Our Approach
Internationalism
and language
We live in an international world,
where the principal need is for effective communication, and the
primary skill is language.
When talking, people can usually manage
to communicate effectively, even if their language skills are not
perfect, because face-to-face communication is flexible and
iterative. We correct our errors as we go; by repetition,
restatement, question and answer. There are exceptions, notably in
international politics and diplomacy, in journalism and in the legal
world, but most verbal communication is good enough even if it
entails a bit more hard work and a bit more time than usual.
Document
Translation
Documents
are different. There is one chance only to say the thing that is
intended, and it has to be right. Documents are kept, copied, read
and reread, perhaps by many people as well as the initial recipient,
sometimes by unintended persons. They are scrutinised, criticised and
evaluated. Small errors, little inconsistencies, a vagueness here, an
unnatural phrase there, a tense out of place, a slightly awkward or
non-idiomatic expression: they give the game away, that the
translator cannot tell you precisely what he wants to say, and
perhaps that he did not fully understand the document in its original
language to begin with.
It happens all the time, we see it
everywhere: in books, films, technical and scientific journals,
advertising slogans, instruction manuals...the list goes on. How
often has one of your international friends asked you the name of
say, a film, that has been translated into some other language and
you say, “But that's not what it means”? Then you see both the
crudeness of the translation and the trap which the translator has
fallen into.
Even if you have never seen the
original document, even if you know nothing of the original language,
you know what it is like to read a poor translation. It leaves you
feeling less than confident about what you are reading. It also means
that there is a huge and growing market for international lawyers,
bilingual account executives, teachers, interpreters and the like,
who can study and use the original documents thus avoiding the risks
inherent in the translations. And even if they are entirely accurate
and technically correct, those translations can leave you wondering
whether they are.
Finally, try to think about your
audience. Something which your organisation is going to produce and
have translated is going to end up on a Spanish or Latin American
Managing Director's desk, or with a team of engineers, a copyright
agent, an editor, a banking Vice-President. These people know Spanish
better than any non-native translator. They can probably tell you
which newspaper a story is published in by the tone and register and
vocabulary of the text, they see documents in Spanish, they discuss
them in Spanish, they meet in the bar and order drinks in Spanish.
They know their Cervantes and their Zafon. Only a native Spanish
speaker, brought up and educated in Spain, can provide convincing
Spanish text.
How
We Work
We translate all documents together: Ana Gonzalez is the main
linguistics expert and native Spanish speaker: Bill Dixon provides
technical, financial and educational interpretation, and is the
native English speaker. Naturally, we use dictionaries and online
tools, especially when the material is of a specialist nature, but we
do the work together, making sure of three critical points:
That we both fully understand the original document.
That the resulting translation really does say the same thing
as the original.
That the translation uses the target language in a completely
natural idiomatic way.
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