I was wondering what would happen if - for whatever reason - someone gave me a classroom full of bilingual teenagers and told me I had two hours to turn them into translators. Maybe half-assed translators, but still translators.
Perhaps I’m just distracted today, but for some reason the idea intrigues me. I certainly wouldn’t expound on lots and lots of theories. I have pretty much wall-to-wall books here, some of which are on translation theory. I even have one on *whether* you even need translation theory. But the only good it’s really done me is showing me that, yes, there are theories about why we do what we do. I haven’t needed much of it so far, but it’s nice to know that I can pontificate on the semiotic functionalism of my translational approach to translingual localization, and no one will know what I really mean.
I think the truth is much simpler. Most bad translations that I end up throwing in the trash and redoing for clients are just poorly told stories. I know, this doesn't apply to contracts or tax returns (although Derrida, if he were still alive, would probably disagree), but it does apply to press releases, annual reports, product descriptions and lots of texts that I get to translate. So basically, I would give them a text and tell them to break it down into a story. Then, I would ask them to tell me the story in their other language.
Not convinced? Well, I was doing some research for a translation and found wonderful descriptions of PeopleSoft software. They’re called “process briefs”, but are basically stories with protagonists who save the day using PeopleSoft products. It sounds corny, but it works. I can visualize how PeopleSoft products can help businesses, which could give them the edge over other products, at least if I were in the market for logistics software.
So what could I use logistics software for? Well, I have to move a lot of papers from one side of my desk to the other….
