Still here, editing more than translating

Yes, I’m still alive (both in the physical sense and as a translator). A lot of the action (in terms of freelance translators talking to each other) has moved to Facebook, and dangnabbit, it’s a lot easier to post a link on my FB page and participate in FB groups than to compose a blog post.

My business has evolved over recent years, and now I’m doing a lot more editing of English texts written by (mostly) Spanish speakers than actual translation. When I realized I had been working steadily for several months without doing any actual translations, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Then I thought about how I do actually enjoy the challenge of doing these texts. Many translators abhor them and don’t want to touch them. So – it’s my specialization!

‘Monte’ in English

Monte means “Mount” (as in the name of a mountain), of course, but it also means “tierra inculta cubierta de árboles, arbustos o matas” (RAE); in other words, “bush”.

Suponer

I was familiar with ‘suponer(se)’ meaning ‘to assume’ or ‘to suppose,’ or used to express ‘supposed to’ in texts by Latin American authors, so I was stymied at first when I ran into a different usage from Spanish authors. This usage corresponds to meaning #3 in the DRAE (and perhaps metaphorical use of #5):

suponer.
(Del lat. supponĕre).
1. tr. Dar por sentado y existente algo.
2. tr. Fingir, dar existencia ideal a lo que realmente no la tiene.
3. tr. Traer consigo, importar. La nueva adquisición que ha hecho supone desmedidos gastos de conservación.
4. tr. Conjeturar, calcular algo a través de los indicios que se poseen.
5. intr. Tener representación o autoridad en una república o en una comunidad.

Here are some options for rendering these meanings of ‘suponer’ in English:

• mean
• represent
• imply
• involve
• entail
• present
• result in
• have
• be

False friends in ES>EN pharmaceutical translations

In her blog, “Signs & Symptoms of Translation”, Emma Goldsmith has a brief but very relevant and useful list of false friends in ES>EN pharmaceutical translation.

German–Spanish correspondence that skips over the English middleman

An English speaker learning German will note many correspondences and cognates between the English and German languages. English is, indeed, a member of the Germanic family of languages.

Likewise, an English speaker learning Spanish will notice many cognates – mostly different ones – between English and Spanish, due mainly to the Latin roots of Spanish and the influence of Latin on English.
 
There are many fewer correspondences between Spanish and German, and very few that skip over English altogether, but here are three that I’ve noticed:

1. German and Spanish use the same word for “heaven” and “sky” (Himmel and cielo, respectively), unlike English.
2. German and Spanish use the same word for “morning” and “tomorrow” (Morgen and mañana, respectively), unlike English.
3. This one is a little more complex to explain. A long-running popular detective show on German TV is called “Tatort,” literally “the place (Ort) of the deeds (Tat),” but the compound word translates to “scene of the crime.”  “El lugar de los hechos,” in Spanish again would literally mean “the place of the deeds/events” but the phrase, like the German compound word, has the connotation of “the scene of the crime.”

Annals of bad literary translation

I’m excited to have another amazing story to add to Life in Translation’s collection of bad literary translations.  At the same time, though, it’s disappointing to see that French readers who thought they were reading classic 1950’s hardboiled detective and noire novels were actually reading distorted and condensed versions of them.

Here is the L’Expresse article: Polars américains: la traduction était trop courte.  [American detective novels: The translation was too short.]

Too short—the article relates how entire paragraphs and even chapters were cut out for the translated versions (sound familiar? but the result will have been even worse in mystery novels, where it may result in clues being lost). In some cases, where the amputations (as the article calls them) left the story incomprehensible, bridging text was invented out of whole cloth. The L’Expresse article includes shocking photos of the vandalized text that the translators were supposed to work from.

Moreover, the translators apparently simply didn’t understand English well enough to produce accurate translations. One example: in a scene in James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss, the detective goes to a topless bar. In French, the bar is topless too, but “without a roof”; i.e., homeless.

Creating translations that sound like originals: some examples

In the current issue of Panace@, a Spanish language journal of medical translation and interpretation, Juan Manuel Martín Arias has a short article (pdf) illustrating some pitfalls of over-literal translation of certain terms from English to Spanish.

Turning his examples around results in a lesson in obtaining natural-sounding translations from Spanish to English.

 In Spanish, a drug (medicamento, not droga, but that’s another story) is “consumed” or “administered:”  

El consumo de antidepresivos tricíclicos produce efectos secundarios de tipo anticolinérgico.

La administración de antidepresivos tricíclicos produce efectos secundarios anticolinérgicos.

Los antidepresivos tricíclicos producen efectos secundarios anticolinérgicos.

These words (consume, administer) would not be out of place in English versions of these sentences, but as Martín Arias points out, they are the correct translations of  “use” or “utilize” in this context; hence:  

The use of tricyclic antidepressant agents is associated with anticholinergic side effects.

In Spanish, a drug is not initiated, interrupted or suspended; rather it is treatment that is initiated, interrupted or suspended. Thus, if you have the sentences

El tratamiento con amlodipina se suspenderá al menos 3 meses antes del inicio del estudio clínico.

or

Se dejará de administrar la amlodipina como mínimo tres meses antes de iniciar el estudio clínico.

you might be inclined to translate them as

Amlodipine treatment should be suspended within 3 months before trial initiation.

But if you realize that these sentences are proper translations of

Amlodipine should be discontinued within 3 months before trial initiation.

you will get an English version that is more propio del inglés.

Here is Juan Manuel’s other example illustrating this point:

He gives

El tratamiento con antiangiosos se iniciará lo antes posible.

 or

La administración de antianginosos debe empezar tan pronto como sea posible.

as translations of

Antianginal agents should be initiated as soon as possible.

Without taking this into consideration, you might translate these sentences as

Antianginal treatment should be initiated as soon as possible.

or

Administration of antianginal agents should begin as soon as possible.