There are certain professions for which a lot of patience is essential; there is no doubt about that. Any thinking teacher or police officer will know how to elaborate on the truth in that statement. Well I feel that “translator” belongs to this list.

Now, I believe in quality control when I do translation work. I go out of my way to proofread entire translated documents after I have finished compiling them. But still sometimes others ask me questions about certain words or phrases that I have used, to which I am all but lost for words. This passage is taken from one of my most recent projects, a delivery process outline, from the business to a client:

“Should it be impossible to perform monitoring operations immediately, then always sign the delivery note as reserved and make a note that the driver did not want to be kept waiting for too long” (the bold text is text that he highlighted)

Now, I have to say that the person checking my work did not have English as his mother tongue. Even so, in a sense, you can’t blame him: the event contained in the highlighted text, should it really be indicated in the simple past tense? But even if you could think of anything better, would it really be appropriate to call this “wrong”? It refers to a past event that has not so much already happened as will have already happened…

So what do you have to say about this argument, how better could have George translates this text? Any suggestions for him? George, you better keep a tab on this post for suggestions and maybe some criticisms too.

Our special thanks to George Trail, for contributing this special post which actually is his experience shared in form of words. At TranslationArtwork.com your translations are in safe hands, believe me. Regarding George, he is a translator by profession, and you could read more about him on http://bit.ly/zG2a3