Generate High Quality translation from Low Quality document
People who work for others to help them in translating the documents hardly face the problem if they get the matter that is crude. Crude material can be defined as a material that contains information but has mistakes that occurred while typing, or there is a mistake in stating facts or there is a doubt about the facts that have been stated therein. All this happens when the writer is not skilled. The language used in such documents is rarely rich.
Translators are always in a fix whether to change the content to improve the quality or just correct the error. The translators get in this Catch-22 situation and find it difficult to move out of it. This situation is faced by almost all translators but there is no way out from this situation. One has to just take the risk and decide on his own as to what is best as per the topic and as per the requirement of the person who wants the work to be done and where he is to use it. The professional translators need to set on your own what procedure you would follow for translating.
If you are a professional translator, you may do some or more of the following things. One thing that can be done is to contact the person who has written the document initially. Mark all the points in respect to which you have queries in your mind and prepare a list of what all is needed to be asked so that it helps in your own writing. But the problem in following this procedure is that the original writer may not always be available. This is when the source writer is anonymous or the person you are writing for has got the matter from someone else about which the details are not present. In this situation many a times even the person for whom the translation is to be done, does not know anything. This procedure is helpful only when the client for whom the translation is being done has the details about the content.
Another option is to just ask the person for whom you working as to what he wants to be do. It is possible that the person does not have much time to invest. It that case, you can opt not to take up the translation work. There may be a chance that you do not have the option of rejecting the person. In this situation, what you must do is simply ignore the doubts that you have regarding the facts and only take into consideration those facts that are obtrusive or say obvious. The best way is to stick to the original work put in your own creativity to make it emphasizing. The style of working also depends on the language in which one is translating. Many a times the language that a person uses makes the work worthwhile. Also, the requirement of the situation also makes a great difference. The main point that one must keep in mind is that never to change your style of writing. Keep your thinking cap on and go ahead.
Have you ever come across such a situation? How do you tackle low quality documents and ensure that translation quality is the best?
Dear Ronald
I have seen that, with Hungarian medical documents. The last one I got was like “insect criss-crossing paths” – illegible in one word.
Then you have the case when your client have done some crude translation or had been to another translator i.e Rumanian to Serbian, but now she needs a Rumanian to French version. Or again when a translator had done a Dutch to Serbian language translation, but because of not knowing well the expressions in that language the border authorities do not accept his eve though he has licence for that language, but mine because its better translated and clearly understandable… It is sometimes like that, and one is sorry to hear that the collegues are not more able or are not able to go ahead on their proper language fields. With translation and especially the crude ones, it goes as we were told at the Pedagogical Academy : “Everybody learns till death, except the teachers who learn even after !”. A good thing isn’t it ?
With low quality documents you can try also to scan them in different formats: GIF, JPG, etc. The point is to do the work properly and never say : NO or IMPOSSIBLE. So if you can zoom enough the document, to be as much legible as possible, the percentage of rejected crude documents are becoming quite minimal.
To ask the client for help ? Sometimes it is not possible as he/she may be dead for a long time, or by the time you have done the translation. In this job – it is more “help on yourself and God will help you”-like procedure without any external help at all. It is also a good thing to involve the members of your family on the base “more eyes do see more” to resolve difficult cases of crude texts.
The “which is more difficult” – latin or cyrillic text, question is relative. A latin lettered text in one’s mothertongue can be as difficult if not more, then a text in a foreign language using non-alphabet characters.
There is one difficulty more : the dialect used in the text is unknown to the dictionary we (have to) use, i.e. Finnish of the 19th century, while your dictionary has entries in the dialect of the 20th. The Finnish Constitution as the Kalevala and the Kanteletar is written in this practically forgotten and not understandable form. The authors of these texts are dead for several centuries, so how to get help on such translation ? One has to use any form of imagination, and to try to be in place of the people who had written the documents you have to translate. What was the essence of their idea ? Is there any word which is similar… the questions are coming out of the translator’s mind like a tsunami, killing any half-solutions. When everything is done, what does stay to us ? We forget the pain of the research done, we only take a big smile and say “I’ve found it” (Eureka !) and that lasts till the next crude document comes into our hands.
I have translated several crude documents, and I have resorted to certain strategies, which I think most translators use, to help me in providing a cohesive and an understandable text. My advice always is to follow the original text, that is if you cannot contact the author to inquire on certain areas, and try your best to produce a readable text.
@ Dona – It is indeed very true what you have mentioned above. Generating the best readable output is the only solution to handle low quality source documents.
have a good day.
Dear Ronald,
Sorry didn’t see your comment on 9 October 2009, any ways, I was glad to receive this thread again via facebook.. and as you said yes the only solution, is to render a readable text whether the source text is low or highly written document.
best.
Dona
Dear Dona, thank you for your comment. May be you are interessted in publishing a blog post on our Blog? See this blog post – http://blog.translationartwork.com/index.php/2009/12/03/write-and-get-rewarded/
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