Page 106 - Translation Journal July 2015
P. 106
Literal translation, AARGH!
By: Franfoise Herrmann
Asking otherwise perfectly calm and composed NYU graduate students and professional translators to translate their patents literally
invariably invokes disbelief and an AARGH reaction! “You gotta be kidding; c’mon, this is a joke ...” Just about everything you learn in
translation is about avoiding the pitfalls of being literal. So being literal is way out of line! Everyone knows that being literal generates
translations like, “It’s raining strings,” instead of “cats and dogs”. And that just won’t do, right?
Well, not quite! The US Courts and Public Administration of the State of California (e.g. the CA Medical Board), in particular, require
“literal, word for word” translations, and if you argue with a judge or the clerk of the court, you may as well go home and do your
laundry.
So indeed you may be screaming inside ...
The trouble is that the Courts and Public Administration of the State of California are hardly wacky, and their requests are legitimate. So,
how do you reconcile all that you hold as true about language and translation with what the courts are requesting? Especially when “literal
translation” is almost a dirty word in your profession!
Fortunately, someone has already done the leg work and saved the day.
In a beautiful article titled “Literal translation of patents” (Cross, 2007), Martin Cross outlines the linguistic parameters of literal translation
- acceptable to both parties. And in the process, he reconciles the intolerable notion of the absurd associated with literal translation from
the translator’s perspective, with the very real, effective, prevailing and uncontestable request for literal, word for word translation coming
in from the courts and public administrations.
In a nutshell, Cross argues that to be literal in patent translation, translators must follow six rules:
1. Reproduce the meaning
2. Reproduce the register
3. Respect sentence breaks and carriage returns
4. Be consistent in the use of vocabulary and phrasing
5. Maintain one-to-one correspondence between source and target
6. Provide appropriate annotations.
All of which appears quite consistent with what most excellent translators strive to do, quite naturally.
Perhaps then, the notion of literal got carried away like “the cow that jumped over the moon”. Perhaps there is indeed miscommunication
106 | Translation Journal - July 2015
By: Franfoise Herrmann
Asking otherwise perfectly calm and composed NYU graduate students and professional translators to translate their patents literally
invariably invokes disbelief and an AARGH reaction! “You gotta be kidding; c’mon, this is a joke ...” Just about everything you learn in
translation is about avoiding the pitfalls of being literal. So being literal is way out of line! Everyone knows that being literal generates
translations like, “It’s raining strings,” instead of “cats and dogs”. And that just won’t do, right?
Well, not quite! The US Courts and Public Administration of the State of California (e.g. the CA Medical Board), in particular, require
“literal, word for word” translations, and if you argue with a judge or the clerk of the court, you may as well go home and do your
laundry.
So indeed you may be screaming inside ...
The trouble is that the Courts and Public Administration of the State of California are hardly wacky, and their requests are legitimate. So,
how do you reconcile all that you hold as true about language and translation with what the courts are requesting? Especially when “literal
translation” is almost a dirty word in your profession!
Fortunately, someone has already done the leg work and saved the day.
In a beautiful article titled “Literal translation of patents” (Cross, 2007), Martin Cross outlines the linguistic parameters of literal translation
- acceptable to both parties. And in the process, he reconciles the intolerable notion of the absurd associated with literal translation from
the translator’s perspective, with the very real, effective, prevailing and uncontestable request for literal, word for word translation coming
in from the courts and public administrations.
In a nutshell, Cross argues that to be literal in patent translation, translators must follow six rules:
1. Reproduce the meaning
2. Reproduce the register
3. Respect sentence breaks and carriage returns
4. Be consistent in the use of vocabulary and phrasing
5. Maintain one-to-one correspondence between source and target
6. Provide appropriate annotations.
All of which appears quite consistent with what most excellent translators strive to do, quite naturally.
Perhaps then, the notion of literal got carried away like “the cow that jumped over the moon”. Perhaps there is indeed miscommunication
106 | Translation Journal - July 2015
