Sunday, August 24, 2008

Translation Horrors...

Linguistic nitpickers like me cringe at bad translations. And there's A LOT of them out there. Here's my all time unfavourite.

From Lord of the Rings:
... the ring that was forged...
...cincin yang dipalsukan...

Right... Forgery = palsu. Heh. Korang ni tak reti cakap Melayu, tak faham Inggeris. Hampeh!! Ever heard of the word "tempa"??? Sheez...

Right now am helping Chitra edit a screwed up translated document. Tu la, aku dah banyak kali offer nak tolong buatkan korang punya documents, hang pi hantar kat ntah sapa2 tu buat apa? Buat lagi hantar kat kroni. Kan dah susah nak kena cari editor.. It's obvious whoever did it was not strong in English, and weak in BM. Everything out of context. Ada parts yang tertingal-tinggal lagi. Very sloppy. Saba ajelah...

On the other hand, it's well understood among translators that knowledge of a subject matter is crucial to get good results. A finance person will find environmental jargon a mystery. Too often, you'll end up using all sorts of foreign phrases that does not fit into the professional lingo of the material being translated. I awal2 dah angkat tangan kalau legal document. I DO NOT speak legalese!!

But I did land in hot water because apparently I didn't do a good job with an Annual Review. Have to admit financial reports are not exactly my cup of tea, but at the time I thought I could swing it. But then, they have failed to provide me proof that it was indeed poor quality that held up my payment, instead of the fact yang diorang memang liat nak bayar freelancers!! Planning to pick up a copy and check if this is really the case.

Whatever it is, have committed to fixing up the freaked out file, so guess I'll just wade through as best as I can.

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