Miriam Hurley

The Joy of Learning — Derrieres, loafers, and flaneurs

Posted on June 16, 2017     Leave a Comment

I often have cause to think of the paradox that this Danish study explored in depth:

Though translators complain long and loud about many aspects of our profession, particularly about our effort being underappreciated, we generally rate very high on job satisfaction. I don’t know if the satisfaction expressed in the Danish study applies cross-culturally (the Danes are the second happiest people in the world, for Pete’s sake), but I agree with its conclusion that constant learning is a major source of this satisfaction. In the words of one translator surveyed in the study:

I gain knowledge within areas that I would never otherwise come into touch with, which gives me a very broad reference framework in everyday debates in society. I think it is a wonderful job where every day you have the possibility to learn something new and get wiser.

Or, in the more succinct words of my friend and colleague Catherine, “I get paid to read.”

When we translate, we aim to write in the style and use the terminology fitting the subject area. When starting a new job, we typically do some online research of texts in our language on the subject and then more focused research as questions come up. Those of us who translate into English are particularly fortunate as most topics have a wealth of online writings in English (though the quality and accuracy of the English is unreliable; the double-edged sword of having English as the international lingua franca).

We translators surely confuse Google as it tries to peg our true interests. For instance, I’ve recently researched the following:

1. Rumors about Kim Kardashian’s butt being fake — for a satirical magazine.
2. What exactly you call the metal thingy on men’s luxury loafers — for a fashion resale site (hint: it’s not “metal thingy”).
3. The details of the murder Caravaggio committed — for a hotel blog.
4. The invention of a new device for assisting difficult childbirth — for a news features for an NGO.
5. The difference between “the price of rice in China” and “the price of beans” — for a blog on food-related expressions.
6. Futuristic floating architecture projects to help us cope with climate change.
7. The discipline of visual anthropology  — for a project proposal.
8. The history of French Surrealist flaneurs — for an anthropological article.

Google surely thinks that I’m wealthy, celebrity-obsessed, highly eccentric and have a lot of free time to research seemingly unrelated facts.

In my actual free time — or multi-tasking when doing mindless tasks — I like to listen to the lectures of online classes, MOOCs. Right now, I’m listening to Moralities of Everyday Life, staying on theme with the last class I listened to, Moral Foundations of Politics. So now the breadth of my conversation can span all the way from Kim Kardashian’s derriere — the goal of my research was to choose the best synonym for butt — to Enlightenment political theories and chimpanzee warfare vs. the sex lives of bonobos.

I don’t know if I’d say this all made me wiser or more popular at cocktail parties, but it’s certainly entertaining!

Seek and Ye Might Find—Research tips for translators

Posted on February 9, 2017     Leave a Comment

Information abounds. In translation, as in lay life, the immense volume of it means that the trick is to find accurate information quickly without sinking into the morass of its excess. Back in the day, dictionaries and libraries were a translator’s best friends. Now our best (though often treacherous) friend is Google. To put it and other research tools to best use, first consider the nature of your ignorance.

So, what do you need to know?

What a single word means. This most basic problem is also the least frequent for experienced translators and easiest to solve. Say you come across the Italian word “bradipo” for the first time. Of course, a dictionary would work, but just putting it straight into Google is faster and more effective. You get the English translation (“three-toed sloth”), images, the Wikipedia entry, and lots of other information you can use to choose the best translation for your context. However, beware of homophones, including cross-lingual ones. If you find “scotch” on an Italian back-to-school list, a simple Google search will lead you far astray! The fastest, most effective option is a Google search with the word and a context-defining word, such as “scotch + scuola” (“school” in Italian).

What something looks like. Fashion and industrial design get quite fanciful with color and treatment descriptions. Popular Italian color terms are “cipria” (literally, face powder) and “petrolio” (literally, petroleum). The fastest way to see exactly what a color or treatment looks like is a quick Google Image search with, for instance, “color cipria.” Then, just check if your translation, such as “powder pink,” visually matches up.

Alternate meanings. Italian is full of tricky words with alternate meanings or ones by imaginative extension. A much-mistranslated example is “declinare.” Sansoni gives eleven definitions. None of which reflects this usage (about architectural design):

Tutto è pensato in una visione sistemica e la sostenibilità è declinata in ogni aspetto.

When confused by an unusual usage of a word, I turn first to the monolingual Treccani, which gives lengthy explanations and is especially good for archaic usage. But, in this case, we’d just get lost in a forest of other meanings.

Linguee.com comes to the rescue. Drawing on bilingual online texts to show in-context human translations, it gives many options (“to cover,” “to take the form of,” “to interpret,” “to give a…meaning,” “to translate”). I often opt for “to express,” which is nice and squishy in its usage, like declinare. The sense here is actually borrowing from the 12^th definition in Sansoni [2 (Gramm) to decline.], referring to word declensions, and stretching its meaning.

What we actually say.  The question translators ask much more than what something means in the source language is what we would actually say in the target in a given context. We look for ideas rather than invariably right answers. This was the origin of my Pesky Words.  The meaning of a common word like “artigiano” is clear, but it is less obvious when and where the use of “artisan” versus “craftsman” versus “craftsperson.” Here Google can be as marvelous as it can be misleading. Calques of Romance-language usage can be so numerous that they might look correct. You can narrow the search to “.com” or, perhaps better, “.uk” sites to weed out non-native writing. For example, a Google search of “The company is a point of reference” (in Italian, calling a company a “punto di riferimento” is a favorite pastime) yields three pages of results, but Italian fingerprints are all over them; the companies described are all Italian or Spanish and the surrounding language is awkward. All signs that native English writers are unlikely to say it.

What an expression means. Idiomatic expressions can be a special challenge. If the expression is common enough, say “in bocca al lupo,” Google will immediately tell you all you need to know. Wordreference.com forums are great for scaring up ideas to solve idioms and getting a good grasp of the range of usage, especially for the many phrases (“piove sul bagnato,” literally, “it rains on the soaked”) that have no close cousins in the target language. The forum discussions will give you grist for the mill to come up with your own solution.

Technical terms. Even in officially non-technical translations, tough technical terminology can show up. Kudoz from Proz.com (just use Google by putting your term in quotes and Proz) will give you multiple suggestions and discussions among translators about them. You can look up online glossaries in the field. The “look inside” feature on Amazon and Google Books is great if you find a print technical dictionary or glossary.  Or you can start your glossary search at Glossarissimo.

Historical names, plant/animal species, and place names. Wikipedia’s multilingual sidebar links are lovely starting points for these kinds of questions. What was Alexander the Great called in Italian?  For species names, it always helpfully gives the Latin name to help you through the forest of alternate common names. Ponderosa Pine, anyone? Always double check Wikipedia’s suggestions as the wiki format can usher in inaccuracy.

And the ever-necessary word to the wise: just because it’s written doesn’t mean it’s true. Doubt, double check, and cross check.

Resources:

Glossarissimo

Kudoz from Proz.com

Linguee.com

Sansoni

Treccani

Wikipedia

Wiktionary

Wordreference.com forums

Translating for the Language Mavens

Posted on April 23, 2015     Leave a Comment

For 20 years, my friend Jun and I have disagreed about language. A one-time copyeditor, she rigorously responds to “How are you?” with “I’m well” and not “Good.” I think she’s never met a split infinitive she liked. I, on the other hand, am a follower of Steven Pinker, who says of Jun (or William Safire, same difference):

“The legislators of “correct English,” in fact, are an informal network of copy editors, dictionary usage panelists, style manual writers, English teachers, essayists and pundits.Their authority, they claim, comes from their dedication to carrying out standards that maximize the language’s clarity, logic, consistency, precision, stability and expressive range. William Safire, who writes the weekly column “On Language” for the New York Times Magazine, calls himself a “language maven,” from the Yiddish word meaning expert, and this gives us a convenient label for the entire group.

To whom I say: Maven, shmaven! Kibitzers and nudniks is more like it. For here are the remarkable facts. Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens are bits of folklore that originated for screwball reasons several hundred years ago. For as long as they have existed, speakers have flouted them, spawning identical plaints about the imminent decline of the language century after century. The rules conform neither to logic nor to tradition, and if they were ever followed they would force writers into fuzzy, clumsy, incomprehensible prose, in which certain thoughts are not expressible at all.Indeed, most of the “ignorant errors” these rules are supposed to correct display an elegant logic and an acute sensitivity to the grammatical texture of the language, to which the mavens are oblivious.”

I like to boldly split infinitives and would love to flout even more such nonsensical rules. But, when translating, the specter of Jun gives me pause. We always write for imagined readers. I want my translations to be understood and sound good to native and non-native English readers. If I break a beloved rule of the language mavens, I know they will take out their red pens. For instance, I would love to use the “singular they” to get around the awkwardness of “he or she” and the archaicness of “he.” But just as my fingers are about to type “they,” I hold back, if only not to pain Jun.

Customer always right?

Posted on September 22, 2014     Leave a Comment

English is a sensitive issue for many Italians. Until recently, it was infamously poorly taught in schools. Knowing English well is associated with career success, travel and worldliness. Many Italians I know who have a solid intermediate level of English will claim to know none. However, the paradoxical flip side of the coin of insecurity can be overconfidence. Clients asking for my services will often say they just don’t have the time to do it themselves. All over Italy are the disastrous results of people confident they needn’t pay a translator.

Because English skill is an ego-laden point here — correcting someone’s English can seem tantamount to calling them a rube — it takes tact to deal with non-native revisers. Italians with high-level English (and always correspondingly aware of their limitations) can be great revisers; their questions often lead me to better solutions. But I find it difficult to avoid getting tetchy with over-confident revisers. Some signs of overconfidence:

1) Translating slogans, section titles, etc. themselves. Recently, I just barely saved a client from printing up their staff T-shirts with a major grammar mistake in the English.

2) Sending “corrections” (“coocked ham”) to the English directly to the graphic designer and merely CCing the translator.

3) Rejecting the translator’s suggestions in favor of what “sounds right to them.”

4) Thinking it’s easy and should be paid accordingly.

I like to be helpful to my clients, and I understand how it can be hard — particularly for authors — to relinquish control. But I’d ask a little more faith, a little more humility, and perhaps a little independent Googling before querying common English phrases.