LET’S TALK ABOUT REAL TRANSLATION WORK (WITH THE HELP OF EXAMPLES)
I saw this quote on the Financial Times website once: “You must take risks to learn languages” (Michael Skapinker). I don’t know about that, but I nevertheless find it easy to agree that one can easily get deluded as to how well one really knows a foreign language – this coming from someone whose job is a professional translator of all things! I’m sure I could learn a random new language if I really pared down – even a relatively little-used one like Korean or Greek or Hungarian or Swahili – but things are different now compared to when I was younger. You see, when I was younger I could count on spending some time learning French or German from a willing teacher in a classroom environment several times a week, and my main concerns didn’t really extend beyond the day’s lessons at all. But now that I am 33, I have a business to run and it’s all too often a question of finding time for anything I would fancy doing; and this means that there’s a bigger chance of getting distracted / having my thoughts scrambled. Even though I am proud of myself for how I manage today, still… it’s just sad sometimes.
Some will probably suggest that being able to translate well requires a certain kind of “gift”. Others will likely argue that it’s simply a matter of literacy and perception and – well – “listening” properly. Indeed, Italo Calvino said, “It is not the voice that tells the story, but the ear.” But I wrote this new blog as a reflection of how I am prepared to critique my own work as a self-employed translator, even if I am… unusually proud of myself at any given time I have any particular good idea when I am doing any given piece of translation work.
You know, have you ever known of a case of anyone translating their own work? Nabokov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Nabokov likened self-translation to “sorting through one’s own innards and then trying them on for size like a pair of gloves” (!) (Did he really write English prose despite the fact that his mother tongue was Russian? Wow. Good for him.)
Either way, put simply, I have plenty to say about it.
I think this is worth a look, for starters. I still have in my records a file I saved which includes a “translation test” for being accepted by a certain translation agency i.e. to do professional translation work for them. When I say “translation test” in inverted commas, it wasn’t really an exercise in translation at all: I was supposed to take nine separate English sentences and “make them make sense in my target language [i.e. English] so that they do not read like a translation from English” – I had no idea what language these sentences were originally translated from, but that would seem irrelevant here.
Here’s what I did with this:
One
“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.”
Reworked by me as: “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.”
Two
“Airport hotels are a practical and convenient solution to the problem of arriving back to the airport late at night or having to depart early in the morning.”
Reworked by me as: “If you arrive at an airport at a late hour, or you have an early flight in the morning, then you will surely appreciate the practical and convenient solution that is airport hotels.”
Three
“Is the Euro really like the Hotel California? Perhaps you can check out permanently, after all.”
Reworked by me as: “Is the Euro really like the Hotel California? It is possible that, all things considered, you might actually be able to check out permanently now.”
Four
“The hotel was founded in 1978, and the new West Wing opened in January 2009.”
Reworked by me as: “The hotel was founded in 1978, and the manager opened its new West Wing in January 2009.”
Five
“Running a resort hotel offers unique problems you can’t always foresee in advance.”
Reworked by me as: “When you are in charge of a resort hotel, you are sometimes confronted with unique problems which cannot always be foreseen.”
Six
“The school prepares students to plan and manage hotels in the international arena.”
Reworked by me as: “The school teaches its students hotel planning and management skills at an international level.”
Seven
“The hotel staff will go out of their way to make your stay with us memorable and we believe that you will leave us feeling that the combination of good value, service, and comfort is unequalled.”
Reworked by me as: “The hotel staff will go out of their way to make your stay with us a memorable one, and we believe that, when you leave, you will agree that you have enjoyed an unprecedented combination of good value, service and comfort.”
Eight
“Access for Disabled Guests: There are four steps at the front of the building—assistance with those is always available.”
Reworked by me as: “Access for Disabled Guests: There are four steps at the front of the building – we make sure that we are always able to provide assistance to those who need help with them.”
Nine
“As well as thanking the hotel staff, we’d like to thank Faye our florist and Orange Entertainments (who provided an excellent pianist, Geoff Hiscott, and magician, Jack Stevens and Sue and her great stationery).”
Reworked by me as: “We’d like to thank the following (in addition to the hotel staff): our florist, Faye, and Orange Entertainments (who provided an excellent pianist, Geoff Hiscott, a magician, Jack Stevens, and Sue, with her great stationery).”
Of course, I must not forget that when I do translation work, I must always be prepared to ask questions – which are by no means “typical” ones, of course – to do with the language I am translating from i.e. the foreign language, which is not my own. And that’s often a lot more challenging and complicated than asking myself questions about what I have ended up writing in my own language (as important as that is as well) – I’m sure that’s easy to imagine. Exactly how well one can do this will be the key determining factor of whether or not, during a translation job, they understand isolated concepts that are waiting to be understood… and can provide a working equivalent of it in the new language, the one they are translating into – usually the one that is supposed to be their native tongue.
Several months (nay a number of years) ago, when I used to translate a number of survey responses from French into English for someone in Hong Kong every week, I generally regarded it as “easy” work to translate – certainly for someone who is as qualified for it as I am, not to brag – although that didn’t mean that I never had to be prepared to deal with French text which had plenty of distinctly casual expressions and / or was only semi-literate in places, rather than being written in standard formal language which follows all the rules and conventions like this blog. For example, I once read “je trouve que le Nokia musique est top” in the original and I have it recorded that I just wondered: “is this music composed by Nokia staff (like ringtones), or the Nokia theme? Sorry, but there’s no hard and fast way to tell which it is from this offhand comment alone!” Another comment in the original in this work read “Sobriété du téléphone, puissant et fluide, Windows phone”; rather than translate “Sobriété” literally as “sobriety” or anything of the sort, I thought about it a bit and eventually decided on the word “reliable” instead; I made what I believed to be the more sensible choice of putting “A reliable phone which is powerful and fluid” (Windows phone)” as my translation of this bit. For the small comment “Très rapide et convivial”, the word “convivial” was not translated literally as “convivial”, hence my translation of that bit as “Very fast and user-friendly.” English speakers are a lot more likely to latch onto “user-friendly” compared to English “convivial”, after all. When I read “J’ai été conquis des les premières secondes d’utilisation” elsewhere: although I don’t actually have a record for what I wrote for that, I did make a note which indicated that I wondered whether the word “conquis” in that sentence was actually supposed to mean “conquered” in English i.e. “completely bowled over”, or “just” “won over” i.e. enough to be impressed, and likely “more so than I would have expected.”
And this, as an example, is what might be called “real French”, or “French French”. This is the French that French people actually use in practice, not exclusively bound by what some people (who speak French as a foreign language, like me) might think it “should be” based purely on the French they were once taught. This is not about one’s knowledge of “French” with a concern only for proper grammar and vocabulary that can be found in any bog-standard French-whatever bilingual dictionary; all I’m saying is that “French French” includes elements which are strictly – obviously – more likely to be used by those who speak French as their mother tongue compared to those who don’t, which are not necessary at the highest standards of the language that they are capable of. You might think I’m just talking about slang and swear words, but I’m not; it’s not even just idiomatic phrases like “it’s raining cats and dogs”, which would just always sound bizarre in any language other than English; it’s quite simply the whole realm of aspects of French which are not really taught but which have ended up used, habitually, by the masses of those who speak French as a foreign language up until the point where they have just bought into it. A case in point: “Il est probable que…” is often taken by native French speakers as “It is likely that…” rather than the more literal “It is [merely] probable that…”.
And yes, I am aware that you get the same thing in German, just in case you’re in any doubt. For example: I once translated “Tourengehen leicht(er) gemacht” as “Touring made (yet) easier” (the usual English translation of the German word “leicht” is “light”, but I just don’t “buy” “Touring made (yet) lighter”, do you?).
I’ll end this by bringing up one more angle it’s worth looking at this topic from. It’s three French sentences (in turn), followed by what I might once have translated them as, with discussion behind it, and then finally “What I have learned to translate it as.” Enjoy reading!
ONE
Original
“Leur activité est fortement dépendante de la disponibilité de cabosses améliorées, qui est irrégulière.”
What I might once have translated it as
“Their activity is strongly dependent on the availability of improved pods, which is irregular.”
(“Strongly dependent” does work, but I guess that sometimes it pays to use something other than the first words in English that spring to mind when dealing with certain words – see how I translate “fortement dépendante” below.)
What I have learned to translate it as
“Their activity depends a great deal on the availability of improved pods – something which is irregular.”
TWO
Original
“Quelques paysans utilisent les engrais, mais dans des proportions trop peu significatives pour qu’elles soient réellement efficacies.”
What I might once have translated it as
“Some farmers use fertilisers, but only in proportions that are not enough for them to be really efficient.”
(The word “proportions” seems redundant here – besides, the sentence is about fertilisers, but it’s not enough to say that. It highlights an issue revolving around fertilisers: the farmers – who are from the Ivory Coast – don’t use enough as they don’t have enough money to buy it in abundance.)
What I have learned to translate it as
“Some farmers use fertiliser, but not enough for it to be really efficient.”
THREE
Original
“Cependant dans ce domaine, les prix parfois meilleur marché dans les villages reflètent plutôt la mauvaise qualité des produits vendus aux paysans.”
What I might once have translated it as
“However, in this domain, the prices which are sometimes cheaper in village often reflect the poor quality of the products sold to the farmers.”
(Does this mean that the products sold to farmers are always of poor quality? While a valid sentence in English, it is still “off” and you soon agree that it deviates from the subject matter if you’re not prepared for it.)
What I have learned to translate it as
“However, in this domain, the prices which are sometimes cheaper in villages are often a sign that the products sold to the farmers are poor quality.”
Of course, this isn’t the only time I have put forward samples in my business blogs for the purpose of discussing “real translation”. Just to clarify: in earlier ones I frequently refer to them as “translation-related anecdotes”, if that makes sense.