Translation Workflows

[roddy]

Been thinking a bit about this lately - how do those of us who are translating regularly like to arrange it?

I generally try to do this

1) On delivery do a character count and scan to make sure I haven't been sent plans for a nuclear power plant written in classical Chinese.

2) Do a careful read through with no attempt to translate, just understand. I often do this on my PDA or from a print-out - means I can get away from the computer screen (ok, my PDA is a computer. But it's cuter.) Note-making or vocab look-up.

3) Sleep. I'm a big fan of having a night's sleep between reading and translating.

4) Translation,

5) After a few hours, do a close sentence by sentence reading of both texts side by side to make sure I've not done anything daft (my eyes appear to incapable of seeing the character 未 50% of the time, with hilarious results) and tidy up the English. I'll do this on a printout sometimes.

6) Cut the Chinese out of the document and do a final read-through. By this point I should be sure that the English means what it should, so this is about making sure the English reads passably - although some clients just ask for a rougher translation, as they prefer to do their own copy-editing.

I find that the quality of stage 4) depends on the time elapsed since stage 2), hence stage 3). If I translate on first reading quality is much worse and stage 5) takes longer. Ideally, the more time I can spend between stages the better, but obviously timing depends on deadlines. I also find working on paper helpful, but obviously I only do that for reading / proof-reading - the actual translation is done on computer.

[zhwj]

Interesting. I find that for my own writing process, I do better when I put the long gap between translation and editing, so much that when I put a night's sleep between translation and rereading it the next morning, I'm sometimes amazed that I could twist the English language into such contortions. Waiting more than a couple hours after the first read-through doesn't help me all that much, I've found.

Step 5 is probably the most important, but it's also the least interesting, especially for a long, repetitive document.

I don't use paper at all, but that's probably just a function of not having a printer and being too lazy/cheap to find a copy shop.

[liuzhou]

Most of my work recently has been into Chinese, so the reading, gist gaining, state secret filtering etc. is usually quite quick.

Then I go down the pub!

That said, I got back from the pub last night to find 6 articles on tourism in Morocco waiting for me. In French.

I was expecting one in English on Egypt.

Close enough!

[heifeng]

1) Character count and scan and give time estimate + plus extra (channeling ST's Scotty, the ship will be ready for you in 72 hours capt'n...)

2) Do a careful read through with no attempt to translate, just understand.

3) Translation / typing like mad, highlighting areas that will need to be 2nd checked and vocab. Hopefully finish version 1.1 of translation.

4) Sleep. Get away from computer. Eat ice cream. Read Chinese forums.....something to this extent.

5) Look up terms, search online, ask peeps questions, come up with version 1.2. After a close sentence by sentence reading of both texts side by side and tidy up the English to make it sound like something not like a translation. no paper, no printing =(. (Mostly doing environmental stuff...grr...save the trees...)

6) Read through English only, careful note on verb tenses and other such things then lastly cut and paste English to end of document. Cut and paste all my vocab lookup/notes/websites to another file and hope I actually can remember new terms...(maybe this should be a separate step)

7) Read through x number of days later if it was only one of the things out of a pile I had to do any way...

[roddy]

Hmmm, ice cream. Not a tool I'd thought of using, but I think you might have something. . .

Do you not find though, that by doing your first draft translation before your online searching / vocab lookup, you are potentially translating with an incomplete understanding of the text, meaning your first draft isn't as good as it could be and you spend more time on your rewriting?

Edit: Just realised there's ice-cream in the fridge!

[heifeng]

'Tis true, but, lucky for me, most of the stuff I deal with has a pretty long timeline until it's actually needed so I can afford to stew over things for a while. Therefore, I try to test myself to see how much of it I got correct before I dive into some of the research. I admit, this may not be the most efficient way however....

sample of random thinking process:

气体照明灯.... gas lamp? that sounds strange or could it be halogen? they are talking about fire prevention...hmm....let that slide for now..highlight for later...i wonder if they have my favorite ice cream outside....yummm 蒙牛草莓香草脆皮雪糕 ....ok, let me see what the "accurate" translation of this lamp would be...well maybe not now....let's check out the awesome Chinese forums.....oh...back to work...oh wait everyone in the office is smoking away and bsing around... maybe i'll just look up the names of all different types of lamps to supplement my lamp related vocabulary.......I could use a diet coke to top off that ice cream now......

yes, very high work efficiency today.....

[roddy]

Yeah, I spent most of the afternoon asleep on the sofa while an episode of the Simpson's looped on the DVD player - got a cold due to excessive air-con use and it's knocked me out for the day.

I can see how that flow could work for you. Myself, I find that by getting a solid understanding first, I can produce a better quality first draft, spend a little less time on error-correcting and rewrites, and the whole process just feels a little bit more quality than doing a first draft I know isn't so good. Maybe it's kind of psychological, but I find I prefer it.

Ice-creams gone. What's for dinner?

[heifeng]

I might try things Roddy's way today...get out of here early...hmmm

AIR CONDITIONING = BAAAAAAD ( I think the a/c here has been responsible for me catching at least 3 colds this summer too!)

Opt for a fan!

[roddy]

Actually, I should add an extra stage to the end - some of my clients will do their own copy-edit on the piece before final use, and if I can get hold of a copy of that I'll take a look at what changes they've made. I don't always do that, but I try to when it's a recurring client or if I think it will be useful for future reference.