The Foreign Language Company
, LLC Vol. 2 № 1 Winter 2002/2003 Edition
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Official
Newsletter of The Foreign Language Company |
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| Language
Ledger - Newsletter of The Foreign Language Company , LLC Vol. 2 № 1 Winter 2002/2003 Edition |
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What makes a Good Translation? |
Team Focus: Rafael Méndez Upcoming Local International Events |
| Three of our translators attended the 43rd annual American Translators Association convention in Atlanta in November. They attended workshops and seminars on various topics to stay abreast of what is going on in the translation/interpretation industry and to sharpen their translation skills. This is the fifth ATA conference Bill has attended and the first one for Amy and Christiane. Over 1,500 translators from around the world were present at this year’s conference. One of the highlights was when Christiane, who is Brazilian, took Bill and several other guests out to Fogo de Chão, a very unique, all-you-can-eat Brazilian “churrascaria” where servers offer the diners an endless variety of meats. |
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New Year’s Traditions Around the World
It
is that time of the year to have a look at the various traditions for
celebrating the New Year around the world. Here are some of the highlights:
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In Brazil people eat lentil soup or lentils and rice believing that it signifies
wealth.
• Because Australia is in the southern hemisphere, it celebrates New Year’s
during summer. Therefore many people go out to the beach or have picnics in
order to enjoy the warm weather.
• Koreans all dress in new clothes to symbolize a fresh beginning. They
also believe that eating soup will add an extra year to your life. Koreans also
calculate their age on New Year’s Day, so everyone turns a year older on this
day!
• In France people traditionally eat onion soup and roast duck for New
Year's dinner.
• In Greece, New Year’s Day is also St. Basil's Day. The most important food
prepared is Vassilopitta or St. Basil's cake. A silver or gold coin is baked
inside the cake and the person who gets it will carry it all year for good
luck.
• The Japanese make decorations out of pine branches, bamboo and rope in the
belief that these will bring good health and a long life. Children are given, otoshidamas.
These are small gifts containing money inside. At midnight, bells chime 108
times, symbolizing 108 human frailties. After the bells have chimed 108 times,
the sins of the people who heard them are expunged.
•In Thailand the New Year festival is called Songkran and does not occur until
April 13th. It lasts three days. One custom is for people to pour water over
each other, so that it will bring a lot of rain in the coming year and all
Buddha statues or images are washed. Another custom is to release fish from
their fish bowls. The bowls are taken to the river and all the fish are released
at the same time.
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What
Makes a Good Translation? Many people think that any bilingual person can do a
good translation. Therefore, very complicated, well-written documents end
up in the hands of people with absolutely no translation experience.
Language translation can be an intricate process. It goes far beyond a
simplistic word-for-word exchange. A good translation needs to carry the
meaning and the tone of the original, while still being culturally
sensitive to the target audience. Poor translations abound and it is such examples which people remember. There is nothing funny about a bad
translation if it affects your company or product. No one wants to be the
butt of a bad joke because a translation has failed to hit its mark. So,
what are the qualities that make a translation good? A translation needs
to meet several criteria to be considered a good translation. Each of the
criteria will
discussed below. The first criterion of a good translation is
obvious—it has to be accurate. Examples of where this often fails
include mistranslations, missing sentences and bad grammar. This point
accentuates the need to use translators with a profound knowledge of both
languages, not merely two years of a high school language. Mistranslations
and missing words or sentences can have devastating consequences. A
mistranslated legal contract could cause one party to enter into a legal
agreement that he or she has not fully understood. Additionally, if a
translation is fraught with bad grammar or spelling errors, the reader
tends to lose confidence in not only the document, but also the company
which produced it. Naturalness of the translation is one of the key
factors in helping prevent a translation from sounding like one.
Typically, after a translation has been proofread for accuracy and
completeness, an editor will go through the document and make sure that
each sentence and expression sounds as if it were originally written in
the target language. In this way, the readers should be completely unaware
that what they are reading is a translation. An easily overlooked feature of a good translation is mirroring the mood of the author. In general texts, there is often not a definitive tone, but in editorial and literary documents there always is a clear attitude of the author. In order for the translation to convey the same feeling to the reader, it must use words and expressions which can transmit a similar spirit. Failure to express this accurately can easily mislead the reader as to the writer’s actual feelings and attitudes on a given topic.
Next, a translation must be culturally appropriate.
References to religious figures, sports or country–specific items can
confuse or offend the end users. Such references either need to be
excluded in the source document before translation begins, or they need to
be culturally readapted into the target languages.
Lastly, the audience needs to be considered. Before a
translation is even begun, the end user of the document needs to be taken
into account. Sometimes the audience is a broad group of people, but more
often, it is a very narrow, targeted audience. A text written for a group
of scientists needs to be translated at a much higher reading level than
would consent forms for newly arrived immigrants. Moreover, if a document
is destined to go only to a certain country, it is usually best that the
translation be performed by a native translator of that country to be sure
that only terms and expressions of that country are used. Metric
conversions, spelling changes and idiomatic expressions may need to be
made to ensure that the translation is acceptable in the country. This is just a brief look at some of the main points
to keep in mind. We hope this article will help you to judge the quality
of translations better in the future. |
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Hawaiian is a
melodic and flowing Polynesian language that mirrors the natural beauty of
the islands. It has only twelve letters in its alphabet; five vowels (A,
E, I, O and U) and seven consonants (H, K, L, M, N, P and W) making it
easy for English speakers to pronounce. There was no written language
until missionaries came to the island in the 19th Century to translate the
Bible into Hawaiian. |
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Upcoming
Local INTERNATIONAL Events
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December 14, 2002—Latino Holidays Celebration Festival (10
am - 3 pm) at the
Eiteljorg
Museum
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Team
Focus: Rafael
Méndez
Beginning
Conversational Spanish – Starts Jan. 21, 2003 6:00 PM All classes are two hours long and meet for six continuous weeks. The cost per class is $180. Other languages are available depending on demand. Call us for more information or to set up an evaluation. 317.924.5175 |
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What
better language to focus on in the middle of winter than the Hawaiian
language? Actually, the story of the Hawaiian language is an emerging
success story. Every two weeks another language vanishes from the face of
the earth, or more succinctly, the last speaker of a rare language dies. A
similar fate loomed over the Hawaiian language, but recent events have
reinvigorated the language. 
