To judge or not to judge

TO JUDGE OR NOT TO JUDGE?

I take my work as a professional translator seriously. Indeed, ever since I heard it said (and rightly so) that journalists give a voice to the voiceless, I have started to view wholeheartedly that the same can be said of translation. That said, the question “to judge or not to judge?” is easy to associate with moments when you realise that “paying attention” isn’t enough. We like to believe that paying attention, like “everything else”, gets easier the more we do it, but you can do it and still fail to understand the significance / message of something; and so this is a question which, I believe, should be on the tip of every professional translator’s tongue. After all, failing to get something can lead to the matter in question not making sense to a person… and external matters, as well! There is no denying that a proper education is the thing most likely to prevent this.

Maybe to some this sounds like an overly obvious point, but when you translate professionally you can be sure of translating stuff which is someone else’s business and clearly in no way yours – is it really any wonder that my own career as one has started to make me view my whole life in a wholly new way? Like, now I realise how much I interact with in my own everyday life that I never consider anyone other than me judging (however fairly), and how this may in fact reflect a mentality which may encourage others to believe that I am selfish or arrogant. Or things I interact with / do which others may falsely believe I don’t judge, or maybe they think I judge these things more than them when I just don’t… but why? …At the end of the day, the history of your own mentality, as well as that of others, can always be engrossing / intriguing. Is it just me or can memories (or, indeed, awareness of them) be as important as a plan? Now I think about it, I guess that’s a question I have been pondering for a very long time.

As part of this article I had thought of recruiting two people to do separate translations of a single piece of material written in a language I don’t understand and then comparing (or should that be judging?) them – but not purely for the sake of deciding which is “better”. However, I would later decide that it wouldn’t do as good a job explaining the term “bias” in connection with translation work, as well as this does https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/annoying-celebrities-who-should-just-go-away-already It is kind of amusing that, in addition to many celebrities who would likely be quick to insist that there are very good reasons as to why they should be labelled popular and liked (not necessarily reflecting a lack of humility as they do so), the list also includes both the current US President Donald Trump and Osama Bin Laden. I’m just saying that the labels people give to things, if the basic concept of difference of opinion is anything to go by, are seldom consistent from person to person. Indeed, on another list of annoying celebrities I saw somewhere else on the net, it included both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, which is a clear example of how you can certainly expect the exact criteria to vary, unlike (for this is ultimately supposed to be a blog about language) dictionary definitions, even if their wording will vary slightly. Just as there’s no limit to the number of categories a person can like or hate at some kind of genuinely significant level. And people are fickle – I mean, as if Osama Bin Laden was really thought of as a “celebrity” or merely “annoying” in the first days after 9/11 happened. How has it come to pass?

The truth is, whether you like it or not, in translation work, biases and judgement of the original speaker, biases and judgement of the translator, and even biases and judgement of the recipient, all shape the output – or rather, success – of translation; so if you have ever done translation I now suggest that you ask yourself how good of a judge of bias you really are (both those of others and your own). Subjective biases are one thing, but objective ones can also form based on certain personal experiences in the past; it depends on what you have become used to; what has become normal to you as an individual. That said, we certainly don’t all think the same, and sometimes we’re forced to accept that, or are reminded of it, in a way that just might be shocking or upsetting. Yet, for the sake of appreciation of translation as an art, it can also be a source of humour or even spiritual understanding.

I would be grateful to anyone for agreeing that translators are people who are likely to be expected to “get something” in a text where there isn’t actually anything real to get. I mean, as an example, a real faux pas and a fake faux pas in speech (designed to mislead and deceive someone by furnishing an incorrect idea about the person saying it) will seldom if ever be able to be clearly differentiated in writing or speech – I suppose, if anything, you should look more for very subtle hints in the person’s actions, such as their body language. But, getting back to the topic at hand, this is the basic concept of sometimes indeterminate irrationality in language – don’t you just agree that irrationality can be born of misunderstanding a misunderstanding?

Have a nice day.