MATCHING WORDS TO THEIR INTENDED MEANING WHEN REPRODUCING THEM IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE: UNSPOKEN “MIND-BASED DEVIATIONS”. INTERPRETATION SHAPES ALL KNOWLEDGE – BE PREPARED TO RECONSIDER WRITING WHAT YOU (BELIEVE YOU) KNOW.
I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that even the brightest of us can end up a bit confused, misled or shrouded in mystery over something we would otherwise confide in. And if you fail to “get the gist of” something that you read or hear, one may surmise that the reason behind it is that what you’re reading / hearing is a translation of something from another language that is defective in some way. I provide these examples – which I will discuss in more detail later on – there are different kinds of bags, and the attitudes of society and certain individuals have yielded different impressions of what “sexiness” is.
If you write a translation of something only to evidence a grasp of the content of the original that someone else claims to find “unusual” in at least a few places, maybe the truth is this: your written material may be 100% “correct” (note the quotation marks) in every respect, but your own interpretation of the original means that your understanding of its content – at least, how concisely you reflect it in your translation – is not what is intended. To carry on from what I said in the first paragraph: chances are that you’re also familiar with the scenario of someone insisting that someone else “just doesn’t understand” something that the latter person has heard or read somewhere. Whether or not an undertone of accusation should be acknowledged in any such case, it may be grounded in the fact that the former person does not agree that the latter person attributes to it the level of credence that is or “should be” attributed to it (even if they actually do!), possibly with the former person being somewhat emotional about it in some way; or it may be based on the former person agreeing that the latter person has a misunderstanding of the material resultant of logical fallacies or misguided conceptions which exist owing to circumstances beyond their understanding. Have you ever heard of the saying “It’s all in your head”? The most fascinating and exciting discoveries you’ll ever know in your life could be a lot closer than you realise… I mean, look up synonyms for words on Google. You may be somewhat surprised at the suggestions you’ll be provided with. For example, I Googled “parochial definition”, and while I see clear similarities between that word and the words “narrow” and “myopic”, I know that, normally when I use the word “intolerant” or the word “conventional”, it is not to indicate anything that I agree is “parochial”.
About my “examples” referenced in the first paragraph. When some people hear the word “bag”, they will most readily think “a white polythene contraption which supermarkets provide to carry your shopping in”, while others might more readily think “a chic items carrier, as in a sports ‘bag’ from Nike, Umbro, Adidas, whatever”. Or it may be something else entirely; I think we all understand. Meanwhile, without providing any specific examples, I also imply that formed impressions of what constitutes “sexiness” range from one having an appearance and certain sometimes grossly brazen yet ever provocative dispositions that make them carnally appealing and little if anything else, to the kind of confident yet quiet and masterful sensuousness that is about as far from the kind of antics of the more bizarre contestants in Big Brother as Pluto is from the sun, to those who prove themselves as winners while being “cute” even if they’re not “alphas” (it is indeed not necessarily always a question of what behaviours and attitudes one exhibits behind closed doors). It depends on the particulars of an individual’s lifestyle and experiences; and these are but two random examples.
Anyone can claim anything about anything while rejecting any ideas that they might be expected to back it up. But notice how much interest in a claim / “thing” tends to intensify when a person who makes a claim is asked to back it up. (Actually… it really isn’t always that hard to find some “reason” i.e. a reason you may or may not believe per se to back up a claim you intend to make; but that’s another subject.)
“So what’s your point?” I hear you say. What are you expecting us to understand when we read this stuff you’re saying?” OK – when you’re self-employed like I am, you realise more and more over time that the normal rules don’t apply to you, so to speak. And why should they, considering how much a self-employed person’s work activities are prone to shaping the very society we live in compared to the typical average Joe employee with a 9-to-5 job? And as a person who is their own boss, I say this: if you tend to be frustrated and angry all the time over the otherwise eager and passionate pursuit of something you know you should be happy with (and indeed know you have been very happy with in the past), you would do well to consider that what is dragging you down is not so much how complicated a given hurdle is, or the resources you have to overcome challenges, or even your competition; no, you may be limited by your own ignorance and parochiality first and foremost, because it could be responsible for you failing to understand things or overlooking them. To evaluate: it could very well make you afraid of how much is impeding you in your goals while being… well, ignorant of the actual facts. And no-one – no-one – likes to be ashamed of themselves, right? Because, whether you think you can live with it or not, your own ignorance and parochiality do make you what you are… And I know I’m not the only one who has ever agreed that this “ignorance” and “parochiality” can be debilitating; based on the mere existence of certain words, like “ruse” and “conspiracy”, “faux pas” and “equivocate”. But this isn’t about entrepreneur life; it’s about the art of translation. A person’s own limits in their translation ability may be grounded in the same.
Oh, and by the way, if anyone thinks I’m being foolish on the basis of the idea that I’m giving succour to my competitors by providing them with a basis for encouragement and inspiration, there are times when I have been one of multiple translators assigned by a translation agency to work on a really big translation project. After all, availability is very important, right? So for that reason, go ahead: feel free to spread what I’m saying to everyone you know who’s a translator. I believe I’m doing the entire industry a favour.
And now – as I have done before in earlier comments, no doubt, but I’m going to do it again anyway because it’s so important – I hereby furnish proof of how I am so not ignorant and parochial in language / linguistic / translation matters, as if you weren’t expecting it. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone that, when I was still studying foreign languages back in my full-time education years, there were times when I was expected to do translations into English when not instructed to form French and German sentences based on what I read, heard or observed. And I know as well as any other translator out there that literal translation tends to be unreliable and that there are times when words (or just parts of words) can have multiple meanings, and I certainly wouldn’t have to try too hard to provide an example of, say, a grammatical construction which exists in one language but not another.
So how does one really translate reliably and confidently? And how do people currently actually translate in general?
Hence, let me point out that, when someone resolves to do a translation, the things that they are most likely to take note of most readily include words which always have a single given meaning, and only a single given meaning. Even if they don’t realise it, they will never have to worry about unwittingly translating those words incorrectly as they apply their own method of making what they deem to be correct sense of the words and grammar in use in the source material – when they are able to justify their reasoning as required using whatever arguments, they are fully confident that they could never be misled into forgetting these unique meanings. Such words definitely include numbers: the words “one”, “two” and “three” in English only ever mean one thing, just as the French words “un”, “deux” and “trois” only mean one thing (although it should be mentioned that, in French, “un” is ever so frequently used as a singular indefinite article, making it effectively “one”; and sometimes “one” in English is used as a noun to designate an individual); and it’s similar with the words “eins”, “zwei” and “drei” in German. Other words with a single resolute meaning are things like “and” and “or”. But let me also highlight this as an example of something: note that, while “from” has a single resolute meaning in English, in French “de” can mean “from” or “of”; the same is true with “von” in German. Meanwhile, while “the” only ever has one meaning in English, in German, “die” can mean “the” or “which”. Concentration and shrewdness is everything (and I don’t think it should be too resolutely “typical” in nature). As far as I can tell, the words for numbers and common conjunctions and prepositions of a given language are pretty much definitely going to be among the most common words used by all of its speakers – whether they are mother-tongue speakers of the language or not; and thus you can see how likely it is that translating something too literally or directly could prove unhelpful at best and perilous at worst, even if the subject matter of the material is oh so basic, do you know what I mean?
A good example of this “oh so basic” material is these short hotel marketing pieces I’ve been doing recently i.e. translating them from German into English.
At one point in the original I read this:
German: “Die ganz in grün gehaltene Lounge”
English: To translate that into English literally would be to write “a lounge decorated entirely in green”. Can you imagine someone advertising that a hotel’s lounge is decorated entirely in green? Whether it would be like nice or not so nice, it does seem like a strange thing to read, do you know what I mean? But my developed knowledge of German – and English, for that matter – meant that I realised that I should have translated it as “a lounge whose décor is economically friendly” (hence the “green” bit), which I did. All I’m saying is that I know very well that I would never have been able to think of that as a young child, mainly because I was so largely ignorant of the topic of the protection of the environment back then – even if I was ready to support suggestions that the protection of the environment is important – and this would be especially true in the case of an oblique reference to the general concept of the protection of the environment like describing something as “green” (based on the idea of saving trees, of course).
I also read this in the original:
German: “Wählen Sie dieses verkehrsgünstig gelegene Hotel”
English: Again, to translate this into English literally would be to say, “Choose this traffic-favourable hotel”. Don’t you agree that that sounds like an odd, if otherwise quite legitimate, expression? Now, this is only speculation, but if I believe that, had I read that in English before doing the work in question, I would have thought that the message that it was attempting to convey was that the hotel had good parking facilities and maybe a good car protection service (and maybe this actually is the truth in reality, I don’t know); and not that this hotel is in fact a “conveniently situated” hotel owing to how close it is to major roads, hence it being “traffic-favourable” . The word “verkehrsgünstig” in the original does indeed mean “traffic-favourable”, yet when we talk about something being “conveniently situated” in English… well, at the end of the day, “conveniently situated” has just become an expression with a de facto meaning that that which is “conveniently situated” is close to major roads and what have you. I can understand it causing frustration because, while there is any number of things you can just resolve to learn and do so, such a fact is not like that, huh?
Another thing I came across in the original:
German: “Stärken Sie sich morgens am reichhaltigen Frühstücksbuffet für einen ereignisreichen Tag”
English: I translated this as, “In the morning, re-energise for an experience-filled day with the rich breakfast buffet” in the English version. Now, you know how I said at the beginning that this was all about hotel marketing? Well, I remember that when I was VERY little I could only link hotels to holidays, such as when my parents took me and my brother to Tenerife. Yes, it’s embarrassing… but what has that go to do with this? Well, it’s about the word “ereignisreich” in the original. “Experience-filled”, and the more literal translation “experience-rich”, are perfectly fitting translations of “ereignisreich”, but a reliable online source that is familiar with this word in German lists multiple English translations for it which include “busy”. Had I been able to speak German as well as I could today when I was that small, I know that I would never have translated “ereignisreich” as “busy” – my mentality back then would have meant that I could only have thought of “busy” as a “work / chore-related word”; but something like “experience-filled” is more suggestive of things like exciting adventure and therefore (by default, so to speak), fun. After all, the last thing that holidays are supposed to be about is work and chores, isn’t that right?
There was also this:
German: “Neben zahlreichen geschmackvoll eingerichteten Zimmern”
English: I translated this as “Besides several tastefully furnished rooms” even though a source suggested “decorated rooms”. I couldn’t help wondering: does “decorated” mean only the floor and wallpaper etc. or does it extend to the furniture and stuff as well? Once again, it all hinges on how I see, remember and interpret the world I live in.
Of course, these are among my latest translation work-related anecdotes that I have listed in my work-related blogs which illustrate the true importance of imagination and flexible thinking in translation. I continue them:
In the German version of a German-to-English translation project I did of some technical material, I read this “bei Mühlenstillstand”. I remember agreeing amongst myself that “inoperational” and “switched off” don’t necessarily mean the same thing, in that “inoperational” might signify that this machine (a mill, for “Mühle” means “mill”) is non-functional as in broken. …or, depending on the circumstances (context), this phrase could be describing what happens when you SWITCH such a machine from on to off, as opposed to outlining things that it is wise to know about when the machine is not running (or, indeed, “inoperational” as in “non-functional” i.e. broken) to begin with.
In another technical translation project I did, this one French to English, I read “D’abord utilisées pour le thermalisme, l’eau des sources est ensuite mise en bouteille”; I translated it as “Initially used for heating, the water from the sources then got bottled.” I remember eventually deciding on “heating” rather than “hydrotherapy” (which might have nothing to do with “using water for medical treatments”).
Then there’s the French-to-English project in which I read, “Au cas où l’adaptation souhaitée serait notifiée”, which I translated into English as “In the event that any desired adaptation is notified”… but what about “duly notified”? You know, is it supposed to be talking exclusively about adaptations that have actually been notified or adaptations that SHOULD be notified as per the rules in question? It’s my perspicacity for otherwise unasked questions like this that let me tackle translation work confidently. It is much the same thing in this example: does “supplied by a common ventilation system” mean that the ventilation system is the source or the delivery (transfer) means? And I suppose the German word “Lüftung” can mean “fan” or “ventilation system”.
I saw this content in the German original in a German-to-English translation project of something technical: “Verfahrens- und Qualitätskriterien” – …is there one procedure or more? Hence I translated it as “procedural and quality criteria”, using an adjective rather than a noun with the “procedure” bit.
Another thing I noted in a given German-to-English translation project of technical material: “Verratswahrscheinlichkeit“, used in connection with machines. The German word “Verrat” usually means like “betrayal” or “treachery”, but I guess that we’re supposed to understand it meaning “letting someone down” in this context.
About these questionnaire responses I have translated from French to English on multiple occasions. In the original of one such bit of work I read “Qualité photo tres moyenne” in the original, for which I put “The quality of the photos is but very fair” in the English translation – I thought it sounded better than just “is very fair”. Think about it.
In another French-to-English project I came across this: “L’offre de formations est une des plus diversifiées en Belgique avec notamment plus de 200 masters”… the “masters” bit meaning 200 Master’s degree courses, just in case you’re confused.
This German technical project included “Drehzahl” in the original material. A literal translation of this word would be “number of revolutions” (“Dreh” meaning “rotation / “turning” and “Zahl” meaning “number” / “count”). But I was knowledgeable and sagacious enough to translate it properly i.e. “rotation speed”. I agree that the notion of “rotation speed” is there in the two German words alone, waiting to be understood as such, if you know what I mean – just “indirectly”. Think of it as like “number of revolutions over a specified period of time.”
I also translated a German press release into English recently, whose content was an interview with someone; the original includes this quote: “Marina war begeistert von meiner performativen Fotografie”. When I read “begeistert”, I originally thought of putting “enthused” for it in the English translation… but what about “inspired”? Can “begeistert” mean “inspired”? People are lot more intensely attached to what inspires them compared to what enthuses them, you know? And if you’re wondering, I did decide on “inspired” in my translation of this word, writing, “Marina was inspired by my performative photography” as my translation of the sentence under discussion.
Finally, I’m currently doing a German-to-English translation project about a tender which includes these words: “Bei Abgabe des zweiten indikativen Angebotes”. How did I translate this in English? I originally went with a more literal translation (i.e. “during the submission of the second offer”) “for the time being” but I think I was astute to reason that “indikativ” is supposed to mean “draft” / “template” here.
In a nutshell, translation doesn’t have universal “rules” like a language does – but I can only support the idea that there are times when it is better to have the courage to adopt your own rules when you’re translating as opposed to choosing not to adopt any as if on principle.