Translation FAQ

Translation serves as a written bridge between two cultures as well as two languages. Professional human translators are the best guides across that bridge to reach your target audience.

Much ado has been made over whether there will one day be a universal machine translator (notably as seen on science fiction shows). The very honest answer is that this is very doubtful in my lifetime. I do not fear that I will one day be replaced by a computer. There is also much fuss in today’s news about using amateur translators, or bilinguals, to translate and save money. This is the question you must answer:

When your company, your brand, and your reputation are on the line, would you risk having a computer or “Bilingual Bill” render your marketing campaign or manufacturing instruction in a foreign language?


Languages are alive
Human languages are living things and continuously evolving over 10,000+ years. Human language constantly adapts, invents new words, or assigns new definitions to old words as new technologies are created or new discoveries are made. Think about how swiftly our vocabulary has changed just since the Internet was popularized in the 1990s. Human language blurs and borrows when it comes in close contact with another culture and paradigm. The English language was born out of the direct interaction between French and the Germanic languages spoken in England after William the Conqueror seized the throne. Every generation of teenagers is famous for inventing a new set of slang terms and code words just for fun and, sometimes, out of rebellion.

Our language is a direct reflection of our own world view – our culture and the things around us. Our paradigm may not match the paradigm of someone from a different culture. Here are some examples our team has been musing over this week. In English, we say “teaspoon” (tea spoon), but the French call the same object a “cuillière à café” (coffee spoon). The English drink tea; the French drink coffee. In English, politicians practice "horse-trading"; in Indonesian the same thing is "dagang sapi" (cow-trading). 

So you can perhaps begin to see that translation delves beyond merely trading one English word for one word in the other language. A translator has to make a bridge between the world view of a human in one culture and a human in another culture.

Context is important
The translator also has to take stock of the context of the word being translated. This in particular is a problem that computers have not been able to overcome. Here is an example:
Type: “I love my wife.”
Have the machine translator translate it into Spanish.
The result: “Amo a mi esposa.” CORRECT!
Now take the Spanish sentence and have the software translate that back to English:
Input: “Amo a mi esposa”
The result: “Master to my handcuffs.” UH-OH!

Why? The software failed to realize there was a difference between the noun “Amo” (an old word meaning “master”) and the conjugated form of the verb “amar” (“to love”). Additionally, the computer slipped up on the difference between singular “esposa” (“wife”) and plural “esposas” (“handcuffs”). Have fun playing with http://babelfish.yahoo.com or http://translate.google.com by entering common nursery rhymes, jokes, or words like ”plant” and “light” that have score of different definitions. You will soon see that it takes a human to apply the surrounding context (and syntax) to get an accurate output.

The importance of context escalates when the document come from a particular industry or profession. Even if we use similar words in regular daily languages as we use in a legal contract or a financial prospectus, the definition of those words just changed. Therefore, the matching word in the other language is likely to be entirely different. Not just that, but legal contracts are famous for containing set phrases that only have meaning in a legal setting and without those set phrases being present in the contract, the reader may arrive at a substantially different interpretation of the agreement.

So when is it okay to use a machine translator?
The common desires behind using a computer to translate are to save time by having instantaneous translations and to save money by not paying a human professional.  I respect that. And there are two situations where machine translations are appropriate and could work. 1) When there is a finite and well-defined set of vocabulary and sentence structures involved, such as weather reports for Eastern Canada that need to be swiftly issued in both English and French. These weather reports cover a very controlled set of vocabulary. 2) Gisting: When you are only attempting to get a general sense of what the document says for internal use. Do not destroy your company’s reputation by publishing commercial documents translated by Babelfish.

Could I use someone who is simply bilingual?
In May 2009, Audi used a bilingual marketing expert to translate the name of a new concept car from German to English. The name: White Power. The result: Public humiliation and scandal in the mainstream media. Audi published an apology.
For a more complete discussion of this issue:
http://www.oregontranslation.com/faq.php?FaqID=29
 
An advertizing professional, an attorney, or a Realtor® is not necessarily any good at writing or translating between languages. In order to arrive at a QUALITY translation, you should turn to a translator who excels at translating that particular subject matter.

Matchmaking
At Oregon Translation, we view ourselves as matchmakers. We listen to how you describe your project and we look over the source materials to gauge the topic, the target audience, and the level of technical terminology in a given industry, and other factors addressed here:
http://www.oregontranslation.com/process/assessment.php
We then assign the best translator + editor team for that specific combination. A translator with the analytical and scientific skills to translate your technical handbooks is not likely to be the best translator to craft your marketing message in a second language.