For Translators & Interpreters

Translation from a native English proofreader’s perspective

How can we assess the quality of translation and interpretation?

I work as a proofreader and also I attend many, many presentations with interpretation (both stop/start and simultaneous) – so this is my personal perspective.

It’s important to understand that translation and interpretation vary in terms of objectivity and subjectivity. 

In certain fields, for example, the medical and financial industry, the correct terminology is obviously important and the translated or interpreted version should be faithful to the original. 

But in other situations, there’s more room for creativity and variation and thus the assessment of the work tends to be more subjective.

What is a good translation?

Is it a direct version of the original or is it the spirit of the original?

If the original document is badly written or badly structured, should the translated version try to improve it?

If the original is repetitive should the original mirror this?

Or should the translator use more synonyms and alternative phrases?

Some points I notice as a native English proofreader

·      Translators often overuse the same phrases and the text seems boring and repetitious (Of course, this may be because the Japanese original does the same thing.)

·      Overusing words from the same word family in sentences such as “the director directed”; “the trainees attended the training”

·      Not using pronouns enough

·      Confusion with uncountable and countable e.g. “the typhoon caused many damages / much damage / a lot of damage / extensive damage”. So which one do you prefer?

·      Overtyping sometimes leads to strange visual aspects like these “ Venue：” or “list、”, “end。”. This is because Japanese fonts are double byte characters.

·      Often colon usage is misunderstood; in English it is like this “Venue: Hanzomon” not “Venue : Hanzomon”

·      Fonts - although the output version may be a PDF, in general it’s a good idea to use just English language fonts, but often documents have a mixture of MS Mincho and standard English fonts like Arial or Calibri

·      Talking of fonts, I HATE Times New Roman so you should never use that!

·      Numbers - sometimes graphs and text use multiples of 10,000s - not wrong but seems very Japanese to me, maybe hundreds, thousands, one hundred thousands, millions would be what I’d use.

·      Numbering and headings - some writers and translators just don’t think about the readability of the document especially with nested headings and hierarchies

Consider this example

1.     Main heading

1)    Sub-heading

1.     Item

1)    Sub-item

Terrible!

1.     Main heading

a.     Sub-heading

(i)             Item

·      Sub-item

Isn’t this much better?

These are just some of the things I look for when I do a native English proofreading check.

For a check of YOUR WORK email jim (at) fourskillsenglish.com

Confusing words

Spell checkers won't find these mistakes but an English-native proofreader will! Hint, hint!

company & country - Sony and Japan

fluency & fluently - noun and adverb

fluently & frequently - smooth speech and often

fiend & friend - kind of opposite meanings!

twelve & twenty - 12 and 20

rent, lend, borrow - rent an apartment, lend money to a friend, borrow money from bank to buy an apartment

room & apartment - bathroom, kitchen etc. and the whole set of rooms

UK, England, Great Britain -  UK political term, Great Britain, England just one country - more detailed explanation via Encyclopaedia Britannica 

English & British - just England and covers Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland

family name & family’s names - Smith and Bob, Alice, John and Mary

hometown & country - Nagoya and Japan

rise & raise - something rises, and something is raised, hmm difficult refer here. 

Examples: the sun rose, he raised his hand, the temperature rose, prices were raised

More easily confused words!

Stationary versus stationery

stationary (adj) - not not moving at all or not intended to be moved

stationery (n) - writing and other office materials

Actually these are homophones -  the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling, for example threw and through.