Last year, I wrote about my experience of the ITI German Network’s mentoring programme, where I was mentored on the topic of legal/contract translation. I found it a very useful experience and decided to complete a further course of mentoring, this time in one of my areas of specialisation: academic translation. My reasoning was that in many ways it would be even more useful to have some input with regard to an area that I do more work in.
Dr Michael Loughridge, an academic and translator who has even written a book on the topic of translating from German, very kindly agreed to act as mentor. In a procedure modelled on the German Network mentoring scheme (although it was not officially part of that scheme), Michael provided three short texts that he had previously translated himself and gave comments on my own translations of these texts. Below, I discuss some of the things I learned from the experience.
Dr Michael Loughridge, an academic and translator who has even written a book on the topic of translating from German, very kindly agreed to act as mentor. In a procedure modelled on the German Network mentoring scheme (although it was not officially part of that scheme), Michael provided three short texts that he had previously translated himself and gave comments on my own translations of these texts. Below, I discuss some of the things I learned from the experience.
Michael sent me three recent scholarly texts from different fields to translate: an encyclopaedia entry, the introduction to a treatise on history and a passage from an essay dealing with philosophical topics (although my own academic background is in philosophy, that was certainly the most difficult of the texts). Michael then responded to the points I had flagged up for discussion, as well as raising other comments on my translation, and I was able to compare my work with his original translations.
Partially for reasons of time (Michael and I were both keen to stick to a three-month schedule), I worked on the texts in a faster and less meticulous way than I would normally do for a paid job, and left certain questions of translation open for discussion in comments. As I mentioned in my recent post on proofreading training, this approach can also serve as a kind of test for myself: what “baseline” quality of work can I produce without checking and rechecking my translations?
The answer is that, at least for complex academic translations, a little more checking and rechecking would probably still be advisable! But having a slightly rawer translation proved useful for the purposes of this exercise, where the aim was to learn and discuss rather than to produce a polished text for a paying client.
Some of what I learned was very specific in scope, concerning particular German or English terms: for example, the meaning of “ausmachen” in the sense of “discern”, the multiple meanings of “bestimmen” or the question of whether the English term “modernity” can be used as a synonym for “the modern era” (apparently not). I was given some fresh inspiration for alternative ways of tackling phrases that crop up time and again in academic German, such as “trace” for “nachvollziehen” or “illustrate” for “aufzeigen”. More commonly, I was able to witness numerous ingenious solutions that, sadly, could not be generalised to other contexts.
A lesson could also be drawn precisely from the fact that these insights were so specific to the terms that happened to crop up in these particular texts. What this makes clear is the value of having one’s texts reviewed, since there are no general rules I could have followed in advance that would have allowed me to anticipate and rectify the accidental gaps in my knowledge and ability; they can only be revealed subsequently on an unsystematic, ad hoc basis by someone attending to the particular text I have produced.
In addition to specific points, I was able to compare general ways of approaching problems and different styles of translation. In some cases, it was interesting to see that our solutions overlapped very neatly: there were a few points where I questioned whether to slavishly follow what my language knowledge (or Duden) told me the German was saying or to follow what my subject knowledge told me must surely actually be meant; both Michael and I tended towards the latter in our translations.
However, Michael’s approach differed slightly with respect to how far to deviate from the source text for stylistic reasons or how much it is permitted to expand speculatively on what the author has actually written. I have a tendency to sometimes move further away from the text in order to make it sound better and more plausible in the English, but Michael emphasised that it is often better to stick closely to the text unless there is a very strong reason not to. Stylistic niceties shouldn’t necessarily be favoured at the expense of losing a deliberate distinction or emphasis. Moreover, it was striking that when he followed this philosophy in his own translations, the results did not in fact sound unnatural. unclear or clunky in English in the way I had imagined they would have to; academic style can seamlessly accommodate turns of phrase that would jar in other contexts.
This point dovetailed neatly with one made in a webinar by Brian Mossop, and that I was grasping towards in my own earlier post on perfectionism, namely that it is important not to waste one’s energy on “improving” sentences that can be translated perfectly well in a fairly straightforward and direct manner. Embellishing such sentences unnecessarily can be inelegant, can give us a false sense of satisfaction that leads us to overlook more urgent problems and is an uneconomical use of time that could be better devoted elsewhere in the text. In other cases, Michael had a clearer eye for places where a too literal rendering would not work in English or where context required a non-standard translation (for example “old-school diplomats” rather than “old diplomats” for “alte Diplomaten” in one case, or “peasants” and “seamen” rather than “farmers” and “sailors” for “Bauer” and “Matrosen” when talking about Revolutionary Russia). Again, this tallies with another point made in Brian Mossop's webinar about the need to be able to separate micro-level attention to detail in the source text from a more holistic reading that is focused on the sense and coherence of the target text. On this point, I have recently begun to suspect that translation tools, which present texts in segmented chunks, may tend to skew the translator’s perspective more towards the former at the expense of the latter, so I am reconsidering whether and how to use them for texts of this kind.
As I had hoped, this proved to be a useful exercise that gave me a lot to think about. I also enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the nitty-gritty of the translation process and to appreciate some of Michael’s own very neat solutions to thorny problems. It was a particular pleasure to be able to learn from someone with Michael’s considerable experience and a welcome reminder, once again, of the benefits that this sort of exchange with colleagues can bring.
Partially for reasons of time (Michael and I were both keen to stick to a three-month schedule), I worked on the texts in a faster and less meticulous way than I would normally do for a paid job, and left certain questions of translation open for discussion in comments. As I mentioned in my recent post on proofreading training, this approach can also serve as a kind of test for myself: what “baseline” quality of work can I produce without checking and rechecking my translations?
The answer is that, at least for complex academic translations, a little more checking and rechecking would probably still be advisable! But having a slightly rawer translation proved useful for the purposes of this exercise, where the aim was to learn and discuss rather than to produce a polished text for a paying client.
Some of what I learned was very specific in scope, concerning particular German or English terms: for example, the meaning of “ausmachen” in the sense of “discern”, the multiple meanings of “bestimmen” or the question of whether the English term “modernity” can be used as a synonym for “the modern era” (apparently not). I was given some fresh inspiration for alternative ways of tackling phrases that crop up time and again in academic German, such as “trace” for “nachvollziehen” or “illustrate” for “aufzeigen”. More commonly, I was able to witness numerous ingenious solutions that, sadly, could not be generalised to other contexts.
A lesson could also be drawn precisely from the fact that these insights were so specific to the terms that happened to crop up in these particular texts. What this makes clear is the value of having one’s texts reviewed, since there are no general rules I could have followed in advance that would have allowed me to anticipate and rectify the accidental gaps in my knowledge and ability; they can only be revealed subsequently on an unsystematic, ad hoc basis by someone attending to the particular text I have produced.
In addition to specific points, I was able to compare general ways of approaching problems and different styles of translation. In some cases, it was interesting to see that our solutions overlapped very neatly: there were a few points where I questioned whether to slavishly follow what my language knowledge (or Duden) told me the German was saying or to follow what my subject knowledge told me must surely actually be meant; both Michael and I tended towards the latter in our translations.
However, Michael’s approach differed slightly with respect to how far to deviate from the source text for stylistic reasons or how much it is permitted to expand speculatively on what the author has actually written. I have a tendency to sometimes move further away from the text in order to make it sound better and more plausible in the English, but Michael emphasised that it is often better to stick closely to the text unless there is a very strong reason not to. Stylistic niceties shouldn’t necessarily be favoured at the expense of losing a deliberate distinction or emphasis. Moreover, it was striking that when he followed this philosophy in his own translations, the results did not in fact sound unnatural. unclear or clunky in English in the way I had imagined they would have to; academic style can seamlessly accommodate turns of phrase that would jar in other contexts.
This point dovetailed neatly with one made in a webinar by Brian Mossop, and that I was grasping towards in my own earlier post on perfectionism, namely that it is important not to waste one’s energy on “improving” sentences that can be translated perfectly well in a fairly straightforward and direct manner. Embellishing such sentences unnecessarily can be inelegant, can give us a false sense of satisfaction that leads us to overlook more urgent problems and is an uneconomical use of time that could be better devoted elsewhere in the text. In other cases, Michael had a clearer eye for places where a too literal rendering would not work in English or where context required a non-standard translation (for example “old-school diplomats” rather than “old diplomats” for “alte Diplomaten” in one case, or “peasants” and “seamen” rather than “farmers” and “sailors” for “Bauer” and “Matrosen” when talking about Revolutionary Russia). Again, this tallies with another point made in Brian Mossop's webinar about the need to be able to separate micro-level attention to detail in the source text from a more holistic reading that is focused on the sense and coherence of the target text. On this point, I have recently begun to suspect that translation tools, which present texts in segmented chunks, may tend to skew the translator’s perspective more towards the former at the expense of the latter, so I am reconsidering whether and how to use them for texts of this kind.
As I had hoped, this proved to be a useful exercise that gave me a lot to think about. I also enjoyed the opportunity to discuss the nitty-gritty of the translation process and to appreciate some of Michael’s own very neat solutions to thorny problems. It was a particular pleasure to be able to learn from someone with Michael’s considerable experience and a welcome reminder, once again, of the benefits that this sort of exchange with colleagues can bring.
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