Proficiency in translation

PROFICIENCY IN TRANSLATION: THE CHALLENGE OF LEARNING TO DISCARD THE IDEAS AND MENTAL INCLINATIONS THAT YOU HOLD DEAR (APPARENTLY)

Foreword: as I was writing this comment, I got to thinking that anyone who reads it would probably think that I “think too much”; but when it’s a matter of making a living on a self-employed basis, you could say that I’d rather think too much than too little (and, of course, “take” whatever’s coming my way as a result of this). Either way, it’s not a crime to want more appreciation, and it’s not a crime to want more power – if you’re serious about fair play – but I’d rather not let it change me in ways I couldn’t imagine before realising the same only too late, which could only happen as a result of the consequences; consequences which do not necessarily affect only me.

Foreword 2: an example of what I mean by the title is me translating something into English as “drafting of the overall plan”. For me it’s very easy to regard a “plan” in this sense as something outlined on a piece of paper or on a blackboard or something. That’s just the way I think, and there’s nothing wrong with that; but I found myself agreeing that I should realise that this “drafting an overall plan” does not necessarily involve a piece of paper or a blackboard or whatever in practice.

Sometimes we end up in situations where we would do well to realise that, by practically anyone’s standards, all bets are off when it comes to guessing what would be going through our mind or what conclusions we would arrive at (eventually)… but as long as we don’t arrive at a conclusion we can support with a workable argument it will only frustrate us indefinitely; and then it’s not long before it really does develop into an “all bets are off” situation. “What do you say?”, indeed; and you must know as well as I do that this doesn’t apply only to the question of what is the best way to reiterate something in a new language when you’re translating something (for this is a blog comment aimed at promoting me as a professional translator). So don’t you believe me when I say that I want to climb higher as a professional translator? Up to the highest echelons of the industry if possible? If I were ever told that I was officially the best translator in the world, I would be delighted, and as confident as I would ever need to be for however long I continue to do it. Well, wouldn’t I be? I do realise that, even for the activity of translation as a practice with a purpose i.e. the general concept of it in real terms, its industry has changed over the years, an example being the recent creation of CAT tools and even just the creation of the Internet; just another couple of cases of people eagerly putting forth their ideas to make things easier (in the domain of science). If you’re smart and determined enough, that is. Of course, I realise how likely this phenomenon in society as a whole is to push up standards, and however hard I was prepared to try to retain my position at the top of the heap in the world of translation if I ever somehow achieved it, it wouldn’t have any bearing on my wish not to want to appear complacent. That said, the bottom line can only be this: how smart and determined – nay, professional – am I in my job really?

I’ll be honest: I don’t really see myself as being at the top of the heap of the world of translation (at least not yet). Still, as someone who’s nothing less than a self-employed translator with seven years’ experience, there must be some things I have done which other people haven’t, and things I know which other people don’t, but that is surely the case vice versa as well. For example, while my professional translation motto is “communication needs the right words”, to me that just seems eclipsed by all of these mottos by other professional translators:

“uncommonly good sense” – Shotlander (on ProZ.com)
“Communication is all we have” – wlgener Waterford, Michigan USA (on ProZ.com)
Communication is more than just words – Jacques Desnoyers (on ProZ.com)
And I also recently got an email from a (supposed – possible scammer) translator called Ana Soloboda Ana.sloboda12@gmail.com, for which the title was “Make my words work for you!” Interesting.

Now, I would never want to boast too much about what I do. Seriously, Tim Doner may be able to speak more than 20 languages while I could only converse in three (including my mother tongue) while he’s only 20-odd years old, but he would never have been able to post all his videos in which he shows off so much if the whole world spoke but a single language (of course, I have to concede that I would never have been able to be a translator as a result of that, either). But as a professional translator of all things, I have an absolute obligation to commit to accuracy and reliability in translation whether or not anyone else can or will. For this reason, it is easy to regard “make-believe-based forgetting by default” (if that makes sense) as foolish and irresponsible; it is simply not admissible. And I continue to write about the subject. The big question is this: what can I talk about having come across something language-related purely by chance rather than pending a decision to have a look at this or that, do you know what I mean?

We shouldn’t forget that communication sometimes requires listening even more than saying what you will, but then anyone who’s ever been in a serious relationship will know that. Now, actors may make a living out of being people they’re not, but I demand myself to put myself in the shoes of the eventual reader of my work, and one thing that has struck me in connection with my work is that maybe, just maybe, I could be expected to explain their understanding better than they could – even if it’s illogical and amounts to being a sign of craziness – while still having a concentrated job to do my end to just write something… anything which will pass for a (correct) translation of whatever it is. I keep wanting to be both at once, and not just each in turn – it’s like I’ve become more aware of the realities of being schizophrenic as a result of doing this job, you know? Or how about considering the concept of writing something which you know may not make sense to a reader straight away but is supposed to later on (and I don’t even read suspense thrillers or crime fiction!)?

What am I talking about, anyway?

At any rate, I would find it very, very hard to think of anything better to say to convince you that I definitely DO consider what would happen if I got too cosy in my job, and definitely DON’T have an absent-minded and dismissive approach to it like an exercise in box-ticking, however challenging or unpleasant the particular actions in question may be. I don’t want to fall into a habit of “hoping for some understanding”, like Katie Melua in her song “A Happy Place” (although, personally, knowing that she spent her childhood in poverty – even though her father was a heart surgeon – and that she has done skydiving in the past, I find that she’s tougher than she looks). I will admit that, even with my level of education, I get surprised by some of the things that I remember; and, for all its simplicity and invariable abstractness, it frequently delights me (not always, of course). Believe me, whatever you think of me, and whatever I think of me, I have no reason to be ashamed to call myself as a professional translator such as I am today. At the end of the day, I want to remain a professional translator, which is probably the only decision which shapes anything in the matter for me personally. And when I do what I do, I find immense pleasure in writing these blogs.

But that’s enough about me. Now, I say this: nobody likes being told that what they are saying, while they themselves are so sure that it makes sense, is in reality a load of nonsense. That’s bound to put anyone’s nose out of joint, do you know what I mean? At this point I will include some more translation work-related anecdotes – challenges that I have had to deal with in my work:

French original: “Nous ne faisons pas de calcul pour cela, nous ne réfléchissons pas.”
English translation: In the material this quote belonged to, this is a reference to human acting on impulse. Although I translated it as “We do not perform any calculations for this; we quite simply do not think.”, the correct translation, I realised that an unwary translator could have “translated” it as “If we do not perform any calculations for this, we quite simply do not think.” (LOL)

French original: “C’est contradictoire avec le fait que ces derniers ont besoin de faire preuve d’intelligence situationnelle pour retisser un lien de proximite avec les clients.”
English translation: I did the right thing when I wrote “It’s a contradictory case [or maybe it would have been more appropriate to write “It will be a very different story”] should one consider the fact that”, NOT “given the fact that”.

I have seen “vorhanden” in things like contracts in German, and realised that “available” was a better translation than “existing”.

I have become familiar with the concept of mistranslating German “Fahrplan” as “travel plan” when it should be “timetable”.

German original: “Anerkannten Werkstaetten”
English translation: better translated as “recognised workshops” or “registered workshops”?

German original: “Zudem finden Sie die Berechnungsgrundlagen […] und verschiedene Alternativen hierzu.”
English translation: “Additionally, you will find the calculation bases for a forecast of the costs up until the end of the life of Mrs. Somerville, along with various options” (not “various alternatives”!)

German original “Pflegeleistung” (as the header of a column in a table) – would it really matter if I translated that as “nursing services” or “nursing payments”?

Verily I admit that it’s easy for one to agree that this may arouse discussion of the very way I do translation and how much I can rely on the methods that I do use (whether I’ve taken the time to define them for myself or not). Indeed, when translating I’m afraid to proceed step-by-step like with most tasks, for fear that that could result in an embarrassing mistake. After I’ve finally finished translating a whole sentence I just need to look at everything at once, and not just “Bit 1”, followed by “Bit 2”, followed by “Bit 3”… It’s not like being happy to live life day by day. I certainly imagine that clients wouldn’t be too happy if they thought that I treated the work that I was supposed to be doing for them as “just another job” – “just another boil in need of lancing”, as it were. Maybe I really do scrutinise written text to the point of borderline obsession these days, even if it’s my own (all for the sake of doing a good job in my work, of course); here’s an example: if you go to Civ 5 Wikia and look at the page of the Thai leader (Ramkhamhaeng), scroll down to Civilopedia entry – Arts and Culture and you will read “Ramkhamhaeng was an ardent patron of Buddhism. He also supported the arts and Thai artistic expression [return – new line] achieved an especially high level during his reign, especially in bronze sculpture and ceramics.” Here, “He also supported the arts and Thai artistic expression” works as a full sentence in itself, but don’t be thrown off, for “Thai artistic expression” is but the start of a new sentence within a sentence, after the conjunction “and”. You see?

There now follows a definition of the word “esoteric”: “intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.” (Google search “esoteric definition”). I say this because, while lots of people decide to show an interest in foreign languages these days, it is surely the case that very few will be as willing to look at and discuss the art of translation in full depth to the extent that some people do… like me – well, I am a self-employed translator, after all. And a serious one, at that. What I’m saying is that I agree that it’s very likely that the average person on the street would label the study and practice of translation as an “esoteric” subject – and everyone can only confidently support their opinions they have on anything so far.

I recently watched Pat Condell’s latest Youtube video “Dumbing down university”. Speaking as a linguist, I find it both shocking and ridiculous (or maybe it should be more like embarrassed and worried?) that he says that British universities today feel the need to provide remedial literacy courses to new students, as if plenty of undergraduates were in Britain today had all the education of your average delinquent yob (or chav) who talks this: “Yo, wa g’wanin blud, you dig me bling, like? It’s like f***in’ well phat, innit?” And he really does provide links to newspaper articles to back this claim up. This is one of them:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews…

I have read this article, by the way. So let’s talk about that for a bit. There’s a bit in it where someone says (quoted ipsissima verba): “Their needs vary from having difficulty with the very basics, such as ‘what does a noun do?’, to students whose English is fine but they have never constructed a report or written an academic essay.” Time and time again, we have to consider how much more likely we or anyone else would understand something in real terms if only it was explained in a different way. In that episode of Blackadder where Baldrick’s trying to rewrite the dictionary, his only definition for the word “dog” is “not a cat” – what “better” definition would you have given him to write down? It’s just that I sympathise with people who have the intelligence to go far but they don’t actually know what, say, a noun or an adjective is when they would surely “get it” straight away if it were explained to them, such as I am going to do here. In layman’s terms: noun is the name given to the kind of word which exists as a label for any given thing, like an object (like the word “noun” itself); and adjective is the name given to the kind of word which says something about something. Any dictionary will confirm these things, itself possibly providing examples. It really is as simple as that. And you don’t have to be any kind of self-proclaimed master linguist, like me, to clarify something like that.

Taken from the same article above: the writer actually claims that some university students “struggle with basic grammar”. Really? What is struggling with basic grammar, anyway, if it’s not just knowing how to get word order right? Myself, I am aware that many people are familiar with the common mistake in English that is writing “should of / could of / would” when it should be “have”, even though “should”, “could”, “would” and “of” (and “have”, for that matter) are all among the most commonly used words in English, and I don’t think I need to explain how “should”, “would” or “could” can simply not “co-exist” in English language terms i.e. when they are followed by the word “of”. Then there’s getting “to”, “two” and “too” confused, or not knowing the difference between “accept” or “except”, or “discreet” and “discrete”. To me that can’t be properly defined as “struggling with basic grammar” because I regard it as more a case of getting the spelling of words wrong (or rather, using otherwise correctly spelled words in places where they just don’t belong and, as such, just leaving a sentence “not making sense” in that it’s not grammatical; something which should be obvious). Then there’s the fact that sometimes people use “it’s” wrongly when it should be “its”. That I can understand, for you would use an apostrophe in, say, “That book is Louise’s”, so I would define, say, “The reason that car is not roadworthy is that the tread of it’s tyres is not sufficient” as a “grammatical” error.

But given that communication is generally to be understood as expression of ideas (whether they are properly elucidated or not), it shouldn’t be too hard to consider how I’m willing to look at the idea of translation as the same thing. I mean, as Pat Condell says in his video (mentioned above), our culture, and with it the success of our education, depends on people germinating ideas rather than exterminating them. And I imagine that it’s fairly common for people to have an idea which carries weight about a topic that matters which they regard as “smart” or “clever”… but they may falsely label it as original or their own while being none the wiser. Or – and I must confess that I was a bit like this when I was still a child – even if one is proud of such an idea for reasons which are hardly selfish, cynical or morally corrupt, they may love to see it demonstrated or verified but they are just not ready to do what’s necessary to realise that themselves. Just for a minute, consider how angry that mindset could (eventually) encourage others to become – not to mention yourself.

Maybe the truth is that even I’m not completely immune to writing things that are a bit odd to read, whether I’m doing a translation task or not. But as far as I see it, in all selflessness, the more I can prevent myself from writing things that sound a bit “iffy” in my translation work, the better. The thing is, I remember how, when I was at school, sometimes I was told by my teachers that, while there was nothing wrong with my own English – the language I translate into in my work as a self-employed translator – I sometimes wrote things which were a bit odd or awkward in terms of following them even if they had to admit that it did made sense (theoretically, at least, I presume). Now, when I do translation work, I definitely realise how serious it is that I find a way to write the intended message of the original in a way that makes sense, and it does weigh on me that I could end up in a scenario where I have to do this “somehow”. And it’s not entirely limited to the issue of the vocabulary I know or the verbal creativity I can show when it comes to the grammar of English (are you following me here)? When I’m writing a translation of something I do love it when I feel that I’m revealing a fact of significance about the subject matter that I am supposed to be writing about even though some might find it easy to claim that I don’t know what I’m talking about but that’s only because it happens not to directly concern me personally. In short, I have to be careful not to end up misled – not just by what I’m presented with, but also with regard to what I’ve allowed myself to feel about whatever it is that I’m effectively discussing in my writing of a translation product, which may well need properly outlining for me personally. And chances are that it will be up to me and only me to do that. After all, I can seldom expect a translation client to be fully ready to take the time to discuss with me why I chose to write this or expression or that expression, or why I seemed to think this thing or that thing.

I’ve been doing professional translation for seven years now and, maybe it’s a bit sad, but I refuse to regard the work itself as anything of an “adventure” any more. Having said that, I suggest that this is because I don’t want to feel that I equate my professional work to children’s stories of adventure – this isn’t “George The Translator – join him in his exciting translation adventures!” (much as I realise how much my job as a self-employed translator has taught me personally); this is real life, and to me it should be a more formal and euphuistic register that shapes the narrative of my blogs.