Monday, May 10, 2010

Logical word order

It is sometimes easy to be misled by he word order of the source text, and to translate using a construction that means something different from the original.

From a contract I recently edited:

English: “Please read the following penalty schedule carefully”
Italian: “Leggere le seguenti informazioni sulle penali con attenzione”

Here, the position of “attenzione” is only awkward, rather than misleading. It would be improved by moving the word closer to the beginning of the sentence: “Leggere con attenzione le seguenti informazioni sulle penali”.

However, in other instances the word order might mislead the reader, even if only for a moment:

English: “… [of the] electronic end user agreement…”
Italian: “… dell’accordo di licenza con l’utente finale elettronico…”

Strictly construed, this translation might be interpreted as “…of the license agreement with the electronic end user…”.Since we do not have “electronic end users”, “electronic” in the original can only refer logically to the agreement; meaning that the agreement appears online or in some electronic media, such as a CD or DVD.

The source text should therefore have been translated as “…dell’accordo elettronico di licenza con l’utente finale…”, or maybe “…dell’accordo di licenza elettronico con l’utente finale…”, but certainly not *“… dell’accordo di licenza con l’utente finale elettronico…”.

Pay attention to the logical word order in your translations: when you read with fresh eyes what you wrote you'll sometimes see it means something different from what you intended.

4 comments:

  1. You are absolutely right. I have noticed that - probably due to living abroad and being more exposed to my second language than to my mother tongue, I'm becoming more prone to form terrible sentences in both languages, simply copying the word order which "seems fine" at the tikme of actual translation, when you see both versions side by side, and then proves awkward or totally misleading in the second reading. This is why second reading is so essential. A pity that some "agencies" tend to think that time of producing the translation = time of typing the target text.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Priscila AndradeFriday, May 14, 2010

    Hi,
    We have received 495 nominations for The Top 100 Language Blogs 2010 competition. For each of the four categories we have admitted 100 blogs into the voting phase. Your blog is included for voting in the 'Language Professionals' category. Congratulations!
    As stated in our language blog Lexiophiles, 50% of the final score will be based on user votes. You can promote your blog by embedding a voting button in your page. The button code is available in the Lexiophiles blog. It can also be sent via email if you contact me.
    The voting phase started on May 12th and ends on May 24th. Winners will be announced May 28th.
    Good luck!
    Priscila
    on behalf of the bab.la and Lexiophiles team

    ReplyDelete
  3. The blog is really nice and informative. Though sometimes mistakes may happen but I think we should take appropriate care of it. Really appreciable blog.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are right. Translation sometimes misleads the order of the source text and might even change the whole meaning. I appreciate the way you have explained the right process.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment!

Unfortunately, comment spam has grown to the point that all comments need to be moderated. All legitimate comments will be published as soon as possible.