Posts Tagged ‘translate’

The best example of what shouldn’t be translated is in the case of names. We cannot translate the names of legal persons or physical persons.

Aside from this classic example of words that should remain as they are in the original, there are other cases of words that cannot be translated: international symbols.

In this sense, the clearest example is chemical elements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element. For example, if, in our original, “Na” appears, we would not translate it as “Sod.”. Instead, we would leave it as “Na”.

The same happens with measures of length. The abbreviations stay as they are in English and are not translated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_units. For example, if in our original, “12 in” appears, we would not translate it as “12 pulg.”. Instead, we would leave it as “12 in.”. What we can do is convert one measurement from one system to another. For example, we can convert feet to meters or vice versa.

If you are a company looking to expand your market internationally, you have most likely already considered using translation services to translate your business material, but have you really thought about which languages you would like your material to be translated into? Of course, this decision largely depends on your target market, location and products and services offered, however you may also want to translate your material so that it is accessible for speakers of some of the most common languages.

Take a look below; you may be surprised at the results!
According to Ethnologue, these are the most widely spoken languages around the world from the year 2000, listed by population of native speakers.

1.    Mandarin Chinese (836 million)
2.    Hindi (333 million)
3.    Spanish (332 million)
4.    English (322 million)
5.    Bengali (189 million)
6.    Arabic (186 million)
7.    Russian (170 million)
8.    Portuguese (170 million)
9.    Japanese (125 million)
10.    German (98 million)
11.    French (72 million)

The term Spanglish came into existence between 1965 and 1970 and refers to any expression in Spanish that borrows parts of English, especially as substitutions of Spanish words.

The most common fields that use and abuse Spanglish are areas related to technology, since most of the products introduced into the market are in English. These terms are commonly used by industry experts and when professionals from other languages need the translation of a text, they don’t want a translation that is so foreign to them for a concept in English that has become widely recognized. They prefer terms that are familiar over terms that are perhaps more correct in their own language.

This is how we have coined words such as resetear (reset), zipear (zip), formatear (format), tipear (type) and bacapear (backup), for example.

As translators, we are frequently horrified when reading text in Spanish that “sounds like English” precisely because they mirror the original in English. We find ourselves saying, “I would never translate like this”. However, the problem is that at times, some clients present us with a dilemma. We can either respect their wishes and use their preferred terminology even if it sounds like English, or translate and follow our own linguistic criteria, creating a text that is less literal but sounds more natural.

As a product of this balance between keeping the client happy and respecting linguistic rules, Spanglish has emerged on the translation market as a linguistic invention situated halfway between English and Spanish. While it has proven to be very useful for clients, reading Spanglish, however, becomes a nightmare for Spanish-speakers who try to conserve the beauty of such a rich romance language as is the Spanish language.

As we already know, one word can have several different meanings which will be defined according to the context. For example, the word trial can have one meaning in a legal document about litigation and another meaning in a document about labor relations. What’s more, these meanings shouldn’t be confused with the meaning that the word has in a medical document.

Unfortunately, not all examples are as clear as this one, and in this case, the translator must have vast knowledge of the topic in order to properly translate the document. We have all been in uncomfortable situations where we are concentrated on reading the document and have found a rhythm when suddenly an unintelligible phrase or word makes us put on the brakes.

This phrase is unintelligible to us precisely because the person who wrote the document did not understand it and thus formulated a completely incoherent sentence lacking basic logic. Of course, we can’t all be specialists and translators in different areas at the same time, but we must rely on specialists in the diverse areas of our translations as much as possible in order to clarify questions or doubts. It is important to keep in mind that the client can act as the specialist and help resolve these types of problems as well.