A number of bilingual people have told me they would be translators, but they find my profession too boring. Of course, it may be that they never stood a chance of standing (and fighting) alongside me in the Halls of Translationgarde. It is of course plausible that they really would make decent translators, they just find certain other professions more entertaining. However, I suspect they have been missing out on some of the daily fun and games I discover in my line of work.
Translation is far from dull. Quite the contrary, I play a number of ‘games’ in my role as a freelance translator. Sure, they are not all games in the strictest sense, but they are certainly entertaining, nonetheless.
Almost every potentially frustrating situation can be turned into something amusing, or potentially even insightful. Perhaps you already play your own games? Either way, perhaps my little list will inspire you and make the next awkward task a little less painful.
When translating a badly written source text, I have been known to play:
1) Guess the native language
I gather this happens a lot more often to my from-English colleagues than it does to me. Still, it has happened a couple of times to me and I have had great fun guessing the native language by the mistakes. I can usually narrow it down to language family, but it can get harder when differentiating between related languages.
2) Guess the correct word from the typo/dodgy OCR
Have you had one of those situations where a typo or OCR is so bad, you are playing guess the correct word? For entertainment, I also like to ponder what highly inappropriate words may fit the context.
3) Guess the verb
Sometimes, in my source language (German), it is not just the non-natives who get to the end of a sentence and forget what verb they wanted to use. It happens through sloppy drafting, too. Sometimes the verb is wrong, other times the verb is just not there. This is probably the least fun game to play with a dodgy source text, but occasionally the wrong word can be amusing, and it’s of course always satisfying when the client confirms you guessed correctly. I feel I should get a point or something.
When proofreading a poor translation, I have been known to play:
1) Guess the native language
As above, except now it gets really interesting – you also have to find the weakest link. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between a poor translator and a translator that is native in the source, not the target. Usually this can be identified through uncharacteristic correct translations of terminology that someone who is generally poor may have gotten wrong coupled with persistent basic grammatical errors that a native would rarely get wrong (i.e. the person may be native in the source). This is one of my favourite games!
2) Work out how they got from X to… x94+150*4?
This is always a source of wonderment. For example, when someone translates “for your child’s trust fund” as “fund your trusted child”, you might guess they have only half-understood the source text. Backtracking these thought processes can be great fun! But there are other examples which lead me to the next game…
3) Google Translate! True or false?
This game follows on from the games above. Sometimes, when trying to work out how a translator came upon their chosen term or phrase, I put a small, anonymised section into Google Translate. If it comes back identical to the translation, it’s a hit! Sometimes, I will find something that’s very close but not identical to Google Translate. I figure some translators are simply smartening up Google Translate, and not very well.
4) Spot the biggest lawsuit
Arguably, handing in pure Google Translate is a lawsuit in itself. But in a really, really bad legal or financial translation you may find a number of examples that, if left unchanged, could warrant a lawsuit. I had some great examples just last week! In an employee vehicle lease agreement, I noticed the translator hadn’t quite grasped the concept of “Selbstbeteiligung” (excess, literally, “the part you have to pay”). I thought I’d found a winner when I spotted something on the lines of, “If the employment contract is terminated early for any reason, then all costs of the lease must be paid until the end of the contract term.” Where it should have said excess, as in, the part to be paid by the employee if they wanted to lease a nice vehicle that was beyond the company budget, it now said all costs. Implying the cost of the entire lease. Ouch! BUT that was not all – later, when talking about insurance cover, the translator assured the employee that they would be covered for every minor incident, but not a massive catastrophe, i.e. “The maximum cover amount is 1,000 EUR”. In actual fact, the source had said, “Cover is unlimited, subject to an excess amount of 1,000 EUR”, i.e. you are covered for the big stuff, but the small stuff – that’s your problem! I think that one will remain top on my list for a while.
I like to play the back translation, guess the verb and the typo games, my favorite is the back translation game.
As for “spot a lawsuit”, it reminded me of a legal document which was translated from Spanish to English by 2 certified translators as least that I had to translate into Arabic. I played all sorts of games with this document which was related to payment of a mortgage. It contained bad grammer and numerous inconsistencies, the fatal one of which was related to the numbers of the surrounding plots of the morgaged place, their numbers were mentioned twice in the document, each time using different numbers.
The games will never end!
Ouch. That “misunderstanding” about the “maximum cover amount is 1,000 EUR” really is good one. I mean bad one, of course. Details, details…
Hi Rose, great blog! It’s funny that people say they would be translators but find it boring: I love doing translations, and I think it would be my dream job, but I have never been able to get any work in it! (or only the odd little bit here and there, rarely, not enough to make a living out of!) I know some people, like you, do make a career from it though, so I wonder what I have been doing wrong?! How did you get started in it, may I ask? If I knew that, maybe I could too.
Well, take a look at the series on my blog, “What makes a good, successful and happy translator”. Have a read of the various blogs and books on the subject. Good luck!
Hi Rose
Great stuff!! I definitely had some fun when reading it
)
Now I know that I can play while translating ))
I had a lot of fun when translating texts written in English by non-native speakers. They either put the words in the sentence in a funny way, or “transfer” structures and words/phrases of their own language into English. It’s quite cool when I can recognize what they mean just because I know their native languege a little, but not what they wrote or said in English
Lena
Indeed! It doesn’t happen so much when translating from German, though.
…Just a thought, but wouldn’t it be cool if we really earned points or achievements for certain difficult texts? On most games, understanding a text in English because you worked out the writer’s mother tongue would net you an achievement!
Well, that’s a great idea! But honestly, I believe it’s only us translators who understand what we’re talking about here. Others will most probably say, “Whatever, you’re translator. It’s your job.”
) I think so anyway. I’ve come across lots of cases when clients do not understand why prices depend on the type of the text, on the level of difficulty and so on 
Lena
Nice games indeed! I’ve played most of them…
Hi Rose,
I teach translation, and I like to play a slightly modified version of the “Google Translate” game. Some students know that Google translate is too well-known, so they prefer cheating with other automatic translation sites believing it would be harder to catch them. I used to spend more time playing that game but now, with http://www.translatordetector.com, it’s a pretty fast game.
As for legal translations, the game I love to play is “Can you finish reading the sentence in one breath?”
Haha. That’s a great one! I think German lawyers also play a similar game: “The two-page challenge” – where they try to stretch a sentence over two pages.
Yes, I seem to remember hearing about homework being done using Google Translate when I did my degree. I seem to remember the tutor gave a little talk at some point, on the lines of “…I know some of you may think I won’t notice, but believe me, I do…”
Thanks for reading!
Hi Rose, Interesting read! I don’t play guess the native language because I only work with one language pair, but one thing I like working out – particularly when I find really poor sentences in English – is how the author/translator structured a sentence in the source language to come up with a meaningless sentence in English. I am fascinated but how people structure their thoughts in different languages.
Yeah, the “What the ?!” moment can be quite intriguing. Back-tracking… what did they mean, how did they get there? Glad you found the post interesting.
And don’t forget the always entertaining quest for which of the fuzzy matches from the TM has been copied but not modified according to the source differences!
Very entertaining read, Rose! I’m sure I can come up with a few more, given a bit of thought and time…
Urgh… I forget that one. I don’t tend to work with dodgy TMs, but oh yes, I remember that game….
One of my favourites is wrong or missing punctuation.
A comma can mean life or death, like in the Russian tsar’s telegram “Execute not possible show mercy”. There are many similar saying in English that illustrate the importance of punctuation, remember “Panda eats shoots and leaves“.
As for “Google translate? True or false” try the Machine Translation detector (http://www.translatordetector.com/) – you probably know it, but nevertheless.
Great post, Rose. Always a pleasure.
Oh, I may have seen that link before, but I’d long forgotten it! Oooh. Thanks for the link!
And yes, guess the punctuation! That’s a fine game! Thanks for reading.
Yeah, the Russian one is my favourite!! )) I still get surprised when a Russian doesn’t know it. After all, we all read it when we’re small
Lena