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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2013 12:06:48 GMT
I spent almost my entire career translating documents at the office, from French to English, from English to French and sometimes from Arabic to English via French. That was always rather strange since I don't speak Arabic other than a few insignificant words and the only thing I can read in Arabic are the numbers and only then by thinking hard about some of them. But one of the executive secretaries was Lebanese and she would read the Arabic documents to me in French and I would create the version in English. This is even harder than it sounds, because Arabic appears to be one of those languages where the whole meaning can be changed by the last few words, so we would often have to back up and start over.
Anyway, I'm sorry to say it, but the point of most of these translations was to dumb them down so that even the most dimwitted employees could understand them. My work was not just to translate but to simplify and abridge.
Sometimes, it was sort of the opposite, because the dimwitted employees (and also the intelligent ones) would often give me their own appalling efforts to write to management or to the head office, and I would correct everything in my translation, including their fuzzy ideas, and make them look intelligent. But I still had to keep it relatively simple because normally our top manager in Paris did not have a terrific command of English.
Anyway, now I am facing a new challenge because I have accepted a freelance job from the museum directorate of the ministry of culture to translate a bunch of documents from French to English for their professional international publications. So it is out of the question to dumb it down -- it has to stay technical and keep the fancy words, which is a whole new world for me. Unfortunately, I don't really care for the writing style of the author and it is all I can do to keep myself from correcting the French version while I'm at it.
I can already tell that I will not be accepting any more such jobs.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2013 12:15:39 GMT
I always found that the best answer to somebody who wanted their French text to sound as bad in English as it did in French (usually some professional jargon) was to say, "You can't say that in English" or "It doesn't mean the same as it does in French".
One piece of advice I can give you is that if you know anyone whose French isn't especially good but their English is, give it to them to read over when you have finished. Since you are so fluent in both languages, you might not catch a "Frenchism" that might slip in. It's very hard doing this on your own.
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Post by htmb on Mar 16, 2013 14:40:43 GMT
I imagine translating is much harder than it first sounds. I am sure I would have the same issues of wanting to make corrections when translating from one language to another. It's hard enough for me to refrain from making major changes when editing English.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2013 18:50:58 GMT
One piece of advice I can give you is that if you know anyone whose French isn't especially good but their English is, give it to them to read over when you have finished. Since you are so fluent in both languages, you might not catch a "Frenchism" that might slip in. It's very hard doing this on your own. I know that I would not be qualified to do this at an official translation agency, because they generally refuse anybody who left their "mother tongue country" more than 5 years ago -- unless they are already established specialists with references. Nevertheless, I am not too worried about the final result compared to so many other official translations that I have read. I know that it is safer to make a "Frenchism" mistake than to make a proper idiomatic translation that goes beyond the grasp of the people paying for it.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2013 18:59:29 GMT
Yes, but in my view, the problem is that the people paying for it are not the intended audience. And if the translation sounds odd, the intended audience will pick it up and 1) find it amusing and 2) not take it seriously, thus discrediting whoever is paying for the translation.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2013 19:25:01 GMT
You mean somebody actually reads these publications?
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2013 20:11:20 GMT
Sometimes -- I once spent hours correcting the English on the website of Paris City Hall!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2013 20:34:37 GMT
Well, that is indeed more likely to be read. It reminds me of when I corrected all of the incredible errors in the English of the Cannes film festival... after the fact. I never received any acknowledgement, but from the next year onwards, the English versions were perfect.
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Post by lola on Mar 17, 2013 1:50:40 GMT
Nothing to add but: they're lucky to have you.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 17, 2013 2:34:05 GMT
I think you are just fed up, as I've done both the dumbing down and the fancy jargon (in English, French and Italian stuff). Recently, a client in France wanted me to translate a document in full-blown French academic jargon, a language unto its own, into European Spanish. While I can certainly read and to some extent translate from Spanish, there was so much wrong there. Fortunately, I was able to pass it on to a qualified colleague!
Of course business, the NGO milieu etc all have their jargon and buzzwords too.
I find the restriction against people who have left their "mother tongue" zone rather ludicrous. People who are working in several languages have to make an effort to keep on top of the current lingo in all of them.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 17, 2013 10:42:30 GMT
Well, so far I have learned one word that I did not know: galéjade
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Post by lagatta on Mar 17, 2013 15:30:29 GMT
I knew that word, but there are always words we don't know!
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Post by bixaorellana on Mar 18, 2013 14:52:25 GMT
I know that I would not be qualified to do this at an official translation agency, because they generally refuse anybody who left their "mother tongue country" more than 5 years ago -- unless they are already established specialists with references. I find the restriction against people who have left their "mother tongue" zone rather ludicrous. I think that rule must have been made by someone was only speaks his mother tongue (& who isn't very smart). Recently someone asked me how long I've lived here. When I said fifteen years he asked, "Aren't you afraid you'll forget English?"
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2013 16:20:48 GMT
I had never heard that rule. I worked for a translation agency for a while and I was never asked how long I had lived in France.
The only rule I know is that you translate into your mother tongue.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 20, 2013 15:18:26 GMT
I don't like to translate words like "paroxyistiques" -- even though the English equivalent exists, it is such an unnatural word that I would want to slap anybody who tried to use it in a conversation.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2013 15:19:17 GMT
Hmmm, I finally reached the end of the translation. I haven't really been slaving over it because some days, I only did a paragraph or two. Now I have to polish it -- and also simplify it, because damn it, I don't know any English speaker, no matter how erudite, who would want to wade through some of this stuff. On top of that, one paragraph is still completel gibberish, and I need to rip it apart and redo it.
For anybody interested, here are the last two sentences of the text. Test your French!
Le Musée, caisse de résonance du patrimoine immatériel enfin reconnu, est l’arbre à palabres où se distille la poétique du patrimoine. Il est l’oxymore du dérisoire essentiel, le grand reliquaire laïc des vies ordinaires, uniques et pourtant partagées.
On a brighter note, I was checking fees on translation sites and saw that if I want, I can get 500€ for a text of this length (7 pages) -- 3500 words.
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Post by mossie on Mar 21, 2013 15:22:10 GMT
Worth every sou ;D
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2013 20:01:44 GMT
I don't think that sentence would translate well into English. It's so ridiculously pretentious.
I wouldn't read something like that in French either. I would find myself skipping entire chunks to find some real information.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2013 20:26:28 GMT
Same with me. But the author is one of the top museum curators in France and this is the jargon of those people. Strangely enough, when she left a message on my mobile phone, she sounded totally normal.
Actually, her text has some very nice moments when she relates anecdotes about "normal" people but then she keeps going back to her tirades about the sacred mission of museums. Once I have cleaned up my work and created the final version, I'll put one of the stories here.
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Post by lagatta on Mar 22, 2013 18:01:06 GMT
I have to translate stuff like that as well, for academics and arts groups. One funding request was full of that shit. Odd, as the group's work is lovely and not at all obscure, esoteric or pretentious. Nor do they talk like that. They just think they have to write that way to be taken seriously.
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