Swears in translation
I remember an argument among project managers a few years ago about whether we should translate certain vulgarities, or soften them before they reached the client. I was on the side of leaving them as raw as they were in the original. I lost. The prevailing concern seemed to be that sending a client that kind of language might be unprofessional. And the belief was that, unadulterated or not, the language in question was not material to the meaning of the whole. Squeamishness won out.
To argue my point, I recalled one of my translation teachers, an older woman who had been translating for years, and one of the nicest ladies you’d ever want to meet. She was always emphatic in her belief that we translators have a responsibility to use the same tone as the original, curse words and all.
Let’s admit it, while profanity supposedly has no place in a business context, it happens. What is inappropriate in an annual report, or even on a translation blog, might crop up in an e-mail from an employee to his boss. And if, in place of “[copulative gerund],” “[widely used term for excrement],” or “[orifice personified],” a translator substitued damn, shoot, or jerk, respectively, I’d be upset. Plus, it becomes an exercise not just in translation, but verbosity.
I too care about corporate image. However, in translation, a reputation of accuracy is more important than one of civility. In our business, context is everything. And accuracy, as one must be aware, is fuckin’ awesome!
8 responses so far ↓
1 Jill // Jan 15, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I agree with you, Ryan. I was also taught that at Kent State University. If the original author swears it is our duty to render the utterance in the same register. Just today in my marketing survey one of the respondents answered (in German) “F*%# first, watch TV later.” I didn’t soften it at all and reproduced it in English.
2 Jill // Jan 15, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Sorry, Glenn. I thought this was Ryan’s GITS Blog. My brain shut down after I finished my big translation today.
3 Glenn // Jan 16, 2009 at 9:49 am
Jill, no problem — I had a brain-shut-down kind of day yesterday. Thanks for reading. It seems to me this is a less talked about issue in translation than the mistranslations that hurt a company’s marketing campaign (”nova,” and the “coke and tadpoles” being the most infamous examples). Legal translation is one area where the translation often has to be faithful not only to the overall spirit of the text, but to each word in the text.
Thanks so much for reading!
4 Corinne McKay // Jan 16, 2009 at 11:36 am
Glenn, I laughed out loud reading this! Recently I was translating some e-mails for a corporate legal case, and one employee referred to the big boss as a “limp *ick.” After consulting with some native French-speaking friends and the PM, I did really feel that that particular expression (which, after 6+ years of training myself never to use profanity around my kid, I could barely bring myself to say out loud!!) was crucial to understanding what was going on behind the scenes at this company. Great post!
5 Jamie O. // Jan 16, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Asshole!
6 Glenn // Jan 16, 2009 at 9:14 pm
@Corinne,
Thanks for reading — I’ve been biting my tongue around my kids too, although teenage years are fast approaching and I’m pretty sure they’ve heard ‘em all.
@ Jamie O., against my better judgement, I allowed that comment! It was too witty to filter — at least I’m reading it as wit ?!?
Next week I’m going to try to get this blog back out of the gutter.
Thanks all for reading!
7 Janine // Jan 27, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Changing [copulative gerund]” or “[widely used term for excrement]” to “damn” and “shoot” isn’t translating, it’s editing.
Great post!
8 MT // Jan 28, 2009 at 12:41 am
I was taught that one of the best ways to evaluate a foreign language-to-English dictionary was to flip it open to several choice curse words and see if they’re in there and dealt with well. Any dictionary that’s going to edit stuff like that out isn’t a good dictionary for a translator. Because all sorts of things come up in translation and the translator has to deal with them. I definitely believe the swearing should be faithfully rendered (which can be really hard to do). The only exception to this is a prudish client who just can’t deal with swearing. If you think you’ve got one of those you can ask them how they’d like you to deal with the swear words. Otherwise, I say, bring ‘em on!
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