| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Off topic: Bilingual, or Just Confused? Thread poster: Moofi
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Moofi 
Local time: 20:08
Polish to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Jabberwock wrote: There are not nearly enough native Polish-English translators to meet the demand. That is why, even though the translations are supposed to be done into English by natives, most of them are done by Poles. What's worse, some of them are not even proofread by natives.
Now that strikes a chord - I hadn't thought of it that way around.
Some of the replies here are *very* interesting - I'm loving all the stuff about the nature of bilingualism. Thank you all for taking the time to reply, it's keeping my otherwise quiet afternoon interesting.
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 02:08
Chinese to English
| Dirty secret about translation | Feb 28, 2012 |
OK, your post makes much more sense now.
As everyone's said, the standard for good quality translation is that it is done by a native speaker of the target language. And that's absolutely right - that is the only way to get really good quality.
But there are two dirty secrets.
1) For many of the world's languages - Polish and Chinese among them - there are not enough natives of other languages who learn Polish and Chinese to make the "high quality" model w... See more OK, your post makes much more sense now.
As everyone's said, the standard for good quality translation is that it is done by a native speaker of the target language. And that's absolutely right - that is the only way to get really good quality.
But there are two dirty secrets.
1) For many of the world's languages - Polish and Chinese among them - there are not enough natives of other languages who learn Polish and Chinese to make the "high quality" model work. So the majority of translation in both directions is done by natives of the "exotic" language.
2) For the vast majority of translation purposes, you don't actually need top quality. We can get by with slightly dodgy English written by Poles (or even by Google).
Incidentally, for anything but literature, I would take a the work of a professional translator working into a source language over any other model. Translators are professional communicators, and they know how to write. They won't get the style and register perfect in their source language, but they'll get the message across. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:08
French to English
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| Market forces... | Feb 28, 2012 |
Moofi wrote:
Imagine I know nothing about translating or any of this stuff. If I wanted to hire someone to translate a Polish text into English, I would imagine that there are many more Poles who learned English *well enough to do so professionally*, than there are English people who learned Polish well enough to do so.
That may well be true. But that doesn't particularly make much difference per se if the balance of need for translation in English>Polish vs Polish>English roughly matches the balance of available translators in the respective target language. (Put another way: there are maybe 50 times more Poles who learnt English to degree level as there are Anglophones who learnt Polish, but maybe that reflects a roughly 50x greater need for English>Polish than Polish>English.)
And at the point where this balance breaks, market forces will kick in and determine at what point one of the ideal requirements is done away with for pragmatic reasons. If native anglophone Polish>English translators are scarce but in demand, then their prices and waiting lists will rise and there'll be some point at which the respective clients can no longer support that price and turnaround time and will resort to other options (cheaper translation of poorer quality by an amateur learner or a translation by a non-native in the target language etc).
Moofi wrote:
This is because Polish is a difficult language for non-language people.
That's probably not the reason, however. There's little evidence that one language is really intrinsically more "difficult" per se than another. What is different is how much effort nations/speakers of Language A might put into learning Language B compared to Language C, and how language teaching methods at a particular stage of learning happen to fit in with the features of the two languages.
When you compare the difficulty of learning languages, what you're probably really comparing is the amount of incentive and effort there is for learning the languages in question.
| | | | | Careful with assertions like that | Feb 28, 2012 |
Phil Hand wrote:
OK, your post makes much more sense now.
As everyone's said, the standard for good quality translation is that it is done by a native speaker of the target language. And that's absolutely right - that is the only way to get really good quality.
I disagree. In general, a translator who is native in the target language is preferable, all other things equal - but your above statement is highly dubious.
First of all, the concept of "native speaker" is quite fuzzy around the edges. There are fairly evenly balanced bilinguals, and the "best" language of (near-) bilinguals can change over time and vary with subject field. I.e. a Greek-French bilingual may be feel more at ease discussing economics in Greek but be more comfortable doing small talk in French.
On top of that, the native argument goes both ways: if you're not a native of the source language, you may not understand all the nuances of the source text, such as dialectal words, obscure cultural references or minor errors that affect the (perceived) meaning. So I wouldn't be so sure that a (target) native speaker translator is the only path to really good quality. In fact, I'd argue that an excellent non-native translator and a good native proofreader will always produce top quality, and usually better than a decent non-native translator, with or without a proofreader.
[Edited at 2012-02-28 17:02 GMT]
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S P Willcock (X)
Local time: 21:08
German to English
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The comments about dreaming in this or that language are interesting to me - I used to dream in Latin at one time, but I know perfectly well that that's not because I was at all "fluent" in Latin, the point is that when you are dreaming, the only person assessing your linguistic output is yourself! A better question would be, what languages do you swear in when you bump your head getting down from the tram? (Czech, in my case - but again, at one time in my life and no longer.)
The ... See more The comments about dreaming in this or that language are interesting to me - I used to dream in Latin at one time, but I know perfectly well that that's not because I was at all "fluent" in Latin, the point is that when you are dreaming, the only person assessing your linguistic output is yourself! A better question would be, what languages do you swear in when you bump your head getting down from the tram? (Czech, in my case - but again, at one time in my life and no longer.)
The point about imbalance, lazy Anglophones and L2 translators is one very close to my heat, because I translate from German + three other Central/East European languages into my native English, and I have found that in the +3 languages, I am beaten on price by L2 colleagues every time. I only do literature and academic by now, where the client knows the importance of an L1 translator.
With a recent volume of Slovene short stories I worked on, we split the work so that I did the translations, and then a Slovenian colleague did the proofreading to pick me up on points that I had missed - of the kinds that András mentions.
EDIT: that should of course read "close to my heart." Though it does get me hot under the collar as well sometimes...
[Edited at 2012-02-28 17:47 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Diana Coada (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:08
Portuguese to English
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| Agree with FarkasAndras | Feb 28, 2012 |
FarkasAndras wrote:
... I wouldn't be so sure that a (target) native speaker translator is the only path to really good quality. In fact, I'd argue that an excellent non-native translator and a good native proofreader will always produce top quality, and usually better than a decent non-native translator, with or without a proofreader.
[Edited at 2012-02-28 17:02 GMT]
I agree. I see KudoZ questions being posted in the RO>EN pair that show that the EN native translator in question did not understand the source text.
| | | | Dave Bindon
Greece
Local time: 21:08
Greek to English
In memoriam | Only some of the time | Feb 28, 2012 |
Diana Coada wrote:
I agree. I see KudoZ questions being posted in the RO>EN pair that show that the EN native translator in question did not understand the source text.
Whilst I have seen Kudoz questions (and answers) in the Greek=English pair where it's evident that the native speakers of the target language have misunderstood the source, it is rare. I see far more evidence of non-native speakers of the target language making mistakes in their replies, or asking questions which a native-speaker would never need to ask.
[Edited at 2012-02-28 19:38 GMT]
| | | | matt robinson
Spain
Local time: 20:08
Member (2010)
Spanish to English
| A question of time | Feb 28, 2012 |
While a non-native speaker of source may be able to produce a perfect text in target (and hopefully a good translation) and have time to research possible problems even within the context of a tight deadline, it will never be possible for a non-native speaker of the target to get up to speed grammatically, stylistically and in a whole host of other ways within the time frame of professional translation.
That said there is a market for many things driven by perceived need. If they pay you f... See more While a non-native speaker of source may be able to produce a perfect text in target (and hopefully a good translation) and have time to research possible problems even within the context of a tight deadline, it will never be possible for a non-native speaker of the target to get up to speed grammatically, stylistically and in a whole host of other ways within the time frame of professional translation.
That said there is a market for many things driven by perceived need. If they pay you for it, why not? ▲ Collapse
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Phil Hand
China
Local time: 02:08
Chinese to English
| No committees! | Feb 28, 2012 |
FarkasAndras wrote:
First of all, the concept of "native speaker" is quite fuzzy around the edges...
if you're not a native of the source language, you may not understand all the nuances of the source text...
I'd argue that an excellent non-native translator and a good native proofreader will always produce top quality, and usually better than a decent non-native translator, with or without a proofreader.
[Edited at 2012-02-28 17:02 GMT]
No, I don't agree with any of those arguments, Farkas (sorry, I don't know which one is your first name!)
1) All concepts are fuzzy around the edges.
2) If you don't understand all the *professionally relevant* nuances of the text, then you need to be working harder on your source language. I'll concede that there are some nuances that a non-native might never get. Perhaps using a particular word for trousers for you marks a particular speaker as unmistakably coming from Szeged, and an English guy who learns Hungarian may never know that. I'd say it's not professionally relevant to the vast majority of texts (if he's a literary translator, he should know/find out). But if the use of dialect indicates that the writer is (deliberately or otherwise) using a "rural" style, then that is relevant - and a translator should - must - be able to read that in a text. And then reproduce it.
Perhaps there aren't enough English/Americans who can do that for Hungarian, but that's a numbers problem, not a conceptual problem.
My own experience: I am a much better professional reader of Chinese than any native speaker I know except a couple of translator/academics. I don't read that quickly, but my ability to parse a text and place it in context is much superior, simply because I work with texts all day. I spend hours thinking about how words change in meaning between legal and political texts. It's not magic, it's just time invested.
3) Translation by committee - no thank you! A translator might use informants - I had to grab my wife the other day when I was asked to do a women's magazine commercial, and had literally no idea what it meant on first reading. But a conversation and a bit of research later, and I had a clear picture of the meaning and register of the slogan. But the stylistic choices for the target text are mine. Two people writing a text just makes for awkward sounding texts. Ask copywriters.
| | | | Jaroslaw Michalak
Poland
Local time: 20:08
Member (2004)
English to Polish
SITE LOCALIZER
Phil Hand wrote:
3) Translation by committee - no thank you! A translator might use informants - I had to grab my wife the other day when I was asked to do a women's magazine commercial, and had literally no idea what it meant on first reading. But a conversation and a bit of research later, and I had a clear picture of the meaning and register of the slogan. But the stylistic choices for the target text are mine. Two people writing a text just makes for awkward sounding texts. Ask copywriters.
Congratulations! You've singlehandledly put an end to the venerable proofreader's professsion!
By the way, as far as I have seen, most of copy texts (longer than a slogan) are repeatedly reworked by teams of writers.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:08
Hebrew to English
| Polish- (native) English translators are no fairytale, they exist.... | Mar 1, 2012 |
Moofi wrote:
I would imagine that there are many more Poles who learned English *well enough to do so professionally*, than there are English people who learned Polish well enough to do so.
There are many more Poles who have learnt English than the other way around for sure, however, whether they have done so "well enough to [translate] professionally" is another thing altogether.
I met a girl at Uni who spoke English almost like a native, she even had the accent nailed. When I first met her I even asked "What part of England are you from?" Bit thrown when she answered "Jawor". Yet, sometimes in speech and more often in writing there were the tell-tale signs of a Slavic language speaker (problems with articles being the main issue).
I can say the same for other non-native friends of mine, no matter how proficient in English they are, their writing quickly betrays the truth (and these are people who have learnt English to a far higher level than most).
I'm yet to read an extended piece of discourse by a non-native speaker which has fooled me into thinking it was written by a native. (Shorter pieces can often pass but only because of their length).
This is not to say it can't be done, only that it is exceedingly rare.
Incidentally, if you look on the advanced directory on here for Polish-English, you will notice that English natives occupy the top spots...which at the very least indicates that quality native English speaking Polish-English translators are out there......
| | | | Karin Maack
Germany
Local time: 20:08
English to German
| There are talented translators... | Mar 1, 2012 |
...who are able to translate from their native into the foreign language, even literature: I think of Svetlana Geier, who was born in Russia from Russian parents, learned German at school and university, became an interpreter and later translated all the big novels from Dostojevski into German!
Or think of Amin Maalouf, a writer born in Lebanon with Arabian as his native language, who went to France when he was 27 - since then he has written his novels in French.
So this is p... See more ...who are able to translate from their native into the foreign language, even literature: I think of Svetlana Geier, who was born in Russia from Russian parents, learned German at school and university, became an interpreter and later translated all the big novels from Dostojevski into German!
Or think of Amin Maalouf, a writer born in Lebanon with Arabian as his native language, who went to France when he was 27 - since then he has written his novels in French.
So this is possible - though only for very talented people, I guess. ▲ Collapse
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