TECHNOLOGY AND TRANSLATION

TECHNOLOGY AND TRANSLATION (A PEDAGOGICAL OVERVIEW). TRANSLATOR-CLIENT COMMUNICATIONS.

Abstract. Recent decades have seen the work of translators shift into several new dimensions, mainly due to technological advances and the process of globalization. The dramatic increase in the information to be translated, along with the availability of translation-memory tools, has led to changes both in the translator’s work processes and in relations with clients.

This text presents an overview of these developments, looking at the principles of translation memories, the non-linearity of the information objects translators work on, the corresponding concept of “content”, the rise of content management, the use of localization tools, and the role of machine translation.

While it is agreed that translation technologies may increase consistency and allow translators to focus their best efforts where they are most needed, the many possible disadvantages include high costs in terms of financial outlay and learning curves, the deepening of divisions within the labor market, and the conceptual restriction of translation to narrow text-replacement activities It is concluded that the solution to these problems lies in developing greater control over technology.

Technology extends human capacities. The monkey uses a stick to get a banana, and that stick is technology, in this case a simple tool. More general technologies are collections of tools. Some of them affect our communications, and thus translation.

The use of books rather than scrolls, for example, made it easier to retrieve and cross-reference texts. Concordances were written for complex texts like the Bible, and translations thus had to render the whole text, not just isolated phrases so that the references would work. Similarly, the move from parchment to paper, which was generally cheaper and more transportable, meant that more written copies were made, revised and distributed.

And since written culture was more easily re-written, translations were commonly re-translated. Not by chance, the use of paper coincided with the translation schools in Baghdad in the ninth century and Toledo in the thirteenth. Or again, the use of print technology from the fifteenth century supported the ideal of the definitive text, hence the definitive translation, and thus notions of equivalence as a relation between stable, fixed texts.

What might we say now that our key technologies are electronic? Texts on the web are constantly being updated, as is our software. We are sometimes called on to render no more than the updates or adaptations. Our translations might thus be expected to move away from the ideal of equivalence between fixed texts, becoming more like one set of revisions among many. In the fields of electronic technologies, translators are less commonly employed to translate whole texts, as one did for the books with concordances. Translation, like general text production, becomes more like work with databases, glossaries, and a set of electronic tools, rather than on complete definitive source texts.
Here we shall be looking at a series of electronic tools that extend human capacities in certain ways. These tools fundamentally affect 1) communication (the ways translators communicate with clients, authors, and other translators), 2) memory (how much information we can retrieve, and how fast), and 3) texts (how texts now become temporary arrangements of content). Of all the tools, the ones specifically designed to assist translators are undoubtedly those concerning memory. But we shall see that electronic technologies affect all aspects of the translator’s work.

Translator-client comm.

In our digital age, electronic formats concern not just our texts, but also our communications with clients and other translators. Thanks to the Internet, professionals from all over the world can be in regular contact by email or various forms of instant messaging. Work can be sent and received electronically, across national and cultural borders. This has several consequences.

First, in theory, you can work for clients anywhere in the world. The market for translations need not be your city or your country. A source text received at 5 pm in Tarragona can be sent to a translator in New Zealand, who will return the translation before 9 am the following morning, Tarragona time. Time zones can thus be used creatively, and work can thus come from companies that are very far away. All you have to do is list your name, language combinations and areas of specialization on one of the many web sites that aim to put translators and clients in touch with each other.

One would expect this process to lead to a situation where the fees paid for translations will become virtually the same all over the world, in keeping with theories of a global market. This, however, is very far from happening. Translation is still a service that depends on a high degree of trust between the translator and the client. Little constant high-paid work will come from unseen clients; the fees paid in different countries still vary widely; the best contacts are probably still the ones made face-to-face and by word of mouth.

A second consequence of electronic communications is the increased security risk. Translators quite often work on material that is not in the public domain, and this is indeed one of the reasons why relations of trust are so important. When sending and receiving files, you will have to learn various forms of zipping, secure FTP, or other company-specific forms of encoding, with all their corresponding passwords.

A third consequence is that electronic communications make it relatively easy to distribute very large translation jobs between various intermediaries. The client may want to market their product in 15 European languages. They hire a marketing company, which hires a language-service provider, which hires a series of brokers for each language, who give the work to a series of translation companies, who pass the texts on to translators, often freelancers. In this kind of system, the client may be paying as much as four times what the actual translators are receiving per translated page. But each link in the chain is revising, coordinating and producing the various translation products, adding value as they go. This means the text the translator produces is commonly not the same text as the one actually used, and there can thus be little question of copyright over the translator’s work. It also means that translators are sometimes very far removed from the end client and the overall context of the texts they work on. Translators in projects like software localization quite often see no more than lists of phrases, along with glossaries that are to be respected. The resulting work can be quite isolating and dehumanizing.

Electronic communications have also been used to enhance communication between translators, especially through Internet forums for professional translators. These are usually classified by topics and/or language pairs. Some may be open, in others participation is restricted to registered members. The traffic (number of emails) in each group varies from a few emails a month to hundreds a day.

In these forums translators are very willing to exchange advice, give tips, and generally discuss their work. Simply by reading the posted messages, students and novice translators can learn about translation and see the kind of support that professionals give each other. Discussion lists for professionals usually have their own communication guidelines, and so new participants see a specific way of interacting among professionals. For example, when asking about terminology, professional translators usually send a short message in which they give the term, some context, suggested translations and the consulted sources.

This model gives valuable hints about terminology mining and teamwork skills. Or again, by reading messages about a specific computer tool, novice translators often discover that the program is in constant evolution and has functions they would have otherwise overlooked. These forums thus build a valuable bridge between students and the professional world. They also put paid to the stereotype of the professional translator somehow isolated behind a wall of dusty dictionaries.

Адрес публикации: https://www.prodlenka.org/metodicheskie-razrabotki/324545-technology-and-translation