translating resumes and proper nouns
I swear, the next person who asks me to translate their resume is going to get a Brighton brick to the face, or they're gonna pay out the ass.
A friend of mine is considering producing a cross-cultural TV series about art. I, stupidly, agreed to help. Now, in his struggle to find the proper host, I'm stuck translating pages of proper nouns.
Look, I understand the need for research in my role as a translator, but the nature of my work is essentially writing. The writing part is something I can do because I can control it, and it's far and away the most fulfilling part of this job, and it's that part, plus my ability to understand the source, that define my role. Proper nouns, on the other hand, unless I'm the one coming up with them, aren't something I control at all. I have no control at all over what parents decide to name their children, what authors and publishers name their books, and what producers name their movies and TV shows.
But there's a few more particularities about China that make this even more of an issue:
1) In a market like China, where foreign media gets swallowed up and translated faster than it can be produced, almost everything has a name that's been translated before. If you can think of a license, a department, a college, a town name, a book, it's been mentioned somewhere in the vast corpus of Chinese literature, and that means that for most things, there's an accepted English translation, which means I can't create it.
2) English is a prestige language, contacts abroad are valued and actively sought after, Chinese people love to travel and live abroad, and that's not a phenomenon limited to a tiny upper echelon of people. Every one of the million-odd factories in this country has an English name, and we won't mention the gajillion other qualifications, businesses and agencies, certifications, departments, schools, and other agencies that qualify for proper nouns. Oh, and then there's that little habit Chinese people have of taking English names. If someone is even marginally famous, chances are the name they go by in the English-speaking world ain't the one their momma gave 'em. Pretenders to fame do the same (I currently know five women who introduce themselves as "Vivian" and have known many, many more). More concisely, you can bet every god damn proper noun in China has an English translation already, and they loathe going by romanization, which is generally what English does with the rest of the world's languages.
3) The insular English-speaking world generally doesn't give a rat's ass about keeping records of the native-language names of things, and beyond the most obvious, world-famous stuff that comes out of China, doesn't bother. Meanwhile, the Chinese side, while obsessive about inventing English names for things, isn't too good about getting the word out or keeping records about it. Most companies, departments, certifications, and other organizations have English names, but no website. If you wanna know what it is, you probably have to call them, and then you'll have to convince the person on the phone to find someone who knows what the name is in English. For media, the record is out there somewhere, but searching for it isn't easy, because it's usually buried in a BBS post or in someone's blog. Or not even online. The information only exists within the Chinese sphere, and it's not organized.
So there it is. I can't invent names, and I can't find them. Hands down, the most time-consuming part of my job is translating proper nouns. The amount of research is just ridiculous, and since I get paid by the word, it comes out to me earning about $1/hr. I spend translating more obscure proper nouns.
So I think, in the future, I'm going to have a special price for proper nouns. That's the only way I can see this working out. No client is worth this much headache.
A friend of mine is considering producing a cross-cultural TV series about art. I, stupidly, agreed to help. Now, in his struggle to find the proper host, I'm stuck translating pages of proper nouns.
Look, I understand the need for research in my role as a translator, but the nature of my work is essentially writing. The writing part is something I can do because I can control it, and it's far and away the most fulfilling part of this job, and it's that part, plus my ability to understand the source, that define my role. Proper nouns, on the other hand, unless I'm the one coming up with them, aren't something I control at all. I have no control at all over what parents decide to name their children, what authors and publishers name their books, and what producers name their movies and TV shows.
But there's a few more particularities about China that make this even more of an issue:
1) In a market like China, where foreign media gets swallowed up and translated faster than it can be produced, almost everything has a name that's been translated before. If you can think of a license, a department, a college, a town name, a book, it's been mentioned somewhere in the vast corpus of Chinese literature, and that means that for most things, there's an accepted English translation, which means I can't create it.
2) English is a prestige language, contacts abroad are valued and actively sought after, Chinese people love to travel and live abroad, and that's not a phenomenon limited to a tiny upper echelon of people. Every one of the million-odd factories in this country has an English name, and we won't mention the gajillion other qualifications, businesses and agencies, certifications, departments, schools, and other agencies that qualify for proper nouns. Oh, and then there's that little habit Chinese people have of taking English names. If someone is even marginally famous, chances are the name they go by in the English-speaking world ain't the one their momma gave 'em. Pretenders to fame do the same (I currently know five women who introduce themselves as "Vivian" and have known many, many more). More concisely, you can bet every god damn proper noun in China has an English translation already, and they loathe going by romanization, which is generally what English does with the rest of the world's languages.
3) The insular English-speaking world generally doesn't give a rat's ass about keeping records of the native-language names of things, and beyond the most obvious, world-famous stuff that comes out of China, doesn't bother. Meanwhile, the Chinese side, while obsessive about inventing English names for things, isn't too good about getting the word out or keeping records about it. Most companies, departments, certifications, and other organizations have English names, but no website. If you wanna know what it is, you probably have to call them, and then you'll have to convince the person on the phone to find someone who knows what the name is in English. For media, the record is out there somewhere, but searching for it isn't easy, because it's usually buried in a BBS post or in someone's blog. Or not even online. The information only exists within the Chinese sphere, and it's not organized.
So there it is. I can't invent names, and I can't find them. Hands down, the most time-consuming part of my job is translating proper nouns. The amount of research is just ridiculous, and since I get paid by the word, it comes out to me earning about $1/hr. I spend translating more obscure proper nouns.
So I think, in the future, I'm going to have a special price for proper nouns. That's the only way I can see this working out. No client is worth this much headache.