| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Bad source text Thread poster: Gregory Lassale
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| A video dubber gave me the answer | Oct 2, 2018 |
A rather famous dubber, dubbing director, and video translator with whom I had the privilege of working several times, once pointed me to the answer.
Emerson Camargo said:
"No matter if the original actor/person onscreen stutters, falters, chokes, mispronounces, or even changes subject in the middle of a phrase, the dubber is not allowed do it (unless it befits the script, of course!), otherwise the result will look unprofessional."
So I transposed it to text tra... See more A rather famous dubber, dubbing director, and video translator with whom I had the privilege of working several times, once pointed me to the answer.
Emerson Camargo said:
"No matter if the original actor/person onscreen stutters, falters, chokes, mispronounces, or even changes subject in the middle of a phrase, the dubber is not allowed do it (unless it befits the script, of course!), otherwise the result will look unprofessional."
So I transposed it to text translation:
I am expected to unravel the original meaning of the idea - no matter how poorly stated it was - and express it as clearly and accurately as I can in the target language.
Incidentally, as we haven't been in contact for ages, I googled him, and learned that he is no longer among us since April last year. RIP Emerson!
https://vejasp.abril.com.br/blog/memoria/morre-o-dublador-emerson-camargo/ ▲ Collapse
| | | | Nicholas Isard 
Spain
Local time: 18:09
Member (2020)
Spanish to English
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| A slightly different situation | Aug 9, 2021 |
I'm in a slightly different situation. I'm translating a website and the content is just incoherent. The individual sentences can be more or less deciphered by doing extensive research, but together the paragraphs make no sense. It's like somebody has just copied and pasted sentences, and used lots of fancy and sometimes random words to reach a word count. Whole sentences are more or less repeated later on in the text and the paragraphs have no theme whatsoever.
I've talked to the c... See more I'm in a slightly different situation. I'm translating a website and the content is just incoherent. The individual sentences can be more or less deciphered by doing extensive research, but together the paragraphs make no sense. It's like somebody has just copied and pasted sentences, and used lots of fancy and sometimes random words to reach a word count. Whole sentences are more or less repeated later on in the text and the paragraphs have no theme whatsoever.
I've talked to the client, who is currently on holiday, who just said to push ahead, as they have no time to lose (they're looking to launch their new website in October).
Anybody been in this situation? I'm at the point where I might just politely ask them to rewrite it and then send it make later on in the year (we're talking at 100k words).
This is an end client. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:09
Serbian to English
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| Yours might be a different case | Aug 24, 2021 |
Nicholas Isard wrote:
I'm in a slightly different situation. I'm translating a website and the content is just incoherent. The individual sentences can be more or less deciphered by doing extensive research, but together the paragraphs make no sense. It's like somebody has just copied and pasted sentences, and used lots of fancy and sometimes random words to reach a word count. Whole sentences are more or less repeated later on in the text and the paragraphs have no theme whatsoever.
...
This is an end client.
Your text might well be in fact very "coherent", but within a different kind of logic.
It is quite possible that the text was written primarily with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in mind. There is a whole "industry" selling advice about SEO.
That would explain all these repeated / fancy / random words, which are there to be noticed by search engines, so all synonyms to "keywords" get repeated ad nauseam.
| | | | | The "in-house experience" with bad source texts | Aug 25, 2021 |
As an in-house translator, I regularly have to translate very poorly written and/or ambiguously worded source texts. It's mind-numbing. And the worst thing is, as an in-house translator, you can't refuse to translate what lands in your inbox.
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Koume
Local time: 02:09
English to Japanese
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| I would tell the client/agency | Sep 1, 2021 |
I sometimes come across the problem too. If I find it as a critical issue (even if I can "guess" the message), I would inform the client/agent to avoid being complained as my mistranslation. If I need extra time to translate due to the issue, I will negotiate for extra charges.
| | | | | It could be worse | Sep 4, 2021 |
Daryo wrote: Nicholas Isard wrote:
Your text might well be in fact very "coherent", but within a different kind of logic.
What about an incomprehensible source text (grammar wise spoken) without any logic?
Let me tell you a short story
I once received a sloppy source text in Spanish, which on itself is bad enough. The autor started with "earthly" politics and ended up in UFO's and stuff coming from other solar systems.
I thought I had translated the text wrongly, I couldn't make head nor tails of my Dutch translation. As it turned out, my translation was correct, the content was total nonsense.
This was one of those times you start to doubt your abilities as a translator.
[Edited at 2021-09-04 17:56 GMT]
[Edited at 2021-09-05 17:49 GMT]
| | | | | Some agencies would fix the bad source text first | Sep 21, 2021 |
Last week I received a poorly written file in English from one of the agencies I work with. They asked me to review the file and "look for errors that may make it hard to understand for native English speakers".
I assumed it was a poorly done translation and reviewed it as I would've reviewed any other translations. Wrote suggestions for the translator in the comment section too.
Turns out there was no "translator". It was the source text their client provided and they wanted ... See more Last week I received a poorly written file in English from one of the agencies I work with. They asked me to review the file and "look for errors that may make it hard to understand for native English speakers".
I assumed it was a poorly done translation and reviewed it as I would've reviewed any other translations. Wrote suggestions for the translator in the comment section too.
Turns out there was no "translator". It was the source text their client provided and they wanted it translated into Russian.
Another agency I work with would have their in-house reviewers or sometimes project managers improve the source text first before they send the files out to their translators. This is reserved for the most important/lucrative projects only, though. Usually the translators will have to face the poorly written source texts alone, lol.
I would try to make my translation look decent no matter how bad the source text was, as long as I'm being reasonably compensated.
Usually the client won't pay me extra for the quality of their source text though. In that case I'd still make sure I'm not making any major grammartical or factual mistakes, but they'll need to accept that the translation won't look too pretty/won't be 100% accurate.
[修改时间: 2021-09-21 03:48 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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