A PASSION FOR PLUMS João Roque Dias, CT in MOX II – What they don't tell you about translation by Alejandro Moreno-Ramos ISBN: 978-1-300-42676-9 Fifteen minutes into our first ever conversation, a colleague asked me if I knew a “good glossary about elevators”. ─ I have this very technical document about elevators and I don’t have a clue about any of it… How do we say “dumbwaiter” in Portuguese? Twenty-one centuries later, the famous sentence by Cato the Elder remains amazingly true: “Rem tene, verba sequentur” (Grasp the subject, and the words will follow). And yet, for reasons unbeknownst to me, many individuals posing as translators present themselves as “passionate for languages” and, more and more these days, holders of some sort of university degree in translation. Do they say anything else? No! And, that’s where the real problem starts. How can a client, say, a manufacturer of elevators, industrial boilers (or a producer of plums, it really doesn’t matter) select these people to translate their documents? Unbeknownst to clients, what they need is people who have a real passion (hence, a real knowledge) for their machines (or their plums) and, because of that, know everything about vacuum cleaners and plums. And, although it’s often not said or asked, clients need translators who, above all, command their mother language better than anybody else, and not just because they have a word processor that came installed in their computers. What clients don’t know is that an alarming majority of these “translators” haven’t even invested in a proper spell checker… I also wonder why other translators, who have spent all their adult and academic lives reading, studying, and learning about everything not even remotely related to sciences and technology go online or publish résumés announcing miraculous translation skills for advanced waterjet cutting machine instructions or CNC machines. In a Danish doctoral thesis from 1994 (Hoffmann), we can read this phenomenal aberration: “Such texts – as e.g. declarations of contents and instructions for use – refer to phenomena which exist independently of the language culture in which they exist – or are invented. We are dealing with totally predictable texts! They can be translated without linguistic intuition, completely mechanically.” Way back in 1813, Friedrich Schleiermacher also claimed that “technical translation was a mechanical activity that anyone with a grasp of two languages can do”. Yes! We’ve all seen such “completely mechanical” translations “without linguistic intuition”, which disregard every rule of “language culture” that makes them useful to those who need them to earn their living, enhance their lives, and – o tempora o mores – just to make money. Simply put, they are predictable rubbish! Yes, it is true that one of the great myths of technical translation is that it’s all about specialized terminology. “Give me a glossary about anything, and I will translate everything,” say all the false Archimedes who populate every translator’s forum imaginable! They completely miss the point: to reduce technical translation down to the level of a purely terminological issue is downright wrong. In fact, in some subject areas and language combinations, specialized terminology is sometimes (not always…) the easiest part of a text to translate. In other words, the greatest problems come from the things that aren’t terminology-
related. Does your translator, dear client, the one with a huge self-proclaimed passion for languages, know this? He should, dear client. But, then again, if he did, you wouldn’t see him yelling on the streets about his passion for languages, and especially not about industrial boilers or plums… The translator you need, dear client, the translator you should look for, knows everything about plums (mechanical or of the edible kind) in both your language and his, so that your information about plums is and remains useful to those foreigners who need, want and are ready to buy your plums. He'll know things about the right language, the correct style, the proper set phrases, and yes, even references to plum regulations. He’ll also know whether your information is appropriate for the target audience or whether the sequence of information in your texts makes sense (because, sometimes, it does not, you see…). And, if your translator knows about your plums, trust him. Outside of your company, he is probably the first person reading your technical texts. Knowing everything about plums, he should be able to understand everything you wrote. And, because everything makes sense to him, he will even tell you if something does not. And that is good, both for your plums and for yourself, dear client. _______________________________________________ João Roque Dias has been a Mechanical Engineer and Technical Translator for about 25 years. He lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal, but his professional life has taken him to Israel, Denmark, the United States, Bermuda, Angola and Mozambique. He is a member of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM International) and an ATA Certified Translator (English-Portuguese). He has been invited to speak at several translators meetings in Portugal, Argentina, Brazil and the United States, United Kingdom and Czech Republic. In cyberspace, João lives at www.jrdias.com.
Author: Alejandro Moreno-Ramos Editor: Justin Bearden Price: 19,95 EUR + shipping (5,00 EUR) Published: December 2012 Publisher: Vita Brevis ISBN: 978-1-300-42676-9 Dimensions: 18.9 x 24.59 cm (7.44 x 9.68 inches) Copyright: Alejandro Moreno-Ramos Binding: Paperback, perfect bound Weight: 300 g (11 ounces) Purchase here: http://mox.ingenierotraductor.com/p/mox-ii.html