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Subject:Bad translations? From:"Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Wed, 20 Jan 1999 11:48:12 -0700
I do translations too, though I'm by no means a certified translator.
I don't have any reservations about doing this because (i) I'm
translating the text into English, my native tongue, so I can
double-check my own work and (ii) much more importantly, we have a
full review process in place for all first-draft documents, even when
they're written by the official editor (me).
Based on my experience as a translator (5 years formally, plus
another 5 informally), the bottom line is that translation is every
bit as much an original act of creation as the act of creation that
led to the original document that you're translating. As such, every
translation, whether by a qualified translator or a suspect amateur,
should be edited by an editor skilled in the target language. If the
editor is also sufficiently bilingual to compare the translation with
the original, so much the better; I catch lots of grammatically
correct but nonetheless factually wrong or imprecise statements
because I'm sufficiently bilingual to do sol, and when I'm not sure,
I can go to the author to confirm my suspicions.
I think the important point here is that you need both a translation
and a quality-control (editing and review) phase. Translation alone
is not enough to guarantee a good result.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
