Invisible Helpers
Imagine that, while living in the United States, I have been asked by a US-based translation agency to translate technical documentation for fuel dispensing pumps from Finnish into English (an actual job I did a little over a year ago). There are numerous technical terms that I do not know. They are not in my dictionaries. How do I find them?
My first step is to get on-line: I send term queries out over Lantra-L (lantra-l@segate.sunet.se--to go to the Lantra-L archives, [obsolete links]) and the forum for Finnish translators, Translat (translat@lists.oulu.fi). "I'm translating a text on fuel dispensing pumps from Finnish to English. Can anybody help?" I cc three or four Finnish translator friends who are not subscribers to those lists, hoping they can help if no one else can. I give the terms in Finnish, with a rough description and best guess in English based on the context and what I have been able to find in my dictionaries, and wait for a reply.
Because I know that replies to term queries often take two or three days, however-- especially when you factor in the back-and-forth that follows an initial answer that I'm not satisfied with--I am not immediately impatient. In fact, knowing how long these things can take, I have deliberately read through the source text and asked my questions early, to give people time to help me out before my deadline.
While I'm waiting I keep translating. But with another part of my mind I am also running through the people I know who might be able to help me: translators I know from other languages who are good with technical terminology; local people who work in similar industries. The first day I can think of no one; and the replies from the discussion groups are not encouraging. The second day, however, I think of a friend who owns his own construction firm. Would he know about fuel dispensing pumps? His company is medium-sized, but has annual revenues in the millions. I pick up the phone and dial; and to my relief he knows a lot about pumps, answers all my questions quickly and reliably.
Or does he? How would I know? Here is the first hitch: if I don't know the word I'm looking for, if I've never even heard it, how do I recognize it when I hear it?
I hear it in his voice: he sounds reliable. I listen for subtle nonverbal clues of doubt or uncertainty, like hesitations or bluster. I hear none of that; he sounds as if he uses these words every day, and is simply drawing from his large terminological repertoire just those words that will help me. I know him well enough to know that if he doesn't know, he will have no compunction about telling me so. I am not someone he needs to impress, and he is not the sort of person to pretend to knowledge he doesn't have even if I were.
But how do I know these things? And do I, really?
There is no way I can justify my trust [lost link] in this man rationally. I have a strong intuition about what he is telling me. It flatout sounds right. All the verbal and nonverbal cues are utterly congruent with rightness.
I am, let's say, "channeling" his knowledge. Not by occult means--he isn't dead, and I'm not a medium. But perhaps the channels through which this sort of intuitive appraisal of another living person's words flow through to me are not so very different from those through which the voices and visions of dead people come to George Anderson and the others. Certainly in the broadest sense of the word, as defined by Henry Reed and Kathryn Ridall--an empathetic [lost link] openness to communication from another being--what I am doing is unquestionably channeling.
And then, when replies start coming in from the on-line translator forums: who knows best? When do I know (when can I assume) that I have a good enough answer to finish the translation and deliver it? A lot more in the translation process depends on this process of sifting through "help" in search of the right answer than translation theorists have recognized. Channel the wrong "help" or "knowledge" [lost link] and you will produce an inaccurate translation. Channel both correct and incorrect, useful and useless "help" or "knowledge" and fail to distinguish between them properly, and the result will be the same.
Then, too, the more help you get on your translations, the more significant the question becomes: Who translates? [lost link] Who should get paid for the translation? At what point does the help you get turn into editing or collaboration and thus a form of work-for-hire? And given professional translators' heavy reliance on the contributions of other people, helpers, editors, project managers, etc., how should we handle translator accreditation and certification {lost link]? Should accreditation candidates be allowed to get help from experts, other translators?
