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USMC vs. Chicago Manual of Style
The Chicago Style Q&A is, well, questions and answers having to do with style issues. The most recent batch of questions includes one from a Marine who is declaring War on Terror Double Spaces After Periods:
Q. About two spaces after a period. As a U.S. Marine, I know that what’s right is right and you are wrong. I declare it once and for all aesthetically more appealing to have two spaces after a period. If you refuse to alter your bullheadedness, I will petition the commandant to allow me to take one Marine detail to conquer your organization and impose my rule. Thou shalt place two spaces after a period. Period. Semper Fidelis.
A. As a U.S. Marine, you’re probably an expert at something, but I’m afraid it’s not this. Status quo.
Looks like the surge isn’t working for the WoDSAP either.
Translation 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.
LDP tug-of-war
With Abe out, the search for his follower begins. The Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election (which effectively decides who gets that kantei office) is set for September 19, with campaigning to begin five days earlier. A snap election that guarantees no surprise candidates, since the only viable ones are those whose support bases are already lined up.
The LDP may be about to take part in a strenuous tug-of-war match between its members who think that venturing into strange (to the party) seas of reform while Koizumi was at the helm robbed it of its traditional strength, and those who believe instead that Abe weakened the party by failing to follow that Koizumi course in a visible fashion. Aso Taro, whom many are calling the front-runner in the race this time around, appeared to come out on the former side when he was tapped to serve as LDP Secretary-General at the end of August, and was quoted as saying: 「自民党は一度、自民党をぶっ壊すという人を選んで、事実、ぶっ壊れた。あとの自民党をどう立て直すかが3人に与えられた役割だ」 (The LDP in the past chose a person who promised to smash the party, and it ended up broken. Our [the three politicians put in top party slots] task now is to find a way to put the party back together). Sounds to me like a rejection of the Koizumi course, although he may have meant otherwise. Politicians speak with forked tongue and all that.
Abe Shinzo to step down
It’s now being reported on the BBC, among other sites: Japan’s embattled PM ‘to resign’ . . . Abe is giving a press conference in about 20 minutes, where he’ll present his reasons for stepping down, but so far the NHK people have mentioned things like his inability to gain opposition support for extending the antiterrorism measures law. Seems like an odd reason for him to give, since he recently stated he would be stepping down if that bill to renew the “Indian Ocean gas station law” didn’t make it through, but who knows? Something to watch on TV in a little bit, if you’re in Japan.
Problem for me: This comes on the afternoon of the day when we have our evening editorial board meeting, and the board members are likely to demand the chance to rewrite all their articles on Abe, the upper house election results, and so on. Even though we’re already finished with layout, and have no time to do massive edits before we go to the printers. C’mon guys, this magazine comes out once every two months, you shouldn’t expect to be timely.
Update:
Just watched the press conference. Abe: “We suffered a big defeat in the July election, but I felt that continuing along the path of reform/breaking free of the postwar regime was all-important. It’s also important for Japan to continue supporting the fight against terrorism. Today I asked for a face-to-face meeting with Ozawa to talk about that, but he wouldn’t meet with me, so I’m stepping down.”
The press questions included some asking why this timing was proper, when he hadn’t stepped down after the upper house drubbing. No very clear answer to be had there. His most honest answer came in response to perhaps the second question, when he reiterated the important tasks his administration is dedicated to seeing through and rather bluntly said “but none of this is going to get done while I’m around.”
Interesting times. I wonder if Uno Sosuke is happy to have some company in the “failed, short administration” club. I also wonder how Wakabayashi Masatoshi feels at having served as ag minister—twice!—for just a few weeks each time. Third, I wonder how the LDP goes about choosing its next president from here on out. Do the party bigwigs just get together and tap someone? Fukuda? Koizumi, again?
A few other posts on this are at Trans-Pacific Radio, Ampontan, Observing Japan, and Japan Probe. The last page names Aso Taro as the pol most likely to step into the PM’s office, but I’m not so sure about that one. We’ll see.
The Worst Manual Contest
A company called Technical Standards used to run a contest to find the worst examples of translation, or just muddled information, in a product manual or other similar literature. The contest unfortunately seems to have fallen by the wayside; the most recent winners are listed on this page, complete with .jpg or .pdf scans of their horrible wondrousness.
Who ever knew Ernő Rubik was such an evil mastermind?
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