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On a platter, a poet's pale and glaring head...
I just finished a re-review of what's called a "sample translation" for a client, and while I think the text—edited, no less—is the cat's meow, I could not help but think how a hostile reviewer could probably find all sorts of minor, niggling points that could be used to cast aspersions in its direction (as in, "In the first sentence of paragraph 1.0, the last word of the sentence, 'объект', has been translated as 'location', whereas in other places, it has been translated as 'site'. This would appear to be an example of inconsistent use of terminology").
As it turns out, in this particular instance, there is a reason I used the word "location" where I did. And if there was some hugely eye-popping reason for my having done so, I might even be tempted to footnote such usage. But there isn't, and I'm not. The translation does not suffer from my choice of words, and that's that.
Which brings to mind a job I did for the first client that I "fired," several years ago. It turned out, after two rounds of incompetent review on their part (don't even get me started), they send my work out to be reviewed one last time by a native Russian-speaker, who (surprise!) found every manner of error in my translation. I had used the word "examination" instead of "test" to describe an end-of-academic-year set of questions. I had used "hypotenuse" instead of "diagonal" to describe the longest side of a right triangle. The former might pass as a matter of taste, but the latter comment is just plain wrong (the correct term is "hypotenuse").
There were something like 300 such comments from the reviewer, and the client wanted me to respond—in writing—to each one! (I declined, stating that I stood by my translation and that they were free to make whatever changes they wished to it, based on whatever reasons they might have for doing so.)
I think I have adequately over-analyzed this. I need to get back to work.
Cheers...
As it turns out, in this particular instance, there is a reason I used the word "location" where I did. And if there was some hugely eye-popping reason for my having done so, I might even be tempted to footnote such usage. But there isn't, and I'm not. The translation does not suffer from my choice of words, and that's that.
Which brings to mind a job I did for the first client that I "fired," several years ago. It turned out, after two rounds of incompetent review on their part (don't even get me started), they send my work out to be reviewed one last time by a native Russian-speaker, who (surprise!) found every manner of error in my translation. I had used the word "examination" instead of "test" to describe an end-of-academic-year set of questions. I had used "hypotenuse" instead of "diagonal" to describe the longest side of a right triangle. The former might pass as a matter of taste, but the latter comment is just plain wrong (the correct term is "hypotenuse").
There were something like 300 such comments from the reviewer, and the client wanted me to respond—in writing—to each one! (I declined, stating that I stood by my translation and that they were free to make whatever changes they wished to it, based on whatever reasons they might have for doing so.)
I think I have adequately over-analyzed this. I need to get back to work.
Cheers...