In the translation industry, it is common practice for the clients to
issue style guides that aim to provide a translator with specific instructions
to follow when working on a project. These guidelines identify the purpose and
the target audience of the translation; they may also enlist the terms that
must stay in the source language, e.g. trade names. In essence, the purpose of
style guides is to instruct the translator on the issues specific to this
particular project.
Unfortunately, more often than not, this is just theory. Experience
shows that clients misunderstand the role of translation guidelines making the
following mistakes:
1. They are written
as if for beginners/amateurs.
Some
of the style guides I received read like a study book for aspiring translators.
It seemed as if the client wanted to educate the contractor on how to do the
job. For example, they explained general rules of translating technical texts,
giving examples of bad translations and comparing them with the good ones. This
is basic knowledge that you could include in the first chapter of a book
entitled “Introduction to Translation”. If you hire a professional to do a
particular job, trust them. They should know their craft and be able to provide
a high quality product. And if they don’t, teaching them the basics won’t help,
neither will providing examples.
2. They are too
lengthy.
Mostly
for the reason mentioned above. Extensive guidelines of let’s say over 20 pages
with general instructions are a waste of time both for their writer and the
reader. Unless there are special reasons behind such a lengthy guide, clients
should limit themselves to a minimum. The bottom line is the shorter the
better. Remember the KISS rule? Use it whenever you draft a style guide for
translators.
The
drawback of long guidelines is that reading them takes up too much precious
time that could be otherwise spend on translation. Moreover, with so much
information to digest, a translator may miss some of the important points.
3. They do not take
into consideration intricacies of the target language.
Each
language is governed by its own rules. Take for example Polish - the language I
translate into. It hates repetitions, whereas style guides repeatedly (pun
intended!) instruct to use the same terms in one sentence or paragraph. In
Polish, it sounds particularly artificial and simply horrible. Except for technical
terms, almost every word has a few synonyms that very often have the same
meaning and can easily be used as a substitution making the target text a much
more pleasant read. The same can be said about pronouns, which are excellent to
limit the number of repetitions. Still, clients insist that if a given term is
used in the source text, it must appear in the target one the same number of
times. I understand that consistency is key when it comes to terminology but
the mental health of the reader is equally important.
Now
a bit of a guidance to those drafting the style guides:
1. Be brief. Lengthy guidelines take up too much time to read and
are much more difficult to adhere to. Simple and concise instructions will do a
much better job.
2. Focus on specific instructions, avoid general advice. Professional
translators know their craft.
3. Don’t tell the translator how to translate. You’re in a
client – contractor relation not a teacher – student one. If you are afraid
that the project will be done by an inexperienced translator because they
accepted a 0.02 USD per word rate, your ‘study book’ will not help at this
stage.
4. Be flexible. Bear in mind that some of
your guidelines may not work in a particular language. In this case, you might
want to listen to translator’s instructions especially if it’s their mother
tongue and you are not particularly familiar with this language. Not saying
that translators are always right, but they are aware of the intricacies and
rules that govern the language they translate into.
5. Respect translator’s work. By providing decent style
guidelines, you’ll show that you value their work. In return, you will receive
a top-notch translation exactly according to your instructions.