Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Doings in Dublin
IJET-14, the 2003 International Japanese/English Translation Conference: sponsored by the Japan Association of Translators; a gathering of colleagues and friends from all over the globe; 24 thought-provoking sessions; Irish hospitality. Look for the Kobe rendition in 2004.
One of the many nice things about the annual IJET Conferences is the chance to see friends old and new. This year in Dublin was no exception. And because these people are not only friends but part of the very supportive J/E translation community, the few days we had were not enough. I’m already looking forward to Kobe next June.
The conference “started” with a pre-conference reception at the Old Jameson Distillery, where we heard how Irish whiskey is made—including what distinguishes it from Scotch and other lesser beverages—and ended up with a tasting session, comparing several Jameson products to a common Scotch and a bourbon. Then there was a sit-down dinner accompanied by lively live Irish music and dancing. You will excuse me if I do not remember what time this ended.
The formal program began the next day, May 17. As has become the custom, there were several concurrent sessions in each time slot, with the slots separated by ample time to talk over danish and coffee. Excellent arrangements. The schedule, minus times and room names, looked like this:
| Saturday, May 17, 2003 | ||
| Patent Pending: From the Renaissance to the Internet —Michael Lydon |
* Translating Economic Texts with a Focus on Company Annual Reports —Susan Wilson |
Roundtable Discussion on Home Computing and Translation |
| The Role of the Translator in the Software Localisation Industry Today —Brigid Corby |
* The Myth of Japan’s Lost Decade —Eamonn Fingleton |
Balanced Diet: Some Memories of English-Irish Translations for Educational Consumption —Máire Nic Mhaoláin |
| * Translation and the World Intellectual Property Organization —Sally Parish |
Finesse and Fugue in Litigation Interpreting —Bruce Holcombe |
Roundtable Discussion on Translation Memories: Usage and Applications |
| Harmonisation of Financial Reporting: Global Impact —Brendan Sheridan |
* The Fictional Figure of the Translator —Judy Wakabayashi |
Roundtable Discussion on the Business of Interpreting |
| Sunday, May 18, 2003 | ||
| * Story and Reality in James Joyce’s Ulysses —Kazuhiro Doki |
異国間における法律の役割の違いについて —Miho Hatayama |
Roundtable Discussion on the Nuts and Bolts of Living Overseas While Working for Japanese Clients |
| * Machine Translation: Development and Development Issues for Translators —Teruko Mitamura |
Roundtable Discussion on Retirement and Investment Tips for Freelancers and Small Businesses | Interpretation and Translation in Nagasaki, 1641-1868 —Louis Michael Cullen |
| コンピュータ分野翻訳の基本的ノウハウ —Yuko Miyata |
* Into Hypertranslation: Abusive Translation or Something for the Future? —Minako O’Hagan |
Roundtable Discussion on Time Management and Efficiency: Managing Work and Home Life from a Home Office |
| “Discovering What Survives Translation True”: Translating Seamus Heaney —Marco Sonzogni |
Media Interpreting and Its Quality Assessment —Akira Mizuno |
* Roundtable Discussion on Translation Business Models |
Obviously no one person could go to all of the sessions, and that is why we—including the people who had to miss Dublin for one reason or another—are looking forward to the Proceedings. And because Proceedings there will be, I am only going to touch very lightly on some of the highlights of the sessions I attended (the starred sessions).
Wilson noted that business translation is an important source of income for many people. After reviewing the state of the field and the need to read widely to stay current, she offered a few general J-to-E principles: don’t overuse the passive voice, keep it brief and to the point (without worrying about mirroring the number of sentences in the source text), check titles and other proper nouns, and consider the reading audience’s needs. Good advice even if you do not do annual reports and the like.
Fingleton argues that the Japanese economy is doing very well and that we should not be taken in by the press reports of its near-demise. In support of his thesis, he cited a few industries where Japanese firms are dominant players. And he said that the misleading press reports are part of a sinister conspiracy by people who do not share the Judeo-Christian truth ethic. Needless to say, I found him singularly unpersuasive.
Parish described the translation work that the World Intellectual Property Organization does to protect intellectual property. Surprisingly—or perhaps not surprisingly, given that it is an extremely Eurocentric body—they have a very small J/E team and have to outsource most of the work, including the abstracts, the international search reports, and about half of the international preliminary examination reports. She also described the WIPO in general and made her work in Geneva sound very interesting.
Wakabayashi surveyed the way translation and translators are depicted in fiction—some of it written by people who are themselves translators. Two things stand out. Because translators straddle cultures, they are suspect in both. And also because of this transcultural straddle, they are assumed to have great identity crises. (Am I an American? Or am I Japanese? For example.) A third theme is marginality, as translators are thought to be mere conduits performing uncreative work. These are the perceptions the public starts with.
Day two started for me with Doki, who picked up some of the more interesting literary devices in Joyce’s epic, explained what they mean and how they evolve during the day, and then looked at how they have been translated. In characterizing the work as a whole, he said Joyce purposely rejected the idea of plot and opted instead for profuse detail, in keeping with his belief that history is not some grand procession toward a divine goal but is simply noise in the street.
Mitamura said the three goals are to (1) automatically turn out (2) quality translation (3) in a wide range of fields but that machine translation is currently only able to do any two of the three. After a brief overview of the field, she explained the work that Carnegie Mellon University is doing with controlled language—restricting the source text’s naturalness to reduce ambiguity and facilitate machine translation—and the results it is achieving in heavy machinery manuals. This was a very interesting companion to Chris Brockett’s presentation last year at IJET-13.
In the next-to-last session, O’Hagan urged translators to get out of the printed-word box and to consider all of the many other determinants of communication—and then to think about how we can also translate them. In effect, she urged language support to go digital. Part of this is localization—where the goal is for routine work that is scalable and repeatable and that produces standardized quality—but it is much more than that. Can text and graphic be separated? Does the graphic translate? Translatability editors need to be involved in the source material’s creation. And translators need to look at new technologies—such as “interpreting” a chat session on the Web or using virtual reality tools to convey the fullness of meaning. Word processing and Internetting have revolutionized the field over the last 30 years or so, but there is no reason to assume this revolution is over.
Finally, the conference program closed with a roundtable discussion on translation business models. To incorporate or not? To work solo or as part of a large—how large?—team? What to do and what to outsource? Much of this was nation (i.e., legal system) specific, but there was also the very interesting suggestion that translators get away from the idea of working for agencies and think about employing agents themselves. While it may look inconsequential as stated, such a reversal could change the shape of the industry with major implications for the translator and translation in general. Unfortunately, there was not enough time to discuss this in detail. Perhaps at IJET-15.
Then the formal conference was over, and we were left to enjoy some more of Dublin’s great hospitality before heading home with a suitcase full of dirty laundry and a mind full of fresh ideas and pleasant memories. Many thanks to JAT for holding this annual inspiration.