The importance of high-quality translations

Translation is Not About Words. It's About What the Words are About. — Kevin Hendzel

Language is often said to reflect a nation's culture and its thought models. In our highly connected and globalised world, we have more ways than ever to express ourselves. However, the ability to communicate faster and more frequently hasn’t eliminated the potential for leaving gaps between manning and interpretation. A translator must have perfect linguistic proficiency, but that is not sufficient for an effective translation. Translators need perfect knowledge of the relevant cultural, technical, legal, and commercial backgrounds and an understanding of the subject. They also require a gift for writing, an insatiable thirst for knowledge, stamina, and thoroughness to find any information that might be required to understand the subject thoroughly.

Ingredients for a perfect translation

The effectiveness of the communication process is the ultimate test of the quality of a translation. How a message is conveyed is not as important. A good translation should accomplish all of these:

1) Accurate. The translation contents must be faithful to the facts and the interpretation. Accuracy is essential to a good translation, but it cannot guarantee that a text will be practical.

2) Meaningful. The message must be significant in the target language and culture.

3) Accessible and Reliable. Any person using the translation must understand the information, and the message conveyed clearly. The translation must not need to be modified after it has been delivered.

4) Effective and ergonomic. The translation must be effective in communicating a message and ensuring that the message fulfils its initial purpose.

5) Compliant with 1) target communities’ linguistic and cultural standards and usages; 2) rules and regulations; 3) official standards; 4) physical limitations; 5) functional constraints.

6) Compatible with the defence of the client’s interests.

Translation process

The activities required to provide a translation service can be organised in three stages:

1. Pre-translation
2. Translation
3. Post-translation

Before actually starting the translation, pre-translation includes everything to do with preparing the work. Examples of activities that are part of the pre-translation phase are estimating costs, negotiating with the client, and obtaining all necessary specifications.

In the post-translation phase should be included all the subsequent activities of the delivery of the translated material. Examples of activities that are part of the post-translation phase are the eventual integration of the translated material (e.g., synchronisation of subtitles, formatting of text, integration of text with audio, etc.). Furthermore, other "administrative" activities such as creating a project archive, creating a glossary of terminology for future projects, and so on, are part of the post-translation phase.

Let us now talk about translation itself. Language is certainly one of the most human things existing. In fact, we are currently still far from achieving human-quality translation without humans. Even applying artificial intelligence with the best existing techniques, we are still far from achieving the quality of a human translator. In fact, we have feelings, perceptions, and culture-bound ways of doing things that make it practically impossible to leave the work of translation completely to machines. It should be noted that today, thanks to modern CAT tools, the professional translator receives an automatic translation proposal. This speeds up the translation process. It also tends to give the translator the opportunity to focus more on details, instead of having to write the complete translation manually.

An important approach when doing quality translations is that of de-verbalisation! This approach involves reading the original text, 'translating' it into ideas and concepts, and then writing these ideas and concepts into the target language. In other words, in this way, you do not translate directly from the source language into the target language. This approach is certainly the most time-consuming, but it leads to results, which in some cases even outperform the quality of the original text. In fact, there are cases in which a book is more successful in the non-original language due to the fact that the translator who translated it has more experience in the subject matter of the book than the author. Furthermore, this approach is necessary when creating subtitles for videos. Indeed, in some cases the speeches may be too fast. In these cases, a synthesis of the translation is made and used instead of the literal translation.

Conclusion

When you invest time in creating a content, you want its translation to be of equivalent quality. A simple informative translation is not enough. That is why it is important to rely on professional translators who are able to retain the essence of the original content in the new language.

Effective translation work requires not only fluency in two languages, but also a passion for communication and a dedication to constant learning.

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