, knowing that I have no context to work with. I cannot put too many words into any sort of context (verifiable or not) because I don’t know what so many of them mean (but then they are made up and are not supposed to mean anything in the realm of what is real, of course). In any case, bear this claim in mind: no-one will be able to suggest that I have leant entirely on a machine translator! Anyway, here we go:

Oh gruntbuggly freddli
Tes micturations sont pour moi
Comme de gabbleblotchites plurduits
Sur une abeille lurgide
Qui a mordieusement blarassé
Ses jurtes eartées
En un organe-squealer rance, purulent et confectieux.
Et maintenant, les agrocrustules jurplantes et slaijides
Slurpent hagrillement en leur montée des axegrurtes
Et de vivantes glupules frartent et slipulent
Comme de jouillante, viandisée foieboue.
Groop, je vous implore, mes drômes fountinants et turlants,
Et dranglisez-moi huptieusement
Avec de bindewoudes crépus,
Ou sinon je vous fendrai en les gobbre-wouittes avec ma blourguecronction.
Observez si je ne le ferai pas.

I admit that there are many words there which I purely made up (and I will point out here that I don’t need anyone to suggest that I don’t know what they mean because I already know as such; or else I wouldn’t have been able to say that, you know?). But what do people think?

“Context” isn’t really a teachable subject, if you know what I mean. But I don’t really think context is all that hard to imagine in practice. Consider this example: if someone were to make the statement “Even Gandhi probably drew the line somewhere”… well, who’s going to think that that sentence doesn’t make sense rather than accept it, without any questioning or investigation, as a reflection of the point that, even when it’s weighed against the point that “Violence is not the answer”, there are indeed some dire scenarios of marked seriousness beyond parody where violence can be justified, as easy as it is to want to avoid talking about the… context? (Well, seeing as this is supposed to be a translation blog, Gandhi did say that anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.)

But… I talked about “linguistic context” “in language matters” earlier; now I want to talk about “subject matter context” in the same. If you agree that I should be doing more to discuss the context game specifically in connection with multilingual / translation matters I do remember being specifically taught that the German sentences “Sie dürfen nicht rauchen hier” and “Sie müssen nicht rauchen hier” really don’t mean the same thing in that, despite what you can see at surface level, only “Sie dürfen nicht rauchen” is “proper” because that does actually mean “You are not allowed to smoke here.” The second sentence, while grammatical, is odd because the verb “müssen” connotes the idea “You do not have to smoke here (i.e. but feel free to if you want; you’re under no obligation to do so)”, effectively on principle. And “Die Tür wurde geschlossen” and “Die Tür war geschlossen” both mean “The door was closed”, but… you could say it depends. The former is to imply specifically that a person went and closed the door thus leaving it no longer open; the latter is to imply that the door was simply standing there closed (in a state of being closed). Both concepts are quite easy to understand – and in no way peculiar the way “You do not have to smoke here (i.e. but feel free to if you want; you’re under no obligation to do so)” is.

But let’s take an example that’s actually from my own recent translation work. The original was in German language and I saw this in it: “Der Laden ist sehr eng, die Produkte sind schwer durchschaubar und wegen des engen Raumes gibt es nur wenige Produkte im Produktbereich.” I translated it into English as something like, “The store is very narrow, the products are difficult to grasp, and with the narrow space there are only a few products in the product range.” My concern here is on the first five words: I originally was confident that “Der Laden ist sehr eng” should be translated as “The shop is very limited” (i.e. limited product range), before I read the rest of the sentence with the right level of attentiveness and realised that it really should be translated as “The store is very narrow” (its corridors, anyway). You can only imagine how surprised as I was when I discovered that a literal translation was the better option here.

Context issues can also become apparent in the scope of one’s own knowledge of but a single language – is there a difference between “continuously” and “continually”, such as I wondered in a recent project (I was wondering how best to translate German “kontinuierlich”)? It’s just that I got to thinking that maybe – maybe – “continuously” is strictly “supposed” to mean “on and on” while “continually” is strictly “supposed” to mean “something carrying on from what it has been in the past.”

If something has what is agreed as a context, then it is something that one can get engrossed in like it’s an adventure. One may gain opinions as to its content (which are not necessarily wholly based on that content) which may be incorrect but not unintelligent or biased – as if they were destined to gain such opinions. And even incorrect opinions may prove enlightening in the long run. For the time being, I can only agree that the existence of context is indeed likely to be accepted by any individual whether their imagination patterns are more likely to be helpful or more likely to be hindering when they are doing translation.

Is it just me or does the average person but wait to have their average opinion or viewpoint in connection with a context validated by someone or something else somehow / by chance (which is by no means unlikely indefinite)? But for the time being, it’s a realm of conversation which I fully believe can only be discussed with an inner fortitude kind of confidence, and we all know how elusive that can be. And that’s the context game.