A BLOG DEVOTED SOLELY TO THE TOPIC OF QUALITY IN TRANSLATION
What is meant by the question contained in the title of this blog? Well, if we are to discuss “quality” in translation in work, what values and standards and concepts do we use as benchmarks? How do we improve the quality of our translation work, or teach someone how to do this?
It’s not like I’ve never discussed the importance of articulateness / literacy in the topic, the practice of translation. And I’m not at all surprised that clients demand “quality” in translation work. I do too, and I can say that because I’ve been a self-employed translator for eight years now. And even now, for all my attempts at innovation and determination to come across as intelligent, it’s not always easy, but what can I do? Or maybe I should be saying “That’s life.”
I have limits to my ability and understanding, but I insist most sincerely that I try to overcome them. Which brings me to the next paragraph.
The comedian Catherine Tate’s character Lauren Cooper, a poorly educated Chav-like teenage girl, is popular because she makes comedy of what might be termed excessive dismissive tendencies. This is what Lauren shows with her catchphrase “Am I bothered?” and it’s what is often seen in those who have a habit of saying “Whatever” in response to something someone else has said. In the Lauren Cooper skits, while she’s not truly aggressive or antisocial, Lauren is sometimes admonished for being rude by other characters for her flippant and irrelevant inanities which tend to make an undeserved mockery of her peers and / or the situation she is in at the time, but I have to admit that even I, for someone who’s supposed to be well-educated, am sometimes amused by them. There is one skit where she’s in a classroom and she has a new English teacher played by a famous actor who has played Doctor Who. She just has to ask him “are you the doctor?” even though (from her perspective) everyone knows he is not Doctor Who but her English teacher. And when she says, “Did you park the Tardis on a meter?”, that amused me because of the idea of the Tardis actually being on a meter and inevitably getting people’s attention as they walk past; I liked that one. (By the way, for the sake of my own dignity here: at the end of this skit, Lauren’s English teacher does get his thingy out which Dr. Who uses – whatever it’s called, I don’t watch Dr. Who myself – which he uses to turn Lauren into a doll-size figure to stop her interrupting, and the audience like that as much as they like Lauren’s fatuous comments that her English teacher finds so unwelcome. Good one, mate.)
Let me get one thing clear: nobody likes the idea of being clever but only in a useless way, any more than they like the idea of being stupid. I mean, if you’re highly knowledgeable about rocket science, there’s no hope of applying it as part of a measure to cure someone of their drug addiction. And nobody’s going to be impressed with anyone who boasts about how much they know about quantum physics when there’s a rape victim to console. Now, lots of people have written online articles about the various kinds of scams to be on your guard against in the modern world, and how to spot them. They say, “Remember the saying: ‘If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.’” They say that scammers aim to generate strong feelings (usually fear or sympathy) in the victim and proceed to use it against them as the first step in a plot to steal someone else’s money. If we’re serious about wanting to avoid being scam victims, and if we’re serious about being honest with ourselves as well as others (and not arrogant), the following concept is likely a good starting point in just about any occasion: ask yourself not what you know, but what you don’t know. I know I’ve talked about the robots in the film I, Robot in another of my blogs – could they “think” like this? You know, the magazine New Scientist has apparently written on “Your hallucinating brain – how our minds invent the reality around us”. So I’m obviously not the only one to touch on this… unusual? …kind of thinking. But whatever adjectives you use to describe it, however much it is to be described, it is surely to be applied more. That’s what I think.
Let’s look at an example. Who hasn’t received scam emails like this one?
“Attention: Beneficiary
by:
Bank of America (officea12@deptofficesstp.cn.tn)
date:
01/20/2016 21:47
to:
Recipients (officea12@deptofficesstp.cn.tn)
5218 West 34Th St
Houston, TX 77092,
united States
WELCOME TO BANK OF AMERICA
Attention: Beneficiary,
This is to alert you that we received your fund worth the sum $ 27,000,000.00 from the Central Bank of Nigeria Africa. We are informing you to send your information and banking details where you desire to receive the fund. The Information’s we need is such as the following:
1 Your Full Name:
2. Your Current Address:
4. Your telephone numbers
5. Banking details
6. Scan copy of your valid ID card
Without your id card your fund can not be transfer into your bank account. Your Id card is very vital.
Waiting for your urgent respond. Thanks for the patronage
Bank of America
President Brian Moynihan (CEO)”
I’m sorry, I just had to insert it here. They tend to be amusing, and not just because of the often poor English (“Waiting for your urgent respond.”?). And the only thing that really matters is the bait: the claim regarding a massive sum of money – how hopeful do you think these guys really are about fabricating a halfway decent clear background story out of the blue that people will actually believe? In this case, $27,000,000 is simply a huge sum of money, even to the Dragons in Dragons’ Den when you think about it. Most people don’t earn anywhere near even a quarter that much in their whole life, and this is a case of someone (a stranger, no less) claiming that they’re ready to send someone THAT much without a word of discussion or deliberation with you, the intended recipient (sic), pending. I know enough about the Nigerian scam that they often claim that there’s a deceased distant relative of yours who’s left you a ridiculously high amount of money in their will, but this email makes no mention of who this relative is in your case (but that’s only to be expected, of course). The email addresses at the top are clearly not even American even though the email purports to be from the Bank of America. It’s sad yet funny, but I’ve said enough (and I don’t want to encourage people to attempt scams by pointing out the reasons why this particular email is a big scam failure).
Sometimes I wonder how often people who fall victim to scams like this don’t and never do realise that they have actually been scammed – such is my “outside the box cleverness” (I hope). But this blog isn’t about scams. It’s about translation theory and practice, and ultimately the provision of reasons why I really am a best choice as a professional translator for hire, just like all the other blogs on here. Which brings me to the idea of my clients’ demand for quality. If there’s anything I care about doing with “quality” – much as that tends to be a vague and abstract concept – it’s my translation work. And I do this even if my customers “don’t really expect quality”, much less have a focus on what “translation quality” actually is and means, and how to ensure it; the very topic of this particular blog. I would agree that Chavs aren’t bothered about “quality” in the products and services they buy with their money: it is well-known that a lot of them wear tracksuits from JD Sports, drink cheap cider (probably from Lidl) and simply don’t have the taste even to be interested in eating anything other than tinned food, microwave meals and pot noodles. But I’m not too ignorant to realise that I owe it to my customers to produce quality translation work whether they peruse what I do or not – it always makes me proud when I get a zing of confidence in what I write as a translation of a given sentence or phrase – especially when I agree that the confidence would actually be there in the customers themselves if and when they read it; but what they do with what I write for them is their business, not mine.
Does this concept parallel this subject matter? I think it does. When I’m driving my car, I’m often made to slow down and stop, not go any further, purely as a result of a car that happens to be in front of me. Of course I recognise an automobile when I see one, but when I slow down and stop like this I don’t stop and see the automobile as an automobile; it just drives me to slow down and stop – without even looking at my brake / handbrake – as though I were programmed. Even though I drive well enough, given that I have succumbed to the tendency to dismiss the vehicle in front of me as anything but the thing which happens to be there which forces me to stop and slow down, it’s not like I’m truly AWARE. I only “see” it for what I want to see it as – what it means (just for a moment) in my own life – and I dismiss it just as quickly.
I think a lot of people are familiar with the idea of a scenario involving tricky translation / interpretation, and ardently wishing they had a “real translator”, like me, on hand to clarify things, make them less confusing, whether or not anyone says as such. It’s especially likely that the plot will be lost if many people try to make their own points or suggestions at once. One of my favourite scenes in the film Corky Romano is the translator scene, where the character Corky (played by Chris Kattan), while pretending to work for the FBI, is expected to act as an interpreter between a Vietnamese man and a Thai man even though he doesn’t speak either language, a fact which he conceals from everyone else at the FBI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk_QnSwlbgk (I know it sounds silly, but you have to watch the film to understand it.) Anyway, you have to understand that Corky has no idea that the syllables he utters do actually comprise words in these foreign languages which the foreign men recognise – at least, the Vietnamese man does – even if they don’t make sense in any way, for reasons which definitely don’t need an explanation. Everyone in the scene soon ends up very confused and frustrated, for obvious reasons – even though it’s not exactly the same between any two of these people (except between the guys in the suits who are standing) – like, they will all have something to say which is indisputably true to us, the audience to whom subtitles are readily available, that none of the others will for the simple reason that it was not logically possible that they COULD have understood it – I don’t think it’s possible to explain truthfully the events that happen in this scene to anyone involved in it, or say anything that will make sense in the sense of clarifying anything or restoring confidence in connection with it, without having to go back to the beginning, right when the Vietnamese man said “Are you ready to begin?” And no, I don’t speak Vietnamese or Thai myself, but even if I could… I admit that there wasn’t much intelligent thought in the scripting of that movie scene, but still, it’s hilarious.
But when I am translating, I just can’t make my judgements, and my decisions, based on “From what I’ve seen…” or “Something tells me that…” And while I am very strict about being thorough in my work in that I “mark off” words in the original version of sentences as I am writing correct English versions of them which I and others can be confident about / comfortable with, maybe, even now, my biggest lesson in translation is yet to be learned.