TRANSLATION IN THE REAL WORLD
There’s no denying that the title of this professional translation blog is a bold one. But I want to write a bold professional translation blog here. That said, whatever you may think of it, I should probably say in advance that I’ve gone out of my way to do everything I can to make it look like I’ve written it for a reason. I really hope that people who read my business blogs / comments don’t think that all I really do in them is blow my own horn / puff myself up. And of course I know full well that I’m not the only one in my industry who’s ever written articles about subjects which can seem rather mundane and, many would argue, uncommon – if not without the “interesting” element – which are basically to do with language and / or translation and / or the translation industry in some way. ProZ and TranslatorsCafe are full of them; titles of ones which really caught my attention include “What if your language had only 100 words?”
These business blogs I write are very long and verbose, I know – and that’s exactly how I wanted them to be from the start. I don’t want to just stuff them full of casual, airy-fairy comments like “I did this project today and I was really excited about it for this, that and the other” or “When faced with problem X, I decided on solution Y”. I don’t want readers claiming that they could fully understand it merely because they think that they could imagine a similar scenario easily enough, but the problem is that the whole content of this similar scenario is nothing but make-believe, and nothing but their own make-believe at that. This article by Tim Doner http://ideas.ted.com/why-i-learned-20-languages-an… is a good example of writing related to language and translation which doesn’t lean on this sort of thing for its content and selling it to those who read it. I am impressed!
Just because translation is my life’s work – my very life – doesn’t mean that it’s all about me and what I think, even if it is reasonable to say that what I say is correct (and more like “indisputably correct” as opposed to “correct in some way”). Still, what do I do (in simple terms)? I… make sense of what I read. And I… use my imagination. And I… articulate accurately and reliably. Translation is one of the oldest professions there is. And it’s certainly true that people don’t like being left fearful or uncomfortable by what they can’t come to terms with; next thing they know (or, indeed, don’t know!; not that I’m claiming to be a leading authority on psychology here) they get angry. Anyone who’s ever resolved to be more “socially minded” will likely agree that our biggest fears can stem from what we don’t want to know or understand – and it’s not always fair to label them as phobias. Trust me, I know how essential it is to be careful about the words I choose when I write a translation of something. A case in point (which doesn’t even actually have anything to do with my translation career): I remember once when I was playing Pokemon on Gameboy – a French Gamepak – and I went to Dragonite’s entry on the Pokedex, knowing that the English text for it reads “An extremely rarely seen marine Pokémon. Its intelligence is said to match that of humans.” I remember specifically thinking that I personally would have translated the second sentence into French as “On dit qu’il a une intelligence humaine”, literally, “It’s said to have a human intelligence”, which is kind of a square-wheeled impression in English but French was the target language, not English, and I was proud of myself for thinking, “I don’t think I could think of anything to make it sound any more ‘French person’s French’” i.e. an authentic French idiolect. Then I read the French equivalent of said second sentence used in the game, “On dit qu’il est aussi intelligent que l’homme”, literally, “It is said to be as intelligent as man.” Both French expressions are perfectly valid here but, in retrospect, I could never have seen myself going along with the latter because there is no actual strict element of comparison being inferred in the sentence. But at the time, the thing that most struck me was that the adjective “intelligent” was used in place of the noun “intelligence”. Also, here is another of these work-related anecdotes such as I have included in previous professional translation blogs: in a recent French-to-English project I knew that a proper translation of “Au clic sur chacun des picto, afficher les infos pages suivantes” was “When you click on each of the pictograms, display the following information pages” i.e. “Expect to have to display the following information pages if you are to proceed with the work you are doing”.
The goal of translation is one which is, indisputably so, an unshifting one which is but so easy to define: to (correctly) reproduce a message in one language, in another language, in a way that is understandable and dependable, or words to that effect (no pun intended). Of course, in the real world it’s only a matter of time before one becomes aware of all the complexities that can and do surround the art – although it’s every bit as much a science – all gauged against one’s own knowledge of a foreign language if nothing else. Now, while I could hardly blame anyone for being proud of their own ability to translate, lots of people like learning languages for no reason other than fun (fair enough); and in this regard I would like to consider the effectiveness of teaching someone a foreign language with more of an emphasis on pure translation technique than anything else (when you’re not too busy teaching the grammar aspects and a sufficiently wide vocabulary, of course).
In his book “The 10 Keys to Success”, the founder of the Big Issue, John Bird tells us that real success requires us to look outside ourselves and to recognise that success is always shifting. Even I can’t predict how likely someone is to be more excited by new translation tools than to feel daunted by them, or vice versa. While some translation agencies I have worked for have me using MemoQ or XTM for certain projects, there are plenty of others which, in the POs that come with projects they assign, specifically say “don’t use machine translators”, and from what I’ve read on the ProZ forums I am aware that some translation clients are skilled in telling whether something was done by Google Translate even if it is in “proper language”.
Translation has been around for a long time, and anyone who’s done it a fraction as long as I have (professionally or not) will agree that creativity will blossom in it. Usually there are all sorts of ways – fully correct and accurate ways – to translate a given sentence into another language. But I would say that I do my job best when the particular words I use in my translation of something are not just enough to constitute a plain rendition of a message in a new language which is fully correct but only in theoretical terms; there have been times when I have used expressions which I am very sure the reader would genuinely agree “guide” them to help them understand the message written in the words that have just ended up being the way they are. After all, no-one likes to be kept guessing, you know? And sometimes you get things (usually concepts, or a situation, or a consensus) explained in language which does the job perfectly in theory – it’s just that the listener / recipient won’t actually “get it” until a (realistic) example of the matter at hand has developed in their mind, and they might need help with it, but the words in the language used might help, do you know what I mean? Such is the recipient’s mind being put to work – now THAT is when a “bog standard”, “everyday” written message or text can be as engaging as anything written by Shakespeare.