MORE THINKING ABOUT MACHINE TRANSLATION TOOLS AND WHAT THEY MEAN BOTH TO THE TRANSLATION INDUSTRY AND TO ME PERSONLLY – WHEN IS “MAKING SENSE” NOT ACTUALLY “MAKING SENSE”?
As certain people continue to boast inventions of this or that translation tool or updates thereof (or maybe certain things that they have achieved with this or that translation tool), I wonder: can pretentious translators be hypnotised into believing (i.e. hypnotise themselves into believing) that it’s possible to formulate any reliable translation strategies (however straightforward or convoluted) from translating in a way where they are hopelessly dependent on machine translators?
I must state here that, however easily some people may be seduced by the option of using machine translators to get their translation work done, I believe that no-one could be ignorant enough (if “ignorant” is the right word) to at least begin to realise their own limitations with their translation skills / ability when they’ve been doing it for even a fraction as long as I’ve been doing it professionally (nearly six years now). Are such limitations usually the same or similar? I’m going to discuss / refer to people’s limitations with their translation skills, and their awareness thereof, before I mention anything about machine translation tools. Starting with: the translation equivalent of writer’s block.
Writer’s block is something a lot of people are familiar with: it happens when, as someone is writing something, whatever good reasons they may have to be confident about the EXISTING content (and, depending on the case, the existing spirit) of what they are writing, they just get stuck with regard to how to put forth something important (which is usually subtle); it’s like a drop in “creative libido”. Translators too may experience a drop in creative libido – it happens to me sometimes, when, as I am reading the French or German original of a text that I am translating into English… the reasonable and stable grasp of the intended message is there but the question of how best to put it into English tends to leave me frustrated, especially when I know that my own grasp of English is not to be trifled with. And as I wrestle somewhat in vain with the material at hand, I turn to certain online sources for suggestions, but never without wondering what solutions (or preludes to solutions) other people would suggest whether they were translators or not. I’m going to be very honest here. I struggle to find a way to put this that doesn’t sound vague, but… I can sort of believe that, when I do translation work, I am prone to making the mistake of focussing too much on the “translating out” bit (the message extraction bit) and focussing too little on the “translating in” bit (the message recreation bit), as literate as I am.
It’s hard for me sometimes – I know I have very good reasons to love myself, yet it’s sometimes so easy for me to despise my own mind for what it is. If that is not a good reason for me to claim that I know what it’s like to be insane, I would love to know what does constitute a good basis for knowing what it’s like to be insane.
But then, I’ve heard of the saying “You’re limited only by your imagination.” It would be easy enough for me to make arrangements to learn new French and German vocabulary on a regular basis, but how much would that really do? Who knows how many totally random French and German words I’ve come across (especially when I was learning French and German back at school) and am still able to remember, which I could never seriously expect to come across in any professional translation job I do. Like “sanglier”, which is French for “boar”, or “Rettich” which is German for “radish”.
But, in my own defence, I always try to allow for consideration of the following things in my own translation style, however poorly defined it may be in reality: the issue of getting more prescriptive terminology right; and how to write in a certain style, by which I mean a style that is more oriented toward a given industry rather than a sociolinguistics kind of style (like, the Queen’s English, slang and swear words are very prominent examples of the subject of sociolinguistics). The thing is, I have made it clear in the past on here that I must get round to mastering LinkedIn proper sooner rather than later (you can visit my LinkedIn profile as it is now right here http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/george-trail/15/5b4/585 ) and there is one conclusion I arrive at time and time again: maybe if I interacted more with other people – by this I mean in the scope of my working life first and foremost, but some might also find it easy to argue that my social life in my private life is also bleak to say the least – I would be a lot more in touch with all these “industry styles” that some people are or seem so insistent on when certain kinds of creative endeavours are undertaken.
Sometimes it really does seem that it is not enough to make sense, and to be intent on making sense. I mean, any individual knows how to be a PERSON who doesn’t make sense, which explains why my dentist is a lesbian with an allergy to cinnamon and why the last Norwegian person I met once had a dream in which he saw Britney Spears doing a parachute jump from the top of the Eiffel Tower wearing stiletto heels. Yes, that doesn’t make sense at all in the scope of ISOLATED INTERPRETATION THEORY, but for the purpose of elaborating the point I made in the first sentence of this paragraph that is also a statement (all of the sentence, constituting a single point) which does make sense. Also, while you could say that this South Park clip
is funny because it makes absolutely no sense, it also “does make sense” because Johnnie states quite correctly (not to mention confidently and assertively) that he is not making any sense, and thus you see its effectiveness as a joke. And to consider the difference between a person who’s not making sense when they speak (be this intentional or accidental) and mere statements that don’t make sense (which can never be intentional or accidental by their own intent), is often important, especially in translation. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
But I don’t write this comment solely with the intention of stating the obvious – that would just not make sense. Knowledge can be a dangerous thing in the hands of the ignorant, and anyone who seriously regards themselves as not ignorant – however modestly – should consider how easy it is for a person to make a statement that is nonsensical even though they may be intent on making sense AS A PERSON, which is not necessarily grounded in that person claiming or believing that they have a knowledge of something which they simply don’t. (Although it may well have something to do with that person having a knowledge of that thing which is a product of delusion.) Admittedly, I would probably have a far better sense of that subject if I engaged in conversation more than I did. Thus you see that an unwavering approach to writing something (anything) that could pass for perfunctory in anyone’s eyes when undertaking translation work, can be a curse if you’re aiming high in the translation game.
Hence you get all these stories on online translation forums like ProZ.com and elsewhere of people who call themselves translators but all they do is chuck the material to be translated through Google Translate or Babelfish or whatever; they actually don’t seem to think it matters that they’re not willing to apply any kind of sincere or innovative critique of their own, “but at least we can tidy things up if we have to, and that’s the main thing”. And no, they don’t always actually tidy things up when they should, so to speak. They may claim that they only use these translation tools “for ideas”, as if they were suffering from a drop in creative libido such as I mentioned in the first paragraph, but they don’t seem to care about the fact that what they do is essentially give more respect and credence to the (often so-called) solutions offered by machine translation tools than they do to their own (real or potential) solutions!
I mentioned Noam Chomsky in my last comment on here, and just like in that comment I argue here that translation is rather different today compared to what it was back he was my age, the main factors behind this being the Internet and the advent of digital communication, and machine translation tools. But even machine translation software is today at a level that just goes over the heads of most people today. The oldest machine translation tools establish all their translation solutions based purely on their own particular bilingual dictionary file memory, using certain complex algorithms as far as the grammatical aspects are concerned. But modern translation software is designed to have the accuracy of its solutions upheld by the ongoing debate and consensus of its users – you have to have a licence to use Trados or MemoQ, but you don’t need a licence to use Babelfish or Google Translate. Meanwhile, Google Translate is a prime example of a piece of translation software engineered to have the credibility of its translation solutions enhanced by general material on the Web, which is made possible by the fact that it is actually connected to the Web as a whole. Even I am in awe at how far we’ve come since the days when translators had nothing to turn to but bilingual dictionaries whose thickness is at least that of the height of an ashtray.
I am of course determined to do whatever necessary to keep up. And I realise that, however much is said about “translating well” or “translating properly”, much, much less is said about “translating convincingly” or “translating persuasively”. I am certainly literate enough in English and the languages I translate from and that’s important. But it does seem to me that relatively few translators are even capable of considering their skills at writing stuff which people can just read with a confidence that they take for granted. Having said that, though, it’s very clear right here that I have had plenty of experience trying to be “convincing” and “persuasive” with my business blog writing record. As I’ve said before, I don’t just write any old fatuous stuff that most people (especially if they don’t do what I do) will not be able to get an easy grip on and therefore be likely only to “half-read” it (you know what “half-listening” is, right?) – anything which is essentially like, “Today I did a translation for this customer – what do you think of that?” or “I decided to try this today and the prospect of it all makes me excited because blah blah blah blah blah.”
To conclude, I believe that I am on the verge of becoming a true master translator in every sense of the word. Watch this space…