The Benefits of Specializing in One Language Pair for Translation
As a translation firm, you want to provide the highest quality translations possible to your clients. One way to achieve this is by specializing in a single language pair. In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of specializing in one language pair for translation.
Expertise in the Language Pair
When a translation firm specializes in one language pair, they are able to develop a deep understanding of the linguistic nuances, idioms, and cultural references unique to that language pair. This expertise is then shared throughout the entire value chain, from the translators to the project managers and quality control specialists, ensuring that every aspect of the translation process is executed to the highest standards.
Quality Assurance
By having language expertise embedded throughout the value chain, specialized translation firms are able to ensure quality assurance processes are applied consistently and rigorously. This means that they are able to deliver superior quality translations that accurately capture the subtleties of the language and the cultural context in which it is used.
Efficiency
Specialized translation firms are able to streamline their processes and procedures by focusing on a single language pair. This means that they can deliver high-quality translations more efficiently, which translates into cost savings for clients.
Client Satisfaction
Specialized translation firms that focus on one language pair are better equipped to deliver high-quality translations that meet the specific needs of clients. They are able to provide a more personalized service and develop long-term relationships with clients, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Conclusion
Specializing in one language pair can offer significant benefits for translation firms. By developing a deep expertise in a single language pair, specialized firms are able to deliver superior quality translations that accurately capture the nuances, idioms, and cultural references unique to that language. This expertise is then shared throughout the entire value chain, ensuring that every aspect of the translation process is executed to the highest standards. So if you’re looking for a translation firm that can deliver the highest quality translations, consider partnering with one that specializes in your specific language pair.
Constructing Realities through Translation
While a text might be seen as an abstract bulk of words and sentences, it can actually be part of a greater narrative that the author or speaker is trying to convey. Although translation has been historically viewed as a bridge between languages to render such narratives and messages, recent revolutionary perspectives began to analyze how translation can be a potential act of manipulation.
While any narrative contains protagonists and active players whose interactions shape the course of events, including the beginning, projected end, and the timeline, translators have become the narrators of these stories in the target language. Translation, as a result, is no longer merely concerned with semantic accuracy or linguistic quality, but rather focused on the translator’s decision-making in selecting certain words and structures to direct the reader’s mind towards a certain angle the translator wishes to highlight, according to Mona Baker’s Narrative theory.
An example to that is Babels[1], a network of volunteer translators and interpreters who offer free-of-charge services for the World Social Forum events and other activities of similar scope. This left-wing network of activists describes its mission as follows: “We work to give voice to peoples of different languages and cultures. We fight for the right of all, including those who don’t speak a colonial language.”
For Baker, who studied both their textual and non-textual elements, this group of translators and interpreters work with a pre-occupation that English is a colonial and oppressive language; as those who don’t speak English are denied the opportunity to express themselves freely. This was even more evident in the website background image that shows the word “Hello” in several European, Asia, and African languages except for English, the lingua franca of the world. This could indicate that translators may communicate texts with this bias in mind, which would be reflected in their choice of structures and words, or even in other ways that go beyond texts.
Another example of narrative theory in practice is also spotted in an Arabic documentary titled “Jenin Jenin”[2] with Arabic to English subtitling, in which an elderly Palestinian man is descrbing the events saying:
“أنا عارف والله العظيم، والله العظيم، بيتنا ما صار بيت”
The excerpt literally means “I swear to God, I swear to God, I know that our home is no longer a home”, while the Arabic to English translation on screen reads: “What can I say? Not even Vietnam was as bad as this”.
In her analysis of this translation[3], Baker suggests that some people may view this as a completely wrong translation, while the translator was in fact trying to revoke a certain narrative in the Western reader’s mind by using this reference to the Vietnam war on behalf of the man speaking. Through this kind of appropriation, the translator is making an effective communication and a call for action, proving the scholar’s assumption that one-to-one equivalents are rather conflictual with the nature of narratives.
With that in mind, one can argue that translation agencies or individual translators may fall short of working with absolute neutrality in certain types of translation, such as translating news or texts containing political discourse, especially when operating in conflict zones.
As translators are narrating texts across different languages from their own point of view, they are eventually participating in constructing our realities. This necessitates the crucial role of impartial and professional proofreading services following the translation of sensitive topics that might be narrated differently across languages, even if slightly.
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[1] Source: Online lecture titled “What is a Narrative Approach to Translation” by Mona Baker, 2012.
[2] Palestinian documentary released in 2002 and directed by Mohammed Bakri.
[3] Source: “Translation & Conflict: A Narrative Account” by Mona Baker.
Bilingual vs. Multilingual Translation Agencies: How Specialty Matters
Bilingual vs. Multilingual Translation Agencies: How Specialty Matters
Language services agencies are vying to compete in the translation market by increasingly selling themselves as providers of several language pairs and different areas of specialty. While being a one-stop-shop with a large network of translators who speak multiple languages seems appealing, a question is raised over the smoothness of management processes and the applied quality control procedures.
To assess this matter based on real-life case studies, we can look into some of the world’s largest organizations that rely heavily on translating all their documents and correspondences to involve all key actors. These are the Canadian government, which is a bilingual system (English and French) vis-à-vis the European Union (EU), which is a multilingual system with 24 official languages, and the United Nations (UN) with six official languages.
Managing the Translation Workflow
The management process of a multilingual team of translators with different language pairs is not an easy task. Not only does it require finding a mutual language for communication, but it also entails setting up a solid management process to ensure that the work pipeline is smooth and flawless as much as possible.
In the European Union, for example, the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) is the world’s largest provider of multilingual translation services with over 1750 linguists, providing an annual output of around 1.5 million pages translated into 24 languages.
The management practices at the DGT start from the very first step by hiring highly qualified and professional linguists, up to the formation of a seamless production pipeline that employs automated systems with strong supervision and oversight[i].
In the same vein, the UN’s Department for General Assembly and Conference Management[ii] reported the challenges facing the translation section lie in providing timely and high-quality translation across the UN’s six official languages.
In the bilingual setting, such as the Translation Bureau that serves the Government of Canada, observers believe that the management process is less intense compared to the previously mentioned models given the smaller scale of the system. This enables efficient management with less effort and cost. Not to mention that such a smaller scale enabled the Language Industry Association to play a key role in promoting ISO standards1 in the translation ecosystem.
What About Quality?
Not surprisingly, the quality assurance procedures become more challenging in a multilingual setting compared to the bilingual setting, especially amid the tight deadlines set for time-sensitive content and the crucial nature of texts.
In the EU and UN alike, the translation departments rely heavily on the utilization of cutting-edge technologies and automated systems to accelerate and facilitate the process of translation and thus the quality assurance processes.
In the EU to be exact, the QA supervisors work on the upstream design of a quality management system and the downstream of acceptable target text quality, particularly focusing on qualitative and quantitative measurement of quality[i].
The qualitative aspects look into the accuracy, readability, and adoption of the proper level of formality in the produced text, while the quantitative aspect relates to the timely submission of assignments while achieving the targeted number of pages required.
The main quality-related issue facing multilingual systems is relay translation, which refers to translating through an intermediary language instead of referring to the original text directly. For example, a text may be issued in French and intended to be translated into Maltese, but there is no French-Maltese translator available.
This raises the need for adopting English as an intermediary language i.e., seeking help from a linguist to translate the text from French to English, then approaching another to work from English to Maltese. This process increases the risks of misinterpretation, lack of clarity, or rendering a mistranslation to the second translated text after it has been made by the first translator.
Meanwhile, having one source and one target as in most cases in the bilingual setting enables the persons in charge of the QA to carry out multiple revisions and ensure accurate rendition of meaning.
Point is…
These global models can be studied and leveraged as case studies of large-scale and well-governed translation systems. They can be also reflected on the actual translation market in terms of both challenges faced and lessons learnt.
These models further highlight the fact that multilingual translation is rife with challenges even when operated in large and global organizations with large budgets and resources, so how about small and medium sized LSPs that do not even have a fraction of the resources required!
This also marks the significance of specialty and focus in a market invaded by so many intruders who are not equipped with the necessary tools and skills to provide a quality translation output, eventually selling delusions to monolingual clients!
[i] Source: Article titled “Managing Translation Quality in Multilingual Settings” by James Archibald. Retrieved from https://www.circuitmagazine.org/dossier-133/managing-translation-quality-in-multilingual-settings
[ii] Source: Translation in the United Nations. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/dgacm/en/content/translation
Human and Machine Translation: The Best of Both Worlds
In a world of changing dynamics and excessive obsession with speed, the necessity increases for new technologies that “enable machines to work more like humans, so that humans do not have to work like machines.”[i]
The translation industry is no exception to this rule given the increasing need for quality and at the same time speedy and effortless translation, prompting research efforts and applications on machine translation (MT).
The Beginning…
The early stages of MT date back to the 1930s, when it was set to help in particular types of texts to accommodate the need for a larger number of translators way beyond the labour market capacity.
One of the first success stories that proved the MT’s efficiency in technical texts was the Canadian Météo Machine Translation System (1981-2001), which could offer accurate translation for the climate forecast between English and French without the need for human editing[ii].
From that time on, both computational linguists and programmers have embarked on a journey to develop this promising technology, hoping it will introduce a revolutionary product to the translation market.
Meanwhile, translators were both concerned and doubtful about how advanced the machine would be, and whether it would ever be able to replace human translators!
MT Evolution…
The various types of MT software either fall into the category of generic machine translation, which handles any type of texts; or into the custom machine translation category, which is programmed to meet specific needs.
The primary types of MT include Statistical Machine Translation (SMT), Rule-based Machine Translation (RBMT), and Hybrid Machine Translation (HMT). While SMT is a word-based model that generates equivalents to the text using the analysis of bilingual corpora, RBMT – as its name indicates – relies on the grammatical analysis of texts. HMT, on the other hand, employs the SMT and RBMT among other various models in a single machine to enhance the output quality[iii].
These three types were the most common a decade ago, providing a primary output that helps understand the gist of a text, but requiring a large-scale post-editing or even a re-translation if texts are intended for publishing.
The most recent type of machine translation is Neural Machine Translation (NMT). Unlike the traditional SMT models, the NMT comprises two major components, an encoder and a decoder that are trained based on a corpus of a specific language pair[iv]. Since it is based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, this model proved to be the most effective so far.
The MT Reality Today
Undoubtedly, human translators still have the upper hand in creative fields of translation such as literature, marketing content, and texts with culture-specific elements. Despite the great advances MT has made, it is still unable to reach the sophistication of human translation, immediately proving its failure when dealing with literary or metaphorical language.
The cherry on the top, however, was the adoption of a hybrid approach that combines the best of both worlds, which is post-editing the machine-translation output. Linguists and translators have managed to suggest editing tips capable of rendering the MT-generated translation as a final product that they can satisfactorily offer to clients.
ZADD Efforts in NMT
Believing in the power of technology in aiding human productivity, ZADD’s IT team initiated ZADD Translate project, which is an NMT software trained using high-quality bilingual corpora produced by ZADD’s team of professional translators and linguists.
Since its pilot phases and until now, the project has undergone constant evaluations and assessments to provide constructive feedback and enhance the output quality. The NMT is used besides a set of other computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools such as translation memories and termbases, all in the hands of knowledgeable translation experts to make the best use of them.
Point is…
It is now the time to look for more innovative technologies and utilise them to foster high-quality production with a minimum effort in record time. As the American writer Stewart Brand suggests: “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you are not part of the steamroller, you are part of the road.”
[i] Source: Quote by Omniscien Technologies, a leading global company for Human Language Technology Enhanced by Artificial Intelligence
[ii] Source: Article Titled “MT: A Positive View” by Nadia Sabbah. Retrieved from https://www.translationjournal.net/January-2017/mt-a-positive-view.html
[iii] Source: Article Titled “The Different Types of Machine Translation”. Retrieved from https://lingo-star.com/different-types-machine-translation/?v=4326ce96e26c
[iv] Source: Research Paper Titled “Generating Noun Declension-case markers for English to Indian Languages in Declension Rule based MT Systems” by Jayashree Nair. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Types-of-Machine-Translation-Systems-8_fig2_330336649
QA in Translation: Going Beyond Accuracy
Peter Newmark once said: “There is no such thing as a perfect, ideal, or correct translation. A translator is always trying to extend his knowledge and improve his means of expression; he is always pursuing facts and words.”
Based on this perception, professional translation can be a form of art rather than a mathematical equation with fixed rules and a single answer, which makes quality assurance processes and customer satisfaction quite challenging to editing and proofreading services.
Aesthetics Vs. Accuracy
To understand the difference between a “nice to read” translation and an “accurate” translation, it is important to look at Peter Newmark’s V-Diagram that manifests the various types of translation. As illustrated in the figure below, some of the types are source-language oriented (SL), while others are target-language oriented (TL):
In the translation market, the semantic and communicative types of translation (placed at the bottom of the V shape) are the ones most commonly used, as both of these types are at the middle ground of the source language vs. target language emphasis. The other extreme types, such as the first two types on each side, are only used upon client’s request since they render the translation either too wrong and funny (in the cases of word-for-word and literal translations), or too loose and different (in the cases of adaptation and free translation).
In spite of their adjacent classification, there is a fine line between semantic and communicative translations. The semantic approach attempts to render the semantics (meaning) and syntax (structure) of the original text, while the communicative approach aims to mirror the effect of the text by producing a translation that influences the target readers in the same way the source text does.
The selection of whether to adopt a semantic or communicative approach relies on the text genre and its purpose to a great extent. For example, in the field of legal translation such as contracts, agreements, or regulations, the semantic approach is more suitable, but it is not adequate for business or media translation such as press releases, promotional content, or creative texts, where the effect on readers is of greater significance.
QA at ZADD as an Example
The quality assurance process of translation and localization services is a rising concern for translation and content creation companies. This is attributed to the trend of increasing attention to the stylistics and readability of translated texts, not only to accurate grammar and equivalent meanings.
At ZADD, our team takes pride in its stringent QA processes, whereby texts are never a one-person product but rather a team effort to ensure meeting the highest standards. We also adopt a strict grading rubric for translators to keep track of errors, along with the glossary making for each client to ensure consistent wording and style.
At the macro-level, the person responsible for the QA process checks the translator’s full understanding of the text, the natural and smooth flow of the translation, avoiding literal translation, and ensuring consistent style.
At the micro-level, more detailed aspects are considered such as the lack of spelling, grammar, and mistranslation errors; avoiding unnecessary addition or omission; and ensuring proper rendition of numbers, figures, dates, acronyms, technical terms, and proper names, as well as maintaining a consistent use of terms and complying with the client’s instructions and references, if any.
Yet Complaints May Still Occur…
Any complaints on quality, although rare, are seriously taken and thoroughly investigated. Based on our experience, some complaints may turn out to be a matter of stylistics and client preferences for certain wording and sentence structures rather than a matter of accuracy. Such scenarios are handled by offering other suggestions or alternative translations, providing the client with several angles to the same text, sometimes by more than one translator.
Other cases may stem from the lack of clarity or poor structuring and wording of the source text itself, which affect the translator’s comprehension and thus the quality of production. We often avoid such scenarios by ensuring proper communication and alignment with the client to ensure that the translator handling the task has fully cleared up any ambiguity in the text.
Point is…
A key part of providing quality translation is assigning the right task to the right translator, ensuring that the text is handled by a translator who is specialized and experienced in the same field of knowledge of the text. Being aware of the text type and the best translation approach to adopt is also vital. Not only will this minimize the margin of error, but will also foster a unique mixture of technical knowledge and an exceptional set of linguistic skills, eventually driving an output that stands out for its form and content.
Cultural Sensitivity in Translation: A Double-Edged Sword
The various cultural aspects of nations worldwide shape the languages that humans use, rendering the relationship between language and culture similar to a mirror, whereby both have reflections on one another.
This often creates a gap in every language for a particular set of concepts or elements, posing a challenge to the job of a translator when translating a text containing culture-specific elements.
A question is then raised with every translation problem on how to address such a gap and which decision is best to be taken.
Language and Nature
Nature, including geography, wildlife, and climate, constitute a major part of a nation’s culture. These aspects are reflected on the lexical focus of a language, making each language rich in a unique aspect that closely relates to its nature.
For example, while Arabic has several names and descriptions for horses and lions, which symbolize chivalry, nobility and pride in the Arabian culture, we find that English and other western languages lack such a lexical variety.
Meanwhile, the Eskimo languages (i.e., Inuit and Yupik) spoken by the indigenous peoples of the Arctic are believed to have more than 50 words to describe snow and ice[1], two concepts that are limited in the desert-oriented landscape of the Arab world.
Not only does geography affect the language in terms of the words it has, but also in terms of the symbols denoted to its elements. Speaking of the wildlife, the owl, for instance, is a bird that symbolizes wisdom, fortune, and good luck in the Western culture, which is the exact opposite of its representation in the Arabian culture, where it is a bird of ill omen and an embodiment of evil spirits or anticipated death.
Culture and Literature
In the opening line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate”, Shakespeare wonders if it is fair to resemble his beloved one to a summer day, and the answer turns out to be that she is more lovely and pleasing. For a person living in England, where winter is often harsh and gloomy while summer is stunning and awaited, this metaphorical image is complimentary indeed.
On the other hand, the Arab region and its desert-oriented geography and weather have a different view of a summer day, which evokes in the mind the blazing sun, burning sand, and even barren lands! The translation of Sonnet 18 into Arabic is, therefore, not an easy mission. Yet, the poem was beautifully rendered in several attempts, each tried to capture the beauty of a summer day in the Arabian culture, such as this translation that reads:
“ألا تشبهين صفاء المصيف؟ بل أنتِ أحلى وأصفى سماء”
Back translated into English, this line is dubbed: “Aren’t you similar to the clear sky of a summer day? You are even loveliest and finest.” Depicting a beautiful feature of a summer day in the Arabian culture, we see how Dr. Mohamed Anani, the translator of this poem who is also nicknamed “The Dean of Translators”, is creating a smart and impressive blend between language and culture, giving a re-birth to Shakespeare’s masterpiece to the Arabic audience.
Jokes: A Challenging Cultural Product
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, was well-known for inaugurating his speeches with relevant anecdotes or jokes. Nonetheless, when delivering his speeches to a non-English speaking audience, he is often met with complete silence contrary to the laughs he usually gets.
It was that one time, however, when the Japanese audience surprisingly burst out laughing after a funny story he told in the opening of a Japanese college. Feeling surprised and pleased at the same time, Carter kept asking the Japanese interpreter how he managed to translate the funny story. Trying to be evasive at first, the interpreter eventually admitted to the President that he just said: “President Carter told a funny story. Everyone must laugh.[2]”
These are a few of many examples that underline how cultural differences pose serious difficulties to the translator as opposed to the structural variations within languages. Eugene Nida, a well-known translation theorist, further suggests that words derive their actual meaning from their cultural setting, making culture a vital factor that contributes to a word’s both connotative and denotative senses.
Cultural Communication: Theory & Practice
For Peter Newmark, translation theories are an attempt to identify and solve the problems that exist in a certain context, suggesting that a cultural focus creates a translation problem due to a cultural “gap” or “distance” between the source and target languages.
Similarly, Lotman’s theory states that “no language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture, and no culture can exist which does not have at its centre the structure of natural language.[3]”
In her book “In Other Words”, Mona Baker believes several linguistic problems in translation can be titled as “non-equivalence terms”, and the selection of the used strategy depends on the context and purpose of the text.
These terms of non-equivalence include culture-specific elements, which are either abstract or concrete concepts and often relate to a certain food, social custom, or religious belief. Baker adds two further translation problems, which are the use of loan words in the source text, in addition to the lack of a specific term (hyponym) in the target language that can be an equivalent of a term used in the source text. Such terms usually denote specific concepts in the source language environment.
There is also the case when a concept in the source language is not lexicalized in the target language, whereby the idea is existent but with no specific terms.
An example of that can be depicted in “Moby-Dick” or “The Whale”, an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville, who details the voyage of the Pequod, a whaling vessel whose captain is determined on finding the white sperm whale.
While Arabic lexical richness is mainly desert-oriented rather than marine-oriented, the translator of Moby Dick Ihsan Abbas had to be innovative to render the spirit of the novel to the fullest.
In the preface that explains the etymology of whales, Melville kept on using “whaleman” and “whaling”. To accommodate the target language to the source text, Abbas derived Arabic specialized equivalents for both terms, which are “حوّات” and “تحويت” respectively instead of “صائد الحيتان” and “صيد الحيتان”.
One might wonder why the direct translation is not sufficient, that is, “whale hunter” and “whale hunting”. However, in Melville’s whale-centred novel, whaling, and subsequently the job of a whaleman, do not only refer to the killing and hunting process, but also “the occupation of catching and extracting commercial products from whales” as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Abbas’s coinage of these two words from the Arabic root “حوت” to include further senses to the practice other than merely hunting was exceptional indeed.
These kinds of translation problems can be rendered through a number of strategies as Baker suggested in her book. One is the translation by cultural substitution, in which the translator uses a term that has a different proposition but a similar impact. Critics, however, argued against such a deviation from the source text.
Other strategies include using a loan word with an explanation; the translation by paraphrasing using related words; and finally, omission, which may seem extreme, but it is a possible strategy if the overall meaning would not be affected although a translation loss would be inevitable.
Translation Today…
After all, one can only be certain that language and culture have been closely intertwined since the beginning of civilizations, making their concurrence essential for proper communication.
In today’s translation industry, the translation process is not only vital in literature and politics, but it is also becoming increasingly crucial for businesses, economies, and trade.
For linguists and professionals in translation service companies, this means that being bilingual and bicultural is the key to seamless and native-like communication, while the lack of cultural awareness could induce miscommunication, financial losses, and even conflict!
Cultural Miscommunication and Conflict
The famous incident we can recall here is the mistranslation of the statement made by Japan’s Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki in response to the declaration of surrender terms sent by the US counterpart. His reply in Japanese that read “Mokusatsu” was translated into “let’s ignore it” and “it’s not worthy of comment”, while in its cultural context it means “no comment for now”[4]. This mistake was believed to have been the spark fueling the US rage and prompting the atomic bombing of Japanese cities in 1945.
Many may also recall the cold war that took place between the US and USSR in 1956 that was accompanied by severe tension in relations, not to mention that some people anticipated that it could be the beginning of War World III. But who knew that the reason behind this tension was the interpreter?
It all happened when Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev used the Russian phrase “my vas pokhoronim” in a speech he delivered while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow, and Khrushchev’s personal interpreter Viktor Sukhodrev translated this phrase into English as: “We will bury you”.
Khrushchev is known for his preference to use jokes, proverbs, and metaphors in communicating his messages when giving speeches, a challenge that his personal interpreter constantly faced[5]. Amid the speculations of what this phrase actually meant, we find that its literal meaning – if the expression “my vas pokhoronim” is pasted into Google translate – would mean “we bury you”, a quite less intense version of the interpreter’s suggestion “we will bury you” but the same after all.
In all cases, it is agreed that the mistranslation lies in translating the expression too literally. Linguists suggest that “my vas pokhoronim” can be interpreted in several ways such as: “we will live to see you buried”, “we shall be present at your funeral”, “we shall outlive you” and “we shall outlast you”, all of which are less of an open threat like “we will bury you” although still considered a provocative statement.
Others have also suggested that it could mean: “Our communist system will bury your capitalist system”, noting that this phrase is used in the writings of the philosopher Karl Marx, who used this expression to stress the inevitable existence of communism, while indicating that capitalism is doomed to fail, and workers are the ones to bury capitalism.
Even in this context, the expression remains unfriendly, but the implications would be less intense compared to the direct threat “We will bury you,” which caused the intense political tension between the two countries back then.
Point is…
Without cultural awareness, grave linguistic errors may keep occurring, placing the onus on professional translation companies to possess the utmost cultural awareness in order to avoid risky implications.
1 Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia; accessed from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inuktitut-words-for-snow-and-ice
2 Source: Article titled “The Time A Japanese Interpreter Made Everyone Burst Into Laughter By Translating Jimmy Carter” accessed from https://theuijunkie.com/jimmy-carter-joke/
3 Source: Article titled “Cultural Implications for translation” accessed from http://www3.uji.es/~aferna/H44/Cultural-implications.htm
4 Source: Article titled “The Worst Translation Mistake in History” accessed from https://pangeanic.hk/knowledge_centre/the-worst-translation-mistake-in-history/#
5 Source: Article titled “How A Mistranslation Almost Started WW3” accessed from https://medium.com/exploring-history/we-will-bury-you-how-a-mistranslation-almost-started-ww3-4a285162e2b9
Why Professional Human-Powered Arabic Translation is Key to Your Business Success
While French philosopher René Descartes believes thinking proves his existence as depicted in the famous quote “I think, therefore I am”, international and foreign businesses in Arab countries ought to establish their presence through Arabic translation!
Whether it is a consumable product, technological solution, consulting services, or content that you are selling, the Middle East is undoubtedly a promising market for your business.
Based on key factors like geography, economy, communication, diplomacy, knowledge, and media, the Power Language Index (2016) ranked Arabic the 5th most powerful language globally.
Although some argue that English is the world’s lingua franca and sufficient to communicate worldwide, the EF English Proficiency Index (2020) reveals that the majority of Arab countries rank “low” and “very low” in terms of proficiency in English skills. This stresses the necessity of speaking Arabic, the people’s tongue, to be able to expand in this growing market.
However, with nearly 3.5 million speakers in 22 different countries in both Asia and Africa, Arab natives speak a wide range of dialects, rendering communication stuck in a high context, which requires the use of the modern standard Arabic (MSA) to reach out to the vast majority.
This task is rife with potential challenges and errors if lacking an expert eye. The Arab communities have recently witnessed a wave of funny translations delivered solely by machines without human intervention, creating odd translations like “البصل الأخضر يغادر”, literally meaning in English “the green onion is leaving” to an essential product named “green onion leaves” just because the English word “leaves” could be either the plural of a leaf or the third person verb of leave depending on the context!
Achieving a solid presence in the Arab world is thus only confined to a professional translation task force that knows all the ins and outs!
CAT Tools
The growing demand for translation services has brought to the fore a new set of technologies that can assist translators with their beyond deplorable and most demanding tasks—CAT Tools. With the plethora of translator-aiding and project-management technologies, CAT Tools’ approach is rather holistic (i.e., their integrated environments are designed with all linguistic needs in mind); and therefore, they offer translators a wide variety of solutions to maintain quality and consistency, and to be punctilious and meticulous, nonetheless.
With that said, CAT Tools have shown to have a rather global application, with many translators finding it rather sordid and excruciating to approach business and financial literatures without their having access to the many solutions CAT Tools offer. Understandably though, CAT Tools are not to be confused with machine-translation technologies (although most of them offer some sort of integrated machine-translation engines)—as the onus is on translators to ‘translate’.
Benefits
As mentioned earlier, CAT Tools offer a rich profusion of technologies and solutions, the benefits of which can be summed in the following:
Post-haste Delivery: Clients can be so ‘one foot in crazy, the other on a banana peel’; and therefore, they might well stir for post-haste delivery—answering to their laundry list of asinine requirements can be surely draining for translators. CAT Tools help translators speed up the translation process through the following:
– File Preparation and Statistics: CAT Tools allow translators to prepare for the translation process beforehand by running a thorough analysis of the projects in hand; the corollary to which is a comprehensive report detailing match rates, wordage, and repetitions—this can very much give translators an estimate on the time needed for the delivery of their tasks.
– Homogeneity and Repetitions: CAT Tools allow for segment matching; meaning that context matches are compared to previous occurrences in older bilingual documents (Translators need to introduce little to no adjustments in most cases). As for repetitions, CAT Tools account for the no-match occurrences in the source file, the remaining occurrences repeated within the same file (As well as cross-file occurrences) are not accounted for and are auto-propagated.
– External and Internal Engines and Resources: CAT Tools offer a great mixture of resources that can be used to speed up the translation process in one integrated translation environment:
- Translation Memory—a database of human-made translations aggregated from previous translation work and stored either on a local server or on the cloud.
- Term Bases—a terminology module that consists of databases of stored terms.
- Plug-ins—external engines and resources designed to facilitate the translation process (some are paid services offered by external partners).
Consistent Terminology: Working with projects of monstrous size imposes a further burden on translators as to maintain consistency throughout the projects in hand—this is made starkly apparent in the PowerPoint slides attached herewith (An excerpt from a previous project we have worked on where the reference files were not consistent). One of the benefits that CAT Tools secure for translators is consistent terminology—one of the many ways to realise this is through Concordance Search; a repertoire of stored human translations that can be utilised in unifying the terminology used (Certain CAT Tools allow for the extraction/exportation of a project-specific glossaries that can be then used as reference materials).
Collaboration Features: as part of their resource allocation and project management solutions, most CAT Tools allow for the assignment of multiple translators to one project; allowing them to work simultaneously thereon whilst maintaining utmost consistency, and to eventually to deliver projects on time—CAT Tools are single-source synchronous and complex software assets that allow for a seamless workflow.
Language & Translation
Apr 25
“Ecology shows that a variety of forms is a prerequisite for biological survival. Monocultures are vulnerable and easily destroyed. Plurality in human ecology functions in the same way. One language in one nation does not bring about equity or harmony for the members or groups of that nation.”
— Pattanayak 1988.380
The activity of translation has yet proven to be—so the argument runs—a conditio sin qua non for human communication. And whilst Peter Mühlhäusler argues that “The transition from polylingualism to monolingualism is accelerating”, the activity of translation remains a universalistic—yet particularistic—tool for language maintenance. Translation—in theory—concerns the rendering of linguistic discourse from one language to another; and whilst the linguistic ability is a defining characteristic of the human race, translation—as a matter of course—is rather vital for the theory of language.
Translation in Theory – Steiner’s Hermeneutic Motion
Steiner’s contributions to the study of language are no tenuous—his model, the “Hermeneutic Motion”, divides the process of translation into a tetrad of stages: (1) Trust; according to Steiner: “All understanding, and the demonstrative statement of understanding, which is translation, starts with an act of trust” (157)—that is, the translator must trust that a linguistic entity, although foreign to them, is indeed meaningful, and in keeping with this approach, a linguistic entity is indeed decipherable. (2) Aggression; entertaining the Hegelian thought that all cognition is aggressive, to Steiner, foreign texts must be tackled aggressively; for the act of understanding is invasive and extractive rather than passive. (3) Incorporation; this stage entails the embodiment of the extracted meaning into a new linguistic entity. (4) Restitution; Steiner argues that translators can overinterpret a given text—the effects of such overinterpretation can be manifested during the Incorporation stage, and translators must revive the balance between the source and target texts.