Becoming a translator by Douglas Robinson

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Becoming a translator by Douglas Robinson

Translators are usually, and understandably, hostile toward machine translation systems, which promise clients enormous increases in speed at a fraction of the cost of human translation.

The ethics of translation has often been thought to consist of the translator assuming an entirely external perspective on his or her work, thinking about it purely from the user's point of view: thinking, for example, that accuracy is the only possible goal of translation; that the translator has no right to a personal opinion or interpretation; that the finished product, the translated text, is the only thing that matters.

Discussion

The translator owns a late-model computer, a recent version of Microsoft Word, an Internet connection

Hardware and software

The translator will not disclose confidential matters learned through the process of translation to third parties.

Confidentiality

The translator is friendly and helpful on the phone or in person, is pleasant to speak or be with, has a sense of humor, offers helpful advice - doesn't offer unhelpful advice, etc.

Friendliness

The translator knows her own abilities and schedule and working habits well enough to make realistic promises to clients or agencies regarding delivery dates and times, and then keeps those promises

Promises

Versatility The translator is versatile enough to translate texts outside her area of specialization

Checking The translator checks her work closely, and if there is any doubt has a translation checked by an experf before delivery to the client.

Research The translator does not simply "work around" words she doesn't know, by using a vague phrase that avoids the problem or leaving a question mark where the word would go, but does careful research.

Sensitivity to the user's needs The translator listens closely to the user's special instructions regarding the type of translation desired.

Attention to detail The translator is meticulous in her attention to the contextual and collocational nuances of each word and phrase she uses.

Aspects of translator reliability

The translation recasts the original so as to hide its meaning or message from one group while still making it accessible to another group, which possesses the key.

Encryption

The translation unpacks or unfolds the hidden complexities of the original,exploring at length implications that remain unstated or half-stated in the original.

Commentary

The translation covers the main points or "gist" of the original.

Summary

The translation is so accessible and readable for the target-language reader as to seem like an original in the target language.

Fluency

Trade-offs From a user's "external" point of view, obviously, the ideal translation would be utterly reliable, available immediately, and free.

Cost controls virtually all translation. A translation that the client considers too expensive will not be done. A translation that the translator considers too cheap may not get done either, if the translator has a strong enough sense of self-worth, or an accurate enough sense of the market, to refuse to work virtually for free.

Timeliness But it is not enough for the user of a translation that both it and its creator be reliable it must also be timely, in the sense of not arriving past the time of its usefulness or value. Timeliness is most flexible in the case of literary or Biblical translations

If the class is taught in a mother-tongue or comparative literature department, "reliability" may mean that the users agree to act as if the translation really were the original text. For this purpose a translation that reads as if it had originally been written in the target language will probably suffice.

the translator may be in a position to summarize certain paragraphs of lesser importance, while doing painstakingly close readings of certain other paragraphs of key importance.

Textual reliability A text's reliability consists in the trust a user can place in it, or encourage others to place in it, as a representation or reproduction of the original. To put that differently, a text's reliability consists in the user's willingness to base future actions on an assumed relation between the original and the translation.

The translation recasts the original so as to have the desired impact on an audience that is substantially different from that of the original.advertising campaign designed to associate a product with sophistication uses entirely different images of sophistication in the source and target languages.

Adaptation

The translation summarizes some passages briefly while commenting closely on others. The passages in the original that most concern the user are unpacked; the less important passages are summarized.

Summary-commentary

The translation reads fairly fluently but has a slightly alien feel. One can tell,reading it, that it is a translation, not an original work.

Foreignism

The translation follows the original word for word, or as close to that ideal as possible. The syntactic structure of the source text is painfully evident in the translation.

Literalism

Types of text reliability