APPEASING THE MORE ENTHUSIASTIC CRITICS OF MY TRANSLATION WORK
At some point in your life you may have heard someone say, or read somewhere, or even agreed amongst yourself, that “Sometimes ‘good enough’ is not good enough.” I definitely find that this applies in translation. Sometimes I’ve done a translation job for someone and later they got back to me saying that the quality was lacking somewhere – I insist that this is rare. Besides, when I undertake a translation project and send the translation over, I never submit the invoice straight away anyway, just in case something needs to be sorted out. And “sorting out” is usually a matter of “clarification” or “necessary discussion” of certain things that I have written rather than dealing with genuine mistakes i.e. things that I really should be ashamed of (which may or may not include typos).
Bearing in mind that I know very well that not everyone speaks the same way by far, and that choices of expressions are generally no less likely to have a subjective basis than an objective one: do you know what “lost in translation” really means? I have to make it clear that it seems that most people think of it only as sentences in a given language (usually their mother tongue) which they instantly agree are confusing and / or which make them think of something strange (or embarrassing, or even offensive) which is clearly not the intended message, but they know perfectly well that they were written by someone who is not a native speaker of the language. I look at it and seek to define it at more subtle levels. Every once in a while one becomes familiar with an article whose level of language reflects that it clearly was written by someone determined to do a “good” job (compared to a “passable” one) but which still fails in some respect; and to me this is a benchmark for defining the concept of “lost in translation” at these more subtle levels.
These days, when you look at how well connected the human race REALLY is, it’s easy for us to say that translation is definitely not just about replacing words with words (and know just how true it is even if you couldn’t elaborate / be any less vague about it at all). After all, everyone does it now. Whatever the case, sticking to the point is paramount if you want to be sure of doing good translation work. It could mean the difference between the recipient of the message being misled or not misled. I’ve recently been watching old episodes of Family Fortunes on Youtube; in one episode, one of the questions was, “[We asked 100 people to] name one of the disadvantages of owning a pet.” The answers in the survey included “being tied to the house”, “smells” and a few others. But there was one guy in one of the families who, when Les Dennis approached him for a possible answer to this question, said, “cleaning it out.” Right – “cleaning out the cage”, I guess. But when Les as the host announced, “cleaning it out?” and pointed to the answers board, that family lost a life and the audience laughed. Cleaning out the cage is certainly something you should do if you have a pet that is something like a gerbil, or a parrot or any other bird, or a snake. But how does one “clean out” a cat or a dog? “Cleaning (washing) a pet” would have made much more sense. But my point here is that the guy who gave the answer “cleaning it out” failed to stick to the point in that he failed to stick to the question, which was “name one of the disadvantages of owning a pet” and his answer effectively excluded certain types of pet. In translation work – certainly professional translation work – everything that you produce should not merely be “correct on surface level” in that it obeys all the rules of the target language and all that; everything you write should actually “fit in”, have a genuine place in the text considering its subject matter and intentions.
I think that, when I was learning how to do translation properly, I started by making sure that I always wrote sentences that were grammatically complete and correct (including checking for spelling and punctuation mistakes and obvious grammatical errors, of course). Then my writing started becoming more laconic as my writing style started turning from being fair to being what could justifiably be defined as of a clearly higher level.
At the end of the day, whatever I see written / hear spoken in English, I just know that I can read / hear it and say, “That looks / sounds like something I would (or could) write / say” or, “That does not look / sound like something I would (or could) write / say”, and so could anyone else. There are some styles of English that I would feel I could recreate at least reasonably easily, and some which I wouldn’t.
Take the kind of English that is used by less educated native English speakers, but who are not so uneducated that they write cringeworthy things like “I should of” or writing what’s supposed to be the abbreviation of “you are” as “your”. You can expect them to use things like quotation marks properly, but they are less familiar with more subtle things, like the comma splice. Now take the kind of English that is used by more educated foreign speakers who may make more spelling mistakes than native English speakers or say things like “I have gone” where a native speaker would say “I went” (this are but two examples) but they really do have a respectable command of it – they don’t usually write semi-incomprehensible gibberish like the things below. I believe that there is a difference.
Instructions with a Chinese toy:
“Avoid disturbing the other while enjoying this item.”
On a Soviet ship in the Black Sea:
“Helpsavering apparata in emerging behold many whistles! Associate the stringing apparata about the bosoms and meet behind. Flee then to the indifferent livesavering shippen obediencing the instructs of the vessel chef.”
At a hotel in Florence:
“Fire! It is what we can be doing, we hope. No fear. Not ourselves. Say quickly to all people coming up and down, everywhere, a prayer always is a clerk. He is assured of safety by expert men who are in the bar for telephone for the fighters of the fire come out.”
Ad for Japanese noodle bar:
“The noodles of a phantom with the resistance to the teeth of boast our shop. The exquisite rainy season which repeated trial and error was completed. Colourful red pepper of Asia. Domestic careful selection pork with little fat of female liking is used. It has healthy vegetables with salad feeling fully.”
I’ve known many foreigners whose command of English would never lead them to write anything like the things above. I’ve read plenty of comments written in English in the forums on the online translation portal ProZ which even I wouldn’t have guessed were not written by English native speakers. But I want to provide some examples of “the kind of English that is used by more educated foreign speakers…” as described above.
The first is a film subtitle which reads, “I am damn unsatisfied to be killed in this way.” I would re-write this as something like, “I hate having to be killed like this.” Wouldn’t you?
Earlier this year, someone who I think was from Sweden posted a translation job ad on ProZ.com, which was written in English. And one thing they said in it was, “If you are sure of your availability…”. I was able to confirm that what they meant was, “If you want to be a part of this project and can be sure of the days / hours when you will be available in the near future…” But it just seems to me that most native English speakers who read “If you are sure of your availability…” will “take it” as, “If you can be sure that you will be available and actually present when we contact you, and not prone to external things likely to be sources of distraction, should you express an interest in this project…”
These examples are taken from the manual of a computer game (Commandos 2: Men of Courage), in the character profiles section. I write what I read in the manual followed by how I would have written it as a native speaker of English.
What I read in the manual: “He can enter buildings through windows, and holes, once inside, opening doors with his tools and the keys that he has stolen from the Germans he found on his way.”
My re-write: “He can enter buildings through windows or holes and, once inside, open doors with his tools and keys stolen from Germans that he encounters on his way.”
What I read in the manual: “The materials he carries in his backpack are always delicate but heavy, this forces him to move slowly and can stop him from entering water in order to protect the sensitive products in his backpack.”
My re-write: “The materials he carries in his backpack are delicate but heavy and this means that he cannot move so quickly; in the interest of protecting the sensitive products in his backpack, he can’t enter water either.”
What I read in the manual: “He was sentenced by a military jury to 14 years hard labour after knocking out an official, superior in rank.”
My re-write: “He was sentenced by a military to 14 years’ hard labour after knocking out an officer of higher rank.”