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Why translate?
 | One powerful reason is that of respect for your audience. Translating the message is an
indication that you care enough about the recipient's situation to make the extra
effort. |
| Competition: When making a choice between different products and services, the quality
of the user documentation and help is a very powerful factor. If your product or service
comes with documentation in a foreign language only, its market penetration and potential
will suffer dramatically. |
| Quality: Documentation and help in the user's own language will make it simpler to use
the product or service correctly. This will reduce the incidence of errors and problems,
and provide you with happier customers. |
Criteria for translation quality
- Linguistic understanding
- In this area, the target language and the source language are of similar
importance. A
popular misconception is that translation should always and only be into the translator's
own mother tongue. In actual practice, the source text can be sufficiently rich in nuance
and complexity that it takes a translator with a full understanding of the source language
to convey the same meaning in an acquired language. Observing the way some writers mangle
their own language, this mother tongue business is certainly no criterion on its
own. Nevertheless, it is generally beneficial if either the source or target language is also
the mother tongue of the translator.
- Professional or vocational understanding
- There is no denying the fact that no translator can make a decent job of translating a
technical text concerning a field of which one lacks even the most basic
understanding,
regardless of linguistic skills. If your text discusses terms, expressions and procedures
that will only make sense to a true professional in the field in question, you need a
bi-lingual, true professional to perform the translation. Medicine, surgical
procedures,
nuclear science, the graphical arts, EC directives, US corporate legalese and bad
commercial copy are examples of fields we endeavour to avoid.
- Quality
- Generally, your average translator has a healthy respect for the author of the original
script. When translating technical texts, however, the translator often needs to be
something other than average. Examples in the text may need to be replaced with examples
that make sense to the intended audience. Sizes and measurements in square meters may need
conversion to square feet or hectares as appropriate. There is nearly always an element of
localisation (see separate item) in any translation. Bottom line - the text should simply
appear reasonable and understandable to the reader. If it does not, you pay
nothing.
A note on Norway's two flavours of Norwegian
We use the Norwegian Bokmaal exclusively. In our very personal opinion, Norway is
cursed with two languages that few foreigners can tell apart. The so-called New Norwegian
(Nynorsk) is a constructed language, spoken by very few, but still in widespread official
use. We are looking forward to the day when using New Norwegian terms becomes valid and
accepted for speakers and writers of Bokmaal, and vice versa, for a fuller, richer and
unified Norwegian language. The Nynorsk of today is simply bureaucratic
nonsense; a sacred
cow of limited usefulness and vast expense.
CAT - Computer Assisted Translation
Some of it works, some doesn't. Machine translation is largely useless, and
produces results ranging from hilarious to just sad. Some promise is shown by
Translation Memory software, where Trados is a major player (though hardly
better than the astonishing Wordfast - which is also freeware). We will use
translation memories if you insist. If you do, this means you are an agency who
wishes to re-use my translations over and over, without paying after the first time.
And that's okay too. Translation memories have their definite uses, such as a
revision of a user manual where much of the text is carried forward with few or
no changes.
Because quality invariably suffers, we will not use translation memory software unless there's a very
compelling
reason. Such software complicates matters, slows up the work, perpetuates
errors, and stupidly assumes that a sentence in the source can always be matched
up with a sentence in the target text.
References
Due to the procedure that often applies to translation work, the term
'References'
warrants a few words of explanation. Our assignments typically come from an international
translation agency. This agency may have received its assignment from an agency in the
originating country, which may again have got the assignment from the documentation
department of the manufacturer. On completion of the assignment, the manufacturer can ship
his product with Norwegian owner's literature to its Norwegian distributor - who can be a
subsidiary, or an independent business. From this chain of players, the only one who knows
us from Adam as the performing translator is the Norwegian translation agency.
Accordingly, neither Siemens AG in Munich, nor
Siemens in Oslo, nor your local retail outlet for that matter, will be able to confirm
that we are responsible for the Norwegian language BIOS on the latest issue of the
Fujitsu-Siemens portable PC range.
The references below are therefore agencies, products and manufacturers provided as
samples of actual work we have done. Note that clicking on the hyperlinked names below
will propel you to a different web site where no verification of the validity of the
reference can be expected. If you need specifics on exactly what has been done in
which context, feel free to email us at per@bergvall.no.
- Products
- Nokia
Mobile Phones; Toshiba portable PC's,
Fujitsu-Siemens mobile
PC's, Nilfisk professional cleaning equipment, Ford
Focus, Ford
Fiesta, Ford Ka, Ford Puma, Ford Mondeo, Thorsman Industrial Poles, 3M projector
panels, Epson Stylus Colour printers, Hewlett-Packard office printers and
supplies, Xerox printers and printer supplies....
- Manufacturers and service providers
- 3M Norge A/S, Snow Software AS, Ford Motor Norge AS, Siemens (Nixdorf),
Ericsson,
Fidelio Nordic AS, Militærteknikk, Nokia Telecommunications, VISA
International,
Nordea .....
- Translation and localisation agencies
- Rubric Limited, Wordbank Ltd, Freedman International plc, Internationell Teknisk
Dokumentation, IDIOMA, Crestec, Logos, ComText AS, Sahlin Information AB,
Proz.com, Languagewire.com, Sandberg Translation Partners, TheBigWord, ....
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