Translation News

When it comes to protecting citizens and maintaining public safety, effective communication between police officers and citizens is absolutely crucial. Yet in linguistically diverse cities, language barriers can prove to be a hindrance to such communication, jeopardizing overall community safety.

A Multilingual City with a Monolingual Police Force

Take Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for example. With an estimated population of just over 164,000, this city is rapidly growing and becoming increasingly diverse. Though approximately 93 percent of the city’s population speaks English as a first language, there are sizeable minorities of nonnative English speakers, which can make communication between citizens and public officials difficult.

It is estimated that the current number of languages and dialects spoken within the city is now more than 140. Roughly 6 percent of the population speaks Spanish as a native language, while 1.4 percent speaks Dakota and 1.3 percent speaks German. Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Amharic, French, Tagalog, Czech, and Korean are also spoken by minority segments of the community.

In spite of this diversity in foreign languages, virtually all of Sioux Falls’ 231 police officers speak English as a first language. A handful of the officers do speak Spanish, but their abilities are limited. “I would love for our department to be representative of the community,” explained Police Chief Doug Barthe. “We know we are nowhere near that, but we certainly welcome candidates with those skills.” Certainly, finding a police officer for each one of these languages would prove to be unrealistic. Barthe explained than during the hiring process, speaking a second language is considered to be a plus, but ultimately the department must hire the most qualified person for the job, taking into consideration education and experience.

Saving Lives with Effective Translation

The gap between officer language skills and linguistic diversity within the city has proved to be quite challenging for the department. High-quality, instant translation services have proved to be key in closing this gap. The Sioux Falls Police Department spent more than $10,000 on interpreter services last year, up from $6,528 in 2012. The department is on pace to spend more than $10,000 again this year.

The price, however, is well worth it. Just last month, Sioux Falls Police Officer Greg Logan explained that a woman called 911 to report that a man was attempting to break into her mother’s home. Yet when Logan arrived on the scene and inquired if anything was amiss, the mother told him “no.” As it turned out, the mother’s English abilities were limited. But thanks to access to translation services, Logan was able to quickly get to the bottom of things.

“I found out she was strangled by her boyfriend and thrown on the bed the day before,” Logan explained, adding that if he hadn’t had access to a translation service, the boyfriend may have gotten away. In some cases, translation really can save a life.

Quote Source: http://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2014/10/08/translating-justice-police-need-interpreters/16942619/

Wise words left to us by one of the most famous poets of the 13^th century, Jal?l ad-D?n Muhammad Balkh?, or in English simply known as Rumi, have, over the years, become quite the trend on social media sites like Facebook. Rumi’s work was renowned in the field of theology, since he was regarded as a mystic whose words encouraged spiritual transcendence, therefore his poetry is the legacy of that work.

These poems were translated worldwide and Rumi is one of the most praised and best selling poets in United States.  The original writings were in Persian and are widely glorified in Persian speaking world (like Iran, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan), moreover it had a significant impact on literature in these countries.

Rumi quotes on Facebook

His works were translated by a retired professor from the University of Georgia, Coleman Barks, and the Google search for “Rumi Facebook quotes” rates at above two million results. It seems a bit odd that a work devoted to spiritual advancement somehow ended up as a Facebook trend, which some may find paradoxical.

This feeling of confusion is probably caused by the fact that predominant content, or mood, on Facebook consists of photos that display drinking, partying, revealing outfits, bikinis etc. Even though that is true when one thinks about it, Facebook is a really vast network that has a number of users which is extremely high. It actually isn’t hard to believe that there are at least two million users who like the poetry written by Rumi.

Chris Jansen the translator

According to Chris Jansen, quoting Rumi on a social network like Facebook is not such a bad thing. He stated that it had been good medicine and that Rumi’s wisdom had introduced some mischief into the culture.

Chris Jansen is an Athenian who also dabbles in the translation of Rumi’s writings – his new book that consist of collected translations of Rumi’s work is called Illumination. Jansen added how Rumi’s poetry helped to bring these two cultures together in a way, despite the ongoing turmoil between them.

He also formed a partnership during the creation of the “Illumination”, her name is Fatima Saidi. Jansen started working with Saidi after he met her at the Maine humanities conference in 2013. Saidi lived as a refugee during her early life and spoke how, during those days, poetry saved her life, which left Jansen standing in awe. Once the conference was over, the two of them stayed in touch, and in the fall of 2013, Jansen brought up the issue of translating Rumi’s poetry.

They worked on those document translations via e-mail and Facebook chat and by spring of 2014, they created a collection composed out of forty poems.

About “Illumination” 

It’s worth mentioning that these are, as Jansen said, “versions” rather than direct translations. Since Rumi’s work was very tightly connected to religion and mysticism and Jansen being an atheist, who studied molecular biology, wanted to simplify them. Spiritual ascension is something an individual must do on his or her own, there are no answers for something like that in those translations.

To put it bluntly, the words have no literal meaning. Saidi simplified the poems in English and Jansen did that in American. Jansen quoted Robert Bly, one of his mentors who also gave task to Coleman Barks to tackle the issue of translating Rumi. Bly stated that translating poetry is an equivalent to robbing a bank, since a poet does all the hard work and a translator gets all the joy out of it. He added that everyone should try to translate poetry for the sake of witnessing just how much is lost once the translation is compared to the original.

One must agree with this statement after all the language of a certain culture is there to serve the needs of that culture, therefore the philosophy and perspective of the same culture is reflected in its language for the purpose of shaping the minds of new generations. When you try to translate that into a different culture which followers are influenced by a different philosophy, you are very likely to be dissatisfied with your work, no matter how hard you try to adapt it.

There is a whole science dealing with words and their meaning, and it is quite fascinating when you think about it, as even the simplest language that exists in the world is complex enough to support all the frequent actions, feelings, and can be used as a great source for explaining thoughts and ideas.

When you look at words, they are nothing more than the combination of a few dozens of letters, and speech is made up only from the sounds a human body can produce, but also all the non-verbal cues that we can give.

But, despite being an almost flawless tool that is unique to us, humans, did it ever happen to you that you wanted to explain something but you lacked the proper word? Was it because you forgot it, or the word simply does not exist in your native language? This is quite a common thing, as we have already talked about untranslatable words before, and translation studies is a whole academic discipline that deals with this.

Translation studies deal with both theory of translation and the practical application of translation, interpreting and localization. It is a discipline that relies heavily on other fields of study such as linguistics, semiotics, semantics, literature and the history of language.

The original purpose of translation studies was to offer advice to new translators on how to actually do their job, and later on it developed to be more focused on what translation actually is. Now, it deals with theory of translation, how it can be used, where it can cause problems, without having to solely focus on translating literature, which was the original purpose.

There is even a grammar-translation method which focuses on teaching a foreign language via learning grammatical rules and then applying those rules on translating between sentences of the target and native language. Word-for-word translation is common, and the whole point is to learn a new language by translating back and forth, mostly from Latin. This method went hand in hand with the original translation studies which were focused solely on translating literature as an equivalent, than trying to prioritize the purpose of the original text.

In the second part of the 20^th century, with the development of the Internet, translation has gained a new meaning, and its importance steadily grew, as well as the importance of translation that is true to the source increased. This gave birth to new procedures that allowed new ways of translating, especially for words that cannot be simply translated into another language:

Adaptation

Adaptation is a procedure of translation where the translator is totally free to use whatever he or she thinks is best so that the connotation of the original text or language is maintained. This is most commonly used for cultural connotations, and subtle jokes that are only available in the source language. The adaptation is not always accepted as good translation, as it is highly subjective, but it can be recognized as a good adaptation of the source language to the target language.

The common example used here is how detectives from the Belgian comic book The Adventures of Tintin, Dupont and Dupond were translated into foreign languages so that they have names that are not Belgian, but from the targeted language, so in German they became Schultze and Schulze. The original joke of similar names remained, while it was adapted to the target language, and the same is applied to the word “Thanksgiving” which has no meaning in itself, so it is translated usually as “Day of Gratitude”.

Literal translation

Unlike adaptation, word for word translation is maybe the least free translation, where every word has to have an equivalent, without paying attention to the original sense of purpose. It is the most scientific translation, used as a technical translation. The quality of translating this way can be quite poor, as it can be full of errors, as the translator does not have to make any effort to convey the original meaning, joke, or idiom.

This is mostly used by unqualified translators, who do not have a good knowledge of either the source or the target text, and this was the most commonly used method of machine translation until the development of translation software which nowadays uses examples from both source and target language.

The simplest example would be to translate the German word “Kindergarten” as “children garden” in English, while this word is actually referring to the school year before the first grade. The literal translation cannot be used for untranslatable words, and that is why this approach cannot be used at all for words like “Waldeinsamkeit” (German) which stands for  a feeling of solitude and happiness in nature, and not “Woodsolitudeness”

Can a Translation be as Good as the Original?

This all leads to a bigger question: can a document translation be as good as the original document? Saying that those two most important methods we’ve described above are all of them, that would be a huge understatement, as there are numerous other methods that can be used in order to convey meaning between languages. How does all of this deal with untranslatable words? Well, it tries to find the best responding equivalent or phrase in another language without the fear of having to describe the word.

While untranslatable words exist, they are gathering much more attention than they should because the statement itself is wrong; those words do not have a single word as an equivalent in another language, but they can be translated as an idiom, or a phrase.

Look at it this way. A human brain thought of a word so any human with a brain could understand it, despite the fact whether his or her language has the corresponding word to describe it. The translation may be longer and complex, but it is still a translation nonetheless. Some people would say that this is actually defining, and not translating, but even that is good enough, as long as the original meaning and purpose are conveyed, and they are used in the right context.

English Word Creation

In the end, language is not afraid of simple borrowing, and I have intentionally saved this method of translation for the end. It consists of actually taking words from another language, as is, maybe changing its spelling so that it corresponds more the way it is pronounced, adjusting to the rules and grammar of the target language.

English has borrowed many of its words from Latin, French and other languages, simply because it had no equivalent. So, many years from now, you can even see an American in New York saying that he misses waldeinsamkeit. Of course, a word is truly borrowed fully as long as it retains the original meaning.

So, while the popular media are fascinated by seemingly untranslatable words, the truth is that, as long as humans are inventing words, humans of all nations and all language users will be able to understand the meaning of it, and the proper description and equivalents will be found, as long as the original aspects are preserved.