OK, fellow translators, it comes with the territory in our line of work: horribly written source documents, lack of appropriate references or context, clients who try to stiff you, etc. We expect it and we handle it in a professional manner.
Despite this, there are always those things that irk us. Right? Right.
Here are a few of mine:
Anything that starts out with “In recent years, in pace with the rapid development of the economy, …”
Non-native English-speaking clients who take it upon themselves to edit something I have completed without letting me see what they’ve done, then seeing the awful result in print with my name on it.
Tongyong “pinyin”.
Your turn!! (Contributions of old pros and beginning students alike are welcome!)
I’m not a translator, but a teacher of English to adults and about 50% of essays I correct have this phrase in them. Or substitute ‘technology’ or ‘the internet’ for ‘economy’. It will then be followed by a clause in the wrong tense.
Source texts that “spell out” something in Chinese based on really terrible English (like one English word for each letter of another English word, but they didn’t pick parallel words or just picked wrong words) and then you’re expected to make it sound good but you aren’t allowed to change the English that’s in there.
And, anything to do with the “Evasions” program at EVA. I am personally offended every time I think of that slash job. What a name for a vacation travel program!
I was asked to deal with something like that. The client chose eight English words (different parts of speech, mind you) and tried to make the initials of the spell something in English as a mnemonic. I checked an online “jumble solver” and found that there is no word that could be made out of the words he chose; there were several word pairs but none of them fit the context. I made some suggestions for change. No, they had to be these eight words. I bailed.
Another peeve of mine: direct quotes from English-speaking authors or speakers that had been translated into Chinese, and the client expects me to translate the quotation back into English, oblivious of the concept of quotations having to be word for word according to the original. Google and other online sources can help sometimes, but not always.
Sentences that start with: “With regard to,” or “Besides” or “Meanwhile”.
The universal translation of “che1” as “sedan”. Matters in a sentence like: “Ford launched its latest car [“sedan”], the Focus, on Friday, introducing three body shapes for the China market: a saloon [“sedan”], a hatchback [“sedan”], and an estate [“sedan”]. Porsche were also well represented at the show with their new flagship model the Carrera GT4 [“sedan”], of which only six will be sold into the China market, and the Cayenne SUV [“sedan”]”…
I have given up. Another is “passenger car”. I have asked for pictures of cars that do not carry passengers but have had no response. Even the Maclaren F1 has passenger seats.
Shudder! Reading this thread makes me ever thankful my translating days are down to almost nothing.
My personal peeve is trying to turnaround a piece of illogical turgid turd that “works” in Chinese solely because some pumped up idiot of a middle manager likes the flowery bullshit language of the original. All the while you know that making it read well in English is just simply never going to happen. Meanwhile, said idiot will be flagging it as an English masterpiece with which he hopes to grab some considerable esteem. Even if you did manage to get good copy, the idiot will take all the credit, but when the iniveitable happens, it’s a reflection of your poor translation ability.
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”]Shudder! Reading this thread makes me ever thankful my translating days are down to almost nothing.
My personal peeve is trying to turnaround a piece of illogical turgid turd that “works” in Chinese solely because some pumped up idiot of a middle manager likes the flowery bullshit language of the original. All the while you know that making it read well in English is just simply never going to happen. Meanwhile, said idiot will be flagging it as an English masterpiece with which he hopes to grab some considerable esteem. Even if you did manage to get good copy, the idiot will take all the credit, but when the iniveitable happens, it’s a reflection of your poor translation ability.
HG[/quote]
almost every day i have this conversations with sales staff where i work…“customer says the job reads too chinesy”
me; “thats cos the chinese is completely unsuitable to translate into english”
sales: “well can you fix it”
me: “you mean completely rewrite the piece from a native speakers POV, without being paid any extra…?”
sales: “um yes”
me: :loco:
That’s because the original was written too Chinesy! There are certain thigns that can be done to avoid sounding too Chinesy, but depending on the way the original is written, Chinesiness can be unavoidable if the client is expecting a translation rather than a rewrite.
Which brings up another peeve:
Text that’s written for the express purpose of being translated into English, but which is written in an esoteric way that’s time-consuming and headache-inducing to translate, filled with untranslateable wordplay, culture-specific references and chengyu. Then, when I ask the client why they wrote it this way if they intended it for an English-speaking audience only, they explain “It sounds so good in Chinese!” :fume:
Let me explain. Letters of recommendation, needed for applying for overseas study, are usually written by professors or employers. In Taiwan they’re often ghostwritten by the applicant, translated into English (by someone like me) and then signed by the recommender upon approval of the content.
The problem is that the applicants often are unable to place themselves into the shoes of the recommender when composing their letters. The result is a letter that has the professor (or worse, the employer) making comments about aspects of the applicant’s life that they should have no idea about (e.g. performance in classes not taught by the recommender, extracurricular activities, activities in private life, life after graduation, experiences in high school or earlier, or even childhood experiences).
When transalting such letters, I try to convince the applicant that they can’t talk about these. If they are stubbornly insistent, I add something like “From my conversations with Ms. Chang, I am aware that…”
Related peeve: A letter of recommendation “from” a professor that introduces the student, then launches into extracurricular activities, with NO mention of the student’s performance in the class the professor taught. This would be a major red flag for any member of an admissions committee, but far too many students here fail to realize this most plainly obvious fact. I wonder why this is.
A more succinct version of my previous peeve . . . basically co I’d translated mine into Southern Ming era language and back and forward again a few times.
Yeah I always think of that as somehow honest!
And raise you with half-arsed academics who hope their academic laziness and complete lack of logic will miraculously dissappear in the translation process. :fume:
You’re not still translating letters of recommendation, are you?
That’s what Word’s “forms” function is for. You write the body of a letter and then you can put in fields with drop-down menus, such as:
[quote=“About a decade or so ago, ironlady”]To whom it may concern/Dear Sirs/Hey y’all,
In my capacity as Professor/Associate Professor/instructor/cleaning lady at [name of school], I was proud and happy/thrilled/amazed/gobsmacked at the incredible/amazing/unbelievable/stellar academic and extracurricular performance of [name of student.]
As for [Name of student], s/he not only pulled down a 4.0 average/was an outstanding student/never missed a class while majoring in particle physics/archaic Chinese/gu-zhang, but also was on the ROC Olympic Team in skeet shooting/climbed Mt. Everest barefoot/helped with earthquake relief in South America/organized a brigade to play with orphaned chimpanzees. And, [name of student] also took it upon himself/herself to go to the library and get more materials about the topics being discussed in class/often raised his/her hand and volunteered in class/frequently sought me out to discuss advanced notions in my field, which made me know that [name of student] is an outstanding candidate for your MBA program/MBA program/MBA program.
When [name of student] returns to Taiwan, as I know s/he wants to make a contribution to his/her country/pay back his/her parents for their sacrifices in the course of his/her education. Most importantly, s/he was the captain/leader/representative of his/her elementary school ping-pong team/class/graduation trip.
In short, [name of student] would be a credit/a great addition/a questionable choice for your program, and I am happy/thrilled/relieved to give him/her my highest recommendation.
Sincerely/Very truly yours/With tongue firmly in cheek,
[Name of recommender][/quote]
(Special patented Taiwanese English phrases in bold.) Go to town, y’all, and take up a worthy hobby with the time you’ll save.
You’re not still translating letters of recommendation, are you?
That’s what Word’s “forms” function is for. You write the body of a letter and then you can put in fields with drop-down menus, such as:[/quote]
A translator at the company I do that for once set up a template like the one you mention. Students complained and when the boss got wind of it, the translator was promptly fired.
I like your example, by the way. “As I know”! Especially this part:
“And, [name of student] also took it upon himself/herself to go to the library and get more materials about the topics being discussed in class/often raised his/her hand and volunteered in class/frequently sought me out to discuss advanced notions in my field.”
It seems like every student “takes it upon him/herself (主動) to go to the library to gather related information (相關資料), has the courage to ask pertinent questions in class, and seeks me out after class to gain clarification about the course material.”
I’d throw in a few things like “It behooves me”, “diligent and responsible” (認真負責) and “your esteemed institution” (貴校) for good measure!!
That boss clearly doesn’t understand Taiwanese culture.
Seriously – when I was “working” for a certain very dishonest and crooked overseas study organization which inflated the qualifications of its teachers beyond belief and refused to give visas they had promised (we’ll call it “APEZ” which is not its real name but those in the Guanqian Road area can draw their own conclusions), although I didn’t use an actual template, this was pretty much how we churned those letters out. I mean, there are only so many ways to write a letter of recommendation, even if you are really the teacher involved! Especially when most of the students had very little to recommend them (in terms of things a Western university would really care about). At least it was good practice dealing with handwriting (back then most of the students didn’t type their letters out). Mind-numbing, though.
ALL of them wanted to study for an MBA. NONE of them were concerned about making money; they just wanted to contribute to the economy of the ROC. MANY took the movie “Pretty Woman” as an inspiration (never really determined quite why this was). And quite a few of them mentioned the whole “actually raised hand in class” or “went to see the professor to talk about class topics” stuff, as well as the third-grade ping-pong team captaincy as an example of leadership.
And my current pet peeve for translation: translating things that are based on other things that you’re not given a copy of and cannot find. Right now, rant involves a set of PowerPoint slides on Chinese motor vehicle regs. Naturally everything is abbreviated since it’s just slides to go with a talk, but somehow I’m supposed to know what they’re really talking about.
Another interesting thing is that, theoretically, these letters would be more believable and authentic if they had some Chinglish mixed in. But the students and teachers scrutinize them, showing them to other people and trying to ferret out any Chinglish. They demand perfect English. I know that if I make it sound as if it was written by a local, it will come back to me the following week for “corrections”.
At least I can accept wrong grammar being corrected better than my perfectly correct grammar being “fixed” to a wrong form…
I’m sure the schools know the score anyway. But Taiwanese tuition money spends just like anyone else’s, and with the enormous “guanxi” and mutual assistance network they manage to graduate even when you can tell from the app they just aren’t going to be scholars.
For me, more than half are MBA applicants. Next come the engineers, and after that are the teachers. But the “art major” season is coming up - this is what I dread the most, mainly because the language they use is impenetrable! But I’m getting myself prepared to talk about “bold lines”, “refined technique” and “nebulous textures” once again.
The MBA students in my opinion are indeed motivated by making money - many candidly say so in their applications. But I don’t think it’s good form to tell a university you want to enroll in their MBA in order to get rich. “To gain a competitive edge in the career market”, sure. “To maximize my potential for making contributions to the company I work for”: boring, but acceptable. “To make oodles of dough”, no.
Thankfully this is not all I do…it’s merely part-time work that pays the bills while I work on far more interesting freelance projects.
Especially this part: