Through the looking-glass – the pleasure of technical translation

 

[photographer and a mirror*]

Most people connect translation with literature and believe that it must be a fascinating to render Tolstoy’s Russian or Balzac’s French to another language. By contrast, translating official documents or financial reports seems as dry as Alice’s history lesson. In practice, the vast majority of commissioned translation is highly technical by nature. Contrary to the general impressions, these documents often create drama by opening up a privileged view (both in terms of special access and confidentiality) of people lives. To illustrate, I will present some examples of what I look for and follow when plowing through my day’s tasks.

Marriage certificates – thought for speculation  - Israeli marriage certificates include a wide variety of information, including the age, profession and place of residence of the couple  as well as the background of parents. Sometimes it is clear what the bride and groom have in common while other times it is not.

Death certificates – the unknown – due to the vagaries of documentation in some parts of the world, the family or the deceased sometimes don’t know the date of birth, leaving the wonderful statistic of 1920, without day or month. Of course, translating the certificates of those that died very young or very old sometimes leads to personal contemplation.

Divorce agreements – priorities – What is a single mother willing to give up to be able to live abroad with her children? How strict are the arrangements for paternal visits? You would be surprised.

Commercial contracts – local character – if you want to know what problems are typical for a certain area, professional and/or geographical, look at the relative weight of the words. BTW, based on the number of pages dedicated to this matter, drinking is a problem at Russian oil fields.

Salary slips – addition with subtraction – It can rather disturbing to have to note how much of the salary or wages disappears in taxes or how much more money other people earn. On the other hand, it can be merely interesting or even encouraging.

Grade transcripts – student life – It is amazing how some students seem to wake up in 12^th grade or college and start achieving high grades. Until then, I imagine that their parents were pulling their hair. On the other hand, I wonder whether certain people ever had fun during their years of study.

Medical questionnaires – awfulness – Ignorance can be bliss. Many diseases have extreme effects on people’s lives.  I always feel appreciative that I don’t have that problem.

As you can see, while numbers and facts can appear to be dry and uninteresting, all it takes is a small leap of imagination to see the story being told and discover an unknown world. Technical translation is similar to looking at Alice’s looking glass, seeing both the subject of the document but also reflecting on the translator. I consider that far more interesting than literary translation, having no desire to get into Dostoevsky’s head, but chacun son gout, to each his/her own.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit: Pixabay

The not-so-straight line – the art of finding convenient flights in the age of the Internet

 

[calcuations of the hypotenuse*]

One of my father’s favorite pastimes was arranging trips. He relished the process of making a few phone calls and then triumphantly telling my mother that that they were going to San Francisco, Las Vegas or even Paris in two weeks. While the means of locating flights have clearly changed (travel agents to online searches), the process can still be quite challenging and ultimately emotionally rewarding. Having had to fly quite often, sometimes on short notice, in the last few years, like my father, I have developed the skill, art if you will, of searching for the best flight, for me at least. This ability has become quite valuable as the current war has turned Ben Gurion Airport into a non-hub, with only a few airlines regularly serving it.  I will share my tips to finding the almost perfect flights in the age of the Internet. I will use my preferences and limitations but obviously these are individual.

Personal preferences:

1. Due to the distance to the airport and the security procedures, which in practice means leaving the house five hours in advance, I take no flight that departs before noon. I need a good night’s sleep before I began a day of travel.

2. I try not to arrive at the destination after midnight. I intend to enjoy the next day.

3. I will not spend more than 4 daylight hours at a connection airport but will insist on at least 2 hours in case (or is that when?) the plane is late.

4. I am willing to spend overnight at a connection location and have learned to enjoy my mini-stop.

Hub to Hub

For discussion purposes, a hub is major international airport, e.g. Frankfurt and Newark, to which there are many flights. By contrast, a non-hub has limited national and international flights.

1. I check the direct routes. They can be more expensive but are easier on the body.

2. I check flights from another hub to the destination with a short wait over seeing if their price justifies the extra flight time. Total flight time is a key statistic here.

3. When flying international, such as to the United States, I try to stay on the international flights as long as possible as the plane is more comfortable. For example, it is more pleasant to fly from Israel to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles as compared to the Israel to Newark and then to LA.

Non-hub to hub

1. Due to limited and expensive direct options, I look for convenient lower-cost flights to other airports that may have better direct flights to the destination.

2. It is vital to check the arrival times in order to allow for late arrival but avoid wasting too many hours in the airport. Duty free is not that interesting regardless of the airport.

3. I reconsider the direct option and make a choice, i.e. time vs. money.

Non-hub to non-hub

1. This is the fun one. Here, I work backwards. I ask Dr. Google “from which city can you fly directly to X” and get a nice map with lines indicating various cities.

2. I crosscheck that list with the cities to which I have a direct connection.

3. I then spend time trying to ascertain which combination of dates, times and price is the most practical, all issues considered.

In this manner, after several hours of intense effort, I found a convenient way of getting from Israel to Portland, Oregon, site of the American Translators Association conference next month where I will make two presentations. If you are wondering, the connecting flights to Portland is to and from Amsterdam, with an overnight stay on the way there and three hours wait at the airport on the way back, all without losing a night’s sleep. When I completed the purchase of the tickets, I experienced the thrill of victory just as my father would do. I suppose if you turn trip planning into a game, it becomes a rather fun challenge. The shortest line takes some calculation.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit - Pixibay

Words and their derived meanings – how far does a ball roll in different languages?

[Effy the kitten with ball*)

 

If we look at the idea of a word, it is fundamentally a concept that human beings apply to various objects, real and theoretical. The Chinese language is the perfect embodiment of this vocabulary building approach but the process also occurs in alphabetical languages. For example, a round object is called a ball, balle, шар [shar] and כדור [kadur] in English, French, Russian and Hebrew, respectively. While each refers to the ball that is the fascination of children, puppies and kittens (especially mine currently), the word also is used for many other round objects with slight differences.

While the origin of the word ball in English is rather fuzzy, its primary meaning is quite clearly, i.e., according to the Oxford Dictionary, a solid or hollow spherical or egg-shaped object that is kicked, thrown, or hit in a game. Clearly, a really heavy one that requires explosive power to launch is a cannon ball, not an object to play with. On a smaller basis, balls can be loaded into cartridges and cause terrible casualties. For that matter, a great ball of fire is also rather threatening. On a less serious note,  ball in baseball can mean that the pitch fails to cross the plate between the knees and numbers of a player and within the side boundaries of the home plate. Not surprisingly but quite differently, testicles are sometimes referred to as balls., This may explain the application of the word to describe the willingness to take a great risk as in the sentence General MacArthur had the balls to land at Inchon. Confusingly, derived from a completely different root, a ball is a formal dance from which probably the term having a ball, i.e., having a good time, may have been derived, although my forementioned kitten might disagree.

The French balle also is generally used to refer to the toy as in the short form of ballon. However, it refers to pills, which are round, and bullets and slugs, which generally are not. In the days of the French Franc (pre-Euro), it was another term for that national currency. In agriculture, a balle refers to a bale in English and  applies to any similar bulky packaging, round or not.

Russian is even more generous is the use. шар [shar] refers to the toy but also to a globe and bowl and other round objects. In the plural, it is another term for eyes. It is used as a term for a lightbulb. Russian even uses it for a vote or ballet. (If a language refers to communication tower as an “object”, everything is possible).

Hebrew almost equates ball and round in the word כדור [kadur]. Sports equipment, pills and tablets and well as spheres and planets are balls. In line with the old traditional ammunition, so is ammunition for rifles and machine guns (despite their modern long shape).

So, as true for many languages, words evolve to expand their meaning to directly and not-so directly connected items and sometimes retain the use when the original shape of the object changes.  Balls really roll far away sometimes.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Beyond language – the extraordinary skill set of a professional translator

 

[quarterback*]

There is a common misperception that a professional translator only requires certain, easily attainable language abilities. These include thorough knowledge of the target language, which is shared by any person raised and educated in a country whose official language is the one required; and a reasonable knowledge of a foreign language learnable through a couple of years of high school study or a few months of Internet effort. Add a bit of machine translation or AI magic. Voila, you too can become a professional translator in a few months.

Reality is quite different. Clearly, the above-mentioned qualifications do not guarantee any language proficiency. Furthermore, professional translators require subject-matter knowledge so they can understand the material and use the correct terminology. However, beyond the required language and subject matter proficiency, professional translators must also be adept in the following technical skills:

Word – The visual aspect is an essential part of a professionally translated document. Therefore, translators must know how to fully format documents, including charts, margins, fonts, paging, borders and colors. As they must do their work efficiently, they must be familiar with the short cuts and professional tricks of using Word. If you think you really know Word, try taking any serious Word proficiency test. In practice, most casual users are aware of only a small percentage of the program’s abilities.

PDF – A significant percentage of original documents received by professional translators are in PDF or jpg. It is often necessary to process these documents to ascertain the number of words, categorize the documents as convertible or not and convert the documents into a useable Word document if possible. Experience is vital.

CAT tools – Just as you would not expect a professional carpenter to tighteen each screw manually, whenever possible, most professional translators use computer aided translation software (CAT) tools, often MemoQ or Trados, to efficiently and effectively translate texts. These programs cost money and require time to learn. The failure to use them often leads to a lack of consistency and avoidable errors, not to mention a large waste of time.

QA – Just as there is no such thing as good writing but only good rewriting, there is no submittable first draft, only a final document that underwent directed and thorough rereading and checking. Therefore, an essential part of the translation process, sometimes taking 50% of the time, is the quality assurance. Programs such as spellcheck, Xbench and Grammarly provide effective ways to review large amounts of texts. Customers should be aware that  AI can be a problem as the quality of its suggestions depends on the prompts it receives. Furthermore and more importantly, use of AI can create a serious breach of security since the material generally enters public domain. Most customers insist on confidentiality.

Social Media – Translators work to make a living. Therefore, they require customers. One methods of attracting customers is the correct use of social media in all its forms. Using this application for business purposes is actually quite complex and requires expertise. By contrast, using them improperly is a waste of time. Depending on their area of specialty, professional translators must gain some proficiency in branding and marketing.

LinkedIn – For legal, financial and other business-oriented fields, LinkedIn is the most focused of all social media and is effective for B2B contacts. However, it takes skill and knowledge of the system to actually benefit from this platform.

Scheduling – Professional translators often work on many projects simultaneously. Being a professional means that the person delivers on time. Thus, serious freelancers take advantage of software that helps them prevent “forgetting”.

Billing – Customers and tax authorities alike require proper billing. Freelancers also need to keep track of payments if they wish to stay in business. So, professional translators must know how to use accounting programs.

For professional translators, this skill set involves constant learning. First, nobody is naturally proficient and/or even open to all skills. Even if a freelancer has background or knowledge, technology is constantly evolving. The modern dynamic business world forces professionals of all types to never stop developing their primary and secondary skills. The cost of the failure to do so is irrelevance.

For translation buyers, it should be clear that a professional translator has for more than basic language skills. Accordingly, such professional deserve to be paid. As this is the start of the American football season, I will compare translators to quarterbacks. It would be foolish for a professional NFL team to use a high school quarterback, no matter how skillful that person is, as they are simply not up to the task. Using a rookie or a low-cost option may be effective in certain situations but won’t get the team to the Superbowl. Paying a top player appropriate money is a major factor in raising the trophy at the end of the season. Translation buyers interested in creating an effective document in terms of content and impact should go with a pro, a person with many talents and skills.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit - Pixabay

Spelling out the differences – Thoughts on why most of us do not pronounce the word exactly as it is written

 

[frustrated Spock*]

One of the claims to fame of Esperanto is that the learners can pronounce words as they see them. As the exception proves the rule, almost all alphabet-based languages exhibit a marked difference between the letters on the paper (or screen) and how the speaker says the word. This linguistic schizophrenia often serves a purpose but more often derives from the fact that written script is snapshot from a given, often distant, time and place and rarely updated to another time and place. Thus, students, both native and non-native speakers, must do as all previous generations do, i.e. learn by heart how to spell the words.

One notable complication of spelling is the multiple manners of expressing the same vowel sound but this redundancy serves a practical purpose. Latin languages in particular use verb endings that sound the same but are written differently. For example, French speakers pronounce é, er, ez, ai, ais, ait and aient exactly the same. Thus, touché, toucher, touchez, touchai, touchais, touchait and touchaient sound alike despite their spelling differences. While this may seem confusing to listeners, mix-ups are rare due to the human ability to apply context. On the other hand, these multiple spelling allow French and similar languages to get more kilometers to the liter for its sounds; due to limited number of phonemes available to Latin languages (as compared to Arabic most notably), having numerous ways of writing them significantly adds to the number of possible visually distinct words. Thus, while such a tendency does add difficulty to learning spelling, it also enriches the vocabulary.

Yet, in most cases, it is the actual process of determining the official spelling that creates the mismatch between the oral and written form. Clearly, pronunciation is a dynamic process specific to a given place and time. It is true that people tend to speak like their family and surrounding neighborhood when they were growing up. My Fair Lady very musically portrayed that phenomenon. Their children may pronounce the same word differently if they move elsewhere or another form becomes fashionable By contrast, at some time or another, somebody writes a dictionary, which establishes the “approved” spelling. At the moment of writing, the composer writes the words exactly as s/he says it or, at best, most people in that area. The spelling is phonetic for that time and place. Thus, in parts of England, then and now, the sentence “the girl went through tough times, I thought” would include 4 guttural g’s, specifically girl, through, tough and thought. Alas, the vast majority of English speakers today would pronounce the each of those consonants a bit differently but the damage is done. There is no choice but to memorize the spelling.

In some cases, such as Hebrew, the actual ability to distinguish a sound from a similar but not identical one has disappeared or is disappearing. Hebrew has two related vowels א, alef, which is pronounced [a] and ע, ayin, which is pronounced [a’] (as in when the doctor checks your tonsils. Furthermore, there are two forms of the sound t, ט, tet, [t] and ת taf [t’], which resembles a soft th historically. Unfortunately, many if not most Israelis do not clearly pronounce the ayin, blurring the distinction. As for the “t” situation, aside from religious Ashenazi Jews who received formal training in biblical Hebrew and Arabic speakers, modern Hebrew speakers make no distinction. See the modern Hebrew Shabbat as compared to the Yiddish shabbas or English sabbath. To take an extreme example, in Hebrew, את ,אט, עת and עט all are generally pronounced the same, [et], but mean moment, slow, a particle to signal a direct object and pen, respectively. In some cases, speakers actually say the letter to make sure of the meaning as in אושר ועושר, [osher v’ o’sher], happiness and wealth, adding “with an ayin” for the second one. Once again, the spelling reflects a reality that barely or no longer exists.

Some languages have managed to clean up their spelling act to a certain degree. The Russian government after the 1918 revolution reformed the language and eliminated numerous historical legacies. The post-revolution version of War and Peace is several pages shorter as compared to the 19^th century edition. The Turkish government in 1928 changed the alphabet, which provided a clean slate for the spelling. Even in English, the distant colonies, notably the United States and Australia often took the liberty of removing the silent and meaningless letters. Some examples include thru instead of through, honor instead of honor and shop instead of shoppe. As there is no official academy of the English languages, such efforts will always be local and limited, unfortunately for learners of English. Comprehensive language reforms are few and far between.

The legacies of the past define a language’s spelling system and lag far behind the changes in actual pronunciation. While sometimes a linguistic factor may justify the gap between the oral and written forms, in most cases, learners have no choice but to depend on their memory and, in these modern days, some kind of digital spellcheck. For me, complaining about illogical spelling reminds me of complaining about the weather. It is an entertaining  topic for a few minutes but, ultimately, people adjust to it. Spelling is what it is, often locally illogical.

* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.

Picture credit - Pixabay