Translation and Resolutions

Last year around this time, I wrote that I wanted to spend more time promoting some of “my” authors in translation in 2012. So how did I do?

Well, that certainly was not an easy task I set myself. As we know, the English-speaking world is generally pretty resistant to translation, and that is indeed what I found when trying to promote some of my favourite authors. I did get some translations accepted in literary magazines, and I wrote some articles about translation in order to help make translation more visible. So while I would have loved to do more, I feel pretty pleased with what I have accomplished.

As for 2013, I’d like to continue what I was doing in 2012. And I also want to continue with the campaign I wrote about a few posts back, to make editors and writers more aware of translation and translators. And finally, I want to do my best for the next generation of translators, which means I try to improve my teaching methods and style.

What goals will you set for the next year of translation?

A Campaign to Acknowledge Translators

I’m something of a known curmudgeon, but I do feel I get annoyed about things for sensible reasons for the most part. One of the issues I find most annoying is how book reviews so often ignore the fact that they are reviewing translations or articles talk about translated texts as though they were just written in the target language. Frequently, they don’t acknowledge that the word choices or the style they so admire actually comes from the translator, not the author. Sometimes they don’t even bother to mention the translator.

I previously wrote here about my annoyance with a food magazine that quoted from my translations and didn’t see the need to mention that the Swedish dishes they so admired had been written in, um, Swedish, and that the chef they thought had a fun way with words was, um, actually translated by yours truly. The magazine didn’t care when I wrote to them to tell them.

A picture book I use in one of my classes at the university was translated from the Dutch, but no translator’s name is given in the book. When I wrote to the publisher, I received the very helpful response that “it wasn’t [their] problem” and they couldn’t even tell me who the translator was.

A few weeks ago, on the train back from London where I’d been giving a lecture, I read the Evening Standard. Reviewer William Leith reviewed two translated books and failed to mention the translator in both cases. He commented on the lovely language, but clearly without a thought as to how that language made its way into English. I sent him an email and also “Tweeted” the newspaper on Twitter, but without getting a response.

You might think that I ought to give up. You might tell me that people won’t change so I’m wasting my time.

But I don’t believe that. There have been quite a few times when I have gotten a response that said, “I never thought about it. Thanks for opening my eyes.” Or, “That hadn’t occurred to me.” Or, “You’re right. I’ll improve.” So people can learn and they can change their treatment of translators. And helping to make translators visible is important work.

So here’s my suggestion. Let’s all write to editors, authors, and publishers every time we see translators ignored. We might not change all minds, but we can certainly change a few.

Let’s make translation more visible, one person at a time.

Translationness and “Writers Who Translate”

Many months ago, I attended the London Book Fair, as I have done a number of times in the past. It’s an exhausting but fun trade event, and there are always some good nuggets of information or new ideas.

Daniel Hahn, my colleague at the British Centre for Literary Translation, and Turkish-to-English translator Maureen Freely had a Q&A session about being a translator.

Danny commented at one point, “The target text is the thing.” He spoke about how he wants readers to read his work as though it had been written in English and for them not to consider that it is a translation. Obviously, I disagree with this to a certain extent (read this). But it’s clearly a fine balance.

And meanwhile, Maureen said she thinks about translators as “writers who translate”, so their writing skills matter more than their source language skills.

Both of these are interesting ideas that are highly debated in translation studies. What do you think?

Words Per Day

We know that how many words you can translate per day depends on what sort of text you’re working on. Some texts are so difficult a translator counts him- or herself lucky if 500 words get translated in one day. Other texts are a breeze.

I’ve heard from a number of people that 5000 words are about the maximum any translator can do in a day. Beyond that, our brains just get tired. But then I have a friend who claims to whizz through 1200 words per hour.

What do you find your average daily counts are? What’s a good day of translating for you?

The Relationship between Translators and Editors

The title of the new book Translation in Practice, edited by Gill Paul and published by Dalkey Archive Press, is a misnomer. It is a very short (70 pages) book that seems – judging by the title and some of the topics mentioned – to want to be an introduction to various issues on translation but actually is mostly on the process of editing and the relationship between translator and editor. It would have been better called The Role of Editors in Translation or The Relationship between Translators and Editors, or something along those lines. A book on that subject would be interesting and worthwhile and if one focuses on that aspect of Translation in Practice, then one gets something out of it.

This books briefly introduces information about issues such as the role of the outside reader, picking a translator, what a sample translation is and if a translator should get paid for it, what it means for two translators to collaborate on a topic, contracts (both in terms of money and also in terms of relationships, such as establishing boundaries between translators and writers), schedules, publicity (though just one paragraph on this), style, particular challenges such as swear words or humor, what it means to be edited, the use of UK vs. US English, and so on. The issues have generally been discussed in more detail in other texts. It also offers ideas that it doesn’t really explain, such as by defining a bad translation as a “flat” one (69), which is a definition that needs more exploration, or by saying that translators should be paid if their work is used in a relay translation (53), which in fact is something that rarely happens, although Translation in Practice doesn’t analyze why that is the case or how to change it.

But the main part of the text, as already mentioned, explores the jobs of and relationship between the translator and the editor. It offers lists of dos and don’ts for translators and editors. For example, translators should “keep careful notes of changes and decisions made in the process of translating” and “carefully recreate the nuances of the original language” (this last point is one of the major difficulties of translation!), but not “take major liberties with the author’s text without reference to both editor and author” (what is a “major liberty”?) or “anglicize a book beyond recognition” (where is the border here?) (57-8). An editor should “approach the text as an original book rather than a translation” (a debatable point, I’d say) and not “rewrite the text in their own voice, changing the vocabulary choices that the translator has made.” (70-1) The book assumes that English is the target language, so it does not look into issues relevant to the publishing industry elsewhere, though the process of working with editors and publishers in other countries would be fascinating to learn about. Still, what it does discuss regarding the editing process in English-language publishing companies is interesting.

One other comment on the Dalkey book is that oddly, a couple of times a translator is quoted but not named or a translation is mentioned but the name of the translator is not provided (such as on pages 2 and 42-3), so the translator remains invisible. Of course, if this person chose to be anonymous, that should be stated. But if not, this shows how far translators still have to go in terms of visibility.

Translation in Practice tries to cover a lot of ground, but not in any great detail. So it is a good overview, but definitely not the final word.

Call for Papers

The following information is from Swansea University, where I just finished my Ph.D. I hope to see some of you at this conference!

Call for Papers



The Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition

Swansea University, 28 June – 1 July 2010



Confirmed keynote speakers include:

Susan Bassnett, David Constantine, Lawrence Venuti



The recent ‘creative turn’ in translation studies has challenged notions of translation as a derivative and uncreative activity which is inferior to ‘original’ writing. Commentators have drawn attention to the creative processes involved in the translation of texts, and suggested a rethinking of translation as a form of creative writing. Hence there is growing critical and theoretical interest in translations undertaken by literary authors.

This conference focuses on acts of translation by creative writers. Literary scholarship has tended to overlook this aspect of an author’s output, yet since the time of Cicero, authors across Europe have been engaged not only in composing their own works but in rendering texts from one language into another. Indeed, many of Europe’s greatest writers have devoted time to translation – from Chaucer to Heaney, from Diderot and Goethe to Seferis and Pasternak – and have produced some remarkable texts. Others (Beckett, Joyce, Nabokov) have translated their own work from one language into another. As attentive readers and skilful word­smiths, writers may be particularly well equipped to meet the creative demands of literary translation; many trans­lations of poetry are, after all, undertaken by poets themselves. Moreover, translation can have a major impact on an author’s own writing and on the development of native literary traditions.

The conference seeks to reassess the importance of translation for European writers – both well-known and less familiar – from antiquity to the present day. It will explore why authors translate, what they translate, and how they translate, as well as the links between an author’s translation work and his or her own writing. It will bring together scholars in English studies and modern languages, classics and medieval studies, comparative literature and translation studies. Possible topics include:



· individual author-translators: motivations, career trajectories, comparative thematics and stylistics

· the author-translator in context: literary societies, movements, national traditions

· the problematic creativity of the author-translator

· self-reflective pronouncements and manifestos

· the author-translator as critic of others’ translations

· self-translation: strengths and weaknesses

· authors, adaptations, re-translation and relay translation

· the reception and influence of the work of author-translators

· theoretical interfaces



Proposals are invited for individual papers (max. 20 minutes) or panels (of 3 speakers). The conference language is English. It is anticipated that selected papers from the conference will be published. Please send a 250-word abstract by 30 September 2009 to the organisers, Hilary Brown and Duncan Large (author-translator@swan.ac.uk):



Author-Translator Conference

Department of Modern Languages

Swansea University

GB-Swansea SA2 8PP

http://www.author-translator.net/

Northern Lights: Translation in the Nordic Countries

I’m happy to announce that Northern Lights: Translation in the Nordic Countries has now been published. It is a volume of essays based on the Nordic Translation Conference that was held last year and it is the first collection solely on Nordic translation.

On the FIT Conference

Earlier this month, I attended the FIT conference in Shanghai. It was a huge event, with over 1500 attendees from 70 countries, 4 keynote lectures (including one by Karl-Johan Lönnroth, the Director-General of the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission), and 8 parallel sessions with ten or so choices per session (i.e. 80+ parallel sessions, some with 5 speakers per session).

There were presentations on everything from the translation of Chinese medicine to terminology, from interpretation studies to translation and culture, from corpus-based translation studies to the translation industry, from publishing and copyright to translation criticism. I myself spoke about translating allusions in children’s literature. Talks were given in Chinese, French, and English, and despite this being a translation conference, only the keynote speeches were interpreted, unfortunately.

There were also poster presentations, including one by Yann Foucault, who translates accounting texts between English and French. His conclusion was relevant to fields far beyond accounting, however: Mr. Foucault felt that by translating texts and not just keeping them in the international language of English, one was both expanding the target language and allowing new, useful ideas to be created in that language.

In the next post, I will discuss a new kind of translation I learned about at FIT.

The Commandments of Literary Translation

In the last post, I briefly discussed Clifford E. Landers’ book Literary Translation: A Practical Guide. I enjoyed his “Twelve Commandments of Literary Translation” that he included in the book:

The Twelve Commandments of Literary Translation

I Thou shalt honor thine author and thy reader.
II Thou shalt not ‘improve’ upon the original.
III Thou shalt read the source text in its entirety before beginning.
IV Thou shalt not guess.
V Thou shalt consult thine author and other native speakers.
VI Thou shalt consult earlier translations only after finishing thine own.
VII Thou shalt possess – and use – a multitude of reference works.
VIII Thou shalt respect other cultures.
IX Thou shalt perceive and honor register and tone, that thy days as a translator may be long.
X Thou shalt not commit purple prose.
XI Thou shalt maintain familiarity with the source-language culture.
XII Thou shalt fear no four-letter word where appropriate.

Though I would add to the eleventh commandment that a translator should maintain familiarity with the target-language culture, too, as well as to both languages.

In Praise of Excellence, or, How to Retain and Get More Customers

On this blog, I have given practical advice for getting started in translation, and how to get a freelance translation business going is probably the most common question people ask me. But it is not enough to set out your shingle and call yourself a translator; you also have to ensure that you get a steady stream of assignments. And that means that you need to make sure you get new customers.

I have found that word-of-mouth is really the best method for getting new customers. People are more likely to accept a recommendation from a friend or colleague than they are to be convinced by advertising. But in order for customers to recommend you to other people, you must do an excellent job. So how can you be a successful translator?

Here are a few tips from my years as a freelance translator. I think this method has been working, since nearly all of my assignments come from regular customers or people they have recommended me to (who often in turn become regulars, too). I do not actively advertise and I no longer spend time signing up with translation agencies or contacting potential direct clients. The “only” thing I consistently do is the best work possible.

First of all, it is vital to keep your language skills fresh. Just because you have taken courses or have at some point lived in the country where the language you translate from is spoken does not mean that you are still perfectly fluent. And sometimes you can even forget things in your native language (I certainly have been embarrassed to experience situations when I remember a word in Swedish, but not in English!). To combat this language-slippage, read widely in both the source and text languages, across as many genres as you can. Read books and online newspapers, and even participate in chat groups. The style of writing and the choice of vocabulary varies according to who is writing and for what purpose and what audience, so any texts you read can help refresh or update your language skills, and can also inspire you when it comes to how you write.

Besides reading texts, I also make a point of learning new words in both English and Swedish. Building your vocabulary is both interesting and helpful.

Also, try to regularly speak both languages, since even if you work primarily with the written word, speaking practice can positively influence your reading and writing. Except in certain circumstances, you probably can not live in a country where both (or all, if you have more than two) your languages are regularly spoken. That means it is up to you to find a way to practice hearing and talking. I’m lucky in that my partner is Swedish. We used to have a schedule in which we spoke Swedish for two weeks and then switched to English for two weeks and so on, since that way we each had an opportunity to use our mother tongue, which is important for us both personally and professionally. At this point, we haven’t spoken English in a very long time, but I do get to speak English with people at the university and when I am out, since I live in an English-speaking country. For people who do not have the asset of having a more or less built-in language partner, find some people in your area who speak the language in question and try to plan occasional get-togethers. This need not be formal; having coffee once a month and chatting in Gaelic or Tagalog or Italian can be enough.

But making sure you are fluent in both source and target languages isn’t all that you need in order to retain customers and impress them with your skills. There are certain personal qualities that have an impact too.

You should be curious and willing to learn new things, since many jobs will require that you do at least some research. Translation is not a matter of just looking up words in the dictionary; for many assignments, I have spent quite a bit of time reading other texts, searching the internet, or talking to experts or other translators, all for the goal of getting more information about the topic the text is about. And do not be afraid to ask questions of your client or other people. You can not do a good job if something about the document or the assignment confuses you or is unclear. You are definitely not stupid if you ask a question, though some people seem to feel it proves they are not intelligent enough for the job; on the contrary, it shows that you are intelligent enough to know when you need help. Doing it alone doesn’t mean much if you have done it incorrectly.

You should also be thorough. It is amazing how many people do not reread their work, leaving careless typos or other errors in the text. Edit the text before you send it off. Do not complain that it is boring to proof-read or that you don’t have time; it is a part of your job. I always compare the source and target texts after I have translated and then I read the target text again to check how it sounds in English. I do each of these things at least once; if I make any changes while doing them, I reread the text yet again. In other words, I edit until I feel the text is as good as it can be. It takes time, but it is worth it.

And speaking of time, an essential quality is punctuality. Always, always, always turn your work in on time, barring an extreme event such as a computer problem or an accident. If possible, give the translation to the client early. When I estimate how long a job will take me, I try to add on an extra few hours or days, depending on the type of assignment, to cover for particular situations or for anything unexpected happening. For example, about a month ago, one of my hard drives crashed, and that took some time to deal with, but not a single one of my projects was delayed because of it. There was no need for me to write embarrassing emails to customers about how I couldn’t do their work because I had a computer issue, since I had already estimated in a little extra time for my jobs (and also because I never wait until the last minute to start an assignment). Some people also like to estimate more time around holidays or in the busy seasons, since they know they will get more work in or have other activities, and they want to have room to prioritize. Usually, of course, the unexpected does not happen, and then you will be able to send the customer the work early, which tends to make them grateful. But don’t estimate that a job will take you two weeks when you know it will only require a few hours; that just makes you look bad, and it may even prevent you from getting assignments. Schedule reasonable deadlines and keep to whatever timeline you have agreed to.

A related point is to respond to all phone calls or emails from clients in a timely fashion. I try to reply within a few hours, or one day at the most. If I am out of town, I have an automated response set up on my email that lets them know when they can expect me to reply. It is annoying for customers if they have asked you to translate a text but you take a long time to reply; since then they don’t know whether you are available or not or even whether you have started translating the text without confirming the price and deadline with them, they may just decide to ask someone else. And if that someone else does a good job, the customer may go to that person for the next assignment, too.

In all your dealings with customers, be polite but firm. Customers may need to be educated about what translation is, but do so as politely as you can. If you snap or shout or send an angry email, you will likely lose the customer and he or she will ignore whatever point you were trying to make, too. Yes, customers sometimes complain about things for no reason, or act as though they are the language experts and not you. If their requests or comments are out of line, explain why and stand up for yourself, but don’t get yourself too worked up about it because it doesn’t help matters and it causes unnecessary stress for you, too. In certain situations, you will find that in fact you are better off without a particular customer. Remember, if you do good work and are polite, you are worth decent pay and respectful treatment from clients, and if you do not get that, move on to jobs from elsewhere.

Does this all seem obvious? Well, yes, it does. However, it is surprising how many people don’t seem to follow these suggestions. I know translators, for example, who see no reason why they should keep up their speaking skills in the source language, or who think project managers or end customers will edit the translation and they therefore don’t have to. I have also talked to people who are rather lax about deadlines or who don’t know how to plan their time. And I’ve heard stories about translators who argue with their customers or don’t let them know when they are going out of town. It is true that we translators offer a necessary service; it is not true that that means we can treat our customers and their documents any way we want. There is a lot of competition out there, so it behooves us to do the best job we can and to be polite, time-conscious, and careful while doing so.

Strive for excellence and I believe you’ll find that customers who care about their texts (i.e. customers who don’t just care about getting the job done as cheaply and quickly as possible) return to you again and again, and recommend you to others as well.

Noble Translation

Some of you may be familiar with the Earl of Roscommon’s poem on translation. Wentworth Dillon (1633-85) was the fourth Earl of Roscommon and he was a poet and translator. Here is his poem:

‘Tis True, Composing is the nobler Part,
But good Translation is no Easie Art,
For the materials have long since been found,
Yet both your Fancy and your Hands are bound,
And by improving what was writ before,
Invention labours less, but Judgement more.

Each poet with a different talent writes,
One praises, one instructions, another bites.
Horace did ne’er aspire to Epick Bays,
Nor lofty Maro stoop to Lyrick Lays.
Examine how your Humour is inclin’d,
And which the Ruling Passion of your Mind;

Then seek a Poet who your ways does bend,
And choose an Author as you choose a Friend;
United by this sympathetick Bond,
Your grow familiar, intimate and fond.
Your Thoughts, your Words, your Stiles, your Souls agree,
Nor longer his Interpreter, but He.

As with many other translation theorists and critics, he thinks writing is the more original and noble art, which implies that translation is reductive. However, the Earl differs from other critics in that he does seem to believe in the need for the translator to have a certain bond with his or her author in order to do the best job possible, which implies that he recognizes and respects the translator’s role in making a successful translation and the limitations the translator faces. Still, both translation and writing are “no Easie” arts and they are both noble.

Out Stealing Translators

Some of you may have heard by now about the novel, Out Stealing Horses, by Per Petterson, which recently won the Independent Foreign Fiction. The award is special in part because it is quite large (£10,000), but also because the translator, in this case Anne Born, receives half of it.

In this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, a long review of the novel mentions the translator exactly zero times (except in the sidebar). If the reviewer has no knowledge of the original language, certainly he or she shouldn’t critique how the translation was done. But to not even state that the book is a translation or which language it was translated from (yes, the review refers to Oslo, but just because a book takes place in a certain location doesn’t mean it was written there) seems to me a gross oversight.

The reviewer, Thomas McGuane, reviews the book quite positively. How does he think that he read the book? In which language? Who and what made the English version that he so admires possible? This is truly a case of an invisible translator, and that a major book section would so blatantly ignore – dare I say “steal” – the important role of translation in making good literature from other countries available in English is depressing.

Translation Issue of Poetry Magazine

Poetry magazine’s April issue is all translation. A few of their poems are online (including one by one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda) and what I especially liked about the issue is that the translators (including Paul Muldoon and Robert Pinsky) have written notes to go along with the poems.

Charles Simic jokes in his note that hell is full of translators of poems, but one of the things that I found interesting here is the variety of ways the translators view their work – some took liberties (Michael Hofmann added what he termed an “opportunistic refinement,” a reference to Fox News in Gunter Eich’s poem, which I found jarring, and A.E. Stallings felt more liberty because she made the translation for someone who knew Alcman’s original poem in Ancient Greek), while others, such as Mr. Simic, seemed anxious to not make any changes or additions at all (he frets over having broken one of Novica Tadic’s lines into two), though most are somewhere in the middle.

In their notes, the translators discuss word choices, the sounds of the poems (such as the sensuousness of Coral Bracho’s Spanish), the formal qualities of the work (Robin Robertson says that Pablo Neruda’s ode to tuna is shaped like Chile, and Peter Cole describes Yitzhaq Alahdab’s “four monorhymed distichs in the Hebrew deployed in a quantitative meter”), and how their languages compare to English (Shawkat M. Toorawa, the translator of Adonis’ poem, mentions that Arabic has no capital letters, which means that it differentiates between God and god by using different words, while J.M. Coetzee feels that Afrikaans and English are both Germanic and thus there are no structural difficulties). Also described are their roles as translators (Kathleen Jamie minimizes her efforts, since she says all Gaelic writers know English and could easily translate their own work), how they work (Mr. Robertson apparently referred to a previous translation of the same poem, and others worked with the poet and/or with a rough English draft provided by the poet), and even why they translate (Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough writes in the note to her translation from the Polish of Janusz Szuber’s poem that “Reading a poem and loving it aren’t enough for translators; they have to translate it, since translation brings them closest to owning the object they love. But the translator’s love has nothing selfish about it: he or she desires to possess the object of that love only to share it with others.”)

It’s also nice to see a variety of languages included, even some less common ones, such as Korean, Belarusian, Gaelic, Swahili, and Hungarian. I, of course, would have liked to see one of the Scandinavian languages represented, however.

Perhaps more literary magazines will begin to focus on translated works as well now; if so, publishing the original text alongside the translation and commentary from the translator seems like the ideal situation. Reading the translators’ notes on the poems added to my understanding and enjoyment of the work.

Thanks to Erika Dreifus for telling me about this issue of Poetry and also to the kind person who sent me the issue!

Translatorial Censorship

In the last post, I quoted from Dr. Marjorie Garber’s book Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life, in which she mentioned some translatorial/editorial changing/censorship (or “gender bowdlerization”) of work featuring homosexuals and bisexuals. Unfortunately, this is not a unique or altogether rare phenomenon.

In the special Translating Humour issue of The Translator magazine from 2002, in an article entitled “Francoist Translation Censorship of Two Billy Wilder Films,” Jeroen Vandaele writes about how, during Franco’s regime, translatorial censorship took place of work that was considered inappropriate or immoral. For example, Some Like it Hot might be considered amoral because of issues relating to its portrayal of cross-dressing, the potential gay implications of the movie, and other sexual topics (especially, it might be noted, sexual issues that are outside the realm of what is accepted as “normal”). Dr. Vandaele says that some of the sexual humor in Some Like it Hot and The Apartment was “changed or deleted because of immorality” or “replaced by morality,” and one can assume that if this sort of censorship happened to films, it was part of a general view of culture and society that also affected literature.

Whether for political or other reasons, translators and editors (and other people with power, such as teachers) sometimes censor or change material that they consider improper or otherwise unsuitable. I remember someone who grew up in Iran telling me about seeing foreign films in Iran and then, once she had moved to Europe and later to America, seeing the same movies and being surprised at how much longer they were; in other words, “inappropriate” material had been deleted or changed before the films were deemed acceptable in Iran.

Personally, I’m a strong believer in having as little as possible come between the audience and the text (or film or whatever) as the author (or director or whoever) envisioned it, and I hope that we translators will be cautious about (ab)using the power the wield.

Translating Homosexuality

To continue with the gender theme from the last post…

If you didn’t know it already, translation is everywhere. While reading Vice Versa: Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life by Dr. Marjorie Garber (yes, it’s shocking, but I do actually read books on topics other than translation!), a fascinating book that I didn’t expect to relate to translation, I noticed a brief discussion of how translators and editors changed Plato’s Symposium and Shakespeare’s sonnets when they found the genders or sexual identities inappropriate or discomfiting, i.e. when they were not explicitly heterosexual.

Dr. Garber writes: “Thus the Greek word eromenos, meaning “male beloved,” became “mistress,” and the “army of lovers” that would have its historical counterpart in the famous Theban Band of warrior-companions becomes, by implication, a bevy of knights and ladies. The word “boy” in Greek was simply translated as “maiden” or “woman,” thus making same-sex love invisible to the non-Greek reading eye.” On the next page, Dr. Garber mentions Lord Byron who “like the timid translators of Greek…often chose the path of gender bowdlerization in his writing” and she creates the term “textual heterosexual” to refer to those who pass as heterosexual through this “gender bowdlerization” in their writing, or by implication, in translation.

She also points out that correct, non-bowdlerized translations of this sort of material later helped make homosexuals and bisexuals more visible and more accepted.

To be blunt about it, translators have a lot of power, and abusing it by significantly changing texts, including by deleting anything not “appropriate,” is, in my opinion, wrong.

How to Read as a Translator

The last two posts looked at reading and critiquing translations. Now we’ll look at reading and analyzing a text from the translator’s perspective.

Do translators read differently than others? Should they? If so, how? What should they be looking for as they read?

Well, translators who are reading something they are about to translate clearly do have different goals and needs than critics, academics, people who are reading for pleasure, or anyone else. In her book, Text Analysis in Translation, Christiane Nord offers a method for reading as a translator that will be helpful to students training to be translators and also for relatively new translators, but I personally find it too detailed and time-consuming for experienced translators, not to mention the fact that people with quite a bit of translation experience probably do much of what she suggests automatically.

Nord recommends a careful analysis of all extratextual and intratextual factors and she writes that doing this will “ensure full comprehension and correct interpretation of the text” and “explain its linguistic and textual structures and their relationship with the system and norms of the source language (SL). It should also provide a reliable foundation for each and every decision which the translator has to make in a particular translation process.”

Examples of extratextual features are the sender (not always or necessarily the same as the producer of the text), the intended audience, the medium, and the reason behind the production and translation of the text (what Nord terms “motive for communication”). Intratextual features include things such as the subject matter, non-verbal elements, and sentence structure.

After an explanation of what these extratextual and intratextual factors are and how they combine and relate in a text, Nord offers lists of questions for translators to consider in regard to these factors. Among many others, there are questions such as “What clues to the ST addressee’s expectations, background knowledge etc. can be inferred from other situational factors (medium, place, time, motive, and function)?” and “Is the subject matter bound to a particular (SL, TL, or other) cultural context?” and ”Which sentence types occur in the text?” and “What model of reality does the information refer to?”

Nord seems to suggest that by answering all these questions as they read a given text, translators can ensure that they have a firm grasp on all essential details related to the text, which in turn helps them make and defend translatorial decisions, and she writes that her system can be used with any kind of document, in any language, at any level. I am not convinced that her method covers absolutely everything, nor that all the questions offered in her text really need to be answered about each document a translator works on, but it is a good start, especially for new translators. As already mentioned, though, Nord’s method of reading and textual analysis does require a lot of time and effort, and that is just not plausible, or even necessary, for experienced, professional translators.

Does anyone use Nord’s system? What other ways of reading and analyzing do translators have?

Do Writers Make Good Translators?

In the last post, I looked at reasons why writers might be put off from translation (the belief that translation is not creative or stimulating, the idea that it is not a well paid job, and a simple lack of knowledge about how to begin), but I didn’t explore a somewhat controversial point made in one of the first paragraphs. I wrote: “Writers are the ideal people to work as translators because they generally already have excellent writing and language skills and an enthusiasm for words”, but is this in fact true?

Well, let’s compare the qualities the typical good translator needs to those the typical good writer has. To start with language ability, a translator must have native proficiency in the target language and near-native proficiency in the source language. A writer obviously ought to have exceptional language skills in the language she or he writes in, but that doesn’t mean that she or he knows a second language at the necessary level. However, being immersed in the world of words and having a deep understanding of language does suggest that one would be open to and capable of learning another tongue.

Next, a translator has to have excellent reading comprehension abilities, because she or he is, it can be argued, the closest reader a text will ever have. Many writers are also voracious and careful readers, or at least they should be because reading and analyzing works by others is beneficial to their own work. A translator can not translate well without thoroughly understanding what the text is about, who the audience is to be, what the author’s style is, what kind of vocabulary is used, what the source and target cultures and literatures are like, and so forth, and these are all issues that writers presumably have also considered.

Translators also need to be good writers. They are taking documents written in one language and basically rewriting them in another. Translation is not simply just choosing a word for word equivalent or copying out the text in a foreign language; it is finding a way in another language of expressing the same thoughts and feelings the author did in his or her language, so translators must be sensitive to what good writing is and how to put words together. Writers, it goes without saying, also care intensely about how to craft texts.

Finally, editing skills are essential in translation, because a translator has to be able to review his or her work, check it against the source document, and also make sure it reads well and makes sense in the target language. Writers, too, typically rework their rough drafts, improving them, seeing if they make sense and use words well, and so on.

In other words, translators must have good language skills, reading skills, writing skills, and editing skills – and as for writers, check, check, check, and check!

So, while certainly not all good translators are or would want to be writers, and not all writers are suited to be translators, I think it is safe to say that many writers potentially could make good translators, and that it is a career path they should consider.

Do You Have What it Takes to Be a Translator?

Here is a recent article, published online at Writing-World.com, that explores reasons why few writers incorporate translation into their careers.

Do You Have What it Takes to Be a Translator?

Translation, just like writing, is a creative, challenging craft that requires excellent writing, analytic, and editing abilities, as well as a love and feel for language. The major differences between translating and writing, of course, are that translators must have near-native skills in at least two languages, and work with transferring words an author has written in one language into another language, whereas writers need only work with one language and with their own thoughts and texts.

Writers are the ideal people to work as translators because they generally already have excellent writing and language skills and an enthusiasm for words, yet not many attempt it. There are several possible reasons for why few writers make translation part of their business.

The first is a belief that translating is less creative or interesting than writing. As both a writer and a translator, I'd argue that translation is incredibly demanding and creative. The limits imposed by the fact that a translator has to understand what the author meant and be able to recreate it in another language for a different audience forces translators to work very hard to find just the right way to express the author's thoughts given the target language's vocabulary, grammar, melody, and culture. This process can be compared to how some poets prefer to write haikus or sonnets rather than free verse, or how some fiction writers create artificial rules for their work (they can't use a certain letter, for example, or they have to focus on a specific topic). The fact is that the restrictions imposed by the form compel translators to be creative in a new way.

The second reason is that writers don't think they can earn money by translating. It's true that literary translation generally does not pay well and that it can be difficult to find such work; most English-speaking countries publish few literary translations, in part because publishers don't see much importance or profit in foreign literature and thus aren't eager to pay for it. Nonfiction translation, however, is very lucrative. Literary translators report getting around $2000 per novel, while nonfiction translators can earn that in just a week or two. Rates vary quite a bit, depending on the location, customer, level of difficulty, and the languages involved, but 12¢ per word is about average. Large companies with customers in many countries need translators and are willing to pay for quality work. Although some writers fear that it would be boring to translate user manuals or articles, such work can be quite stimulating and demanding. Translating court documents, for example, can be like reading a thriller; working on annual reports can teach you something about finance; while translating advertisements requires not just an understanding of language, but an ability to subtly make the ads more appropriate for the new culture. Translators I have spoken to report just as much satisfaction from finding the right word for a translation of a website as they do for a poem.

The final reason why writers are reluctant to seek translation work is because many simply don't know where to begin. The easiest way to start is sign up with translation agencies and to join one or more of the many e-lists that focus on translation. It is generally more common for translators to work for agencies rather than directly with customers, especially when starting out. Though agencies usually pay less, many translators like working for agencies because then they don't have to try to market to, contact, and sell their services to customers and also because agencies edit all the translations before sending them to the end clients, which means that an extra pair of eyes always checks over the work.

E-lists are useful because they often have job announcements and one can also meet other translators through them; more experienced translators might have advice for new ones, and they also might have too much work on occasion and be willing to subcontract assignments. For people who are more serious about translation, joining a professional organization, such as the American Translators Association or the International Federation of Translators, is a good credential. Such associations often have databases of translators where potential customers can find you, as well as newsletters with information, and conferences to attend. It's not cheap to join professional organizations, but the investment is worthwhile. Finally, make sure you tell your family, friends, neighbors, bosses, writing clients, and everyone else that you work as a translator. You might be surprised by how many people know someone who needs a translator and how many jobs friends or colleagues can pass on to you. In any business, making contacts is important.

Translation is a creative and stimulating art and craft, it can be lucrative, and there are easy steps new translators can take to find business. Not least, many writers are uniquely suited to being translators. All that remains now is for writers to expand their writerly horizons and start translating!

Translators’ Responsibilities: When the Source Text Has Issues

The definition of a translator is someone who translates a text from one language to another, carefully considering the cultures involved, the style of the text, the purpose of the text and of the translation, and the potential audience. That’s all challenging enough, and there’s much to consider in that about what the translator’s responsibilities are and what s/he should prioritize, but in this post, I’d like to look at an aspect of the job that is rarely mentioned: what should a translator do when faced with a source text that is, to be perfectly frank, not well written?

Some source texts themselves are poorly done translations while others simply have been authored by people who either didn’t put much effort into the document or don’t have good writing skills, or both. A sloppy text might have misspellings, grammar mistakes, factual errors, unclear meanings, or other problems. What options does a translator have when working on such a text? And, more to the point, what is the translator’s responsibility in this case?

Some translators believe that their job is simply to translate whatever is on the page, without questioning it. So they’d generally correct misspellings and bad grammar (that is, they wouldn’t create equivalent misspellings or incorrect grammar in the translation), but they wouldn’t rewrite awkward sentences, mention factual errors to their client and/or the author of the text (that’s not always the same person, obviously), or ask what was intended by a certain phrase.

Others will ask the client to clarify confusing passages or to re-check facts. Still other translators would go even further and give the customer feedback on the text, pointing out some, or even all, of the problems.

There are translators who offer to rewrite and/or edit the source document for an additional fee, and there are some who refuse to translate poorly written documents until they have been reworked, whether by themselves or by the author and/or customer.

All of these different responses show the various ways translators view their job and their translatorial responsibilities.

I have tried a variety of these methods myself, but most often what I do is ask about anything that seems unclear or especially awkward plus point out mistakes I find in the source text. If I can’t understand what is meant by a phrase or a paragraph, then I won’t be able to translate properly, so I do feel it is my responsibility to make sure everything is clear to me (and, I should note, if something is seemingly incomprehensible, it may, of course, be attributed to my own lack of understanding or knowledge, and not just because the writer is not proficient as his or her craft). As for the reason why I mention mistakes to the client, I feel it is a courtesy to them, and it also shows that I am observant and take my work seriously. A client who later finds mistakes in the source text but remembers that I didn’t bring them up might wonder whether I even noticed them and whether, if I didn’t notice them, I paid as close attention to the document as I should have.

There have been occasions when I have received a document of low quality that has had such a number of careless errors and sloppy phrasings that I didn’t feel I should have to spend the time necessary to edit the whole text, especially as I wasn’t getting paid for that, so I instead just gave the client a general summary of issues I noticed in the text, with a few specific examples. Once, I had a text so riddled with problems that I found it very difficult to translate, and I suggested that I or someone else be hired to fix the document, but the company I was working for made it clear that they didn’t care enough about having correct and well-written language to spend additional sums on the document, so I could only do my best with the text as it was.

So I suppose where I stand on this issue is somewhere in the middle: I believe translators have a responsibility to thoroughly understand the documents they work on, and that they must ask questions or do research if a certain text doesn’t make sense to them in some way. I also believe that translators should fix problems such as misspellings or incorrect usage as they translate (unless such things are part of the style of the text, as in some fiction or in reproductions of dialect), and I think it is respectful to the customer to mention whatever issues come up in the text, even if in a general way, without necessarily sending back a completely marked-up source text. But I don’t think translators should have to rewrite source documents (unless they get an extra fee for that) or that they should feel the need to give the client detailed feedback on them.

What do other translators think? And what about those of you who employ translators?

Translating from English to English

In the last post, I mentioned that American and British English are not always the same, even if they are, obviously, mutually intelligible for the most part. Something many people don’t realize is that there are translators who translate between American and British English.

Why would such a job be necessary? After all, if you can read English and have some basic knowledge about vocabulary and grammar differences among the various Englishes, why should seeing the word “boot” (UK English) instead of “trunk” (US English) bother you? Wouldn’t you understand if a character in a novel asked, “Do you have a pen?” (US English) instead of “Have you got a pen?” (UK English). Wouldn’t it just add to the flavor (or flavour) of whatever you are reading?

Well, I believe that is generally true for literary works; after all, just as it would be odd if, in a book set in Spain, a character suddenly used American slang, I think preserving the original style and feeling of an English text is important. Publishers tend to disagree with me, however, in part because they seem to assume the audience would find it confusing or disturbing if a book was in any way “foreign.”

This is especially the case with children’s literature, because it is erroneously believed that children don’t understand that people in other countries might speak differently or have different traditions. So publishers worry that Americans kids might think it is “weird” if an English boy in a book that takes place in England says “lift” and not “elevator,” and therefore such things are translated to American English (or to British English, in the case of American books). I have not read any of the Harry Potter books, but I have been told that the vocabulary and grammar in them is Americanized for US audiences, and that some American Harry Potter aficionados insist on buying their books from the UK, so they can read the original texts. And, as another example, I received some information not long ago about a children’s book translated to English from a Scandinavian language. An editor at the British publishing company implied that major, “neutralizing” changes were made in the translation (including removing all mentions of the setting), so the book would be ready for child audiences in both the UK and the US, and so a second, American translator wouldn’t later be needed, at an additional cost to the publishers. To me, this kind of translation amounts to a sort of dumbing-down of the book, because it makes it easier for readers to access. Sure, explanation may sometimes be needed, and that can be given in a footnote or by adding a word or two to the text, but remaking parts of a novel so it appeals to foreign readers is going a bit far.

When it comes to non-fiction, though, I have more understanding for publishers. In some non-fiction works, it is essential that the message not be lost because the audience doesn’t recognize the words or the style. For example, I have seen an ad here in Wales that says “Have you sussed it?” As an American, I had no idea what that meant when I first saw it. Then I learned that “to suss” means “to check out” or “to find out” or “to understand.” If that ad were used in the US, perhaps it would be changed to “Do you get it?” and the company wouldn’t have to worry about losing potential customers because of the incomprehensibility of their message. That’s the kind of thing an English to English translator can help with.

Cultural references can add quite a bit to a novel, but might need explication in a work of non-fiction. Recently, I read Simon Winchester’s book about the OED, The Surgeon of Crowthorne. That’s the original British title, anyway. In the US, the book is called The Professor and the Madman, apparently because the American publishers thought (correctly, I suspect) that their more dramatic title would appeal more to Americans. Knowing that fact made me wonder what else beyond the spelling and grammar had been adapted or translated for American readers. I have not read the American version, but I would imagine that the mentions of the Civil War are not necessarily as detailed in the American book, since Americans are presumably more familiar with the facts of the war, and that there might be more information about the locations in the UK, so American readers can understand distances and issues of, say, fashionability. I wondered, too, if the tone of the book, which seems rather British to me, might have been changed a bit.

In short, translators from English to English analyze texts for issues of grammar, vocabulary, and culture-specific references (locations, politics, educational systems, and so forth), and they adapt such “problem passages” to another kind of English. As I made clear above, I see the need for this in non-fiction documents, especially for ads, user’s manuals, tourist information, and other such texts that are to serve an informational purpose. But I don’t think much of it when it is applied to fiction.

Have you sussed all that?

To learn a little more about this very specific kind of translation, check out this article. It would also be interesting to know whether this type of translation is common in other languages that are spoken in two or more countries (such as German, French, Spanish, or Swedish).