The Translator Diaries

I'm delighted to announce a new series of articles to be published on this website, starting Saturday 2nd March.

The Translator Diaries features a weekly interview with tweeting translators, from some of Twitter's most established linguistic professionals to recent industry débutants.

They will be telling us, in specific terms:

• What made them want to translate
• How they broke into the industry
• How they acquired the experience and qualifications required to be a successful translator
• How they found making the transition from university or from another job to translation
• How they found the initial start-up phase

The interviews will also answer questions such as how much experience do you need to go freelance, how necessary is a postgraduate degree, what are the typical problems that face translators starting out, and how can they be overcome.

With the routes into the industry being rather diffuse, we will look at concrete examples of how translators have established themselves in the industry and built a successful career.

The series starts next Saturday with Megan Onions' story of starting up Speech Marks Translation.

I'm looking forward to it and I hope you are too!

Investing in yourself as a translator

Translators need to continually invest in themselves. We all know this. Continuous professional development, both on a professional and personal level, enables us to take on new challenges, but also to gain more confidence in our work. It’s no wonder that the ITI encourages us all to keep up with our self-training.

Mastering without a Master’s 

In the past year, I have taken a keen interest in the subject of breaking into the industry and how translators establish themselves in the career, evidenced by a talk I’ll be giving at Newcastle University next week, an upcoming series of interviews with translators (watch this space), and my posts last year on whether a postgraduate qualification is necessary to be a translator. Unfortunately, there is no yes or no answer.

Although it is true many agencies stipulate that their translators must have a Master’s or equivalent in translation, would they turn down someone without this qualification, but who is highly experienced in a specialised area in demand? There is no doubt, however, that a postgraduate qualification would put you in a strong starting position and allow you to cement yourself in the career.

I left university with my BA in Modern Languages desperate to break into the translation industry, but to train on the job rather than study the theory behind it. That was a personal choice, one which I stand by; studying for a Master’s in translation may well be a better choice for others, and I have an enormous amount of respect for translators who have successfully built their careers on their MAs, not to mention those well-established translators who take up a postgraduate qualification later on in their career to give themselves a formal acknowledgement of their authority in an unregulated industry.

Preparing to succeed 

Having worked as a translator for two years, I feel I am entering a good position to accredit my skills with an equivalent qualification. For this reason, I have decided to pursue the Diploma in Translation. As this is an exam only, and as such there is no teaching involved, I will be undertaking a fifteen-week preparatory course for the DipTrans. I will need to learn which techniques are the best to use and build up my specialist terminology base, ready to sit the exam in January 2014.

Of course, this will make me £1,500 lighter overall – a minuscule figure compared to the cost of a Master’s and not one which qualifies for a student loan. Nevertheless, it is still worth contemplating whether the investment is worth it. As the ‘gold standard’ in the translation industry, it is notoriously difficult to pass (reportedly a 30% pass rate), and failing it will result in forking out the money again and waiting another year to re-sit whichever of the three module are not passed).

I will keep you updated as I progress, rather than retrospectively, from starting the course to receiving the results in fourteen months’ time, in an effort to exhibit a first-hand experience of the exam and its preparation, and help others decide if this qualification is suited to them. If you would like to find out more about the DipTrans, visit http://www.iol.org.uk/qualifications/exams_diptrans.asp. 

Top 5 Pseudo-Anglicisms in German

I’ve talked about Denglisch (and how much it bothers me) before, whereby English words continue to influence German vocabulary. ‘Downloaden’ is an infamous example, particularly because Germans are perplexed as to how it would fit in within their grammar. If you have downloaded something (past tense), would it be ‘downgeloadet’ or ‘gedownloadet’? But there is also a far darker side to Denglisch. This is where Germans use a seemingly English word in their lexis with a meaning that doesn’t correspond to English at all. Such words are known as pseudo-anglicisms. 

"Language changes. Get over it," you might say. English has a rich variety of sources, so would it be hypocritical to discourage foreign influences on other languages? No, it wouldn’t. We are far more ‘linguistically aware’ than ever. Many are proud of their language and wish to protect it, particularly given English’s role in globalisation. But why should native speakers of the English language also not protect their language from misuse? It may not be threatened by other languages, but it is a proud language that does not want to be taken as a joke.

Translators will be more than familiar with German’s preference for English terms over its own, but will have no doubt seen English-looking terms for which they have even had to consult a dictionary. Here are some of the worst perpetrators:

Wellness

Wellness is synonymous with a
massage and some candles

Although it is in the English dictionary, most native English speakers would probably be unable to define this word. Is it a new buzzword meaning health or well-being, or is it part of the ideology of some New Age cult?

Germans will associate this word with being pampered at a Wellness-Hotel, perhaps in the secluded mountains of Austria where one can enjoy the utmost tranquillity and relaxation. In English, we could probably just call this a spa.

As the phrase is used so often in
German, this key exists on the
German keyboard to save time

Know-how

I don’t know any into-English translator who doesn’t weep slightly on the dozens of occasions each day when they see this in a German text. Referring to technical skills, this term became popular with the rise of the computer, but fell out of favour with English speakers when it became cliché management speak.

Despite the fact that KnowHow is the popular face of the support service offered by electronics stores Currys and PC World in the UK, using this term in most other contexts in English is linguistic suicide. Conversely, the phrase is enjoying booming popularity in German. However, I usually translate it as knowledge and/or expertise.

Beamer

A Beamer beams just like a beamer

A Beamer in English means a BMW. A beamer in German means video projector. I’m stumped as to how this crept into German. We can see that the word ‘beam’ might have something to do with it, so perhaps the image of a BMW's headlight projecting into the darkness provided some kind of metaphor, but as far as I know, we have never used the word beamer in this way in English. Granted, beamer is quicker and easier to say than ‘Videoprojektor’, but we can’t say that Germans aren’t used to long words.

Jeremy Kyle - the Talkmaster.
Known as such since he never
lets his guests speak

Talkmaster

A term unheard of in English. One might hazard a guess that it might be synonymous with chatterbox, but alas, it means a chat show host. Talkshow is the ‘German’ word for a chat show, so when coining this term, did they not think it would be a bit silly to just apply the word ‘Meister’ on the end? Evidently not.

Street working can have various
interpretations

Streetworker

No other pseudo-anglicism gives rise to such a significant potential misunderstanding between a German and English speaker than this word. The meaning of streetworker is more innocent in German, referring to a social worker rather than a lady who was the object of the 1978 single Roxanne by The Police.

Conclusion: these examples present a very good case for language regulation. Languages continue to draw inspiration from others and evolve; this has always been and shall continue to be the case. Nevertheless, since we are more linguistically aware these days, we should make intelligent decisions to protect the heritage of our languages.

This is not a denouncement against language enrichment, which is a completely different subject; rather it is a call to do away with needless jargon that serves no purpose when alternate terms already exist in or can be constructed using elements from the target language. Otherwise, it demonstrates a lack of respect not just for the adopting language (German), but the adopted language (English). As English becomes the world’s lingua franca, some of those who speak it as such forget that it is a proud native language for others, who do not want to see it subjected to ridicule.