Maybe our local city government isn't so bad after all. Even if their prose is mindnumbingly bureaucratic, at least they're sensible enough to get it properly translated.
One of my jobs today was proofreading a brochure for a different city. Up to about two thirds of the way through the English was at least comprehensible, if not all that grammatical. But then it suddenly turned into sentences like this:
They argue at the equal viewpoint as the engine of which it became independent respectively also though it's exchange of cooperating each other, city council and city chief are making an effort toward improvement of a life of city people
The person whose job it was to produce the English version must have run out of time and just thrown the last part through some translation software. I ended up sending it back to the agency with a plea for them to request the original Japanese; OK, I could have a stab at making some sense out of this, but it would be a creative reconstruction akin to trying to reproduce a portrait of someone's face using nothing but a heap of splintered skull bones.
In a sense it is reassuringly bad, though. At least computers aren't going to be putting us human translators out of a job any time soon.
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4 comments:
Hi I have been reading your blog for awhile now!!! I really enjoy it!
hehehe, nice English isn`t it.....so confusing and complicated!!
I was wondering how you got jobs doing proofreading for that sort of thing. I am heading back to Australia soon fr a year but will be coming back to Japan after I am married and would love to get involved in doing proofreading if possible!!!
Your kids are cuties!
Hi Lulu,
Thanks, it's nice of you to say that!
I used to work in publishing in London before I came to Japan, so it was relatively easy to get started here. Basically, get as much experience as you can, starting now - offer to proofread for free for any organizations you're involved with (school, church, NGO, whatever), and ask around all your friends and contacts to see if any of them can put you in touch with people who need something done. Then use your contacts when you get back to Japan, this time with some experience to put on your resume. If you know anyone who's already working in that field, see if they'd be willing to recommend you to their clients, or pass jobs on to you. Join the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators; post to their mailing list, attend events, make new contacts, show you're keen to get into the business.
It's also a good idea to read books on English style, like Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" or Fowler's "Modern English Usage." A lot of proofreading is actually nit-picking - distinguishing between "which" and "that," "due to" and "owing to", "is composed of" and "comprises," making sure that if something starts with a capital letter in one place it does all the way through the document. You have to be really detail-oriented.
I enjoy it, but that's probably because I'm critical by nature and enjoy picking out all the tiny flaws in other people's writing. (When I'm working, that is - NOT when I'm reading friends' blogs for pleasure!)
Job security! It is reassuring isn't it? How any one actually markets those machine translators as value for money is beyond me. Considering the amount of time I sometimes spend fussing over semantics I can't see how a machine CAN ever get it.
Hi Claire,
I really enjoyed those thoughtful comments on language, translation and proofreading.
From European experience, machine translations are sometimes quite welcome -- when human translators are not available... But the human translators are so much better -- and indeed so much friendlier!
Here in sunny Kenya, thinking of you all, and looking forward to seeing you soon.
Isabelle.
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