A dear friend of mine is a veteran in the publishing industry in Taiwan. Something she and her colleagues said has stuck with me after all these years:
"There are no bad translators, only lazy ones."
In this day and age, I think that's pretty much 100% true. As far as accuracy is concerned, a translator really has no excuse for getting anything wrong. Whatever we don't know or aren't sure of, we can look it up online and find answers immediately. If you do your research, you will be able to deliver accurate translations.
As for having the translation maintain the style and flavor of the original, that's something one has to work at. And yes, there are some translators who do this better than others. But it's not unattainable. Again, it can be done by anyone willing to put in the hours.
Thomas Edison famously said all his work "boils down to one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." The same holds true for translation. Even the most talented translators have to "work" to translate anything; those words don't translate themselves!
For translators and anyone working in this industry, good time management is especially vital because things often come down to the wire. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
Speaking
of which, it baffles me to see people procrastinate on jobs that
they've never done before. How would anyone know what kind of time
they'd need for something they're doing for the first time? Wouldn't it
be wise to start as soon as possible so we'd have more time for
unforeseeable bumps down the road? It's a simple "the tortoise and the hare" situation, but the inertia is such that we still get too cocky to just "get up and go."
Please translate responsibly.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Monday, November 17, 2014
"English" Slang in Other Languages
As the de facto international language, English has been welcomed and incorporated into languages and cultures around the world. Many countries start teaching kids English as early as when they enter elementary schools. Therefore, perhaps it's inevitable that many languages have developed their own "English" phrases.
At first blush, they appear to be English. But to a native English speaker, they are not only grammatically incorrect most of the time, but also confusing as all get-out. Why? Because these "English" versions grew out of completely different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and, therefore, can only be understood in the correct context.
Here are a couple of examples:
Jetso being ing lah!
Own car repair fu good man!
What do those "English" words actually mean?
1. Jetso - the romanized pronunciation of Cantonese 著數, which refers to some special offer or discount.
2. ing - a borrowed form of the progressive tense, referring to any activity or action that is going on right now.
3. lah - a popular, albeit neutral and somewhat meaningless, sentence-ender in Chinese.
4. man - adjective; the equivalent of "manly."
5. fu - noun; the equivalent of "feeling" or "impression."
So those two sentences can be translated as:
Special Offer Going On Right Now!
Fixing your own car feels so manly!
I can't speak about other languages, but I'm guessing they have something similar as well. If a word can't be found in an English dictionary, at least we'll know it's made up. But a word like "man" in the example above can be pretty confusing. The only way to learn what they mean and how they're used is if you live them, i.e. in context or through immersion.
And I dare say, as the Internet furthers its reach, this type of slang will only grow exponentially.
Welcome to the digital age!
Please translate responsibly.
At first blush, they appear to be English. But to a native English speaker, they are not only grammatically incorrect most of the time, but also confusing as all get-out. Why? Because these "English" versions grew out of completely different cultural and linguistic backgrounds and, therefore, can only be understood in the correct context.
Here are a couple of examples:
Jetso being ing lah!
Own car repair fu good man!
What do those "English" words actually mean?
1. Jetso - the romanized pronunciation of Cantonese 著數, which refers to some special offer or discount.
2. ing - a borrowed form of the progressive tense, referring to any activity or action that is going on right now.
3. lah - a popular, albeit neutral and somewhat meaningless, sentence-ender in Chinese.
4. man - adjective; the equivalent of "manly."
5. fu - noun; the equivalent of "feeling" or "impression."
So those two sentences can be translated as:
Special Offer Going On Right Now!
Fixing your own car feels so manly!
I can't speak about other languages, but I'm guessing they have something similar as well. If a word can't be found in an English dictionary, at least we'll know it's made up. But a word like "man" in the example above can be pretty confusing. The only way to learn what they mean and how they're used is if you live them, i.e. in context or through immersion.
And I dare say, as the Internet furthers its reach, this type of slang will only grow exponentially.
Welcome to the digital age!
Please translate responsibly.
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Why Human Translation Will Always Have Its Place
The other day, someone who shall remain nameless was looking up a famous chess player on Google to verify his suspicion that this player wears a toupee.
Lo and behold, most of the search results were people commenting on said chess player and his "wig."
Our nameless protagonist said to me, "Don't people use the word 'toupee' any more?" I thought about it for a second and replied, "Maybe they use the word 'wig' because most chess players in the world are not native English speakers."
That seems like a logical explanation. Take Chinese as an example. "Toupee" and "wig" are both translated as 假髮, which literally means "fake hair." I'm sure a lot of languages don't distinguish between toupee and wig like English does. Therefore when those speakers try to use English (which is pretty much the common language on most of the international forums and message boards among chess players) to talk about this chess player and his "toupee," the word "wig" was inadvertently used.
That makes me marvel at the thought that went behind Google Search. Obviously somebody had thought of situations like this and decided that the search hits should include "wig" as well, even when it is not part of the search keywords.
However, machines can only do so much. There are instances that require a human brain to decipher phrases that are intentionally fraught with typos and sound-alikes.
Examples abound in Chinese. 杯具, for instance, means a set of drinkware. Somehow, somebody decided to use it as a cute replacement for 悲劇, which actually means tragedy, since the two phrases share the same pronunciation. So far, it's used as slang only. But I've seen websites' 404 (error) pages using 杯具 to describe how much the webmaster regrets such a tragedy.
Another popular phrase these days is 內牛滿面, which actually means absolutely nothing at all. (Its literal translation would be something like "the inside cow all over one's face.") In fact, I doubt that it has been acknowledged by any Chinese dictionaries yet. However, it's prevalently used online as a colloquial form of 淚流滿面, which means "tears streaming down one's face." The former was probably an accidental typo that somehow gained a lot of traction because, again, someone thought it was cute to see totally irrelevant homophones in phrases we use all the time.
This is all fine for native Chinese speakers, of course. Most of them will be able to understand these with no trouble, because once the phrases are sounded out they're easy to decipher. But machines and non-native speakers are completely out of luck, especially since you can't look these phrases up in a dictionary.
That's why I think human translation will always have its place. We have to clean up our own mess, after all.
Please translate responsibly.
Lo and behold, most of the search results were people commenting on said chess player and his "wig."
Our nameless protagonist said to me, "Don't people use the word 'toupee' any more?" I thought about it for a second and replied, "Maybe they use the word 'wig' because most chess players in the world are not native English speakers."
That seems like a logical explanation. Take Chinese as an example. "Toupee" and "wig" are both translated as 假髮, which literally means "fake hair." I'm sure a lot of languages don't distinguish between toupee and wig like English does. Therefore when those speakers try to use English (which is pretty much the common language on most of the international forums and message boards among chess players) to talk about this chess player and his "toupee," the word "wig" was inadvertently used.
That makes me marvel at the thought that went behind Google Search. Obviously somebody had thought of situations like this and decided that the search hits should include "wig" as well, even when it is not part of the search keywords.
However, machines can only do so much. There are instances that require a human brain to decipher phrases that are intentionally fraught with typos and sound-alikes.
Examples abound in Chinese. 杯具, for instance, means a set of drinkware. Somehow, somebody decided to use it as a cute replacement for 悲劇, which actually means tragedy, since the two phrases share the same pronunciation. So far, it's used as slang only. But I've seen websites' 404 (error) pages using 杯具 to describe how much the webmaster regrets such a tragedy.
Another popular phrase these days is 內牛滿面, which actually means absolutely nothing at all. (Its literal translation would be something like "the inside cow all over one's face.") In fact, I doubt that it has been acknowledged by any Chinese dictionaries yet. However, it's prevalently used online as a colloquial form of 淚流滿面, which means "tears streaming down one's face." The former was probably an accidental typo that somehow gained a lot of traction because, again, someone thought it was cute to see totally irrelevant homophones in phrases we use all the time.
This is all fine for native Chinese speakers, of course. Most of them will be able to understand these with no trouble, because once the phrases are sounded out they're easy to decipher. But machines and non-native speakers are completely out of luck, especially since you can't look these phrases up in a dictionary.
That's why I think human translation will always have its place. We have to clean up our own mess, after all.
Please translate responsibly.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Jackie & Maggie: When NOT to "Improve" on Google Translate
The other day a friend of mine asked, "Guess what Google Translate's Chinese translation for 'Jackie' is?!" Not missing a beat, I replied, "成龍 (Jackie Chan)." She was astonished that I came up with the right answer.
I didn't use Google Translate to find out, in case you were wondering. That was an educated guess based on what I'd found out a few days earlier about how Google Translate handled another name: Maggie.
Apparently someone volunteered 張曼玉, instead of the generic 瑪姬, as the translation for Maggie. The problem with translating Maggie as 張曼玉 is, the latter is one specific person whereas the former is a very common name.
Logically, that translation doesn't have a leg to stand on, either:
That's the pitfall of resorting to just anyone to improve translation quality on Google Translate. When enough people decided to call Jackie "成龍" on Google Translate, it will take a lot more people's "improving" that translation to change it back to a generic translation like 賈姬 (a more common translation if it's female) or 杰基 (if it's male).
Crowdsourcing is a wonderful thing. There are many people with a common goal willing to volunteer their time and knowledge to help make our lives easier and more efficient; it makes perfect sense to encourage and take advantage of that. However, I'd like to remind anyone thinking of improving translation quality on Google Translate: please try to make the improvement apply to as wide a range as possible. Anything as specific as 張曼玉 or 成龍 does not fit that criteria and should not make the cut.
Please translate responsibly.
I didn't use Google Translate to find out, in case you were wondering. That was an educated guess based on what I'd found out a few days earlier about how Google Translate handled another name: Maggie.
Apparently someone volunteered 張曼玉, instead of the generic 瑪姬, as the translation for Maggie. The problem with translating Maggie as 張曼玉 is, the latter is one specific person whereas the former is a very common name.
Logically, that translation doesn't have a leg to stand on, either:
Maggie != Maggie Cheung;
Maggie Cheung == 張曼玉;
therefore, Maggie != 張曼玉
That's the pitfall of resorting to just anyone to improve translation quality on Google Translate. When enough people decided to call Jackie "成龍" on Google Translate, it will take a lot more people's "improving" that translation to change it back to a generic translation like 賈姬 (a more common translation if it's female) or 杰基 (if it's male).
Crowdsourcing is a wonderful thing. There are many people with a common goal willing to volunteer their time and knowledge to help make our lives easier and more efficient; it makes perfect sense to encourage and take advantage of that. However, I'd like to remind anyone thinking of improving translation quality on Google Translate: please try to make the improvement apply to as wide a range as possible. Anything as specific as 張曼玉 or 成龍 does not fit that criteria and should not make the cut.
Please translate responsibly.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Tummy Band, Waist Band, and 書腰
Book packaging in Asia is quite different from that in the Western world. For one thing, most of the new books come out in paperback. And then there's something called 書腰.
Literally translated, 書腰 means "book waist." It's a decorative "band" wrapped around the dust jacket of a book. I know what you're thinking: "What? A dust jacket for a paperback?" Yes, a paperback. In fact, most paperbacks I've seen in the Chinese market are packaged that way. And elaborately so.
Wikipedia has a diagram showing the anatomy of a book in the Chinese definition of Book:
書腰 is #1. Well, in the picture it looks like the "waistband" has slid down to the book's ankles, but you get the idea. It's just an extra piece of paper wrapped around the "waist" of a book, usually to spotlight expert endorsements or critics' reviews for marketing purposes. (To stay on topic, however, I won't go into the debate of environmental impact on the overall impression of excessive packaging that seems so prevalent in Asian products.)
It is perhaps because this piece of paper is almost nonexistent in the English-speaking world that I've found some pretty hilarious English translations for 書腰: belly band, tummy band, book waist, etc. And the amazing thing is quite a few Chinese blogs claim that those are its English names and that there is no special term for it in Chinese.
I'm sorry, but that is utter misinformation. It's analogous to saying Child Shredded Meat is the English name for 儿童营养肉松 but the Chinese call it differently.
This is what I think 書腰's English translation should be : dust jacket band. At the very least one will know it goes on a book instead of a person.
Please translate responsibly.
Image credit: Wikipedia
Literally translated, 書腰 means "book waist." It's a decorative "band" wrapped around the dust jacket of a book. I know what you're thinking: "What? A dust jacket for a paperback?" Yes, a paperback. In fact, most paperbacks I've seen in the Chinese market are packaged that way. And elaborately so.
Wikipedia has a diagram showing the anatomy of a book in the Chinese definition of Book:
書腰 is #1. Well, in the picture it looks like the "waistband" has slid down to the book's ankles, but you get the idea. It's just an extra piece of paper wrapped around the "waist" of a book, usually to spotlight expert endorsements or critics' reviews for marketing purposes. (To stay on topic, however, I won't go into the debate of environmental impact on the overall impression of excessive packaging that seems so prevalent in Asian products.)
It is perhaps because this piece of paper is almost nonexistent in the English-speaking world that I've found some pretty hilarious English translations for 書腰: belly band, tummy band, book waist, etc. And the amazing thing is quite a few Chinese blogs claim that those are its English names and that there is no special term for it in Chinese.
I'm sorry, but that is utter misinformation. It's analogous to saying Child Shredded Meat is the English name for 儿童营养肉松 but the Chinese call it differently.
This is what I think 書腰's English translation should be : dust jacket band. At the very least one will know it goes on a book instead of a person.
Please translate responsibly.
Image credit: Wikipedia
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Medical Mistranslation
I have to say, there's simply no excuse for mistranslation when working on the medical or health care subject. It's people's health and money we're dealing with. Nobody deserves to be baffled by mistranslated signs at hospitals or emergency rooms when so much is on the line.
Let's first look at the funny translation found on Pleated Jeans:
As much as one would like to rationalize how the translator decided on "Cunt Examination," there's actually a term for 阴道镜检查: Colposcopy. Therefore, 阴道镜检查室 does not have a "dirty" name at all; it's just the Colposcopy Room!
As for "Fetal Heart Custody," I'm not sure who's supposed to be fighting over a fetal heart here. 胎心监护室 is the room where the doctors check an unborn baby's heart rate: Fetal Heart Monitoring Room.
Another error on this picture is Observation Room. That applies only to the 观察室 part of the phrase. 药流, however, means medical abortion. (Abortion is legal in China due to their government's one-child policy to control population.) Therefore, the correct translation for 药流观察室 should be Medical Abortion Observation Room.
I was looking for the best way to translate 收费许可证 when I came across this:
There is a lot of mistranslation on that hospital's website. I'll get to it some other time.
Please translate responsibly.
Image credits: Pleated Jeans and Gongren Hospital.
Let's first look at the funny translation found on Pleated Jeans:
As much as one would like to rationalize how the translator decided on "Cunt Examination," there's actually a term for 阴道镜检查: Colposcopy. Therefore, 阴道镜检查室 does not have a "dirty" name at all; it's just the Colposcopy Room!
As for "Fetal Heart Custody," I'm not sure who's supposed to be fighting over a fetal heart here. 胎心监护室 is the room where the doctors check an unborn baby's heart rate: Fetal Heart Monitoring Room.
Another error on this picture is Observation Room. That applies only to the 观察室 part of the phrase. 药流, however, means medical abortion. (Abortion is legal in China due to their government's one-child policy to control population.) Therefore, the correct translation for 药流观察室 should be Medical Abortion Observation Room.
I was looking for the best way to translate 收费许可证 when I came across this:
It surprises me that almost everybody translates 收费许可证 as "license fee." A license fee is a fee you pay to the government in order to be licensed to conduct a certain type of business, whereas a 收费许可证 is a license proving that you're allowed to charge people for services rendered. The closest translation, I think, should be a billing license.
There is a lot of mistranslation on that hospital's website. I'll get to it some other time.
Please translate responsibly.
Image credits: Pleated Jeans and Gongren Hospital.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)