Choosing the right translator – the source issue

[water flowing through hand*]

 

When choosing the most appropriate translator, customers often focus on price and knowledge of the target language, the language into which the text must be translated. One factor that is no less important is the capacity of the translator to understand the source text. Specifically, in order to grasp the essence and intricacies of any document, the translator must have thorough linguistic and subject matter knowledge as well as experience in the field. Only then are linguists capable of ascertaining the full meaning of the text to be translated.

Clearly, formal knowledge of language is a requirement for any translator. This background goes beyond a basic knowledge of tenses and syntax. It involves the understanding nuances differentiating similar structures and words with non-identical meanings. For example, in English, may and can often do not express the same idea. Likewise, I have lived in England for 5 years does not mean the same as I lived in England for five years or I had lived in England for 5 years. It takes extensive education to grasp what the writer meant to said, far more than three years of high school classes. The appropriate translator should have studied the language of the document to be translated.

However, knowledge of the actual subject matter in that language is no less important. A linguist may have a rich general vocabulary but lack knowledge in whole series of fields, notably medicine, law and engineering. This ignorance leads to guessing, lack of confidence, overly literal translation and, far too often, serious errors. For example, a marché in the government realm is often a contact, not a market. The required background goes beyond vocabulary but how experts in that field express themselves in order to catch the nuances of the expressed and unexpressed text. The translation buyer should confirm that the translator has some formal background in the specific subject area in order to ensure a viable product.

That formal knowledge is not enough in many cases as there is no replacement for experience. A translator that has translated tens of thousands of words in a given subject area is far more proficient than one testing the waters for the first time. That person has already worked out many of the translation issues that appear in such texts, particularly how to deal with problematic terms without direct parallels in the target language and the sentence structure transformation often required in translation. For example, experienced translators from Russian understand that is necessary to remove the common Russian phrase "the activity of " and use a verb instead of a gerund. By  contrast, linguists inexperienced in the given field often produce awkward language as they “learn”. If you wish to have a specialized document translated, it is far more effective to let a seasoned expert do it.

Thus, translation buyers need to select their linguist carefully not only on the basis of knowledge of the target language and the price but also taking into account the knowledge of the translator of the language and vocabulary of the source document. Careful consideration of this factor will help eliminate the source of one problem in translation buying.

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