In areas like law, finance and marketing, the written word remains a crucial part of corporate activities, from day-to-day operations to documents bearing on major deals. Most organisations devote considerable resources to ensuring that all their written production, including websites, legal documents, marketing material and emails, is in line with the image they want to build for themselves. They also know that hesitation in word choice, spelling or punctuation works against this overall aim and that even a minor typo will stand out in an otherwise carefully drafted piece.
The same applies to translated texts, which are as integral to corporate image as their conscientiously prepared originals. The recent global embarrassment for the Spanish fashion giant Mango, sparked by a mistake in the translation of a single item in its online catalogue, serves as an example of the damage such errors can cause to a company’s image. Yet it is not only major gaffes that have negative consequences. Any translation that falls short of the standard will create a bad impression in target readers.
Conversely, faultless use of the target language demonstrates respect for the intended audience and their culture—an essential ingredient of any cross-cultural relation. A good translation functions just as effectively in its own milieu as the source text in the original environment. But it takes an experienced professional to overcome the complexities of translation and convey the intended message faithfully and accurately in a text that is readable without strain, while avoiding the countless pitfalls that inevitably appear in every translation project.
What do translators actually do? Who can be a translator? What is a good translation and can a computer replace a human to translate resources? These are some of the many questions to which you would like answers. Translators convert written (or spoken – interpreter) words from one language into another. This does not mean that they simply replace the words, literally or mechanically. Trained and educated translators adapt the contents of the situation for the recipient in the other language, so we can talk about this as “intercultural translation.” We could say that translators are mediators between cultures. That means, among other things, that the translator has a really good knowledge of languages with which she works in a manner that is far beyond the use of everyday language. Such knowledge of the language often includes jargon and the transfer of complex and lengthy texts into the target language. A translator cannot be a person who is just bilingual, who speaks two languages. The job requires much more knowledge and better than basic skills. Good translations are the result of carefully coordinated teamwork between translators, linguists and experts of different profiles, with guaranteed completeness and correctness of the translation. The quality of translation can also be affected by revision and proofreading.
Where legal texts are concerned, translation is required to bridge not just languages but different legal systems. Such is the case of English and Spanish, which are generally associated with the common law and civil law traditions respectively. This added difficulty calls for extensive expertise in dealing with specialised legal terminology to ensure that the exact spirit of the original is reflected in the target language. A translation that allows the reader to simply ‘understand’ the original is not good enough given the multiple legal implications of contracts, regulations, financial information and other texts that may have binding force.
The above describes my outstanding discovered skill, which surfaced most while at the Access Project, and was seconded by this blog’s title as it reflects the most meaningful and particular email titles ever recieved from the MCH & RapidSMS Coordinator during Tracking 1000 Days Training Manual development and validation phase. Don’t be hard on yourself when the going gets rough and/or tough, even during your fellowship term cause it eventually will if it hasn’t yet passed you by; may be you are just misplaced or your turn hasn’t arrived yet. Whatever the case, remember even those seemingly insignificant breakthroughs, as they’ll carry you on. Don’t be discouraged by not reaping exactly what you hoped for — sometimes the unexpected fruits will be exactly what you need right now, but you might not realize it until after it’s passed! Yet, the next time you read ‘credit capacity’ where ‘credit rating’ is meant, or ‘social statutes’ instead of ‘company bylaws’, you will know the client did not get value for money 🙂