翻譯小工的敲鍵盤日記

Why do people always ask translators, if you don’t understand this subject, how can you translate?

Why don’t they ask designers, if you don’t understand this object, how can you design?

Because the designer’s job is to do his/her research to the extent that he/she is able to present a solution.

And it's just the same with translators.

A translator’s job is to do his/her homework to the extent that he/she is able to figure out what the source text means and render it into a comprehensible and readable target text.

If you are a company, and you are working with designers, would you give the designer a glossary and then say, ‘ok, so that should be it, that’s all you need to know’.

If not, then why would you do that to a translator?

Designers need to work with their clients, not just ‘for’ them. It’s the same with translators. We need to work 'with' our clients.

As a designer, you make ‘a controlled analysis of the surrounding environment with regards to scale, appropriation of color, and balance of geometry’. It’s the same with words. Words also have a ‘surrounding environment’, be it a promotional leaflet, website information, or a magazine article.

Designers don’t just draw something nice and put it up there and say, so this is your logo. No more than translators just cram a few big words together and say, now this sounds like really good English (which 'talks a lot about nothing’).

We translators do our homework. And that, takes up more time than most people would imagine. So there.