English to French translation

Avatar

November 20, 2009

While reading PoPCo, by Scarlett Thomas, I learnt that the word “avatar”, which refers to an Internet user’s alter ego in online forums and other communities, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “descent of a deity to the Earth in incarnate form”.

According to Wikipedia, it was popularised by Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992):

While Stephenson was not the first to apply the Sanskrit term avatar to online virtual bodies (the video game Habitat did that), the success of Snow Crash popularized the term to the extent that avatar is now the accepted term for this concept in computer games and on the World Wide Web.

I think I know what my next book will be.

Image: Vishnu with his 10 avatars (incarnations): Matsya, Kûrma, Varâha, Narasimha, Vâmana, Parashurâma, Râma with the Ax, Râma, Krishna, Bouddha and Kalki.

Interpreting: how to react when stuck

November 13, 2009

However thoroughly you prepare for an interpreting assignment, there will always be surprises. I’m not talking about having to hop on a tractor so the client can see it in action, although my client was very grateful that I didn’t mind working in unusual conditions (mind? I loved it!). I’m talking about terminology.

I had researched everything to do with sod-cutting, including soil composition, so when the English client explained that the sod-cutter worked well on loam-based soil, I congratulated myself and used the French word “loam”, which was part of the little glossary I had compiled.
The French looked puzzled. They had never heard of “loam”. In this type of situation, panic or cursing online dictionaries is a tempting option, but it must be resisted. The best thing to do is to acknowledge the problem to the clients and find a way to go around it. In this case, I asked for a description of loam and was told that it was “between sand and clay”. When I relayed this information to the French, they exclaimed “Ah, du limon!”

It would be nice to know everything about a subject when interpreting, but it’s impossible. When faced with a problem, the main thing is to accept one’s limitations, not feel too bad about it and concentrate on quickly finding a way to overcome it (without falling off the tractor).

Of mice and fairies

November 5, 2009

“Look! I have a wobbly tooth!” says my niece Jasmine, who is six.
“Brilliant! Will you put it under your pillow so the little mouse comes to get it?”
“A MOUSE??! In my BED??!”
Cross-cultural confusion alert! Backtrack or the little girl will never go to sleep again, terrified that her bed is about to be taken over by tooth-loving rodents.
“The fairy! I meant the fairy! The lovely tooth fairy!”

Although no one knows for certain the origin of the little mouse and the tooth fairy, it looks like they might come from a French fairy tale called La Bonne Petite Souris, where a fairy turns into a mouse to help a good queen defeat an evil king.

Jasmine recovered from her shock. After all, this is the auntie that once told her that chocolate was brought by, wait for it, not a rabbit, but BELLS at Easter. Whatever next?

Mouse photo by PixCat

Guest post: An interpreter's dilemma

October 30, 2009

The verb “to interpret” has two common meanings, which in a sense are somewhat contradictory. The first relates to the act of interpreting written documents or oral statements, in the sense of giving one’s “take” on them. The use of the word in this sense suggests circumstances in which a fair degree of subjectivity is permitted.

The second sense, with which NCTA members are likely to make an association, relates to the art of oral translation, whose practitioners are expected to eschew subjectivity and to render the target language with an almost scientific precision.

Translations are often chiseled out of rough source language and fashioned in their final form with the aid of dictionaries, by consulting colleagues and, as a last resort, by asking the client for a clarification of the intended meaning. Interpretation assignments, such as the cross-examination of witnesses, allow no such luxury. Rather, the thrust and parry of these verbal brawls sometimes makes one yearn for the days when one knew only a single language and life seemed simpler on that account.

While driving back from one such assignment, a Hebrew-language deposition, I was mulling over one or two of the trickier terms that the deposing attorney had been pitching across the table at his victim. The deponent for whom I had been interpreting was a flower seller. The deposing lawyer, confident that he was about to establish a case of forgery, dramatically flourished the document he held and asked the deponent: “So does this purport to be your signature?” As the word “purport” comes up fairly often in legal settings (and being myself a retired lawyer), I knew the Hebrew equivalent. But I anticipated a familiar trap.

While I had no doubt that the flower vendor could, if called upon to do so, expound at length on the subtle differences between various types of chrysanthemums, I was equally confident that he had never heard the Hebrew equivalent of “purport.” If, therefore, I rendered a translation of that word so precise as to qualify me for a top grade in any Hebrew-language test, I knew that the deponent was highly likely to reply “I didn’t understand the question.”

This kind of situation is pregnant with danger for the interpreter. At best, furtive glances are likely to be thrown in the interpreter’s direction, with all present assuming that the correct rendition of the lawyer’s question had proven beyond the interpreter’s language skills. At worst, the deponent’s counsel, looking up from his newspaper, is likely to see in the deponent’s state of bamboozlement a golden opportunity to come to his client’s defense (which he may well not have done in any juridical sense), by stating for the record “We seem to be having a problem with the interpreter,” or some such gratuitous comment.

Determined not to become a victim of the blame game, I decided, on the spur of that fateful moment, to break all the rules of professional interpreting, and to take a little professional license, by lowering the register of the question. I therefore rendered, in Hebrew, the equivalent of “So are you claiming that this is your signature?” I held my breath as I waited to see whether my self-protective, unprofessional sleight-of-tongue would have the desired effect. Would it, I wondered, elicit an answer that would demonstrate that the deponent had understood the question and if he had not, would it be he or I who would take the rap? His reply, in Hebrew, was: “Not only do I claim that this is my signature, but it is in fact my signature.” I took one more small step, if not for humanity, then at least for the interpreting profession, and rendered the answer back into English as “Not only does it purport to be my signature, but it is in fact my signature.”

My gamble had paid off. The pair of distortions had cancelled each other out. I had demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that the deponent’s powers of comprehension extended far beyond the realm of chrysanthemums. I had allowed the deponent’s counsel to continue reading his newspaper without the need to sort out any bothersome misunderstandings. I had in fact performed a valuable service to all parties.

I am hoping that the parties who paid me to interpret for the flower vendor are not regular readers of Translorial, because they may not fully appreciate the interpreting resourcefulness that I displayed while on contract to them. But if this frank discovery of mine (in the legal sense of that word) should elicit a complaint, or a demand to stick to the straight and narrow path of interpreting when carrying out future assignments, I intend to plead argumentum ab inconvenienti.

By Jonathan Goldberg, French/English and Hebrew/English interpreter and translator residing in Los Angeles. Article published with the permission of Translatorial, Journal of the NCTA.

Flower photo by Gertrud K.

Loire valley castles

October 22, 2009

I visited many stunning castles during my recent holiday in the Loire Valley. Guess what these are called in the comments and if you're the first to give all the right answers, you'll win a month of free French podcasts courtesy of frenchpod101.com. Go!

Castle 1 is mainly known for its incredible vegetable garden.

Castle 2 was the home of one of Napoléon's ministers, whose nickname was "the limping devil".

During the Second World War, one end of Castle 3 was in the free zone and the other in the occupied zone.

Castle 4 is one of the earliest French Renaissance castles.

Castle 5 was the home of Agnès Sorel, the very first official royal mistress.

Crowdsourcing and translation

October 12, 2009

Crowdsourcing is the act of using the general public to take on, generally for free, work that would normally be assigned to contractors.

Some companies have decided to use crowdsourcing to translate their website, relying on thousands of volunteers to work for them for free (step 6 of the crowdsourcing process above doesn't always happen) and produce a result that will help them increase their revenue. The results have been of varying quality, with Spanish users of Facebook, in particular, reporting grammatical errrors and confusing terminology.

I can understand why a not-for-profit website might choose to ask its users to translate it in several languages: when budgets are tight, it is tempting to use the skills and good will of others. Besides, members of an online community might have an emotional investment in it and might be only too happy to give up their time for it. The result might not be as good as it might be, had it been done by professionals, but if it’s good enough to attract other users, then the aim has been achieved.

There is a perception out there that, in order to be a translator, all you need is to know two languages. Our profession struggles with recognition and that is why when LinkedIn, a for-profit organisation, sent me an email asking me whether I’d be happy to translate their website for free, to have fun or to get a badge, I was very annoyed, along with a lot of other translators. Not because LinkedIn was choosing to use crowdsourcing, but because, in asking me to give away my services, it seemed to contradict its main aim, which is to help professionals further their career. No professional is going to further her career by accepting to work for free, and as LinkedIn clearly wasn’t interested in supporting me as a professional, I deleted my profile.

When Twitter announced that it was looking for volunteers to translate its interface for free, I wasn’t surprised. There is a real “community” feel about Twitter, and they knew that many people would be interested in contributing to a website that they feel very much a part of. I won’t be helping, as although I love Twitter, I feel decidedly uncomfortable working alongside amateurs, however talented they are, and being associated with a final result that I might not be entirely proud of. I shan’t be deleting my profile either: Twitter has made no claim as to what it can do for my career or professionals in general, and so I see no contradiction there. All I see is a business decision, with which I disagree: in my work, I strive for quality and I’m prepared to pay for it.

It’s a shame that some big companies aren’t prepared to treat their non-English speaking users with enough respect to hand their localisation needs over to professionals, who are best placed to produce a translation which will enhance the experience of all users, whatever their language. In fact, I can even see how crowdsourcing could be used within the translation process: once the work has been done by translators, it could be extremely beneficial to submit it to the community for comment, to make sure that it responds to its needs and respects its inherent culture. This combination of translation expertise and user feedback could be a real recipe for success.

Crowd photo by TwOsE