It’s not the fault of our polite party-goer asking the “how many languages” question, since it’s just an attempt to strike up a friendly conversation.Īnd there’s no help from our culture, either – especially in the U.S. So my response to this friendly question of “how many languages do you speak?” would be a bit playful and would always be delivered with a smile: In my case, for example, I’d arrive at such parties after having worked out certain issues in my translation work such as the principles underlying optical excitation of Rayleigh waves by interband light absorption or coherent acoustic resistance to an electron-hole plasma or approaches to calculating the electronic structure of alloys. It’s a question that suggests an innocent, almost whimsical notion of translation as a low-stress career of light reflection, picked up effortlessly while flipping through phrase books and sipping sweet tea in the afternoon shade. This prolonged effort is crucial to our ability to precisely convey all these concepts across language barriers.īut no matter how many fields we master as translators, awaiting us at that same cocktail party will be the eternal question that has been asked of translators since the Tower of Babel: This process involves learning highly complex concepts in science, technology, philosophy, law, finance, business, music and dozens of other fields through immersion in the lab, lecture hall, classroom, production line, fabrication plant, trading floor or boardroom.
We translators can spend decades of rigorous effort in the lead-up to our translation careers – and certainly during such careers – developing the crucial subject-matter expertise essential to the translation enterprise. Mysticism and superstition in medicine have been duly and effectively discarded in the proverbial dustbin of history. In medicine, for example, those include a recognition that the human body exists in a physical universe subject to the laws of science and not to a fictitious universe of mysterious spirits accessible to the chosen, pre-ordained few, a concept that had dominated human medicine for millennia.Īs a result, medical doctors strolling through a cocktail party today would never encounter questions from their friends, patients or colleagues about the effectiveness of specific spells, incantations or charms in their medical practice.
It’s the very essence of translation.īuried deep in the bedrock of every profession are certain truths that are universally understood and accepted by modern practitioners.
It’s About What the Words are About.ĭecemSubject-matter knowledge is not just “important” to translation.
0 kommentar(er)
