TRANSLATION WORK: ONLY REFLECTION OF THE REAL CONTENT WILL DO (WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO POLICE OFFICERS EVERYWHERE)

This is the latest blog I have posted as a self-employed professional translator with the aim of promoting myself. I believe that its title alone is enough to explain what it’s about. Without further ado, my first point here is elaborated thus…

There’s a joke on the Internet which has become quite popular which outlines the difference between a British police officer, an Australian one and an American one. It starts off like this:

“Ask them the following question:
You’re walking down a deserted street with your wife and two small children.
Suddenly, a dangerous looking man with a huge knife comes around the corner, locks eyes with you, screams obscenities, raises the knife, and charges.
You are carrying a Glock .40, and you are an expert shot.
You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family. What do you do?”

Their answers:
British police officer’s answer:
Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
Does the man look poor or oppressed?
Have I ever done anything to him that could be interpreted as legitimate provocation for him to attack me?
Does he know me? Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity? Even if he doesn’t know me, is it possible I could talk to him and reason with him?
Could we run away?
What does my wife think?
What about the kids?
Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
What does the law say about this situation?
Does the Glock have appropriate safety built into it?
Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
Should I call 999?
If I raise my gun to scare him off and he turns to run away, do I get blamed if he falls over, breaks his neck from the fall and ends up dead?
If I shoot him, and lose the court case, could I be sued and lose my job, my credibility and the family home?

Australian police officer’s answer:
BANG!

American police officer’s answer:
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! “click”….
Daughter: “Nice grouping, Dad! Were those the Winchester Silver Tips?”

Remember how it starts off – it seems that the author of the joke forgot that the setting was not one of the dangerous incident in question actually taking place; it was just a willingness to ask the police officers of each nationality this question. And after all, it’s perfectly possible for an American police officer to have one or more children who are all boys – no daughters. I say that to say this: their attention was obviously, for whatever reason, diverted as to the setting of the content of the joke… but they never knew it – but how embarrassing would it be for a professional translator if someone essentially pointed out that they had done the same sort of thing in a piece of translation work that they had been doing?

That said, what encouraged me to do what I say I did in the following paragraph?

Recently I have watched Youtube videos of clips from the PS4 game Watch Dogs 2, in which you get to engage in hacking exploits in a fictional setting for your entertainment (the game is for adults only). In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BzE7mJy_0g we see some kid playing some MMORPG on his computer – note that he says “Do you want to get swatted?” to someone at 1:26. Now, everyone knows that people swat flies all the time; so I gather that it’s easy to conclude that he essentially meant to swat them down like a fly (in a poetic / metaphorical kind of way) i.e. “Do you want me to vanquish you, and in a really big way?” Now, I apologise to any Americans made upset by what I’m about to say here. In America you get SWAT teams (Special Weapons And Tactics), who are basically part of American law enforcement except that they are armed with more than just pistols. There’s a good chance you’ve seen them in outlandish Hollywood action movies. But, as the game Watch Dogs 2 is set in America and this guy in the video at his computer is American, I just found myself basically wondering: “You know, this guy’s American – given the existence of SWAT teams in America, and given what people of his ilk are like, when he uses the expression ‘get swatted’, could that actually have some sort of reference to SWAT teams and what they do? Maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t actually quite mean like, ‘I will swat you down like a fly, vanquish you in a big and conspicuous way’?”. You could say that he is essentially saying “I will own you” (if not in the context of the game that is being played by the guy you see and the guy he is temporarily talking to), if you’re familiar with that expression. Well, apparently, I was right. If you look up “swatter” on Urban Dictionary you see that it means someone who pranks a fellow online gamer by making a false report to the police of some very serious fictitious ugly emergency taking place at their address, that’s supposed to compel the police to raid their home indiscreetly i.e. burst in with shotguns or MP5s or whatever and yell “Freeze! Down on the ground!” in the well-known American way. Apparently, from what I’ve seen, it’s not enough to say that this action is likely to result in vexation to the victim; some say that it is possible to watch it happen to them as it takes place, through the camera on their computer. I mean, I’ve got a camera installed on my laptop, located above the screen. But can you believe the mentality of these people? Anyway, the fact here is that I thought “swatting” could mean something other than just basically “vanquishing someone in a big way”, generally speaking; like, I thought it just possibly could have had some possible overt reference to American SWAT teams for some reason… and, following a bit of research, I was proven right!

Also, when people speak of Generation Snowflake, do you think that label started with the Tyler Durden quote, “You are not ‘special’. You are not a unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else” in Fight Club?

I merely wish to say that I think that these are stories worth bringing up whenever you feel like discussing what separates true professional translators, like me, from pretentious wannabe ones. For I am keen and proud to explore far more than theories pertinent to the subject of language-related intricacies for the sake of providing the quality translation work that my customers expect and deserve – and discuss it. I’ve been doing this job for eight and a half years now – could you really suggest that I owe it purely to outrageous fortune or flair I have failed to properly acknowledge and appreciate all this time or something like that? Well, I may not know who you are or what you do but…

I don’t think so!

And that’s that. End of blog. Thank you for reading.