Comments on: Generate High Quality translation from Low Quality document

By: Team TranslationArtwork.com

Team TranslationArtwork.com — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:40:13 +0000

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/

By: Dona

Dona — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:27 +0000

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

By: Ronald

Ronald — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:20:27 +0000

@ 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.

By: Dona

Dona — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:10:55 +0000

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.

By: Attila

Attila — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:29:53 +0000

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.