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Tag Archives: language

Weird translation request of the week

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.

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Localisation – When Language, Culture and Technology Join Forces

First published as: Byrne, Jody (2009) “Localisation – When Language, Culture and Technology Join Forces”. Language at Work, Issue #5

When you switch on your computer and type up a letter, what language do you see? What about when you visit a website or play a computer game? Does your mobile phone speak your language? Chances are that each of these technological marvels of the modern age communicates with you in your own language. For many of us, this is so commonplace and seamless that we hardly give it a moment’s thought but behind the scenes there is a whole industry dedicated to making sure that technology bridges the gap between language and culture without you even noticing.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to use a computer for whatever reason, you had to be able speak English. The alternative was a tedious process of trial-and-error using a dictionary and your powers of deduction. The reason for this is that Personal Computers were originally developed in the sunny, English-speaking climes of Silicon Valley in the USA where engineers and programmers concerned themselves with producing the next technological break-through. Back in the 1980s it never occurred to companies that there could be people in the world who did not speak English, or worse, who, even though they spoke English, actually preferred to speak their own languages. Over time, however, companies realised that in order to break into foreign markets and maximise profits, they would have to provide foreign language versions of their software rather than expect those pesky foreigners to learn English.

And so, once software was developed it was sent back to the developers who were told to “translate” it into whatever languages were required according to the company’s sales and marketing goals. Developers were less than enthusiastic about this, naturally. After all, they had done their job and now they were expected to do even more work which, strictly speaking was not their job. What’s more, because individual products, like languages, had their own peculiarities, customs and conventions, the process of translating the software was often time-consuming, incredibly complex and not always successful. One way of describing this process is to imagine baking a fruit cake and then being told afterwards to remove the raisins from it!

Read the rest of this article on the Language at Work website…

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Keep smiling…

I’ll be honest, I’m really busy at the moment marking a PhD and preparing lectures for the new semester so I’m taking the easy way out and going for some cheap laughs. But seriously, it is easy sometimes to forget what it was like to learn our first foreign language. Languages open up a whole new world or cultures, people, places food and experiences but learning them is hard work and it takes perseverance and practice…

…but eventually you’ll become fluent and you may even go on to add some more languages to your repertoire

Have a good weekend!

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How to feel #?$*! great

Monkey's armpit book cover

Quite by coincidence and just days after reading an interesting book on swearing and insults a number of articles appeared in Irish newspapers explaining how swearing can actually help us cope better with pain. Researchers at Keele University found that when we swear, our tolerance to pain is greater than when we don’t swear. As a firm fan of creative swearing (not the dull, unimaginative football terraces variety) I’m quite pleased by this, especially when the researchers say that swearing helps to trigger a fight-or-flight response – you can’t get more natural than that can you?

So armed with this sense of vindication and the knowledge that swearing can actually make you feel better Robert Vanderplank’s book “Uglier Than a Monkey’s Armpit: Untranslatable Insults, Put-downs and Curses from Around the World” is especially enjoyable and fascinating. Anyone who speaks more than one language knows how swear words differ in their focus from language to language with different cultures being fixated on different things whether parts of the anatomy, religion, stupidity, parents or excreta. Vanderplank takes this even further and guides us from the ancient languages of yore right up to modern languages from around the world. Some of the insults, to be honest, really aren’t that insulting and some languages clearly don’t put much effort into insults or swearing. Having said that, some are really bad. Shocking even, in a way which demands admiration and respect. The book also includes some useful pronunciation guides which would suggest that it is more than just an interesting collection of profane curios – you’re meant to try them out!

From the cover: “Whether borne out of surprise, anger, passion or humour, curses and insults make up some of the most colourful and profound phrases in a language, offering insight into cultural mores and a greater understanding of the most fundamental social and personal taboos. Organized by language for an overview of each culture’s favoured profanities, this beautifully illustrated volume – put together by language experts from around the world – is an essential reference to the brilliantly inventive, funny, scorchingly insulting words you won’t learn in a language class.”

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Translators make bad language students

Over the Easter break I decided to take the plunge and enroll on an intensive French language course for beginners. French has never been a language that I’ve been particularly attracted to. Instead I’ve always been drawn to the languages of Northern Europe for their logic, order and general coolness. In fact the list of languages that I would love to learn includes Finnish, Swedish and Icelandic (but this probably has a lot to do with my liking for bands like Korpiklaani, Amorphis, Entombed and Sigur Ros). Having said that I’ve dabbled in Romanian so there’s probably no real logic to my languages wish-list and whether I get around to learning them is another matter altogether.

But anyway, back to French. I think the accent is always something that put me off learning French. Not because I don’t like it, but because it seems to require a lot of effort to achieve the right level of sophistication and “Frenchness”. As an Irishman, I’m not a huge fan of flamboyance or drawing attention to myself and this gives rise to a sort of linguistic shyness which has put me off learning French for a long time. But I decided to give it a go because I’m going to a music festival called Hellfest in June which happens to be in France.

Excusez-moi, il faut prendre quelle direction, pour aller vers le centre ville?

Excusez-moi, il faut prendre quelle direction, pour aller vers le centre ville?

Being a very well-organised festival there’s absolutely no need to speak French because everyone speaks English and there’s absolutely no danger of me going hungry, or more importantly, thirsty but as a linguist, I don’t like being reliant on the language skills of others. I’m used to being able to communicate with people, even if it’s just a few broken words and phrases to order a pizza or buy a train ticket and I find it frustrating when I can’t do this. Several translator friends have told me that I’m not alone in experiencing that incredible frustration of going to another country where I don’t speak the language. Last year I had this experience in China and in France and I didn’t like it. China in particular was especially frustrating because it is such a fascinating and exciting place that I felt I was missing out on a world of interesting things by not being able to speak or even read the language and it felt like I was just scratching the surface. I think the translator in me is so used to seeing something in a foreign language and understanding it that couldn’t come to terms with the fact that here was a language situation that I couldn’t decipher.

So I turned up on a Monday morning for my French class, a little apprehensive, but looking forward to it nevertheless. I told myself that I’m not here to become fluent, just to learn enough so that I can ask for directions, food and beer… no more! And I really enjoyed the class. The teacher had a nice relaxed style and there was a really friendly atmosphere in the class. But I found myself wanting to know more and I was actually in danger of becoming one of those students who constantly asks questions the answer to which is “we’ll be coming to that in a little bit if you’ll just bear with me” (and as a lecturer I know how annoying this type of student is). Once I’d reined in my enthusiasm I wondered whether the fact that I am a translator makes me an impatient language learner? Does being a career linguist make you impatient with yourself and your ability to pick up a language? I think that being a translator gives you a unique insight into how language works and you start making links between the different aspects of the language and then mapping it onto other languages. You then start to look beyond the set phrases and situations of a beginners class and want to know how to put the limited knowledge you’ve picked up to use. In the controlled environment of a language class this inevitably creates a little tension because your brain is trying to use the language at a faster rate than you can get the raw materials into your head. I think maybe at a subconscious level, translators view languages as a way of making money and when they learn a language their eye is on the meter and they just want to get to the stage where they can translate and earn money from it. Eeep, that makes us sound like a gang of mercenaries…

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