The simple sentence “I need the following document translated into German,” rarely provides sufficient information for a quality translation. For maximum success, you should always know and communicate a few special pieces of information to LCW or any translator:
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The location of the target audience.
(country, region, and sometimes even city) Informing the translator that you would like a translation into Russian for people in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will greatly improve the accuracy of the translation. In some instances, specifically those where the audience may be from multiple countries, this may not be possible and the translator must use more general language. This is especially common with Spanish language translations because of the innumerable dialects which exist across the globe.
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The demographics of the target audience.
(Who are the readers - lawyers or laborers?) While legal documents obviously require a translator specialized in legal terms, other audiences may also require special attention. Informing LCW that the ultimate reader will be a group of executives and not entry-level laborers may affect our word choice.
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If the desired audience is unclear to the translator, they may make language choices which don’t meet your needs. A Spaniard would never be able to please a Mexican reader unless he was informed that the reader was indeed from Mexico.
Similarly, it is possible to write the same sentence two different ways for two types of readers. The language used to convey current events differs greatly between Newsweek and The Economist, yet both are in English.
Which means…
Always be specific as to who will be receiving the translated document and make any necessary requests ahead of time. An example of a clear translation request would be: Please have this translated into German for Austria – it will be sent out to all nurses at our hospitals in Vienna.
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Translation is an art, not a science. The translated document that you receive is a talented professional’s interpretation, from one language to another, of your original document. Most specialized translators work only into their native language, so the person translating your English document into French is typically a native French speaker…mentally interpreting the meaning of the English text you have supplied and producing a French text which he or she considers equivalent in meaning. This brings up two important points you should remember as you receive your translation:
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The translated document you have received is written with the phrasing and structural choices of one or more translators. Nearly every sentence we write can be re-written a different way – sometimes truly better, sometimes not. It is for this reason that even in our own writing, we often request peer reviews or proofreaders. While you might be able to make a change to some of the sentences in this document to make it more “your style”, it was still written by a native English speaker.
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Many foreign languages have dialectal differences. Take the English spoken in the U.S. as an example. On the East Coast, people wait “on line”, while in the Midwest, people wait “in line”. A French translator from Switzerland may translate certain phrases in such a way that a French speaker from Tunisia may disagree. Disagreement, in this case, is most often a question of location.
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There are therefore two key phrases to listen for as others (perhaps internal to your organization) evaluate a translation: “I don’t like the way that sounds,” and “That is not correct.” In the case of the first, many things might sound better, but weeks of iterations could be needed before everyone agrees. If you send your document to 100 translators, you will receive 100 different translations. The second phrase, on the other hand, may in fact indicate that something is amiss in the document (e.g., a misunderstanding of the intended meaning by the translator).
Which means…
There are three basic reasons why others may criticize a translation:
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The native speaker has a different style of writing and/or speaking. |
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The native speaker is from a different region than the translator. |
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There is truly an error in the translation. |
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