Why i was born to be a translator

WHY I WAS BORN TO BE A TRANSLATOR

The more eager linguists among us may look forward to doing translation work in particular whenever they take lessons in learning a new language. Of course, it is known that deciding on / agreeing on the best way to put a piece of communication when rendering it from one language to another can prove frustrating – even for those who do it professionally, like me. And by all means suggest that I’m only blowing my own trumpet here, but – as should already be evident – I do this on a self-employed basis, which is why I claim that I must be under more pressure than anyone else (or certainly almost anyone else) to… well, get it right. But, like I said in my last comment, I’ve been doing this for seven years now, and I realise that some of the tales I can tell of my career to date show how much it satisfies me to pursue this line of work.

If you need convincing about this, there follows some more of my translation work-related anecdotes such as I have discussed in previous comments.

Original German: “Nahezu alle interviewten Produzenten brachten klar zum Ausdruck, welch hohen Stellenwert ‘I got it!’ für sie persönlich”
English translation: “Almost all the interviewed producers clearly expressed what kind of high value ‘I got it!’ represents for them personally” …their station or even the public in their country; and not “the kind of high value that”, where, doing word-for-word checking, I had to see and delete the “that” in the expression that I actually did use.

“Treated in a highly different manner from the treated animals” i.e. animals which have been treated or animals which are still being treated? I hope it wouldn’t mislead, do you know what I mean?

Original French: “Durant quatre jours, ce salon concilie ainsi arts et gastronomie, excellence du terroir et création, mais surtout dégustation et vente directe!”
English translation: “In short, over a period of four days, this show combines arts and gastronomy, local and creative excellence, but also, in particular, tasting and direct sales!”
I.e. “Ainsi” in the original was translated by “in short” at the end.

Original French: “C’est un artiste d’atelier : concentré, lent et dense”
English translation: “This is a studio artist: concentrated, slow and with substance”
Let’s just say that I knew better than to translated “dense” in the original as “dense” in the English translation!

Original French: “Le musicien parisien démarre sa carrière dans le jazz manouche à 18 ans. Django Reinhardt est son héros et la guitare son instrument de predilection.”
English translation: “This Parisian musician began his career in gypsy jazz at 18. Django Reinhardt is his hero, and his guitar is his instrument of choice.”
I remember how, when I was doing this project, just for a bit, I forgot I wasn’t writing about Django Reinhardt, and would have been wrong to write that “this man is his own hero”. No, we’re talking about Thomas Dutronc here.

Original French: “dans le but de mettre en lumière la vie et la personnalité d’un des artistes les plus influents du tournant des XIXe et XXe siècles”
English translation: “with the aim of highlighting the life and the personality of one of the most influential artists at the turn of the 19th century”.

Original French: “Arman Méliès se joue bien des étiquettes.”
English translation: “Arman Méliès goes by many labels”.
Although, I NEARLY translated it as “Arman Méliès is played by (represented by) many labels.”

Original French: “…qui permet d’emprunter trois pièces en même temps”
English translation: “…and where a customer can borrow up to three articles at once”
The words “up to” were added for better quality.

Original German: “Sie erzielt feste Vergütungen für geleistete Tätigkeiten, keine Provisionen.”
English translation: “They receive fixed payments for the work activities that they perform, not [I specifically remember deciding to remove the word “including” at this point] commissions.”

The phrase “lost in translation” is very widely recognised now. Not least because these days it’s so easy to find examples of bad translations whose intended meaning may be easy to understand or it may not be, but it will always strike readers as humorous. Sometimes it’s because of something simple, straightforward, and easy enough for anyone to define confidently, like a typo or an expression which, however commonly used otherwise, is just out of place in the material in question. Other times it’s owing to what might be labelled as stylistic or syntactical errors, the discussion of which can only really be done confidently if one knows of common terminology applicable with that sort of thing (assuming that this even exists at all). Of course, sometimes mistakes in translation revolve around cultural matters, and while it may be amusing on occasion, there are – there really are – times when it’s enough to cause embarrassment or offence! And if you really want to talk about cultural matters, then look no further than what Professor Mona Siddiqui says in her recent Thought For The Day monologue on BBC Radio 4 entitled “Culture is more than holding onto food, dress and ritual.”

Hence, we see why translation is regarded by plenty of people as a science, and as an art. Bearing in mind that, seeing as people have always communicated and different languages have always existed, translation is indeed hardly a “new thing”, there’s every chance that one would think that translation is a science / art whose “content” (i.e. its methods and principles) has changed very little or not at all after all this time – through the ages, no less.

You know, although I’ve just described translation as an art – for art is a cultural thing – I really should make it clear here that “imagining” isn’t always about thinking of things that don’t yet exist, like when you’re writing fiction or putting together a choreography, as will become clear in the next paragraph.

When I translate, I relish the chances I get to be inventive and clever in what is essentially the representation of a message. And of course I can and do get bothered and irritated (angry?) by gaps – real or imagined – in my knowledge of what is being said in the original material; and it’s by no means limited to the mere static and (generally) plain “boring” written information that has “ended up”, as it were, being the content of the original document for, for better or worse, it was just meant to be as such. What I’m saying is that every so often there are occasions when my own lack of knowledge of the story behind it (whether real or imagined – the context, if you will); and I have to consider that whatever may be “supposed” to happen with regard to the matter in question once my own translation work is completed and submitted, also has to be remembered and afforded enough attention, and it’s not like I can lean on anyone else to do that for me!

I hope this makes it clear enough what “imagination” can also mean. In a sense, it has to be recognised as a prerequisite for one’s very stability and welfare sometimes – I think Liquid Snake would agree on this in his final speech in Metal Gear Solid (PS1)

when he talks about how nature tends to “favour asymmetry” (from 7:01 onward). Hideo Kojima is a great writer, but then everyone knows that. You only have to read his Wikipedia article.

Now, as I said before, I, like a lot of other people, accept that translation is an art. But it’s rare for me to feel like I’m revealing “anything great”, or the underlying truth about anything when I do translation work. It’s not really self-expression, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling somewhat sorry for myself about it. At any rate, one of the things I find most fulfilling about translation is when I know that I’m not just writing the correct meaning of something in a way that some people would appreciate as “impressively articulate”. I will always remember that bit in the film Hot Fuzz where Simon Pegg is standing in front of all these schoolchildren with his hands his back talking about what being a police officer is all about. He says, and I quote, “Police work is as much about preventing crime as it is about fighting crime. More importantly, it is about procedural correctness in the execution of unquestionable moral authority.” …and only then do you see that he’s talking to all these schoolchildren – that works as a joke for me. Anyway, I know that these are very good (nay important) points, and I’m sure Rowan Atkinson – for he played Inspector Fowler in The Thin Blue Line, and I would feel very comfortable around him as a police officer – would agree. But you see, it’s not particularly unlikely that someone may need an example of Simon Pegg’s character’s points to properly agree with them as much as would have liked. How much do the points he makes really speak for themselves?

That said, in my translation work, I delight in it when I can write things which convey an idea which speaks for itself without the need of any “thing” (i.e. argument, incident, whatever) to serve as an example of it. A case in point: this is the point where I admit that RAC – Relief Addiction Cure, the term of affection that it is supposed to be obscene to use casually – was my invention (not that this was originally a translation of something from another language into English). Now, anyone can just decide to use any expression as a term of affection that it is supposed to be obscene to use casually. You can do that with a swear word, for God’s sake. But I remember how I amused I used to be by how it was, essentially, a “technical” “special” term of affection.

Not that I would expect it to remain all that popularly used forever. You see, once you’ve heard about the acronym RAC being used like this (just now?), then you can fathom what it means independently… and that means that you will, by logic, never meet anyone who will prove to be your own RAC, however great they may be.

Anyway, I’ve covered everything I wanted to cover in this comment: the topic of getting translation right, discussion of translation as an art, what “imagination” sometimes really means and its significance, how nature tends to favour asymmetry, the concept of comments which make points without the need for example (with what I say about RAC to back it up)… what shall I do now? I guess I’ll have to use my imagination.