Re. More notes on translation

[Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

 Diane Ritchey suggested that she had been advised by
 various folks at "translation houses" that "translations
 take roughly as long as the original writing". Not to put
 too fine a point on it, Diane, but they're either
 intentionally deceiving you to guarantee that they've got
 more time than they need to meet your deadline, or they're
 not particularly skilled at their jobs.

 I do French to English translations of all our technical
 reports (forestry engineering, reforestation, etc.) as part
 of my job. I'm pretty good at it, but I'm not Mr.
 Translation. I can translate a 32-page report complete with
 graphics, tables and figures in about two days, including
 interruptions and bugging the author for clarification;
 that's probably about 10 pages of 8.5 X 11 single-spaced
 text per day after you delete the visual parts. If the text
 is much more complicated, maybe three days (say 7 pages per
 day). Revision and approval takes about another 2 days all
 told, but broken into several chunks because the manuscript
 has to circulate. Don't ask how long it took the author to
 write it (including research and data analysis), me to edit
 it (before translation), and the peer review process to
 spit it back out again so we could publish it... just take
 my word for it that it's significantly longer than four
 days. <grin>

 Our professional French translator (thanks, Therese!), who
 does this work full-time, is at least as fast (often
 faster), and she doesn't get to bang on an author's door
 with her questions. Despite relying on e-mail and phone
 calls, her work also requires less revision than mine. (On
 the other hand, the problem isn't with my technical
 accuracy; because I'm the editor, and cover their pages
 with red ink, my authors take a certain pleasure in editing
 _me_ and playing with _my_ wording. Go figure! <grin>)

 It is possible that your translation houses are including a
 full review and usability test of the documentation
 (described below), including whatever review cycles you
 would practice for the English version, in which case their
 estimates are closer to the truth... but it still won't
 take the same length of time to translate as to write. Not
 even close. Think about it: how much work do you do just to
 collect the information you need to begin writing? Do they
 do this work all over again in the second language? I doubt
 it. How much revision do you do until you get the thoughts
 and the words that express them just right? You've already
 done all that work for the translater.

 Your second question concerned testing the quality of a
 translation. There are always two main tests you'll have to
 do: test with your users, and test with your technical
 experts. The users must read the translation to verify that
 the language is appropriate for their needs; for example,
 when I worked for the federal government, our French
 translaters were accurate, but they often used fancy words
 that were trendy (say) in Paris or some literary magazine,
 but our readers had never heard of these words. (In some
 cases, the words weren't even in our basic dictionary!) I
 always simplified these words; I have this unreasonable
 philosophy that if a sample of your audience doesn't know a
 word, they should at least be able to find it in the sort
 of dictionary a non-editor would own. <grin>

 The techies must read the translation to be sure that the
 correct words were used; there are lots of near misses in
 technical translation, and only an expert who also speaks
 the language fluently will be able to tell you if the
 correct word was used. If you don't have an expert who's
 skilled in the second language, you'll have to find one.
 The other task, particularly if you don't understand the
 language yourself, is to make sure that every sentence in
 one version was transferred into the second version, and
 that every number, cross-reference, name, etc. was retyped
 correctly. Try your local STC chapter, or one of the
 European chapters, to find a good bilingual editor. Some
 technical editors can verify that everything was retyped
 correctly _and_ that the translater used the correct jargon
 _and_ that it reads well for the reader, but you'll still
 want to test things on your audience.

 Alexander von Obert, if you're listening, can you provide
 suggestions for European contacts in editing and localizing
 second-language versions of an English text? Can anyone
 else provide Asian (etc.) contacts? I'm thinking of
 addresses for STC in other countries, or equivalent
 organisations (e.g., translation associations such as ATA).

 That's the short version; I'll elaborate further if you're
 interested. I'm also sure that this message will attract
 some contrary opinions, which I'm looking forward to
 seeing!

 --Geoff Hart    @8^{)}
 geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

 Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of our
 reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.