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Mālō ‘etau lava,

We're now at the conclusion of Tongan language week involving a series of events throughout the country, including events at parliament, a careers expo and community events and church services attended by dignitaries such as the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs as well as some of our own Tongan translators. This all attests New Zealand's close ties with Tonga and the Pacific and the importance of the Tongan language here.

Earthquakes have also been rocking the capital over the past month and we are all a little on edge from this. I sincerely hope that you and your families are safe and well and I would like to point out the translations we carried out for Civil Defence on how to prepare for and react in an emergency: www.getthru.govt.nz. This may be a good time to review this information and update your emergency kit (links to the translated pages can be found down the bottom of the screen).

This month's newsletter covers some crucial information about revising other translator's translations. The revision process is the single most important step in ensuring that the final, published translation is accurate and high quality – the buck stops with the reviser!

International Translation Day is only a month away on 30 September! It's time to celebrate our profession – a profession that dates back almost as long as written language itself!

Happy Translation Day and best wishes from the team here at the Translation Service!

Q.R.

This newsletter is written for you. As such, we want you to tell us what or how we could improve its content. What would you like to read? Give us your feedback.

Kesar recently joined our panel of freelance translators and provides translations from Punjabi and Hindi. Born in Northern India, he migrated to New Zealand in 2004 and now lives in Manukau. Holding a Law degree and a master’s degree in History, he was recently admitted to the bar and now works for a law office as a staff solicitor. He has two children – a beautiful daughter who is six years old, and a naughty five-year-old son.

He’s always keen to help others and the community, and volunteers with many organisations.

Here are his answers to the Proust Questionnaire.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Always give, donate, and help others.

What is your greatest fear?
Falling from a height.

Which person do you most admire?
My father.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Lack of pride and confidence

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
No comment.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Books.

On what occasions do you lie?
When I forget to bring something that my wife has asked me to get.

What makes you happiest?
When I help someone.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Become more confident.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My parent’s happiness.

If you died and came back as a person or thing, what would it be?
As royalty, so that I could help the starving and the poor.

What is your most treasured possession?
Intuitiveness.

Who are your heroes in real life?
My dad.

What is it that you most dislike?
Lateness.

What is your motto?
To become a successful person in the eyes of my parents.

We feature a staff member or one of our freelance translators every month. The featured profile includes a picture, a small biography and the person’s answers to a light version of the Proust Questionnaire.

Do you wish to be featured in one of our newsletters? If so, write to Stefan for more details.

Many of you find our use of square brackets a bit confusing, and rightly so. We’ve had a short discussion about this issue and this is the outcome.

When should we use square brackets? First of all, it depends on the type of translation. We only use them in official translations – either selective or full – that are printed on our letterhead paper. If you are doing a translation that is not going to be printed on our letterhead paper, e.g. brochures, web content etc., then you should not use square brackets at all.

When you do need to use them, it is mostly for place names, or for information that isn’t stated (‘[not stated]’ in selective translations). If the document states a village or city and bears the stamp of a state, then include the name of that state as well – without square brackets. For instance, most Punjabi birth certificates will state a village and will bear the logo of the Punjabi state. This is sufficient information to insert ‘Punjab, India’ without square brackets. However, if a birth certificate doesn’t bear that stamp, but you know from your research that the village or city is located in Punjab, India, then you’ll need to put that information between square brackets.

In official full translations, you might need to use them for stamps (in that case, the formatting for this is ‘[stamp: xxx]’), signatures (‘[signed]’), logos (‘[logo]’), and other useful information (e.g. ‘[page 2]’, ‘[Translated from French]’, and so on). Do not use them for anything else! If ‘and’ isn’t stated in the source text, but would be good in the translation, don’t insert it between square brackets.

Just remember to use square brackets wisely.

Feel free to ask us questions if anything is unclear, or share your tips and tricks with other TTS translators.

S.G.

Mox is a young but well educated translator. Two PHDs, six languages… and he hardly earns the minimum wage. Find out more about Mox’s adventures on his blog.

Many of you will be familiar with the way we recruit new translators. Anyone who is interested in applying to become one of our panel translators needs to fill out an application form and do a translation test. When possible, we will ask two of our existing panel translators (i.e. you) to assess the translation and help us decide whether that person is a good translator and should be added to our panel.

To a certain extent, the assessment process is very similar to a revision (see the article on revision in this issue). Both tasks require you to compare the target and source texts, and make sure that the meaning has been translated correctly. While a reviser makes corrections and suggestions, an assessor only makes comments to mark up errors and explain why they are errors (if you aren’t sure how to use comments, read this page).

To help you with this task, we recently established a new quality assessment system and defined two types of mistakes:

• Translation errors: these are related to the transfer of meaning. They may be omissions, additions, mistranslations etc. – the rendered meaning is different to the original;
• Language errors: they relate to the language used in the target text, i.e. spelling mistakes, improper syntax, inadequate language level etc.

There are two severity levels: errors may be either minor or major. For example, the colour of a car in a short description in a novel may not be a major piece of information to the reader – if the car is red in the translation when it is burgundy in the original, it won’t be of great consequence, and would normally be considered minor; however, in a theft report to the police, the colour of the car is an essential element and any mistake in that regard would be major. Another example is punctuation. While it may generally be considered a minor issue, in a sentence like ‘Let’s eat Grandma!’, the lack of a comma determines what will be served for dinner…

Your comments should contain an error code, as well as a note explaining why this should be considered as an error (in English). 

Error type	Translation		Language
Severity	Major	Minor	Major	Minor
Code	MT	mt	ML	ml

For example:

‘A grey, blue-eyed cat jumped into his lap and started puring.’

Comments:

• his - MT: wrong possessive pronoun. The character is female
• puring - ML: spelling mistake. This should be written 'purring'.

Here’s an example of what you should not do:

‘A grey, blue-eyed cat jumped into his lap and started puring.’

Comments:

• A grey, blue-eyed cat - The cat was grey and had blue eyes and jumped into her lap.
• his - her
• puring - purring

Two general questions round up the assessment process:

1. What is the intended purpose of the original text? Can the target text be used for that purpose?
    
2. On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 = doesn’t sound natural at all; 5 = well written and sounds as if it had been written by a native speaker of the target language), how natural does the translation sound?

As you can imagine, the assessment process is very important. If we ask you to do one, it means that we trust you to give a fair and informed assessment of a test translation that we can then send back to the applicant, so that he/she may become aware of their strengths and weaknesses. As with a revision, you should only focus on errors, and accept that different translators have different styles.

S.G.

This month, we are travelling back in time. Our selective translation is that of a marriage certificate issued in Denver, Colorado in 1928. I have no idea who the two lovebirds are, but their marriage certificate will show you what to do when the name is shortened to the initial, when the place of birth isn’t specifically stated, and how to use square brackets wisely.

The sample selective translations of this series are here to illustrate our guidelines and help you improve your selective translations. We hope you enjoy these mock translations as much as we enjoy doing them. Feel free to send your comments and questions.

S.G.

Disclaimer: This mock selective translation wasn’t requested by Immigration NZ or Citizenship.

Click on the image to open it in your Web browser and find out about the art of selective translations.

Do you know exactly what a reviser does or should do? Many of you carry out revision tasks for us, as our translation process includes a revision stage in accordance with the EN 15038 standard for translation services. But do you know exactly what revision entails?

We can start by stating what it isn’t:

• revision is not a retranslation, i.e. you should not do the translation all over again;
• revision is not proofreading, i.e. you should not only read the translation and make sure that it sounds good.

As a reviser, your task is to compare the translation to the original text to make sure that the translator understood the source text correctly and transferred its meaning adequately into the target language. This means that you are responsible for making sure:

• that everything has been translated – no omissions should be left unmarked;
• that the terminology has been properly researched and used;
• that there is no spelling or punctuation error;
• that numbers have been transcribed accurately – for example, the number 1,250.30 in English is 1 250,30 in French;
• that the formatting of the translation reflects that of the original;
• that the tone and style of the translation match those of the original text and are appropriate for the intended readership.

In doing so, a reviser needs to respect the original translator’s work and style, and accept that the same meaning may be expressed in different ways. For example, ‘I slept through my alarm clock this morning’ and ‘My alarm clock didn’t wake me up this morning’ express the same idea; both options would be acceptable.

In that regard, our personal stylistic preferences are irrelevant. The role of a reviser is to eliminate errors and by doing this, improve the quality of the translation. If the text submitted to you doesn’t contain any errors, then you shouldn’t make any corrections. You can however make rephrasing suggestions if you think that they would significantly improve the quality of the translation.

From a practical point of view, please use track changes to mark your corrections (if you don’t know how to use track changes, read this page), and use the comment function to make your suggestions (learn how to use comments here).

You may also find it helpful to use the error categories mentioned in the article on assessing translations (translation and language errors), as well as a third type of errors: compliance errors – these relate to the non-adherence to instructions, style guides, required format etc; a blatant disregard of instructions would qualify as a major compliance error, while a slight deviation from the instructions given is a minor one.

Thinking of revision in those terms may help you distance yourself from your personal preferences and focus on errors per se. As mentioned earlier, it shouldn’t prevent you from suggesting important improvements – you only need to be able to distinguish between improvements and corrections.

Finally, if you believe that the quality of a translation is too poor to be revised – but that should only happen on rare occasions, shouldn’t it? – let us know and give some examples. Do not start translation afresh without being instructed to do so by the project manager.

We are in the process of developing an ongoing quality assessment system, which should be implemented by the end of the year at the latest. This will involve a few changes in the way we do revision, but the basic concept of revision will remain. Compulsory training in that area will also be provided.

S.G.

All translations are not equal. A good translation is one that conveys the same meaning as the source text and sounds natural in the target language (if that is the desired outcome of the translation). Some do just the opposite. Here are some of the greatest howlers found in translation, taken from the Daily Mail online. We hope you enjoy them.

If you come across funny mistranslations, feel free to share them with us.

1. The earth is moving
   In a Chinese bathroom, a sign which appears to be warning people of a slippery surface, warns of a far greater risk: ‘Be careful of landslide’. Most English-speaking bathroom visitors would probably look for another bathroom.
    
2. Informative sign
   Passengers in an airport were advised that a plane to Xiamen was ‘delayed due to some reasons’. After all, everyone has their reasons – why not planes?
    
3. Save the environment
   A sign in a Chinese park speaks to your animist self: ‘Don’t tread the grass as they also have life’. Now that’s a metaphysical statement.

S.G.