So I recently completed a German-to-English translation job comprising of numerous articles
about a Nazi concentration camp somewhere in Germany. May what I say here be understood
as a depiction of an example.
When I started doing this job, as far as I’m concerned – with all due respect – I shouldn’t
have been expected to acknowledge from the outset that it sure looked like material that was
to be put up for display in a museum (not least because the project manager of the company
in question didn’t inform me as such; but who am I to judge?). That conclusion I only arrived
at later on, as I did the work…
What I mean to say here is that, when I first got on with it, I realised soon enough that I was
expected to provide some translation of “Tafel” – a credible one; even if it might be
questionable; and a word which, at school, I was taught meant “blackboard”. And, for what
it’s worth, it is definitely true that “Tafel” means “blackboard” – as Google Translate will
confirm – but it is also true that this is not the only translation of it – again, as Google
Translate will confirm.
But, for the sake of playing the good professional, I accepted from the outset that I needed to
have my brain “truly switched on” as I did this project. And that, I insist, is the only reason I
could ever even write this article at all, and the only reason I can say here, in all candour, that
I was wondering: how should “Tafel” really be translated in this case?
You see, at the start I was toying with the idea that “Tafel” should be taken in the sense of
“slide” – as in a PDF presentation – in this case. Truth be told, as my work on this project
progressed I became less and less convinced by this otherwise unmentioned idea.
But, whatever people may say about my work in this job, there’s just no escaping the fact that
I didn’t know any details of the “intended situation”, if you like, on the part of the client with
the translation product that I was expected to produce (and I did) – and how could I have
been expected to (unless I had actually been briefed as such by the project manager of the
translation agency who gave me this project; much as I understand that they could only hope
to know such information if the end client just told them it from the start)?
And so it was when I left a comment amidst my translation output for this job asking them to
“verify” the correct translation of “Tafel” in this work. They were saying, “You should
know!” while my argument was “Only the client knows for sure under what circumstances
this material is to be used [supposedly] so let them decide from the list of suggestions that I
have given! Should it be ‘slide’ or ‘board’ or something else like ‘board’ but a more nuanced
term?”
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