Getting dirt under your fingernails

            In this final section, we turn to smaller-scale strategies that come into play as we work our way through a particular translation job. First, though, we would like to provide some context by reiterating the basic model of the translating process which we outlined in Section 2.
            In our view, good professional translators will set out to become intimately acquainted with their source text (one workshop participant called it ‘undressing’ the text), internalize its form and content, and then launch their new version into the world. Or to put it more succinctly: take it in, make it one’s own, put it out.
            Yet another way of regarding the process is to treat the translator as a special kind of reader: as well as ‘re-creating’ the text in his or her own mind (i.e. what a reader normally des), it is as if the translator is also required to render a detailed written account of their professional ‘reading’ of the text.
            We can use this model as a frame in which to set the various micro-strategies which a translator needs to have at his or her fingertips. And, inevitably, this entails getting dirt under our fingernails! Moreover, a crucial feature of the model we are presenting here is that it involves not just our minds, but our bodies as well.            When we translate, it is our body which is the vehicle for the ‘sensibility’ which tells us whether or not we like what we have done. As we have seen, every process can be described in terms of operations, tests and decisions (see the part on questions in Section 2). In the case of translation, the test could be a question like ‘am I satisfied with what I have dome?’ and the first, semiconscious answer on which the decision is based appears to be supplied by the body, before it is justified by the mind. The body makes its decision very rapidly, while the mind takes much longer for grounds on which to rationalize it.
            As we saw in Section 2, the process of translating a document from beginning to end is an evolutive one which involves approaching a text, becoming one with it, differentiating from it and integrating it into our world experience and releasing it to a separate existence. Here, we have split the process into three parts to illustrate what happens. However, it is important to bear in mind that we are offering a theoretical model, and our division of the process into a number of discrete segments is an artificial one. The distinctions in real-life translating are not and cannot be expected to be that clean: the phases can occur simultaneously or more than once within the process, for instance, or even in a different order . however, we do believe that the basic model is a valid one. More important still, we believe that it explains how the quality of the end product can only be guaranteed by the process by which the products is created.

 Engaging

             We have all known tourists who spend their holiday looking through the viewfinder of their camera, obsessed with the idea of capturing every last experience on film to take home and show their family and friends. They end up not experiencing the holiday itself! A similar trap awaits translators, who may manage to translate their texts at arm’s length , paying so much attention to words and syntax that meaning and purpose pass by unnoticed. If we choose this approach, there is a real danger that we can live an entire professional life without being touched by all the acts of communication that have gone through our hands (but not through our hearts). This is the translator functioning as a catalyst, effecting the transformation of a text from one language into the other while remaining unchanged by the end of the interaction.
            In contrast, the translating process being described here does not allow the translator to remain a mere catalyst, but rather requires us to commit fully to the process of translating each document, to bring its world of meaning within us rather than keeping it at arms’ length, and to allow ourselves to be changed by what we translate.
            When we work in this way, we do not translate by transposing words or sentences from one language into another. We read and understand a passage, allow it to sink into us until we understand its structure, its raison d’être and its message, and then, holding the intention of the text in our minds, we reproduce the message in our mother tongue.
            In order to generate the kind of motivation needed to commit to our work in this way, it can be helpful to start any new text by embarking on an inner search to find some way, however slight or seemingly trivial, in which the subject of the document touches on our own lives. Clearly, this is easier when our document concerns dioxins in poultry and eggs than micro-components in a nuclear plant. Nevertheless, how many times a day do we switch on a light?
            Much of the ‘engaging’ phase takes places before we even start translating our document. Examples of micro-strategies that operate in this phase are:

• the translating brief: it is surprising how often translators are expected to “just translate” a document without knowing what it is for, who is to read it, where it came from, in what form it is to be delivered, etc. Clearly, having this information will make a great difference not only to our confidence as we start work but also to the actual words, phrases, presentation and register we decide to adopt. Even if a useful brief cannot be obtained from the client, it is still important to have some idea in our mind about the purpose of our work before we embark on it. Indeed, research by Janet Fraser of the University of Westminster has shown that professional translators will always tend to invest a brief for themselves where one is lacking or inadequate.
• thinking/reading around the context: while it is tempting under time pressure to launch straight into translating a document as soon as it lands on our  desk, it is helpful (and often time-saving in the end) to spend some minutes reading the text itself and any background material relevant to its subject matter. This activity can contribute to filling in an inadequate brief, although most professional translators are wisely reluctant to spend too much time hunting in vain for illusive reference documents. However, we often have a ‘hunch’ that there might be more useful background material than what we have been given – again, it is often a felt-sense in the body that lets us know we have a hunch in the first place.
• the art of not starting too soon (and not stopping too late): we have already mentioned the importance of body sensations as information from our unconscious mind about when things are going well and when things are going wrong. Knowing when we are ready to start translating and at what point to declare a job finished are both cases when this sensitivity to our intuition is a key. Our feeling-sense can be used as an excellent indicator that we are “ready to go”. Translators who consistently make an initial examination of the document for translation report that there is often a powerful surge of energy when the context becomes clear and missing pieces of the meaning fall into place. If we were to wait more often until receiving this signal from our subconscious creative minds before launching into a translation, how much better the results would be. We suggest you try this and see for yourself: try holding back until you are bursting with inspiration, with choice words and elegant phrases oozing from your fingertips. The actual translation goes much faster and more effortlessly and the quality of the final result is usually in another league.

 Integrating

            Every document we translate contains some information that is familiar to us (given) and some that is new. As we engage with a text and bring the new information it contains inside our inner world, that new information will penetrate our existing body of knowledge and understanding of the world, filling in gaps but also subtly (or even radically) and irreversibly adjusting what was already there in order effect a seamless integration into a new and coherent whole.
            Part of the process of internalizing a text as we translate it involves what Karla Déjean Le Féal calls deverbalising. This is stripping away the words of the original document until we are left with only the representation of what the words describe. This process takes some time, particularly in the beginning, but it is a failsafe way of ensuring that we really do internalize our work, rather than just skimming along on the surface and playing word games with the lexis and syntax. In an ideal world, we should not begin generating words in the target language until the meaning of the text is completely free from the original carrier medium of the source language.
            One of the dangers of many of the new translating tools like the Translator’s Workbench (TWB) is that they provide the translator with ready-made segments of text in the target language (lifted from earlier documents), making it much easier to stay on the surface of a document. And yet in our hearts we know that what was an adequate translation for the document from which the segment originated is unlikely to be as adequate for the document we have before us now.
            So many translators cry “but how can we be sure that the segments we are offered by the TWB have been properly validated”? the answer is “No previous translation can ever be assumed to be valid for the document you are working on now: it is our job as translators to re-validate every word or phrase we use.” And how does this re-validation happen? Often enough, it is our bodies that tell us whether we can safely re-validate a term or a phrase, or when we have adjusted it satisfactorily to the present context and purpose. But our bodies can only give us this information if we have made the extra effort to internalize our translating process, brought it down out of our heads and into our hearts and guts.
            So much of the process described here takes place unconsciously that it is important to stop and tae stock, before we finish, of what has changed in our inner world. What do we know now that we did not know before? In what way does the world seem different to us now than when we started translating this document? What will I do differently in future as a result of what I have learned here today?

 Releasing

             The cut-off point, the moment when we finally decide that enough is enough and we can let our translation go out the door will probably depend on a number of criteria which might themselves vary from job to job.

• Context is as usual a key factor (What is this translation wanted for? How important is absolute perfection? What will happen if it is not ready on time?).
• Time is another factor (there is not always the option of “I’ve started so I’ll finish” when the buzzer goes at time-out!).
• The additional effort required to make the translation that much better can be another factor. Is it really worth the effort in terms of the difference in result? This will often depend on context and time factors.

             Some translators seem to have more difficulty that others with putting the finishing touches to their translations, thereby suffering the agonies of perfectionism. We find ourselves holding onto our “baby” until the last possible moment and actually relinquishing it into the hands of the client or a reviser can be a stressful moment. Most examples of this phenomenon ca be reduced to two underlying causes:

a)      ‘perfectionism’: “With a little more time I could make this even better”. Such perfectionism is often accompanied by a fear of criticism for any unspotted mistakes or infelicities, an over-identification with our handiwork which prevents us from letting go even though this particular job might not call for the level of perfection that we are comfortable with. (this phenomenon arises from the prevailing paradigm that quality takes time (see Section 1);

b)      ‘under-confidence’: “I’m not happy with the results of my research so far, there are still some points I need to clear up”; sometimes we need our solutions to be confirmed by others we consider to be more expert before we feel confident enough to let a job go.

             As we have seen throughout this article, it is important to make a distinction between the translation as a product and translating as the process whereby the product is arrived at. When we ‘release’ a document we have finished translating, we will find ourselves looking at it in a different way: we will have moved on from the translating process to be able to view the finished translation as a product destined for our client.
            In order to be able to produce a document from our own depths in the way we are describing, we need full access to all our internal resources and knowledge. When we act as a mere ‘translator as catalyst’, it is easy to keep an arsenal of notes, cards, documents, books, dictionaries to help us in our work of translation. When we come across a new word, we make a card, or a MultiTerm entry, we file the finished product for future reference. However, all these resources are outside us.
            When we have worked intimately and internally with a document, the process of recording our learnings is rather different, as described above. How can we be sure we have truly integrated what we have learned? One sure test (sure because the answer comes from our bodies, not our wishful thinking) is the degree of comfort with which we are able to loosen our gasp on the document and everything connected with it when the time comes to release it into the world. If we find ourselves clutching onto external forms like a copy of the translation to file for future reference, terminology cards, etc., etc. this is an indication that the integration process is not yet complete. It is feedback that we did not absorb this document quite so completely as we might have done. Of ten we can be pretty sure that the text we have just finished will return in a fresh reincarnation some time in the future. How will we recognize, when the time comes, that we have seen all this before? The final step in the process of releasing a translated document into the world is to review the communication process that it is part of, and to take stock of our own contribution to that process. This is particularly important for translators, since if we don’t recognize our own contribution, it is unlikely that anyone else will.

Tentative conclusions

            By writing this article, we have been continuing the process of digesting our workshops to date, seeing yet more underlying connections and homing in on what we believe to be the really fundamental issues. We summarise these issues below by way of a conclusion.

• Although quality of the finished product is created in the process of translating, there is no direct relation between quality and time spent. What generally distinguishes a good translation from a mediocre or poor one is not the length of time taken but the attention and commitment invested by the translator in the process of translating it.
• Professionalism in the filed of translation has to do with taking the broadest possible view of the communication context in which our work is situated. Only when we do this can we be sure of providing our clients with what they really need. 

• Enormous benefits can be reaped from cultivating our awareness of the “meta-context” within which the translating activity unfolds. This means:

       - being aware of the modes of thinking and presuppositions we habitually use,

      - knowing which other modes are available, and

      - understanding which are the most appropriate in any given translation context. 

·         The three-part model of engaging/internalizing/releasing described in Section 3 is a first step towards formulating a method that can systematically help us to bring these insights to bear in practice and put the production of quality within our grasp, tangibly and on a practical, day-to-day basis.

The end