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Subject:Re: Japanese tech communicators From:Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Sat, 11 Mar 1995 16:50:02 -0800
Robert Plamondon said:
> * Maybe the translator went out and gathered up tremendously
> compelling true stories to hammer home the main points.
This is not part of translation.
> * Maybe the translator organized the material into a cohesive
> whole, with recurring themes and a gradual development.
This is most emphatically part of translation.
> * Maybe the translator devised a clear, cohesive plan of attack,
> reducing the apparently impossible problem of factory modernization
> into a series of intuitively correct steps.
This is at least part of the translation. (It helps if the 'plan of
attack' is already coherent to native speakers of English, but if it
isn't, then it's the translator's job to make it that way.)
> a "translator" who delivers a work with significantly more content
> than he started with is doing something other than translation.
Neither the second nor third things you mention constitute
'significantly more content', and I believe they are well within the
purview of the translator.
Karen
karenk -at- netcom -dot- com
"Hell, I'm gonna be 17 forever, but even 17-year-olds get sick and
die." (Mama Primate)
