Am i a typical translator

JUST BECAUSE I DO WHAT A “TYPICAL” TRANSLATOR DOES – DOES THAT MAKE ME A “TYPICAL” TRANSLATOR AND NOTHING BUT? THIS MIGHT BE HARD TO UNDERSTAND BUT… I JUST WOULDN’T WANT TO BE THOUGHT OF AS A TYPICAL TRANSLATOR – AND THIS IS COMING FROM SOMEONE WHO IS NOT AWARE OF ANY PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATOR STEREOTYPES…

I’m confident that I won’t look as if I live in a bubble when I say what I’m about to say… as far as I can see it, few people if anyone would dispute that being a translator requires a unique blend of words-related understanding and imagination which can be as interesting as it obscure. If anyone asks, it’s just what I do – and I won’t delay putting forward my latest few work-related “anecdotes” (as I have defined them in earlier comments on here) for the purpose of discussing it:

All these so-called “work-related anecdotes” of mine in this comment refer to one particular translation project I did during the working week 11-15 November: an IV (medical device) instruction manual from German to English. One quote from the original in the same is “Beim Verbinden der Vorratsbehälter” and I don’t think I got terminology in the English version egregiously wrong when I translated it as “When connecting the storage container”. But I think it’s worth pointing out that, in the production of my first draft of the translation, I didn’t always include the word “storage” when I wrote down “container”, and I’ll tell you why. In my eyes, when you read “storage container” as opposed to just “container”, it’s somewhat easy to get misled and think that reference is being made to an ongoing medical process that the device is used for, rather than just the “setting up” of the device; while it is easy for one to suggest that anyone could be trusted to do the latter if not the former. For the word “storage” could give the impression that the container is always actually containing something whenever one specifically reads “storage container” (which is “storing” some kind of fluid used in an important medical process); but it’s not unheard of for someone to install an empty container as part of the installation of something, where its function is not so much the containing / storage of something (so that that thing may be used and benefited from) as it is the receiving of something (like toxic waste management). Or is that just me? Then again, when you prepare an IV for use, a key task of it is applying a bag containing something in the right way – and I do mean prepare it as in setting it up for an actual medical operation, as opposed to just locating it in the hospital where it is right there ready to use when necessary.

I remember seeing “entlüften” in the original and originally translating it as “ventilate”. Looking back, I find it hard to believe that I was using the word “ventilate” as meaning “allowing air to escape from something”; up to then, if I ever found myself using the word “ventilate” at all I think it would otherwise always or nearly always suggest “to allow for the provision of air to something” i.e. to provide it with oxygen or as a cooling means, so that it wouldn’t melt or explode.

There was also a bit in the original which described what process should be followed when administering a given treatment process / cure to a patient being treated with an IV (NB for some reason, the word for “treatment process” / “cure” in the original was “Herstellung”, a word which normally means “production” / “manufacturing” – let’s just say that I can claim all credit for seeing the truth in that one in the scope of this translation project). This to-be-followed process included the registration of certain details: the amount of fluid to be administered to the patient and the required time intervals, if anything. I never learned at school that Germans use the word “Eingabe” (which normally means input / feed / insertion) to mean “details” in this way, but then again, how could I have expected to?

But there is one thing that really threw me: I saw the word “Aufschaltung” in the original, but according to various online sources that word can translate as “installation”, “disconnection”, “implementation” or “intrusion”. How do you explain that? I probably could (after time, during which I conducted some close research and thought about it a lot), but certainly not off the top of my head, if you know what I mean. The harsh truth is that only committed acuity could possibly help me there.

Of course, the “unique blend of words-related understanding and imagination which can be as interesting as it obscure” doesn’t just apply to these “work-related anecdotes”. Outside of the project indicated above, I’ve often noted that native German speakers sometimes use “Auftraggeber” (which translates literally as “order giver / provider”) for “client”, rather than “Kunde” (at least, certainly in contracts, when they are listing the parties recognised in contracts). I have also found myself postulating that, for me, there is a difference between “various projects” and “diverse projects”, whereby “various projects” always pertains to more than one project (which usually have their differences) while “diverse projects” can mean one or more projects which are “diverse” in that they have multiple aims, or are pertinent to various matters which may well have nothing in common… you get the idea, right? I wonder if the English verb “beware” only exists because of the phrase “be aware”, even though people don’t always use “be aware” in connection with something that is to be recognised as risky or threatening, like they do with “beware”? The dance / gymnastics move called the splits is called “le grand écart” (“the big split”) in French, but I’ve only known that for about a week ever since I looked it up in my trusty dictionary, which can be relied on to provide not just translations of individual words, but also translations of commonly used short phrases in which these words appear (Hachette-Oxford) – just before I did look it up, I found myself saying to myself: what if someone were to ask me, “George, what does ‘splits’ mean in French?” and I had a little think about it before deciding that “les jambes 180ées” was the best de facto French expression I could come up with – it’s my opinion that that French expression’s meaning is clear, convincing and self-explanatory enough even if it’s not official. Having said that: in the comedy Thin Blue Line (which has Rowan Atkinson in it), where Inspector Grimm (David Haig) uses the expression “fannying about”, there’s no disputing what is supposed to be understood by it even if it is not an “official” term; but what do you call expressions like that?

I might ask someone how often they “use synonyms”, but I should (and do) appreciate that people can be prone to using alternative words which otherwise mean the same thing depending on what a given word in question is referring to and / or what the speaker has on their mind / what they are feeling at the time they use any expression for which they know that there are synonyms which they are familiar with. That said, some synonyms of certain words are not readily thought of as synonyms as such, even if it possible to identify similarities in meaning without trying. For example, look up the word “abstruse” on Google and, right at the top, it gives you a list of synonyms for it and one of them is very easy to consider a synonym of “abstruse”: “obscure”. I was familiar with the word “abstruse” beforehand and when I did look it up on Google in this way I thought of it as meaning “the opposite of straightforward”, and I would only use it when referring to concepts, never objects. And yet, whether it’s the result of human effort or the output of anything automatic, you also see Google listing the following words as synonyms of “abstruse” which might surprise you: “unfathomable”, “impenetrable”, and “hard” among other things. Or click on “arcane”, for example, and the Google definition of it is: “understood by few; mysterious or secret”, but I don’t think something has to rigidly have any element of secrecy about it to be “abstruse”, by a long shot (and we see “hidden” as a synonym for “arcane”, and “hidden” doesn’t pass for a synonym of “abstruse” in my book!). And the synonyms that Google lists for “abstruse” include the universally common words “hard” and “difficult” – I wasn’t expecting that. But what more strikes me here is that “unfathomable” usually means something that would simply leave anyone in awe (or otherwise faze them) purely as a result of how much of a given adjective it is – unthinkably such. And, to my sensibilities, “impenetrable” basically means “so well fortified / tough that it cannot be broken through”, and that is a fair distance away from the true meaning of “abstruse” or “obscure”, isn’t it?

Finally, you know how people who have English as their mother tongue always say the somewhat cliché expression “never mind”? It’s just that I have imagined a foreigner who speaks good English seeing one person with English as their mother tongue saying it to another one whereupon the foreigner thinks that the first one is accusing the second one of contemptuous ignorance i.e. the notion: “That’s always your attitude, isn’t it? ‘Never mind’! You just don’t care about anyone but yourself!”