I got an enquiry from a client I work for on a regular basis asking whether I would be available to do a translation review for them. I’m pretty busy at the moment and can’t really take on any more work just yet but I thought I’d have a look at it and see if there was any way of tweaking my schedule to fit it in. The email arrives with all of the files attached. Looking through the English texts first I noticed a few “odd” formulations and some generally unidiomatic expressions here and there. This is nothing surprising – most things need to be proofed and this is why people have translations reviewed and edited.

But when I went to open the source file to get a feel for the project I realised that there was no source file. Thinking that this must have been an oversight on the part of the PM I went back to the email whereupon I spotted the following: “This is a translation from Chinese. The client won’t give us the source text but we’re pretty sure that the translation is factually correct”.

Needless to say the prospect of trying to edit a translation without benefit of a source text for clarification didn’t appeal and certainly would have taken more time than I had to spare. Now this probably isn’t worth a post all of its own but I love the comedy value of an Irish translator, living in England who translates from German and Spanish into English being asked to review a translation from Chinese, a language he doesn’t speak. You really do have to love translation sometimes.