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English source text is bad translation from another language - What should you do?
Thread poster: Zolboo Batbold
Zolboo Batbold Italy Local time: 08:47 Member (2021) English to Mongolian + ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Nov 13, 2021
It has happened to me a couple of times to recieve source texts in English which were translated from another language (Korean, Chinese etc.), possibly machine-translated and post-edited. As a result, the texts contained wrong terms/collocations, awkward-sounding sentences...just overall bad. Is this common practice? A method to bypass other language pairs? I'm considering not accepting such texts in the future. It's time-consuming to translate such texts. What is your opinion on this?
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Mr. Satan (X) English to Indonesian
In my case...
Nov 13, 2021
...I try my best to translate them. Thankfully I love linguistics, so I don't mind learning some vocabulary in languages I don't speak. It also gave me a bit of knowledge about those terminologies that bent my brain beyond recognition. Once, I had to juggle between English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Turkish (I was only asked to translate from English into Indonesian). If there's something I just couldn't grasp after I've used all my resources, I ask the PM or client for some guidance or clarificat... See more
...I try my best to translate them. Thankfully I love linguistics, so I don't mind learning some vocabulary in languages I don't speak. It also gave me a bit of knowledge about those terminologies that bent my brain beyond recognition. Once, I had to juggle between English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Turkish (I was only asked to translate from English into Indonesian). If there's something I just couldn't grasp after I've used all my resources, I ask the PM or client for some guidance or clarification. But hey, that's part of the job, right?
Is it a common practice? Well, for source texts which were already translated from a different language into English, feels like it. In my language pair, that is.
At least it's still better than a guest ordering Tom Yum without shrimp. Yes, that did happen in my previous job.
Using English as a lingua franca is often a necessity though.
My ex translates stuff into English for a well-known Swedish retailer, and it is her English that is then translated into god knows how many different languages (including American and Australian!).
The risk of a “Chinese whispers” effect is very real though.
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Philip Lees
expressisverbis
Emanuele Vacca
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I can’t remember over the years how many times I had the situation you described, but I suppose it was just a couple of times. I always refuse, the reason being that I can’t translate what I can’t understand.
P.L.F. Persio
Zolboo Batbold
Jennifer Levey
Josephine Cassar
Philip Lees
Christopher Schröder
expressisverbis
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Christine Andersen
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