Game of translators

Picture credits: www.adme.ru

              Game of translators

Translations are a series of choices that can cost life, money, relationships and reputation. That is what today’s recruiters forget while paying a layman instead of a professional translator or interpreter.  There is a tendency to take translators for granted, assuming they only need to know how to use CAT-tools in our age of technology or, even worse, treating a good command of two languages enough for a good translation or interpreting. This approach can only be acceptable in regards to love letters where the only danger is two broken hearts. However, when such matters as safety, politics or religion are concerned, the degree of translators’ responsibility is much higher. Here are a few examples that illustrate how prudent the choice of a translator should be and how strict the rules in the game of words are. 

1. It’s not personal - strictly interpreting

Perhaps, if puns or ideas cause troubles or make a fool of translators, it is better to keep silent and not take any risks? Or maybe certain people and meanings are not worthy to be translated? Sometimes, translators disobey orders, explaining their choice by culture differences. They may forget what they were supposed to translate and express their personal opinion, taking negotiations into their own hands. For example, the solution of a Korean interpreter:

«The minister has told his obligatory joke, would you all please laugh heartily and applaud» - the Korean interpreter asked the audience during an official banquet in Seoul, South Korea. 

2. Hard nut to crack

However, one cannot argue that translation errors sometimes help to revive boring official events - which is what happened during the visit of US President Jimmy Carter to Poland in 1977. State Department officials did not waste time looking for a professional translator, but decided to use the services of a Russian emigrant who knew the Polish language pretty well. The Russian emigrant ended up amusing the participants of the Polish-American negotiations: for example, he translated Carter’s phrase “When I left the United States ...” as “When I abandoned the United States ...”, and “your wishes for the future” - as “your longing for the future".

3. Don’t judge the company by its cheaply translated cover or why so serious?

While people need to have fun sometimes, too much fun can become the reason why commercial clients lose business and reputation. Of course, unordinary solutions might help to attract people’s attention, but do translators have the right to create such solutions by themselves? In other words, if translation is an art, why should it be limited?  

Parker, a stationery maker, also tried to translate its tagline into Spanish. Their pen advertisement is: “It won’t leak in your pocket and embarrass you”. The translator was mistaken and mixed up two Spanish words. As a result, the Parker ad campaign in Mexico was held under the slogan "She will never make you pregnant." 

4. You can’t take it with you

It has taken a while to make most of the world’s governments understand that hospitals need qualified translators and interpreters specialized in medicine. Among millions of translation errors in people’s lives, the most tragic one happened to Willy Ramirez, who, as we all know, ended up in a wheelchair due to a translator’s mistake, but received a 71-million-dollar compensation for improper treatment. 

There are many examples of translators’ failures: from funny to dangerous and history-changing.  That is why choosing a good translator is a very important step to success. No matter what area translators are working in, the client wants his idea to be accepted and the translators’ goal is to help in this affair, keeping his own opinion to himself. Translation can’t be an art, because it has limits stipulated in contracts. Interpreting and translation are sciences, where practitioners can only operate with a certain variation of phrases, words, and tactics if there is a possibility to do so. Otherwise, if they start to invent their own meanings, people will not be able to know whose idea is behind the words, and the conversation will be over.

written by Tatiana C.