IT’S DIFFICULT TO TALK ABOUT TRANSLATION IN ABSOLUTE TERMS
The next time you’re in the first stages of studying a foreign language, remember to bear in mind that there are so many other ways you could say all the basics, like greetings, “I would like”, and “Where is… ?”, other than the rigid phrases you’re first taught for them for the perfectly understandable reason that you simply don’t speak the language – yet. Of course, learning the grammar and a respectable vocabulary in another language takes some time: I mean, when I was at school studying French and German: when they taught me, say, how to use this tense or that tense, they knew well enough to have me to practice exercises of it with them (like filling in sentences with missing words that had to be properly spelled etc.)… and it’s not like it was simply limited to a single session. Generally I was expected to do it quite a few times on multiple days; to say nothing of the fact that I was expected to demonstrate use of it in creative work such as essay writing, the nature of which tasks hadn’t been announced to me beforehand (it’s not like I ever got to see a copy of the syllabus). You could say that I don’t like to limit myself in the study of foreign languages.
Oh, those were the days. In the modern day, of course, I don’t (well, rarely) have the option of just leaning on my teacher – or anyone else – for support if I’m anything less than 100% sure about the best way to put something / do something when I do my work that involves foreign language work. (And anyway, would it necessarily be better if the teacher were a native speaker of the foreign language, or one whose native tongue is your own? At the end of the day… well, it simply depends on the issue / complication / problem at hand when you really, really think about it.) What I’m trying to say is that remaining on the ball quality-wise when it comes to translation isn’t about just understanding and following straightforward practices which will stay the same – ones which one could suggest everyone comes to terms with eventually, with or without being notified of them by someone else; like proper spelling and correct word order. But it can be so difficult to avoid writing things which, however convincing and intelligent they may look on the surface, make the reader wince because they use one or more words taken out of context. To me, a professional translator, being “lost in translation” isn’t just about the simple idea of broken language and dealing with it (like pidgin); whether it’s employing it or – if you’re reading it – for all its obvious faults, seeing what was intended to be communicated by it.
Even if you’re translating something into your mother tongue, you can uneagerly end up writing awkward expressions in your own language if you’ve got a word in the original whose true meaning eludes you but you had good reasons behind your incorrect translation of it anyway. Or maybe you don’t know the correct terminology, which can frustrate the reader and easily leave them asking questions / having doubts. I hate thinking that I could be doing anything like that.
Revolutionary people are famed and acclaimed because they think more than what they’re “supposed to think”. I understand that people can easily find themselves asking “What am I supposed to think?” when they wish they were more confident about something, but this needs clarification. You may think that, by “supposed to think”, I mean that if someone is seen to be thinking anything other than what is not covered by the same they can expect to be punished / persecuted for it, most likely unjustly – that’s “supposed to think prescriptively”. But no, I mean “supposed to think descriptively”: like, they may raise eyebrows by showing that they think anything other than what they’re supposed to think, but they’re not breaking any rules by doing so (whether or not they are, on the contrary, actually encouraged to do so).
These things are often better exemplified. Take this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzRWkf0lIz4 First, you are encouraged to believe that the last word of every fourth line is a rude word (actually, this fact is all the more true given the illustrations that play in this video as the song plays). But the content of the “story”, the subject matter of the song, is clearly a piece of totally insincere nonsense which was only thrown together for the purpose of what this song is about: random assumptions involving rude words; it doesn’t make sense, but strictly speaking it’s not like it was meant to. But suppose you got someone who was invited to watch this song for the first time – they had never seen it before – who was actually told beforehand that there is no (strictly speaking, as it were) rude content in the song (apart from the beeped-out word at the end). Like, they were actively encouraged to predict what the words at the end of each fourth line really are – they don’t rhyme. Seeking a “reasoned” guess would be utterly in vain – and, I suppose, pointless. There’s no hope of actually arriving at one. Besides, how many people could actually listen to this song once and not have trouble retelling the events that take place in it from start to finish (doing their best to put aside the irreverent humour element, of course)? Getting back to the topic at hand: who’s to say that there isn’t (at least sometimes) no hope of a “reasoned” guess when you’re tackling a difficult bit in a translation job, where you’re afraid about not knowing whether or not the guidance you’re following in the reasoning efforts that you are actually employing is serving you well rather than proving misleading.
Translation cannot be so easily regarded as a science in technical terms. When you’re doing a scientific experiment, for example, one can so easily discuss the steps of the method in straightforward terms that are absolute terms which have a formal touch (whether or not there is terminology / jargon to be taken into account). But in translation, relying on someone else’s account of the subject matter / content simply doesn’t relieve you of having to use your own judgement, intellect and initiative for the sake of suggestion and clarification… whether to someone else or to yourself.
It’s not all straightforward, I admit. But it’s not like I don’t realise that sometimes it’s best to resist the apparent urge to assert something in a certain way when you’re doing translation work simply because it sounds genius to you personally but, for more subtle reasons, it is just not loyal to the intended message of the original. You could say that it’s like the “fast thinking” that characterises the well-known Moses delusion, but it’s much harder to explain.
I want to label this is a sagacious blog, but… maybe I have been doing this job for too long?
Only time will tell. For now, I wish myself and my clients a Merry Christmas.