DOES THE TRANSLATOR NEED TO BE A SUBJECT MATTER EXPERT?
Translators often deal with unfamiliar topics that fall outside of their field of expertise. This has led some people to take the view that only subject matter experts are equipped to translate a given text. We do not share this opinion and believe that a well-trained translator can always educate himself or herself about the topic of the text, especially thanks to modern search tools and other easily accessible information resources. The translator is increasingly required to show skills that go beyond the mere mastery of two languages. Nowadays, a translator must be well read and curious about the world, be a tireless researcher who is willing to learn about any topic, and be perseverant enough to dig deeper into the text to understand what it means. At the same time, a translator must always be ready to question his or her own assumptions.
COMMON OBSTACLES TO UNDERSTANDING
Despite the variety of documents, topics, and circumstances, it appears that the vast majority of comprehension difficulties in translation fall under one of two categories:
1. Novelty: Novelty is when the translator encounters a topic or a concept that is new to them. Novelty can arise from the translator’s lack of familiarity with the topic or from the fact that the concept itself is a new coinage in the source language. For example, when translating a document about information technology, the translator may be faced with a newly coined term such as “material design,” a concept developed by Google around 2014 and introduced in more recent versions of the Android operating system.
The translator first needs to understand what “material design” means in English before setting out to find an equivalent in the target language. A quick search of the Linguee dictionary app (www.linguee.com), for example, reveals that the majority of occurrences of “material design” deal with actual materials and are translated into French as conception des matériaux. This equivalent is useless in this context because the expression does not refer to the material of which the device is made, but rather a software design concept that makes virtual objects look more real.
Other interesting examples are “disruptive technology” and “native advertising.” Understanding the definition of the concept and devising an equivalent that covers all its semantic traits is a daunting task. For example, some equivalents suggested in Arabic for “disruptive technology” only retain the disturbance caused by such a technology, whereas it would be more relevant to look for an equivalent focusing more on its groundbreaking nature.
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When faced with novelty, the translator is inevitably required to read beyond the lines to get to the bottom of the new concept through all possible means (e.g., by consulting dictionaries and encyclopedias, search engines, including images and videos when available, asking experts, reading other documents on the same topic, and examining relevant bilingual texts if available).
Through research, the translator can sometimes “witness” the event being described. For example, the “silent spectre of a candlelight vigil” referred to by the United Nations Secretary-General in his message on the World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims in 2014 became much clearer to the translator after finding pictures of the event online. This inspired the translator to devise a better equivalent. In another case, watching a video on YouTube about airdropping food pallets helped the translator understand the context. Such external sources can even allow the translator to ascertain the exact title of an event, the accurate pronunciation of entities, and the names and the gender of participants referred to in the text.
2. Ambiguity: Ambiguity is a situation where the translator encounters a word, phrase, or sentence that can be interpreted in more than one way, especially when the context does not provide enough information to select a correct translation. A frequent case of ambiguity in English texts is that of nominal compounds such as “collaborative procurement agreement.” (Does “collaborative” describe procurement or agreement?)
Ambiguity can also stem from a poor word choice by the author or speaker. One translator was working on a document where the authors frequently used “nation states” instead of just “states,” implying that they had a specific category of states in mind. However, the context did not support such an interpretation. Fortunately, the translator had the opportunity to communicate with the authors. After several emails back and forth, the authors agreed to simply drop the word “nation” throughout the document.
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A poor grammatical construction or a spelling mistake in the text can also create ambiguity (e.g., when “export specialists” was misspelled as “expert specialists,” or when “lessens the burden” appeared in the text as “lessons the burden”). Seemingly insignificant typing errors like these can cause a lot of unnecessary pain for the translator. This is the reason texts need to be edited carefully, but not all clients are ready to allocate the necessary resources to do this.
Finally, there are cases of deliberate ambiguity, especially in diplomatic discourse. The example of intended ambiguity in the withdrawal clause in United Nations Security Council resolution 242 is notorious.3
Some may argue that all the translator needs to do when faced with ambiguity is simply to carry it over to the target language (i.e., keep the translation ambiguous in the same way). However, it is not always possible to find a word or phrase in the target language that carries the same multiple meanings. Add to this that tolerance for ambiguity may vary depending on the audience or even the culture.
Faced with ambiguity, research is again the best tool in the translator’s hands. Specific tools include relating the text to other texts on the same topic to see if they can shed light on the ambiguity (rel-texting, chron-texting). Previously translated documents (bi-texting) can also give the translator new ideas based on how other translators approached the issue.4
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