Poor translation back in the spotlight

Yes folks, it's definitely worth getting yourself a good translator, especially when the topic is as high profile as FIFA is at the moment:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/10/johnson-lost-translation

For those interested, here is the link to the English translation of the Swiss Public Prosecutor's press release:

https://www.news.admin.ch/message/index.html?lang=en&msg-id=58891

"Johnson" has a point. One can be "disloyal" in English but only to a person or a body, like being disloyal to a government.

I'm no legal translator, but if "illegal" is too strong a word, then it is still possible to recast the sentence. Many people – including some translators – don't realise that it is okay to play with syntax, i.e. retaining the impact of the original text but expressing the ideas with a different part of speech in comparison with the original text. So, something like (assuming the German is the source text):

Furthermore, Joseph Blatter is accused of acting in bad faith by making a payment for CHF 2 billion to Michel Platini...

Summer reading

Here are my summer books this year, so it won't be much of a holiday...

At the moment I'm fascinated by the whole intersect between translation and good writing. As experienced practitioners know, there are two extremes to be avoided: one is sticking too closely to a source text and producing a plodding, turgid target piece that fails to pass on the intended message of the original; the other extreme is a free translation that says more (and often less) than the original text. In the middle of this, the translator must "find his or her voice" (to use Ros Schwartz's expression from the Financial Translation Summer School this year).

My gut feeling is that specialisation (again!) is the name of the game. As a seasoned financial writer, I know my way around my subject - and have drafted financial articles directly in English. I know what may be omitted, and what must be left in.

Anyone who has worked in the translation business for more than 10 minutes knows what it's like to be "out of one's depth" in a text. This is the feeling we have while learning the trade. Enter the more experienced team member to revise the junior translator's text.

Once we have earned our stripes, I believe that we should not stray too far outside our area(s) of expertise. And in the financial and business arena, there are plenty of sub-specialisations to be developed, from financial statements (using the right IFRS terminology, of course) and macroeconomics to fund reports and currency roundups.

Horses for courses...

Translating business films

Last Friday I was kindly invited by a Geneva bank to attend a seminar on translating business films. As the spoken word is more and more giving way to visual and oral communication, it seems timely for financial translators to have audiovisual-translation skills up their sleeves.

I was very much impressed by this seminar, given by applied translation expert Jean-Pierre Mailhac. His profile can be consulted at www.jpmlanguageservices.com

No thanks to you...

Right, I'm officially declaring war on "thanks to" being used, especially at the beginning of sentences, to denote a negative cause. A silly example would be

          Thanks to my cancer, I only have one year left to live.

Daft, eh.

The FT wrote today: "Thanks to the decline in CD sales..." when it meant "Owing to..." or "Following..." or "As a consequence of...".

For a fuller discussion, see this useful article:

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/07/thanks-to.html

Professional courses attended

Some translators are in the habit of listing all the seminars they have attended since the year dot.

A recent example got me thinking, and made me realise that, over the years, I've attended a good few events - some of them rather informative.

Here is a selection:

SFT/ASTTI Financial Translation Summer Schools (Paris/Spiez): 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015

German Annual Report Masterclass (Robin Bonthrone) - October 2013

Die Welt der Banken und Ihre Sprache - April 2015

"While" versus "whilst"

There is a definite tendency today to simply use (he says, voluntarily splitting an infinitive!) "while".

A decent summary of the issue is available here:

http://www.richardhollins.com/blog/grammar-tips-while-or-whilst/

However, I was composing a pretty ordinary sentence the other day, and "whilst" seemed a better fit to me:

He will also oversee Acme Corporation's differentiation strategy in terms of its products and services whilst optimising design and construction costs.

(I was having to deal with another one of those long lists in French: "he does a, b, c, d, e, f...". I don't usually allow more than three items in any such list without adding some kind of conjunction.)

Here is the same sentence with "while":    

He will also oversee Acme Corporation's differentiation strategy in terms of its products and services while optimising design and construction costs.

To me, the "while" sounds like he's doing everything at the same time; imagine him spinning plates.

It's almost like "whilst" has a sense of "as well as" in this example.

Of course, the EMT editor at the client may have simply edited out the "whilst" for the more internationally acceptable "while".

To be continued...

Die Welt der Banken und Ihre Sprache

In April, I attended this two-day seminar on the world of banking and the terminology that accompanies it. Organised by the BDÜ in Baden-Württemberg.

The highlight is that the speaker, Holker Schuster, is not a translator by trade (though I'm sure he could turn out some excellent work if he had to). Rather, he is a trained banker whose current area of expertise is trade finance. But he also has a passion for languages and has held high-level management positions within reputable translation companies.

This was the most comprehensive presentation on the business of banking that I've attended in any language.

It'll be happening again next April in Mainz. Herzlich empfohlen!

ASTTI Financial Translation Summer School

I'll be attending this event in July. It is held every two years in Spiez.

Always an excellent opportunity to see old friends and make new ones. (No, this is not an advert for a dating site but we translators don't get out much so these kinds of get-togethers are highly prized among us.)

There's a considerable amount of good stuff for into-English operatives. Look forward to attending the workshops.

Here's the link for those who are interested:

http://new.astti.ch/web/Sommeruniversitaet_281_3.php