yndigo

I’m not a good speller. Not in my acquired language, French, nor in English. In fact I’m worse in English, but we should all be forgiven; English orthography is about as regular as the M101 bus in Manhattan, winner of the latest Schleppie Award for least reliable bus.

So I’ve gotten in the habit of spell checking my writing when it counts. Like translations for example (I should spell check emails too… or at the very least stick a post-it to my screen to remind me there are two ‘d’s in address). Surprisingly, many translators don’t run spell check, despite it being a feature on word processors since the beginning of time.

More important and more involved than a spell check, of course, is the process of reviewing a translation. But the lack of a spell check is often a telltale sign that the translator has not reviewed or reread the document. Even seasoned translators should understand that the first sentence to roll off their fingers is not always the best. Exempted are those who began in the age of typewriters, many of whom out of necessity learned to compose beautiful sentences in their head before comitting them to paper. Alas, recent evidence tells me those skills have not been passed on.

Provided a translation is accurate — which is another pair of sleeves, as the French say — reviewing your work does not have to be that time consuming. Having been in the business of revising translations for about a dozen years now, I can say that, besides spelling and clean formatting, the two things that make an English sentence sound the least native are:

1. Unnatural order of words or phrases. The placement of subordinate clauses, adjectives, adverbs, differs between languages. “Shake well the bottle.” No thanks. True, an author may stress a phrase by changing the normal order of things, but more often it is the syntax and conventions of a language that determine how a native speaker orders his or her phrases. A college teacher used to tell us that French is analytical whereas English is like a movie scene where the action follows a life-like chronology. In English we say, “He ran up the stairs”; In French, “He went up the stairs, running.” At best, it sounds non-native. At worst it sounds like something’s missing. He went up the stairs, running his mouth? running his mother ragged?
2. Over-nominalizing, as I have written about in the past. English generally features strong verbs and weak nouns. Anyone reviewing a document will — or should — find it very strange to read, “she executed the translation of the document” and opt instead for, “she translated the document.” Formal writers tend to nominalize more of course but overall, we should get out of the habit.

Certainly, taking on rush work, being easygoing, having a deep knowledge of your specialty, being on time, etc., etc., are all very important and appreciated, but submitting translations that require little in the way of syntactical and typographical repair saves headaches, time, and money and will keep your inbox jumping and your phone ringing.