THE COURAGE NECESSARY FOR ATTEMPTING TRANSLATION

Time for a new business blog comment, I think. You know, part of me is concerned that there are / would be people who think that all I do in these comments is pay lip service to proven ideas about translation and languages, and the industry of translation, and say just anything and everything I can about them in response, hoping that it will make me sound intelligent. Surely that would only undermine my own voice and professional credibility eventually; perish the thought!

You see, for all the times I have gone out of my way to articulate at length in my business blog comments like this one the reasons why translation is indeed not quite as easy as some claim (“replacing words with words” if nothing else), I have decided that it’s time that I made some points about the art of translation / my approach to it that really does show a certain level of genuine “honesty” on my part. More specifically, as the title indicates, I’m going to claim here that attempting translation often requires some kind of courage, as comfortable as I can feel in my study sometimes, and not just because no-one bothers me there. So to anyone who would think that I’m just rambling here, let me point this out: when you are fully expected to acquaint yourself with information which is essentially someone else’s and to just rewrite it in any kind of manner that’s both accurate and lucid, it’s not too unlikely that there will be times when you end up struggling with the finer points of individual expressions, or maybe you need to research something online before a final decision is made; if it comes to the worst the only thing you can do is grit your teeth as you resolve to be inventive in what you write. Even today, sometimes I feel like all I can do is write things which, while they are correct and accurate, end up sounding peculiar and awkward. Put simply, you could say that translation – certainly professional translation, at any rate – has taught me not take my own knowledge and understanding of things for granted.

Of course I realise that there are plenty of times when it doesn’t pay just to make an educated guess (even if you openly admit it as such) at what is meant by something before crossing your fingers i.e. dismissing the matter entirely as you expect someone else to have their say on it, as if to say, “the ball’s in your court now!” And it certainly doesn’t help if the work you are translating is of a subject matter which is “specialist” i.e. you know very well that there will be people who actually have a far more in-depth knowledge of it (likely coupled with actual experience of it) than you do. Indeed, just the other day I learned of this comment that has been posted on the ProZ.com forums: “After working long and hard to make a translation perfect, and sending it off to the client, I’m always frightened to read it the next day (tempting though it is in case I find a mistake I hadn’t noticed.” In fact, I first saw this comment on someone’s Facebook wall – after the quote itself these words were added: “Do you have this fear?” Amen to that. Let’s just say I feel for whoever first said that.

It’s like this in some way: I once saw an episode of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire where one of the questions was “What is the central part of a church called?” The answers included aisle and vestry, and two others which I can’t remember. And I remember my dear old mum saying that that was an unfair question, and I agreed with her. Just what exactly was meant by “central part”? (The correct answer was aisle, apparently.)

When I’m doing more challenging translation work I like to take the time to envision / illustrate in my own mind what I’m reading (both in the original and in my translation), but sometimes there’s just no straightforward or logical way to do this however well I understand what I’m reading. To invoke another TV game show reference: I find that Catchphrase encourages a certain kind of open and flexible thinking which is not too far from this at all. Watch an episode of it

and see if you see what I mean. I like that show.

I’ve seen the film Forrest Gump in the past but I think it’s sad that I remember so little about it (and it’s certainly acclaimed by film critics). So why do I say that? Because I think it’s very easy to feel for someone whenever they make a point which, while it’s not exactly correct and it shows that they’re not as knowledgeable (or, depending on the situation, accountable) as they think they are, you still find yourself warming to them because you know in your heart that what they have said is still enough to really get people thinking. There’s no other way to put it: their otherwise undiscussed mentality earns a place in your heart even though they’re not actually serious about telling or defending the core truth of the matter in question. But I think we all know that you’re just fully expected to care about the core truth of the matter when you’re translating. And it’s not just the question of what is to be understood in the source material; a genuine commitment to plain, boring verbal accuracy is essential in the process of recreating it in a new language. And you could say that, if anyone will discuss this further, it will be me.

I’ll say one thing about translation here: there is no substitute for imagination in it, however well-versed you are at translation, however much experience you have in it. And no-one could be blamed for thinking that it’s something that helps where nothing else can or will. Myself, my own experience of translating has “taught” me familiarity with what I call “the concept of precedent-based assertions”. It’s like this: you can probably remember at least one time in your life when you felt compelled to say something to someone else having been motivated to say it by something based on emotion, an example being a time you saw what you considered an otherwise elusive opportunity to sound cool, or you wanted to save face. It’s just that your statement was just taken wholesale e.g. duplicated from the statement of someone else in some completely different matter – it may have actually been something someone said in a TV programme or something similar, and you felt some urge to say it because the original time you heard it, it just stuck with you; most likely because the e.g. TV programme appealed to you personally and that’s the only reason. So you run the risk of developing a habit of letting your imagination essentially – literally – speak for you; which, I have to say, is not a good thing if you’re trying to make an impression, or just sound “real”. You betray a lack of being in control; you end up underestimating your propensity for saying things which, all things considered, just don’t make sense. Personally, I can imagine a certain proximity between precedent-based assertions (or PBAs) and unreasonable fears which will (inevitably) impact the very society we live in, such as catagelophobia. No wonder the topic of culture is so prevalent in the subject of doing correct translation.

Anyway, back to work…