Attitude to the Materials for Translation

This is very important. Most of the material people want translated is not of high culture. I have translated materials ranging from articles in medical journals on deep vein thrombosis to bearer’s bonds. The longest translation project I ever did was a 65,000-word book, the shortest, a 50-word diagram.

Basically, translation is seen as a slow and expensive process which most businesses and organizations would rather avoid. They prefer not to go through the hassle of calling some agency, sending them the material, waiting for a bid, bargaining and haggling over price, form and date of delivery and then waiting to see if they get something they can use. Very little of what businesses do is worth translating.

So what they do translate has to be important to someone somewhere. And therefore, it has to be important to you to do it right, especially if you want to get more work from that client.

What might seem stupid to you is worth a lot to someone. I’ve translated lost traveller’s checks surveys, interoffice memos, and advertising copy for car care products. None of this is of high culture. But someone wanted it, so I did my absolute best. Remember, the only way to survive as a translator is to do a good job. You will be judged solely on your work.

Materials to be translated come in all sizes and shapes. Often you have to deal with hand written material. Someone scrawled out some message to someone else and this twenty-five-word chit of paper is now Exhibit A in an international patent infringement lawsuit. You probably won’t know that, but it could happen.

When one person was working in-house as a translator in some office, his supervisor plopped a short letter on his desk and he translated it. He later found out that Prime Minister of his country took this letter to President Reagan during the Summit meeting in 1988. You never know.

When translating, no problem is too small, no term too minor to be ignored. The people who will read your translation don’t know the source language. If they did, they wouldn’t have hired you. It’s easy to see why an article describing a surgical procedure must be done very accurately. Death and life of a patient might depend on your very translation, its accuracy and readability. If you confuse a scalpel with retractor something will happen with a patient for sure. You must be very careful while translating comments on the aircraft design, for the air crash might happen just because of your reluctance to look into vocabulary to find the precise meaning of a specific term. You have to take it all seriously if you want your clients to take you seriously.

Questions for discussion:

1. What is the difference between free-lance and in-house translator?

2. What is the difference between translator and interpreter?

3. What does the term “bilingualism” mean?

4. In what ways do translators learn and master their languages?

5. What does it mean “to know the field of translation” and “to have necessary resources”?

6. What are the pitfalls of translation?

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