“la parole exportée”

As translators we are required to be excellent, which we strive to be.

The bit I’m quoting below is taken from a coupon I received from a supermarket chain that implements a customer loyalty system. Usually, I just check the amount they are refunding me, but this time I took the time to read the rest.

Literal translation into English:

‘It must be used until 03/05/2009.’

I disagree.

Either the original text should read:

Il peut être utilisé jusqu’au (It can be used until) 03/05/2009,

or it should be:

Il doit être utilisé avant le (It must be used before) 03/05/2009.

This sentence makes no sense. Option 1 would be possible only if you were allowed to use it several times, or if you could redeem only part of it, and redeem the rest at another time, before the expiry date. But it’s a one-time ticket, and you lose any amount that you are not using (i.e. if you’re buying something cheaper).

You can guess the meaning of course, because the only important piece of information here is the date itself.

But it’s not as if this had been translated by a poor soul speaking a language with a different grammatical structure. It simply shows that the person who wrote it is unable to follow the logic of a short, straightforward sentence, in his or her own language.

And that’s only a detail. Think about bigger things. Politics. The economy…

During my brief visit overseas (understand ‘under the English Channel’ and on to Canterbury, England) last Saturday, I dropped by the Oxfam second-hand bookshop in the main street and there I made my way, shelf after shelf, sifting through a much better selection of books than I imagined.

I almost bought a gilt-edged copy of Longfellow’s poems (and still regret not doing so, hoping it will still be there when I return in September).

Ending up in the Languages section, there, under a set of brand-new copies of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Nouveau Roman gems, I found what promised to be fun for someone interested in words, and pure torture for ordinary people. [About Robbe-Grillet, I must confess that we parted ways when I was in high school and was assigned the reading of his Manifest toward the end of the school year; I found it so excruciatingly boring that I've never read anything by him since then.]

‘A Glossary for the 90s’ was published in 1998 by Guardian columnist David Rowan. It lists words and phrases that crept up maybe not in our personal vocabulary, but at least in the media, in corporate publications, etc. in the previous decade. Some of them have become very standard, like ‘Reality TV’, ‘Social Entrepreneur’, ‘the New Black’, ‘the Defining Moment’, ‘Pushing the envelope’, etc.

The book is classified in the Humour/Reference category, and it includes many euphemisms. I’m not sure which one is the longest, but one I particularly liked (and had never heard before) was: ‘Real-time Precipitation Syndrome’. The author doesn’t cite a source, but provides a translation: ‘Rain’.

Unfortunately, there are only 9 pages in the section headed ‘Eurojargon’, that well of linguistic and sometimes incomprehensible invention. But the ‘Wheeled Child Conveyancing Vehicle’ has been included. In those Eurocrats’ heads, What’s wrong with pushchair, or pram?

I am still reading the book, there are quite a few of these phrases and words that I’d never seen before. Buying this book was a good move. Longfellow will have to wait…

There’s a good test. Read this ad:

We need freelance translators for all language pairs. We are willing to pay $0.01-$0.03 for small projects (1-10,000 words) and $0.01-$0.02 for large projects (10,000 and more).You will have to translate a sample text as test translation. You must give the amount of words you can translate in 1 hour for your language pair. A sample text will have to be translated as test. Please note that MACHINE/SOFTWARE TRANSLATIONS will not be paid for.

If you are proud of the job you are doing, then accepting the offer is digging your grave with (or maybe despite?) your neurons.

1. Such rates aren’t even minimally acceptable. Forget that you ever invested in learning a language, became a full-fledged professional, gained years of experience, accumulated knowledge of your subject. Even a beginner cannot live on that.
2. Beware of sample texts used as free tests, they are often a way of donating perfectly usable translations. I remember a company that would give different chapters of a book to translate as test pieces, to different translators (usually beginners) and they did not pay any of them, because they were test pieces. Not only that, but the result was judged “not acceptable”, so none of the guinea pigs ever got the rest of the project. One translator checked… and found the book on the market, his translated chapter unchanged…
3. The amount of words you can translate in 1 hour varies a lot, even between individuals, and has only a limited bearing on the final quality. A “slow” translator might be an excellent translator, whereas someone who doesn’t bother to check anything – grammar, spelling, etc. might deliver with mistakes. Also, if you’re experienced, you can spit something acceptable in no time (and being an interpreter as well I have an advantage here, I do translate fast, at least for the preliminary version). But you still need to do Quality Assurance and that takes a little time.
4. “Machine/software translations will not be paid for”. This makes me laugh. No professional translator in his or her right mind would deliver unedited machine-translated documents. But some translators do use machine translation software that has a cost. Translation memories and user dictionaries take time to build up and maintain, and mean knowledge. So yes, it has a cost that the translator should be able to recover.

So, what do you think?