User manuals, instruction guides, handling instructions and operating guidelines are texts where two elements are equally important. The terms and facts about the described tool, machine or software matter a lot. And, of course, the user must be able to perform a certain task with the tool, machine or software. Therefore, the needle of the Text Type Detector, T-TD, goes to upward right.
What is important when translating user manuals and instruction guides?
Last time I travelled abroad by plane I bought a book in one of the airport bookstores. You know, one of those books you buy just to pass the time during the flight…
This time, I was in for a real surprise and therefore I will recommend you this little book for a change.
It is, of course, translation focused. It is also fun to read. Really. I kept giggling and chuckling all the time, sometimes almost to the point of cracking up. The fun part, of course, are the mistakes frequently made by native speakers of German when they use similar words in English that are, however, totally inappropriate in a given situation.
The book’s title is “False Friends in Business English”. It was ingeniously written by Stephanie Shellabear. The intended audience are business women and men in German speaking countries. Not only does Shellabear give wonderful real-life examples, she also emphasises pitfalls, describes common mistakes and shows how to avoid them. She has a clear, easy-to-read instructive style without ever lecturing the reader.
I particularly liked the classification of errors by cringe factor. A very good idea!
The book will be really helpful to those German speaking Austrian, German and Swiss business travellers, who want to avoid some of the embarrasing moments when the English speaking opposite is too polite to comment on yet another gross misnomer…
And for those with good knowledge of English (and native or very good knowledge of German) it is hilarious lecture*.
Stephanie Shellabear,
False Friends in Business English,
ISBN 978-3-648-01113-3,
Really good reading.
Enjoy!
Karoline
*pardon the pun, couldn’t resist: that would be the German “Lektüre”, which, of course, should be translated as “to read” or “reading” in this place…;-)
To all of you, a happy Holiday Season and my best wishes for the New Year
Today, the company website is one of the most important means of communication for successful businesses. With the internet being accessible worldwide and many even small companies acting beyond the borders of their HQ country, an English version of the company website is a must.
Over the last 12 something months I have investigated the international English-language websites of 100 Austrian B2B companies.
For those who do not know: the official language in Austria is German. Therefore, most English website versions are translations.
The results are scary but no surprise:
For a non-German speaking visitor, more than half of the English websites are completely useless. Unless the visitor is already familiar with the company, it is hard to find information on the company, on the product and on how to get in touch.
Often, the translations are simply insufficient from a language point of view. The English version is unimaginative, of a low quality, and lacks the spirit of a message beneath. But the translators are not the only ones to blame, because there is a relation between the German source version and the English-language version.
The study covers 20 test criteria on 74 pages. It is available as PDF for a small compensation of EUR 75. Please note that the study is available in German only. Contact me at karoline.mrazek@dokuconsult.at to order.
Karoline
or
the Illusion of Verbatim Translations
Translation always is an approximation. Even between languages with a very similar cultural and linguistic background some concepts remain simply untranslatable.
Therefore, the traditional idea to mirror a text word by word in a target language – i.e. what most people have been forced to do at school – does not work in the real world, especially in business reality.
If there is no exact match for a certain concept expressed in one language in the other language, what does a translator do? Well, s/he must find a way to make the situation clear to the reader in the translation. This can be done through comments, with added descriptive explanations, or by finding a similar concept in the target language.
What really matters is to evoke the same emotional and/or intellectual response to the text in the reader.
Simple word-by-word match-writing is not suitable for a professional text.
make every word matter
Karoline
In the translation business different types of pricing have appeared among translators and across regions and countries. Why, I have no idea, to be honest. In other service professions, the hour is a common benchmark by which the services of different providers can be compared. In other, more tangible services, say a foot massage or a training course of some kind, the service itself is a unit with a certain price.
So far, so good. But what do we have in translation? There are prices per word, per line, per page, per character, percentages of known and unknown text sections, and some colleagues only give lump sum estimates for the texts they work with.
I think it’s not wise to keep the client in the dark about pricing. It leaves behind a feeling of uncertainty in the client, which in the end bounces back to the provider as a “no, sorry, we will accept the quote that gives us a clear idea about what we will have to pay in the end.”
Hello again. Sorry for the long interruption in my blog entries. First, I had to tackle a rather complex project involving GUI localization. There was lot of pre-existing client terminology involved that needed alignment and checking. Then, I needed a brief vacation.
From the latter I brought something back for you: The funny side of wrong translations.
While the English and German versions on the first sign became somewhat clear in the context (there was a huge fenced-in construction site next to the sign), I never really grasped the meaning of the second. I just liked it a lot and laughed heartily for quite some time after taking the shot. The sign stood in a window next to the entrance of an Asian restaurant in Rome. I never saw anybody walk in…
Until soon
Karoline
As explained in part one of this series, the translation industry uses its very own jargon.
Some more technical terms have accumulated in the entries since Translatorspeak – Part I:
Or rather: How to translate GUIs properly.
If you work on a computer on a daily basis, you probably will have noticed that in some applications the wording used on the user interface is sometimes quite strange to say the least. Sometimes it’s plain wrong altogether.
Here’s a little true story about how these user interfaces, or GUIs as they are called, are produced. GUIs are usually developed by GUI programmers. Programmers are software developers and as such a highly technically minded type of people. They are usually only marginally interested in inter-human conversation. At least when they work they think in code. Not as exclusively so as perhaps the hardcore database programmers do (no offence), but still enough to sometimes twist natural language beyond recognition.
Don’t get me wrong. Developers are a nice bunch of people. I have worked with many of them on a lot of occasions and I have nothing but the fondest memories of them. Nevertheless, I believe that programmers should not be trusted with writing texts. Even if they are as short as GUI strings.
To sum it up, the initial GUI texts are often written by technicians. They are usually clipped to fit the constraints of the limited available space on the screen. And they often contain abbreviations or contracted technical terms intrinsic to the software at hand. Grammar is usually of no major concern.
The texts that appear on the screen are usually collected in so-called source files before the software is compiled or generated and shipped. These files are sometimes also called resource files.
When it comes to translation, such resource files are thrust at a translator. Most of the time with no background information at all about the software, how it works, and what it does. Hardly ever, screenshots are made available to the translator, let alone other helpful information such as manuals or design documents.
Do you see what I mean?
Does it begin to register why some software texts are so badly written and even worse when translated?
Experienced GUI translators would never accept to translate source texts without access to the software. Screenshots are the absolute minimum background information required to start serious translation work. Ideally, also the software design documents and/or a manual are provided to the translator.
So, to make it right, the translator must have:
Good GUI texts are an important software usability factor
Today, I am going to kick off a new series. And I will introduce a cool little tool to you: The personal Text Type Detector, or T-TD.
I mentioned before that texts have different types. So, what does this mean for translation?
How do you grasp the type of a text? And what do you do to get it right; the transfer of the types of text from one language to another?
In my experience, all texts have three top issues to ponder, three text parameters featuring in every text. First, the author and her/his style and storyline. Second, and somewhat opposed to the first, there are the readers/users and what they should do or how they should react when reading the text. Third, there’s terminology or the literal meaning. This trinity rules every text. But, and actually we must capitalize this BUT, the weight of the three chunks varies a lot between the different types. All parameters are closely related to the purpose of a text.
Text analysis itself is easy. With the T-TD. I feed the text into this mind tool and see where the meter goes. The element that dominates a text is where the needle sticks.
Read the rest of this entry »
