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Should I 'back translate' translated exerpts of the text or find the original?
Thread poster: Madeline Robinson
Madeline Robinson
Madeline Robinson
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:47
Italian to English
Nov 29, 2017

Hello everybody at Proz,

I'm not sure I've used 'back-translating' correctly here, but here is my situation:-

I am translating an academic article in Italian into English. The article discusses American art during the cold war period and quotes American articles on the subject in Italian translation. For example:
 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 04:47
Spanish to English
+ ...
You decide Dec 2, 2017

If you think you can do as good a job as the previous translator, I don't see why you shouldn't present your own rendering. Also, it may be quicker than trying to find the original text, especially if the quotations are obscure/less well-known.
On a couple of occasions I've come across translations of quotations which had originally been in English, which were easy to find. However, I seem to recall having tweaked them a bit anyway.

[Edited at 2017-12-02 11:28 GMT]
 
Daniel Frisano
Daniel Frisano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 04:47
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
De-quote the quotation Dec 3, 2017

You can re-translate to English and make it clear that it is - so to speak - an explanation of the original English rather than a quotation. I have done the same on a couple of occasions when it was impossible to find the original.
 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 04:47
French to English
As a last resort Dec 3, 2017

Daniel Frisano wrote:

You can re-translate to English and make it clear that it is - so to speak - an explanation of the original English rather than a quotation. I have done the same on a couple of occasions when it was impossible to find the original.


I would do this but only as a last resort after trying hard to find the original quotes. I would first do my very best to find the quotes and insist on speaking with the author of the text to ask them.
 
Madeline Robinson
Madeline Robinson
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:47
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
Missing part of my question Dec 3, 2017

Hello everybody, Thank you so much for your advice. I had problems posting the other day and the following part of the message was missed off: -

"For example:
 
Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 04:47
German to English
Same question asked one or two weeks ago Dec 4, 2017

You can't fill an academic article with misquotations. Translating an Italian translation of an English source back into English and placing the results in quotation marks is misquoting the source - plain and simple.

There are contexts where that is no big deal, but misquotations are never acceptable in an academic article. (Of course, they do sometimes happen, and I guess that if a physicist cites Clement Greenberg in an aside, it doesn't really matter if the quotation gets garble... See more
You can't fill an academic article with misquotations. Translating an Italian translation of an English source back into English and placing the results in quotation marks is misquoting the source - plain and simple.

There are contexts where that is no big deal, but misquotations are never acceptable in an academic article. (Of course, they do sometimes happen, and I guess that if a physicist cites Clement Greenberg in an aside, it doesn't really matter if the quotation gets garbled, but in 99.99% of cases this is absolutely unacceptable and a big deal.)

Worst case, you could use Daniel's suggestion, but there is a big difference between quoting and paraphrasing a statement, so quotations should remain quotations as far as reasonably possible.

The author might be able to simply forward all or almost all of the original texts to you. Any obscure quotation is unlikely to have already been translated into Italian, so he or she presumably translated them personally. Any quotation that is not obscure is easy to find in the Internet, particularly when you have a citation to point you in the right direction. ▲ Collapse
 


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Should I 'back translate' translated exerpts of the text or find the original?







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