“la parole exportée”

The dilemma:

I’m working on a monthly translation project with which I have a long-standing love-hate relationship, even though my client thinks that I’m managing rather well.

Much of the English copy that ends up on a translator’s desk was not drafted with French translation in view. In fact, on closer inspection, you will find that the copy wasn’t drafted with any of the other major languages of the world in mind. French, Spanish, German, Russian, to name a few, all happen to be languages that use more, and often longer words, than English.

This is fine when there are no space restrictions, and the translator is free to translate.

But things are less rosy when space restrictions are involved, for instance for headings, or copy intended for websites, or publications of any sort.

Maybe the English or American writer was vaguely aware that some translation would be involved at a later stage, but they had to include a given amount of data in their copy. Maybe their own copy was too long to start with, and they had a hard time fitting it in, and they have used up all 500 characters.

What can you do? Throw a tantrum, send an angry e-mail to your client, refuse to do the work unless they make the copy shorter for your sake?

That’s where professionals have to stick their necks out. Their reputation is on the line.

When a simple solution like nudging the font size a notch down behind your client’s back isn’t an option — ending up perhaps with a font size that’s so small that readers have to use magnifying glasses, or move on to easier-to-read articles — there’s no other way but to:

Take risks.

Taking risks is not easy, yet this is what professionals are paid for, whether we like it or not.

In this particular situation, the risks I take involve:

1. Deleting all unnecessary info (I didn’t say data). I know who the copy will be read by, the degree of detail required, possible additional props like photos, etc., so if for instance the copy includes a product model number and its extended name in 4 or 5 words, I translate the full name once, then I drop it in the rest of the text, using only the model number. That’s at least 20 characters saved per instance, more in some cases.

2. Make the text more readable. A couple of examples:

In technical documents written in the USA, product names tend to be repeated several times, sometimes within one sentence. This doesn’t really go down well in terms of style in the target language, at least in French. So using it once, and replacing it, as appropriate, by ‘it,’ ‘this,’ ‘this model,’ ‘this feature’ makes for a lighter style (and saves characters again).

Depending on the type of copy, again (this is all very context-dependent), two related sentences can be joined and a little cleaning up can be performed in order to make the relationship more obvious, in less words.

The translator should consider all options that make the reader’s task easier, of course with their client’s agreement. But slavishly translating everything without respect to readers is not translation, at least in this particular case.

Here the key words are ‘context-dependent,’ ‘as appropriate,’ ‘knowing who the reader is,’ etc. All this involves a good knowledge of the end-reader, and a direct relationship with your client.

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That’s it. I’m not allowing Twitter to hog this front page anymore, I’m moving all my tweets to a separate page in the sidebar.

Why am I doing this?

1. In the interest of design and esthetics: I like the clean look of the initial posting page. I quite like a white page too! Because I’m using the default WordPress theme, I’m frustrated by the untidy look of bullets, but I’m not changing the theme until I’ve had time to explore other ones, i.e. until the Summer.

2. In the interest of clarity of content: I want to reserve the posting page for more content- or opinion-oriented stuff. Things that I’m sharing with readers, with at least a semblance of logic. By their very nature, tweets are a collection of often disjointed statements.

3. For ease of publication: Twitter updates are fed automatically around midnight (local time here), and I usually find them the next morning only. I edit them (deleting those which I consider as outside the realm of this blog). Now I will simply move them en bloc over to the new page, where they will be free to go to sleep forever in their actual state.

4. To reduce the pressure: Looking at a list of untidy tweets gives me a bad conscience when I’m not updating the blog. As if I had taken the lazy option of throwing at my readers a list of haphazard (although sincere and genuine) statements as a stop gap. Not good for my morale, not good for my readers too.

Do I need to continue with Twitter at all?

In the beginning, I quickly became bored with the ‘push’ nature of Twitter, and frustrated over its lack of interactivity. Over the weeks, though, I’ve come to realize its very specific benefit, namely the building of a core community of professionals around the theme of language(s) and small business.

For instance:

@zjjtrans, @EHegenberger, @matthewbennett, @spokk, @pikorua etc. are translators and we have conversations/opinions around products, projects, and so on. I value this immensely, and it’s much more responsive than comments to a blog post.

@amypalko, @joannayoung are my guardian Angels of the English language. I value their opinions on the importance of words and they help keep me on my toes with English.

@judithstephens, @kreschke, @thetimediva, @karensmith, @drsallywitt, @marismith, @LindaZimmer are just a few of my business women ’support group.’ I should include @jlturn here, except that he’s a man, but he is very supportive. @GoodAdvice is also a good friend from the Facebook universe.

I follow many more people, but unfortunately I can’t list everyone, so I hope I’m not offending anyone. If you feel that you have been unfairly overlooked, please let me know, and I’ll add you! If you don’t fit one of the above categories, I can always add another one. I also follow tweets from Le Monde, The Guardian, The New York Times, CNN and, yes, even 10 Downing Street!

Are you on Twitter too?

I’m http://twitter.com/NadineTouzet. See you there?

In France, May is a strange month for business, it’s the month of holidays.

There are two reasons for this:

A variable combination of religious and public holidays: Ascension Day; Pentecost (today — Easter was early this year, hence Pentecost falls in May); May 1st (Labor Day); May 8 (1945 Victory Day). May 9 (Europe Day) selected to replace May 8 as a more positive symbol, has not really taken off yet.

It is also the month when those who are employed are ‘using up’ their statutory vacation days, if they haven’t used them up before. If they don’t do now, they are lost forever.

I haven’t even mentioned the Spring school vacation!

Yes I know, this sounds a little complicated. For those of us who are self-employed, it means a slack month, with reduced conference activity. Translations are not affected in the same way. The most noticeable effect is when you work for smaller companies that haven’t automated their payment system. June is a better month!

This year strangely departs from the tradition, as several of these holidays happened to be combined: Labor Day and Ascension Day were both on May 1, and today is a special case, supposedly the last day of a 5-day weekend, but it has become a controversial subject, and I’m receiving work e-mails.

This leaves us with 3 full working weeks before the end of May. Very unusual.

Have I lost you?

I found the video below on Dawud Miracle’s blog (go there to read the entire post) and it resonates so much with me that I decided to refer you to it too.

Admittedly, Christine Kane is a musician and an artist. Yet I believe that the points she makes also apply in any profession where the blogger is performing, or delivering a service for something in which they are a vital component, even though they might have to stay out of the limelight.

Why does this interview resonate with me then?

Because a majority of people around me are a little confused, even suspicious:

“Tsss… Why do you blog?” “Is it really going to bring you new business?” “Shouldn’t you be concentrating on more traditional ways of approaching clients?” “Aren’t you wasting your time?” (understand: “stay where you are, don’t do anything that wasn’t done before”)

“Aren’t you revealing too much of yourself?” (understand: “keep quiet”)

“Who are those people who read your blog, anyway (*frown*)” (understand: “serious people, potential clients, don’t read blogs”)

My answers are:

“The world is changing around us, it’s as simple as that. We might as well acknowledge it, instead of holding on to old ways (old ways are good too, but not the only ones anymore.)”

“I carefully select what I want to reveal. This is not very different to what you have to do in real life, and I am aware of the necessary restrictions on disclosure.”

“All kinds of people are following this blog, including spammers… My blogging experience, in the widest sense of the word (I include here all the social networking and reading on marketing, etc. ), has allowed me to meet more diverse people than I had ever been able to before.”

Christine Kane - Broadcast your self LIVE

Do you come across similar roadblocks? How do you deal with them? Why do you blog?