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About meTranslation column 3
This is the third of a series of columns I’m writing on translation. The first two are here (1) and here (2).
Translation Step by Step
What’s that paper on my desk?
CIRs do a wide range of tasks for their employers, and translation is a common part of the job description. It can also be a challenging part. If you’re fresh off of the plane, you’ve just arrived in your new town, you’ve done the office introductions, and you’ve finally been shown to your desk, it can be a shock to see a document sitting there, waiting for you with a Post-It note telling you to “translate this into English by noon on Friday, please.” Now what do you do?
The “into English” part might mean you’re in luck, actually. Going into your native language is always the wisest choice when it comes to translation. If it’s a text going into Japanese, having a native Japanese speaker work on it will produce a better translation in the end. That said, many offices just don’t have a Japanese staff member with the language skills—or the time—to do that job, so it may fall to you. See steps 1 and 6 below for some advice on what to do when it does.
In general, though, you should go through the following steps when you do a translation, no matter which language direction you’re dealing with. We start by:
1. Asking questions
That document on your desk isn’t just a bunch of words existing all by themselves. You have a lot of context to consider—who wrote this, who wants it translated, why it’s being translated, where the translation will be used. (See the translation column in the June 2007 newsletter for more on these issues.) All of these factors will affect how you translate the thing, so it’s important to ask some questions right away, rather than jumping in and starting to type.
Find out if it’s just for information (you can write quickly and focus more on meaning, less on beautiful prose), or if it’s going to be read by Japanese learners of English (you’ll be using simpler vocabulary). If you’re translating into Japanese, ask who will be editing your writing, and who is available to answer your language questions as you work. You’ll use different styles for words on the Web and words in a printed magazine. Find out all you can about the background to this document; you’ll be more confident about the choices you make later, when you’re working on it.
2. Reading the text
Now that you know what’s going on, it’s time to sit back and study this thing. Take your time and make it through the whole thing. Just as understanding the context outside the document is important, understanding the entirety of the document itself is essential to translating it well.
Translators do a lot of rearranging, and sometimes even deletion. A Japanese newspaper article will include plenty of information that doesn’t show up in an English article on the same news—the age of a person, the fact that he’s unemployed, and so on. English writers don’t write the company president’s name in parentheses following the company’s name, but Japanese reporters do. You might end up taking some of this information out of your article; you might also move it to a later spot. Knowing how the entire piece is put together helps you see what sort of structural changes you might be making.
3. Asking more questions
All right, you read the whole thing. Did you understand it all? Probably not! It’s your first day on the job, remember? Maybe the text is full of names of local neighborhoods. Maybe it’s a list of job titles in your municipal office. One way or another, there will be some stuff that’s new to you—and happily, you’re surrounded by coworkers who know all about this stuff. Ask for clarification. Ask where the previous CIR kept his or her files. Translators do a lot of research, and for you, talking to your office neighbors will rank up there with the Internet and book references as a way to get your research done.
4. Hitting the books
One important question to ask: Where are my dictionaries? You should have access to J-to-E and E-to-J dictionaries, as well as monolingual dictionaries in both languages. A thesaurus is nice to have, as is a style manual of some kind. The Web has a lot to offer, and you’ll want a computer with your collection of handy bookmarks, but paper references are still important, for two reasons:
First, the Web just doesn’t contain everything yet. It’s possible to look through Jim Breen’s site and Eijiro online and find definitions for lots of words, but in many cases the information you need won’t be easy to find, no matter how much of a Google wizard you are. Books contain plenty of data that’s too old to be of digital interest. The Encyclopedia Nipponica has an edge over the Japanese Wikipedia, at least for now, when you’re dealing with historical matters. For a translator, books still matter.
Second, books are your ally when you’re confronted with a Japanese editor who asks why you used this phrase, or that vocabulary term. “It sounds more natural to me that way” or “I found lots of Web hits for it” may not convince your local 英語屋 (which might be translated as “a person who knows just enough English to be dangerous”) that your choice is best; but opening the Chicago Manual of Style to section 6.83 and showing him the proper use of an en dash, not a hyphen, in something like “1995–2005” is a very convincing method.
5. Time to translate
Step 5, and at last we’re getting to work! This is, of course, the hard part, and I could write many columns on different aspects of this alone. Remember that the more preparation you’ve done in steps 1 through 3, the easier this will be. Beyond that it’s all a matter of focusing on the meaning, not the individual words, and making sure you’re being faithful to the source text as you produce a natural target text.
6. Yes, still more questions
You finish the document, hit “save,” and print out a copy. You aren’t done, though. In the course of translating the text you probably found something that confused you. Sometimes it’s because the text was hard to understand, but sometimes it’s because the text was sloppy in the first place. Time for more clarifications. (Are your coworkers getting annoyed? They shouldn’t be. You’re trying to do the best job you can, and they need to know that they’re an important part of helping that happen.)
If you’re working out of your native language into Japanese, this step is probably the most important one here. You need to get a native speaker to edit your work. There will be a lot of rewriting, but remember that while red ink might look painful on the product of your hard work, it’s actually the best friend you have as you improve your skills. Get the feedback you need. If you’re in an office with more than speaker of your language, you should be seeking this feedback on the documents you translate in that direction, too.
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