Mar 05 2008

Can Translation Change the World for the Better?

Jianjun
Published by Jianjun at 5:35 pm under Life,Translation

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SpringI always love Spring! The weather is warm, and the sky is clearer and bluer. Everything is growing and the earth is full of life. It’s the best part of a year in my town – less fossil-fuel-caused smog, greener city, more apt for outdoor activities.

It’s afternoon again, time for me to sip my cup of Mocha and start blogging. I’m feeling very grateful deep inside that I have what I have today. There are so many people in the world living in terror, being bombed, shot and killed, struggling every day to live – a most basic right! There are so many people living in property, agonized by diseases and sufferings.

I have been thinking about a question: By translating, am I able to change this world even a little bit for the better? And today I may have the answer. Somebody says a translator, by way of translation, facilitates communication. Better communication in turn prevents misunderstanding and, ultimately, confrontations. However, I doubt this. Today’s world is probably equipped with the best communication in history. But confrontations are still everywhere. :-o

So I guess, like it or not, a translator is just a medium. If he/she doesn’t make things worse (by mistranslation), then the more important thing is what is being translated, not the translator him/herself!

I feel myself more like a tool now. Cool! :D

By the way, tomorrow I am going to write about copycat translation web sites. I will teach you a fun way to find out if somebody is copying your web site and, by taking advantage of the text, trying to edge you out.

But what these fake ‘translator/translation companies’ do most harm to is the whole market. They are going to spoil the Internet market by cheating and churning out bad quality translations. They will also defame the professional translator society as a whole. I believe in just a few years, if these guys are not revealed and stopped, no potential client will trust any online profile.

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3 responses so far

3 Responses to “Can Translation Change the World for the Better?”

  1. # Nadineon 05 Mar 2008 at 6:14 pm

    I beg to disagree slightly here, Jianjun, as I feel I might be the person you are referring to.

    I do believe that our job is to help people communicate, for whatever purpose, so there is no moral underpinning here, provided that we are aware of our mission, and take our job to heart. I can see this in my own practice, but that may be because I don’t work exclusively for industry, and I also do a lot of interpreting that involves real communication.

    My feeling, however, is that those who breed cynicism and destroy this superb capability we have are those who, as you are rightly pointing out in the latter part of your post, have turned translation into an industrial product to the point of serving their customers unintelligible and perverted translations.

    Cheer up! There are many translators out there who believe in real communication: one obvious example is court interpreters.

    Reply

  2. # Jianjunon 05 Mar 2008 at 6:37 pm

    Natine, actually I thought the same before (translation -> better communication -> fewer confrontations). But recently I’m having a feeling that the world may not benefit much from my work (I mean all those poverty, killings, bombings, etc.). Hmmm…

    Reply

  3. # To John from Transhorsa.com/orgon 26 Jun 2009 at 9:21 am

    [...] However, you posted the same message today (July 21, 2008) on my post “Can Translation Change the World for the Better” (http://www.yeasir.com/blog/2008/03/can-translation-change-the-world-for-the-better/#comment-2590) [...]

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