“la parole exportée”

photo credit: keith_rock

A couple of days ago, Google Alerts called my attention to this article on the Linuxfr.org website, the opening paragraph of which made me jump:

‘Dans le monde de la traduction professionnelle, vous savez, les gens qui vous produisent des notices tellement bien écrites que, si vous avez le choix, vous préférez les lire en anglais, eh bien dans ce monde-là, il existe un outil intéressant (en fait, il y en a plusieurs, mais l’article se concentre sur l’un d’eux) : la mémoire de traduction.’

My translation, if I may (I am a professional translator, but…): ‘In the world of professional translation, you know, the people who serve you instruction guides that are so well-written that, if you have a choice, you prefer to read them in English, well in that world, there is an interesting tool (in fact, there are several, but the article focuses on one of them): translation memories.’

I would like to draw your attention to two contradictions in that sentence.

Contradiction #1: the term ‘professional translation’, used with such a cynical undertone, implies that people who call themselves professional translators, well, serve you junk food, i.e. translations that are so bad that you need to read them in the source language.

My response to this is:

Yes, I too read ‘translated’ instruction manuals, fact sheets, press releases, etc. and yes, most of the time I have to refer to the English original. In actual fact, when the booklet includes more than 3 languages (12 or 15 languages are not uncommon these days), I don’t even bother to look for the French section, I stay on Section 1 (English).

But, having some experience of this business and therefore some idea of what goes on behind the scenes, it wouldn’t cross my mind to call the authors of such messed up documents, ‘professional translators’. They are posing as professionals, but they have no idea whatsoever of what translation means. However, they know the concept of making big $$$$$$$, or €€€€€€€.

Contradiction #2: At the same time, the author mentions that in that world of *professional* translators, there is a tool, that is likened to a miracle cure. Translation memories.

My response to this is:

I am lost! If this is such a miracle tool, then why is it that professionals are still producing bad translations? Does the author imply that they are, or are not, using these beautiful tools? There are wonderful tools, but stubborn translators do not use them?

Hey! Get real! True professional translators are not living in medieval times, they are already using a range of tools, not just their little brain cells. But what makes their work truly professional, and genuinely valuable, is that they use their brain cells to clean up after the machines. This is called post-editing. If they don’t, or if no-one asks them (understand: pays them) to do it, well, you get junk translation.

By the way, I find that translation memories are far more useful than machine translation systems. But I will discuss this subject in a future post, because I am now assessing a new TM tool that is being developed by a colleague, the very best tool I’ve ever tried so far. So more on that another time.

It is too easy to throw anathema at an entire profession with one comfortable sweeping statement, when there are thousands of true professional translators who are doing their job well and conscientiously.

So how do we make our voices heard? Should we introduce the concept of super-professional translation?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Translation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.