{"id":58,"date":"2015-03-28T10:34:17","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T10:34:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/?p=58"},"modified":"2015-08-27T10:34:38","modified_gmt":"2015-08-27T10:34:38","slug":"feedback-from-the-community-on-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"Feedback from the Community on Translations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">In Australia and the United States, it\u2019s very common to have someone from \u201cthe community\u201d to check our translations.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">But, who is \u201cthe community\u201d we are referring to?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #333333;\">\u201c<span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The community\u201d is composed of those people who left their countries and migrated to another country. Take for instance people from Spanish speaking countries that have migrated to Australia and live in communities as if they were living in their own countries. In many cases, they\u2019ve learned Basic English skills which help them to communicate in everyday situations. They\u2019ve spent 20 or 30 years in an English speaking country and, sometimes, they have not been in touch with the Spanish language for a long time.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">And this is what happens:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Our clients (government agencies, health care centres, hospitals, etc.) commission a translation to a translator. The translator has been professionally trained to provide the best quality translation possible. The translator needs to keep up with the language on a daily basis and undergo training sessions to retain his\/her skills and\/or accreditation.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">The client believes that by giving \u201cthe community\u201d to check the translation they are doing a good job. In the end, the translator ends up doing a job twice or three times or spending a lot of time trying to explain to the client why \u201cthe community\u201d is not correct. Sometimes, the client is not well versed in our language.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">According to my experience, and some of my colleagues\u2019 experience, we encounter 5 top mistakes \u201cthe community\u201d makes:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Grammar errors<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Spelling mistakes<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Calque from the English source<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Mistranslation or misunderstanding of the text<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Low register<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">In recent years, grammar rules and spelling have changed in the Spanish language. We, as translators, are aware of these changes because we participate in forums, training and other translators\u2019 resources. However, \u201cthe community\u201d, those who check our translations, are not aware of the changes and, in fact, we end up explaining why they are not correct.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"color: #333333;\"><span lang=\"en-US\">Therefore, the client should trust the translator when doing his\/her job. However, if the client really needs to have a second opinion, they should ask the translator to work with a proofreader instead. This is a normal practice which will be discussed in a different post.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Australia and the United States, it\u2019s very common to have someone from \u201cthe community\u201d to check our translations. But, who is \u201cthe community\u201d we are referring to? \u201cThe community\u201d is composed of those people who left their countries and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/?p=58\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,10,8,11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-translations","category-home-based-office","category-proofreading","category-spanish-translations","category-translation-courses","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/The-community.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gabrielalefevre.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}