Quality control of the translation
Quality control of the translation must be done by the translator, first and foremost, and can be done by an editor, either a hired editor or the translator’s colleague.
Giving advice to translators, a experienced British professional translator Geoffrey Samuelsson-Brown suggests the following steps for quality control:279
· Resolve any queries that you may have with a subject expert or the client. It is not infrequent that the quality of the translation is governed by the quality of the source text.
· Check to ensure that the entire text has been translated - you could easily have been interrupted for a number of reasons and missed some part of the text.
· Check all figures and dates in the text and in tables.
· Carry out a spell check using your word processor program and grammar check if available.
· In every case proofread your translation. If possible, set your translation aside for as long as possible when you have completed the first draft. Read your text as an original text and not as a translation.
· Pass the translation to a colleague for checking in order to get a more objective view of the translation.
· Discuss any corrections with the proof-reader, where required. Incorporate the corrections and changes where these are relevant. Repeat the spell check to ensure that the corrections and changes do not contain typing errors.
In evaluating a translation, proof-readers usually mark four types of mistake: distortions, inaccuracies, stylistic drawbacks, and solecisms.
Distortion is a blunder marring the sense of the original by describing another situation and, thus, misinforming a receptor. Distortions generally occur because of the translator’s misunderstanding of the text, poor language knowledge, and insufficient background awareness. The often repeated example of machine translation of the biblical text can illustrate the point: The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak translated as Спирт хорош, а мясо протухло.
Inaccuracy occurs when a translator mistranslates some detail of the text. Inaccuracies result from misunderstanding a word or a structure. For example, the time of the situation is incorrectly conveyed in the translation of the sentence: Говорят, эта церковь была построена в 14 веке. – *This church is said to be built in the 14th century. The wrong form of the infinitive is the cause of the inaccuracy. Or another example, cited by Nora Gal: the source text tell of an old woman who wants to buy a dog and explains her desire this way: I want something human. – Хочу, чтоб рядом было что-то человеческое. This translation sounds somewhat unnatural in Russian; it would be much better Хочу, чтобы рядом была живая душа.280
Stylistic drawback is a deviation from target language stylistic and semantic norms. Often, this fallacy is due to underestimating translation transformations: e.g., It’s high noon. The sun beats down on the dusty, deserted main street of Dodge City. - * Полдень. Солнце бьет по пыльной пустой улице Додж-Сити. *Солнце палит на безлюдную улицу города Додж-Сити. The translation would be more natural if the student translators used partitioning of the sentence and found another equivalent to the verb: Город Додж-Сити. Главная улица пустынна. Стоящее в зените солнце жжет нещадно.
Solecism is a syntactical error resulting from breaking structural norms of the target language because of the translator’s illiteracy or because of source language interference. Another citation from Nora Gal’s experience: И никто не увидит нас вернувшимися обратно. Evidently, the translator meant Никто нас больше не увидит. (Мы не вернемся обратно.)
If a translated text is meant to be published, the translator is sure to deal with an editor, the central figure in the publishing industry. Some experienced translators become eventually editors of publishing companies (Nora Gal, Ivan Kashkin281 and others).
Generally, the editor’s tasks are as follows:
- arranging creative and publishing work;
- checking the translation;
- consulting the translator;
- in some countries, the editor’s tasks include recommending titles (authors and books), appealing to them, for publishing.
The editor is a conductor of the publishing house strategies. S/he oversees that the translated text meet all the proper norms and requirements. One of the exemplary editors of the time was Alexandre Blok who required that translators show the author’s individual style in the natural flow of the target discourse.282
To perform his/her role successfully, the editor must be very competent, even more experienced than a translator. It is desirable that the editor know two languages (unfortunately, sometimes publishing companies have only monolingual editors, editing translations haphazardly). Normally, editors check translations into their native tongue, in which stylistic, semantic and syntactic resources they are completely proficient.
An intelligent, patient and benevolent editor is a real help and mentor to a translator. The editor has the right to insist on emending the text, but it is the translator who is responsible for the target text, not the editor. The translator, after all, comes to a consensus with the editor, or rejects his comment. It is as illegal for a translator to emendate by him/herself the text, already checked by the editor, as for an editor to alter the target text without the translator’s consent.
It is essential that a translator understand proofreading (editing) marks, which follow national standards and are marked both in text and in margin. The most important of them are as follows:
- leave unchanged (both in English and Russian): _ _ _ _ _ under characters to remain unchanged;
- refer to translator if anything is of doubtful accuracy: encircled question mark or word;
- insertion: Ù in English, and Ú in Russian; etc.*