Language breakout: interactive translation session FR<>EN
What do you get when you fill a room with experienced translators working between English and French?
In a nutshell, you get a coming together of ideas and a seemingly infinite number of ways of translating the same thing. This year, the format involved giving us brief sentences (or snippets) in both language directions, to get the old grey matter really working.
After inviting us to get together in groups of four or five, Aleksandra and Nelia gave us our first snippet, into French, from The Economist. It was a very succinct description of a succession of recent UK political leaders, and hearing the different ways people translated “reverse ascent of man” into French was quite fascinating.
For our next snippet we were invited to choose between two airline adverts (although I think that most of us tried to do both anyway).
- Work hard, beach hard
- Girls just wanna have sun
Obviously, the second one was a play on a song title, and the room was soon ringing with a variety of French song titles which also riffed on the word “sun” (well, “soleil”, but you know what I mean).
Next, we were given a sentence from a Belgian alcohol awareness campaign, “Au volant, aucune excuse ne tient la route”. Once again, the discussion was very lively, with some people suggesting the three-word slogans beloved of some politicians (“Just say no” was one), before the discussion moved on to one about the imagery. The posters showed a bottle of rosé wine and a bottle of a generic Belgian beer. It was suggested that you wouldn’t use those, at least in the UK, to communicate a message about drinking, and that they should be replaced by photos of pints of beer.
As things were drawing to a close, we were shown a translation error in a subtitle (“planned entrapment” instead of, presumably, “confinement”). It gave us all a laugh, and reassured us that the machines aren’t ready to replace us yet.
The entire session was extremely enlightening, showing clearly how human translator minds work, going far beyond the simple words on the page to encapsulate ideas which sometimes just come into our heads at a tangent (such as searching for suitable song titles).
In some ways, the session felt a bit like being back at school, but in exactly the sort of lesson that you’d miss the end of break for, just to get there quickly. (I’m not really speaking from experience, obviously, since in my case I would almost always be the last person into class and would end up skulking at the back of the room, doodling on the desk.)
The session also demonstrated clearly that human translators really aren’t limited in the ways they can come up with ideas, all of them valid, although in each case somebody managed to come up with something that got universal approval from the 35 (or so) people who took part.
Given the high quality of the sessions on offer this year, it really wouldn’t be fair to give this one a rating, but what I can say is that, if it happens again next year (and if I’m there), it will definitely be on my “must attend” list.
This METM24 session was chronicled by Paul Appleyard.
Featured photo courtesy of MET.