There is much more to translation than simply changing the words from one language to the other.
Some of you might think, "Thank you, Captain Obvious!" But I know from experience that this is not obvious to everyone. Actually, a common misconception is that anyone who knows at least two languages can translate. There was a time when I thought the same thing. I've never been so wrong in all my life :D
So today, I'd like to share with you some thoughts on what translation is really about. I think this might be helpful to those of you who are interested in translation. But even if you're not, it could help you understand the craft and be more forgiving when you see "bad" translations in your favorite movie/series/game (spoiler: that's usually due to lack of context).
1. Mastering one's mother tongue (or another language you translate into)
In Russian linguistic universities, it's common to study a lot of English or other foreign languages while completely neglecting Russian.
The obvious result: students can perfectly understand and fluently speak English/French/Klingon, but have trouble formulating even the simplest ideas in their own mother tongue.
2. Specialization
To be a good translator, it's not enough to know languages; you need to understand the subject matter. And you can't possibly master law, economics, medicine, and IT to the same degree. You need to focus on something (that excites you, hopefully) and delve really deeply into it.
3. Considering the reader...
Not the editor who's going to proofread the copy after you. Not the client who ordered the translation. Not your boss.
If the source is written poorly, don't drag its weaknesses into the target — make it better.
4. Preserving the author's style...
By conveying their ideas, not by stickling to the original sentence structure and words.
This is such a cliché, but the copy should sound as if it was originally written in that language, not translated into it.
5. Context
You need to understand 100% what the source is about. Do your research, ask questions, repeat.
Unfortunately, not every client provides sufficient references and feedback. That's just life.
6. No machine translation!
I'm sure someday Google will drive human translators out of existence, "but it is not this day!" :D
Thank you for reading!
Hi Liubov Vasilyeva, I totally agree with what you’ve said. I’ve worked as a translator myself and translated German academic papers into English. My main goal was always to preserve the logical structure of the arguments and express them as comprehensive but also as precise as possible. I really underestimated the task in the beginning but really started enjoying it along the way. A few months ago, I issued a translation myself, but wasn’t really happy with the result. It was obvious that the translator had no clue about the topic and more or less translated the text word for word. It was a coherent, grammatically correct text but it didn’t sound nice. I know it’s a controversial topic, but I’m usually in favour of creating a new text that conveys the message, just as you’ve proposed.
Hi Liubov, I really like your last point! Sometimes I use translators like DeepL to see how natives would react to that translation and they often find mistakes. When I'm a beginner of a language I actually quite often use translators in order to get the right sentence structure and I think that this helps a lot in the language learning process. But your right, machine translation becomes better and better. I'm not sure though if human translators could eventually be replaced.
Great Post! I wonder if digital translators would be able to pick up on the tone of someone to understand if they were being sarcastic?
I'll be honest here your writing level is superb!
@MimmiCaro Thank you! I'm glad to hear you feel the same way. Yep, this really is a controversial topic. I guess it depends on the purpose of a certain text and its target audience :) For example, marketing translations allow for much more creativity than technical or legal documents. That's why I love translating marketing :D
@LindasLinguas Thank you, Linda! I also use machine translators when learning a foreign language :) I totally agree that it helps with the right sentence structure, at least for key European languages. I don't know how well it works with more difficult languages, like Chinese or Arabic.
@Jackson Thank you so much! :) I guess it'd take a lot more learning for neural networks :)
Liubov, that was very clever and I really like the relaxed, conversational tone of your article. It's proof that a piece on something as technical as translation does NOT have to be boring. Great work!
@CocoPop Thank you so much for taking the time to read my entry and to give feedback! Especially for your explanations why something would sound better this or the other way :) This is very helpful!