Editing translations + making decisions
I have been editing a translation today having to do with an art collection and the contract that stipulates what is to happen with the art collection. I did not translate it. Some translators do not like editing, but I don’t mind it. It allows me to approach translation from a slightly different angle, and also to look at the work of other translators.
One has to be careful when doing this work to not commit what some call “malicious editing”, which is trying to find fault as much as possible in the translation, in order to run down the translator and thus make oneself look good (for the purpose of replacing the translator). But I don’t find it hard to avoid that.
It is also interesting to reflect on the choices made. Each translator makes his or her own choices. For instance, the source text in this translation used the word “Hypotheke” to describe assets of the foundation. The source document is Swiss, and unless I am missing something, that means “mortgage” in English. So I replaced it (the translator had written in: “stocks”). Also, the translator translated “Obligationen” (bonds) as “obligations”. Again, this is a choice, but I think that bonds is more the exact translation in this context. Interestingly, the source document referred to “Mutationen”, referring to changes to the art collection. The translator translated that as “changes”, but one perhaps might have added a bit of “exoticism” and exactitude by keeping tightly to the German word, and putting in “mutations”. I also think that mutations are different than changes. A mutation is really a biological notion, and suggests that the art collection is an organic entity, subject to possible “biological” changes. These are some of the things one runs into while editing documents, and it gets me thinking about translation and the choices one makes.
I think that Google Translate, by the way, does not make these “decisions”. For instance, it would either hang onto mutations in the above instance, or an algorithm would tell it that “mutation” is too odd to use within the context of art collecting. But I prefer to make that decision in my own human way.
