Nadine T
French Freelance Translator & Conference Interpreter OpenNetworker.com LION
Your Experience with Translation? Avez-vous des histoires à partager en matière de traduction ?
Your Experience with Translation? Avez-vous des histoires à partager en matière de traduction ?
I'm curious to know: what was your best -and maybe your worst- experience with translation, as a service provider and as a client?
Note: I may comment some of the stories on my blog (http://solstice54.wordpress.com)
Thanks for your contributions and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Joyeuses Fêtes à tous !
J'aimerais connaître vos bonnes et pourquoi pas vos mauvaises expériences dans le domaine de la traduction (côté prestataire et côté client).
NB : Je pourrai éventuellement commenter les meilleures histoires dans mon blog (http://solstice54.wordpress.com)
Good Answers (3)
Vikas D
Transformation through Innovation
Best Answers in: Internationalization and Localization (1), Business Analytics (1), Organizational Development (1), Pricing (1), Professional Networking (1), Business Plans (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Rather than individual stories, I would prefer to give an overview of the types of problems I've seen as a client:
1. Lack of Domain knowledge:
Translators need to be allowed a learning curve to understand the background domain of the translation required by the client. In other words, each time your agency hands your job to a new translator, you have to re-train that resource through trial and error which can be very draining on your time.
2. Specifications can never be precise enough to account for contextual differences:
For example, in software the word 'flag' is used to mean indicator, but could be translated into spanish as 'banderas' which is the type of flag that flutters atop a flag-pole! Through iterations, one has to build up a list of common errors, and pass this list on to each subsequent translator who works on the project.
3. Loss of cultural overtones:
Translation of poetry or literature involves not just the words and meaning, but also the rhythm of the poem or prose. Here the background of the translator is important to know: If the translator has been in the profession of writing academic papers, the translated literature or poetry would like end up sounding very dry. Often the cultural overtones are lost if the original word does not have an exact equivalent in the translated language. (For example, angst does not have an equivalent word in English).
4. Structural differences between the languages:
Translation from a west European language to English is far easier because of the structural similarity. However this would not be the case when translating Korean or Japanese to English, on account of the lexical differences between the languages.
5. Ambiguity:
This arises when a word or phrase has multiple meanings, or when a colloquialism does not have an exact equivalent in another language. Even worse. if the translator does not understand the colloquialism, the entire meaning could be lost: For example, 'don't rock the boat' needs to be translated as 'maintain the status quo', and not to the literal translation of the rocking of a water-borne vessel. Similarly, in 'He was game', game could be translated as 'willing' or 'spontaneous' or even 'prey', or some other meaning of game, each of which might give a totally different meaning.
6. Contextual difficulties:
Often it is very difficult to get good translations of documents such as sales literature, which is typically very clever brand-enhancement through the usage of well-selected words. If these are not translated expertly, the entire flavor and hook of the sales message can be lost!
7. Checking the quality:
Lastly, it is very difficult to check the quality, unless you hire a second translator to do the quality check!
Connor Andrew C
Specialist Recruitment Consultant
Best Answers in: Organizational Development (2), Career Management (2), Staffing and Recruiting (1), International Law (1), Internationalization and Localization (1), Offshoring and Outsourcing (1)
Hi Nadine,
Great question. My job involves a lot of Japanese - English translation as our HQ is in Japan and lately obsessed with making all the knowledge of the parent available to all their “lonely” children.
1. Language Issues:
Unfortunately, translating between Japanese and English presents a lot of unique problems. The structure is opposite and there are few phrases that can be easily directly translated. Thus, for internal translations we have to do a lot of discussion with the original author and other native speakers to understand the "feel" of what they are trying to express. Then we can find the "best-fit" translation.
2. Outsourcing Pains:
However, only a small percentage of our translation work goes through this process. The great majority gets outsourced to a "Language Centre" based in Japan that sends the documents to freelance translators around the world. The result is pretty painful to read.
Like any major Multinational, we have our own good share of internal terminology, which literally gets butchered in translation. Most of the time it seems the translator never bothers to even try and understand the content before jumping head-on to a babelfish-like attempt. In the end, we get to re-translate and ground-up edit the copy.
3. Internal Headaches:
On our side, the worst experiences normally have to do with departments that prepare unclear and sloppy documents and expect perfect translations. If the original is crap, the translation won't be much better. And unfortunately, we can't throw the copy back in their face and tell them to "come back when you have a clue what you want to say." So we hunker down and get creative.
4. Advice, we all love it:
As a provider I would give the following advice:
1. Develop a good relationship with your client
2. Learn their internal business flows and terminology
3. Get regular feedback regarding quality
4. Understand the content
5. Ask questions, ask questions and ask more questions
As a client I would give the following advice:
1. Make clean and clear copy for the translator
2. Talk with your provider to help them understand the project
3. Give regular feedback and develop an improvement plan
4. Spend time to develop a good relationship with good translators
5. Walk away from bad translators who don't improve
All the best bringing some logic to a world lost in translation...
Links:
Hi Nadine
If you need professional translation on an ongoing basis, it's good to get yourself organized as soon as possible and work with a vendor who can help you meet your precise needs. The number one thing to bear in mind is that this is the face of your business in the eyes of the world, so you want it to match the way you present yourself in your own language(s).
As a service provider, the worst experience is generally with clients who don't really understand what it is they need to have done in order to effectively market their products/services in other languages.This means they are not accepting that the service providers are the experts and can put together an end-to-end solution that may not be the fastest or the cheapest, but will make their company look better in the market.
More Answers (6)
Robert D
interim management, Consultancy Microsoft Dynamics NAV/CRM, IT management,freelance, mind mapping, problem diagnosis,
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Hi Nadine,
When software is being translated into other languages, it often gets a little confusing. It occurs mostly if des mots se ressemblent in the different languages. You then get a mélange of words that look good à première vue but may une autre signification. Example. The word "open" in English means both the status "open" and the verb "to open". When translating into Dutch, somebody has to make a choix. You avez 50% chance to be right. Mais la signification est tout-à-fait différente!
Je suppose que le même problème puisse se présenter pour les traductions français - anglais.
Un joyeux Noël!
The booklet "Translation: Getting it Right" published by the UK's Institute of Translation and Interpreting - http://www.iti.org.uk/pdfs/trans/GIR_english.pdf - is an invaluable guide to translation buying and contains quite a few cautionary anecdotes. (Please cite the ITI if you reproduce any of the stories.)
I regard every assignment as a challenge. But localization jobs without a clear context are the most difficult ones. I am often offered texts in Excel forms, the strings were separated from their contexts sometimes to an extent that any translation would be senseless. Due to very different sentence structures between western languages and Chinese, positions of some parametres have be changed completely, otherwise the Chinese translation would be nonsense. A common structure such as: This is the favorite necklace of: (Somebody). would have to be: This is Somebody's favorite necklace - in Chinese. However, not in all cases the structures can be easily changed in the web page/software interface. To solve such dilemmas, experienced translators would have to change the meaning a little to fit into the situation. E.g. The above sentence might be rendered as: The person who loves this necklace most is: (Somebody).
Do I have the best experience? Hmmm... Maybe when I'm translating love letters. :D
My best experience: I translated 11 chapters of a manual about oil hydraulics and the proofreading engineer congratulated me on the job as he said it sounded as if an engineer had translated it (he did not know I am not).
My worst experience: I had the unfortunate idea to ask a collegue to translate the following 9 chapters and unluckly the translation agency that had subcontracted me the job accepted my idea. She skipped *entire* paragraphs (50 Italian pages became some 28 English pages!), mistranslated half of the concepts and made some major mistakes in English (as a matter of factS, 'made up of' was the same as 'made of', this+singular noun and much more). I fixed half of her chapters *thoroughly* and *alone*, while I fixed only some major things in the remaining chapters, telling her she had to take her own responsibility for that mess. I told her more than once that I would have been happy to list her mistakes so that she could avoid them in the future, but she was not interested in it (!). The proofeader immediatelly identified what I had not fixed, so I was charged with all the corrections. Overall it took me ***2 months*** to correct her 9 chapters and she was obviously paid less than it had been agreed. While I felt guilty for my bad choice and I said I was sorry to the agency a billion times, she was arrongant, never said 'sorry' to anybody and even asked all the money we had agreed agreed. She ended up thinking there was a 'plot' against her to 'steal' her money (!). She stopped talking to me and I must say I have been happy with it because I don't want to have anything to do with people who behave like that.
Some very valuable advice so far for clients as well as service-providers! One experience I can relate to is the one about the original being 'crap' but the client expecting a high-qualitiy translation...
The client ususally wants:
fast + high quality + inexpensive
However, it's nearly impossible to offer all three at once... I think the choices are:
fast + high quality = expensive
high quality + inexpensive = not fast
fast and inexpensive = lower quality
This has been my experience when translating or reading translations
Gert C
release coordinator at AWW
Best Answers in: Using LinkedIn (9), Viral Marketing (1), Public Relations (1), Computers and Software (1)
I have been translating a book on MorphX, the IDE from Axapta/Dynamics AX from english to dutch. In dutch we have the habit of rarely translating terms from informatics. And you end up with sentences in "dunglish" like "Wij hebben de rules overruled". Half of the sentence is in english, but I've tried to avoid this. First reason is a bit of respect for the original author. You can't expect to get money for your translation if you end up with half a book in english and the rest in dutch. If french and german books succeed in finding new words for the english terms, why can't this be in dutch ?
But frankly, I had to get some help from afrikaans, the language which is considered to be a "daughter" from dutch. The Afrikaanders have the habit of really translating everything. So, I had to be careful : computer should not be translated into the afrikaans word "rekenaar", but for the rest I must admit afrikaans has inspired me when needed.
Et je vous souhaite également une bonne nouvelle année, bourrie de bonheur et de santé.
