yndigo

Brackets: A rather delicate translator tool

contrast to [sic], which lets the translator wipe his hands of an error in the source, brackets rectify the problem while alerting the reader something’s a bit off.

As an aside, the unqualified bracket means the square version in American usage, where for Brits this would mean parenthesis, thus their need for square. This and a bevy of usage and historical tidbits can be found on Wikipedia’s page on the topic.

Both the journalist and the translator use brackets. And for much the same reason: to repair the language of the source (source, of course is a term of art referring to different things in these two professions) in order to give the fullest representation possible to the reader.

However — no slight to journalists — translators have to use their brain here. Just as with sic, conventions controlling the use of brackets by the press and by translators (or at least in my niche) vary somewhat, not least of all because the press deals with only one language at a time, so less judgement is called for.

Brackets are used to supply information that is not in the original, a practice generally frowned upon in translation. There are times, though, that by means of an educated guess, the translator, rather than adding new information, actually replaces something that would have been present save for the harsh treatment that befalls many an old file that has been copied, faxed, re-faxed, scanned, etc.

When part of the date in the corner of a page has been obliterated by a hole punch and then scanned, and the very same date is clear on the remaining 19 pages, we can be pretty sure what it is. It does require brackets however because we are making a small leap of faith.

A larger leap may be required when deciphering handwritten documents and, after comparing the shape of the author’s “d” or “r” to the illegible word, we convince ourselves and insert the word in brackets. For some strange reason, the magic percentage of conviction for me has always been 65%. Meaning, between 65% and a slim shadow of a doubt, I surround the dubious term (or letter, or figure) with brackets. 100% gets nothing, obviously. Less than 65% requires an “[illegible].” Don’t ask me how I measure.

There exists another use of brackets that I would qualify as interpreting, and therefore a bigger no-no (translators don’t interpret as we know ; ), and that is repairing a sentence to make it read better than the original. This would include replacing a pronoun with a noun, inserting conjunctions, fixing punctuation, etc.

Exacerbating this is an imperfect knowledge of the source language, which can lead one to take a correct term or phrase as a mistake. It’s perfectly correct in French to say, “Nous nous sommes retrouvés Place de la Concorde.” To translate it as, “we met [at] Place de la Concorde” would be in essense to correct a non-error.

Again, my one-sided view of these guidelines results from my specialization in translations for attorneys. I would guess that improving on the original may not only be warranted but desired in certain other fields, such as marketing.