Or should I say, Who are your audience? I’ll have to defer to M Lynne “Lynneguist” Murphy over at separated by a common language for that one. Lynne delves into the minute linguistic variations between our side of the pond and hers, which can be surpisingly practical when you’re considering whether to wear your vest under or over your shirt. Her latest post includes mashed potatoes, which I, for one, always eat in the plural.

Country-specific particularities are merely the most obvious consideration when we gear a translation to a specific audience. And most translators never even have to worry about it, because they translate only into the variety spoken in their own country. They are not qualified to do otherwise.

When we say audience, we are most often asking why we are translating something. Contract? Sure, but is this a draft yet to be executed or an exhibit in a litigation? Press release? OK, but is this for the company to ensure their message is intact, or will it go straight from our desk to publication? Medical brochure? For the doctor or the public?

Does the reader want to know what it says, or what it means?

Which is not always the same thing. Or would the client prefer we ignore the original altogether? We who work in legal translation are usually on a short leash. The author may have wanted to convey a certain message, but if he went about it in an awkward manner and ends up clouding that message, we usually feel we should retain all the awkwardness and make it just as cloudy for our reader. We don’t want to go sticking our neck out, and, how someone said something may be as important as what he said.

Of course we need to distinguish whether the writing is obtuse or if in fact the source language allows for much subtler turns of phrase to convey the same thing. In other words, if the original means something to a speaker of the original language, the translation better mean something to a speaker of the target language. Legal translators or not, we are not slaves to each word to the detriment of meaning.

Erring on the literal side of translation is not the legal translators only mode. We must also ask the purpose of the translation. This could determine how we treat everything from word choice to currency symbols, translator’s notes to formatting.

Of course each discipline has its default mode with its corresponding sense of freedom. The advertising translator wants to make the ad sell and often takes many liberties to do it. Someone who translates technical manuals wants to ensure the user understands the device even if the author of the source did not. Still, he often must check his creativity at the door.

The legal translator wants to be able to defend each word he puts on the page, sometimes despite his client’s wishes. He’s faithful to the text; not always to his customer. Each mode falls somewhere along a spectrum from word-for-word translation at one end, to adaptation at the other.

Beyond asking the general question, “Why do you want this translated?” we can narrow it down in more specific ways:

• What country or region?
• Is this for filing or for informational purposes;
• Is this for publication/presentation or for informational purposes;
• Is this for the expert or the layperson
• Shall we follow the author’s style or give it a new style?

Etcetera, etcetera. And knowing the answer to these questions will help us to provide what our audience ask for.

Overall, I found the conference excellent, and the turnout extraordinary. Over 2,300 attended and at times, it looked like translators had entirely overtaken the Marriott Hotel.

Although I was not able to attend as many sessions as I hoped, I wanted to mention a few I found to be particularly well done and engaging:

• Grant Hamilton held a pre-conference session on untangling the linguistic knot that is administrative French. His steady hand as a translator nudged us all in the direction of extracting the meaning, leaving behind the structure, and feeling the freedom to rephrase into beautifully readable English.
• François Lavallée’s session on translating slogans from English to French was not only amusing, it was unexpectedly informative. Unexpected because I was doubtful one could codify something that on the surface looks as instinctive and spontaneous as slogans. But François’ careful observation of French and English slogans over the years uncovered many underlying “rules” for slogan writing. I might also mention François’ comic timing, which made the hour fly by.
• On a more serious note, the session on legal translation presided over by Steve Kahaner, Thomas West III, and Alejandro Garro, was packed with useful information for the legal translator striving to develop the requisite experience to master this challenging translation field. And with Steve and Thomas both heading up well regarded translation agencies specializing in law (i.e., the competition), it gave me a chance to reflect on how to improve our offering here at Yndigo Translations.

While not all conference events and sessions were equally interesting or fruitful — as can only be expected at such an enormous event — the four days were, from my point of view, an overwhelming success.

But another force is at work in the industry: fungibility. And it’s a trend that is also being driven by technology.

Of course, the internet has made it possible for businesses and individuals to specialize like never before. This means we don’t have to shop at a store that sells every car part under the sun if the selection of floormats is better at a store that sells nothing but mats. And we don’t have to use a general translator if we want someone who really knows car engines or the environment. I would say this a good trend. It leads to better translations and it rewards translators who dig deep into their subject.

Driving us in the other direction however — away from specialization — is translation as big business. Large agencies often have large databases, filled with thousands of translators from accross the globe. By plugging into such a vast network, these agencies are able to promise speed and capacity that others are not.

But when it comes to executing these fast or high-volume jobs, translators often get an anonymous email, one that has clearly been sent to tens, even hundreds of his or her peers asking how many words they can do over, for example, the next 24 hours.

A quick message, a click of a button and the project manager has made his job so much easier than his pre-email counterpart could have ever hoped. This is a disturbing trend. Not only does it drive down quality, it can mean a breach of confidentiality if, for example, the project manager attaches a file to an email spread far and wide.

And that’s just just the risk to the client relationship. This practice can can also hurt the agency’s working relationship with its translators. Some have resigned themselves to the practice as the modern way of doing business, thus they try their best to respond as quickly as they can. But this puts translators in competition to see who can be the most available and accessible, not the most qualified.

Translators have more experience than I do with this though, so let me ask them: have you seen this trend grow? Is there an upside to it?

Watching the French Open finals this morning between Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova, I heard “S’il vous plaît, mesdames et messieurs” come over the loudspeaker to quiet the crowd before play (By the way, when did the wave make its transition to the tennis stadium?).

My very funny wife Jen echoed the French with her intentionally awkward and accented, “If it PLEEZES you, laideeez and zjentlemen.” I don’t know why it made me laugh so much.

Of course we don’t dissect the phrase like that when we translate. Just like we don’t literally render the close of a letter, “Please agree, Madame, to the assurance of my distinguished sentiments.” We say “Yours truly” or “Sincerely” or some other anglified formula.

Pretty obvious to translators. Yet, many still resort to the old “That’s what it says in the original” when dealing with less formulaic phrases. If it is correct and fluent in the original, it should be correct and fluent in the translation. And even when it’s not correct, we don’t always have an excuse. Because although it’s common to find grammar mistakes in the original document, they are often made by a native speaker. Thus the idiom is still native, and the translation should be native too.

Here’s an example: native English speakers often say, “Between he and I.” This is an example of an attempt at hypercorrectness and it’s wrong. Yet people born and raised speaking English do it all the time (in fact, I doubt a non-native speaker would make this same mistake unless he spends too much time around us!). We cannot translate this into French as “Entre il et je” because no native French speaker would ever say that. The only solution is to gloss over this mother-tongue mistake.

And when the source document is free of errors, there’s simply no excuse at all for a less than fluid translation. I read a translation last week that was frankly horrible. The translator just couldn’t be bothered to put words into their English order or even rout out false friends. Or spell-check for that matter! (one of my pet peeves). I think he knows better in fact, just didn’t review his work. He left far too much work for the editor. He was fast. I’ll say that for him. But not worth it.

Often a translation that sticks too closely to the original is the result of a lack of confidence. There is what I call “the steady hand” in translation, a translator — often seasoned — who is able to cut through the dense source idiom. These individuals, while never taking liberties with key terms, don’t get tripped up by the inherent “differentness” of the source language. It takes a nuanced understanding of the original to gain this sort of confidence. Along with years of experience solving how to put it into another language.

After editing hundreds of translations over the years–good, bad and everything in between–this translation did a couple things, besides making our client happy, that is. It reconfirmed my faith in human translation (alright that’s a bit over the top perhaps; I hadn’t really lost my faith in human translation, I just tend to forget how far superior it can be), and it led me to consider that too often we let the machines win.

It’s become cliché in translation to say computers will never figure out how to truly replicate what we do, yet between some translations I’ve read and machine output there really isn’t a lot of daylight. Machines are catching up. But please, let’s not go meet them halfway.

Now you may claim with the workload and the price pressure — much of it caused by those same machines — how are we supposed to have time to craft translations that make the client say, “Wow, I’m glad I hired a human!” Good question. The daily grind can sap much of that creative juice that made us choose this career over accounting* way back when.

First, let me say that most translations I come across are better (and quite a bit more accurate) than machine output. However many translators skip the one step that can most efficiently help them leave machines in the dust: Re-reading. While downright essential for new translators, it should not be overlooked by old-hats either.

I know when I’ve translated I often feel I’ve written the most fluent English sentence, only to go back and discover it doesn’t sound like English at all. When we re-read we really discover the translation for the first time as a native speaker. Because, when we’re translating, we are tethered to the idiom of the original and can find it very difficult to take the ideas while leaving the original language structure behind. It’s a two-step process (sometimes more) when done right. When an editor claims a translation wasn’t done by a native speaker, often it’s just that the translator did not re-read.

Of course there are different levels of re-reading. You can look it over quickly to make sure there are no errors or you can read aloud until all the little seams are ironed out. Either way it’s the best way for both beginning and experienced translators to improve and to continue to make the client choose them over the machine.

*I apologize for perpetuating the stereotype of the uncreative accountant. With the state of Wall Street over the past few months, it looks like the accountants have been quite creative in fact. Whoops, now it seems I’ve called them underhanded too…