Lucking out...

The "morning warmup" went well... and at least I haven't committed to coming in early over the weekend before undertaking the Execute Package shift. While at the office this morning, I ran into my former boss, who invited me to stop by the Villa Capri, one of the better local restaurants, after my shift is over to help mark the imminent retirement of the company's CFO. I'm looking forward to it.

When I arrived at my designated place here on the third floor of the MCC, Olga D. jokingly accused me of having "накаркал" (i.e., jinxed) the radiogram work load, which was quite significant today. (I had remarked yesterday about the "light duty" day as far as workload was concerned.)

I lucked out with today's workload in that two of the radiograms that fell to me to do were very similar, one describing how to perform procedure A, and the other describing how to perform procedure B, where A and B are mirror images of each other. Then there was a radiogram containing a greeting - a short speech, actually - to be delivered by the crew to the participants of what amounts to a high-level youth science fair on environmental issues.

Everything was done in the usual crisp, workmanlike manner.

I found an interesting question in my friends list, from a post in the ru_translate community. It has to do with the following snippet:

...the Sakhalin-1 oil drilling project off Russia’s Sakhalin Island, located north of Japan.

The translator, who was working from English into Russian, asked whether the translation had to mention that Sakhalin is a Russian island and that it lies north of Japan?

When I asked why one wouldn't want to include that information, the reply came that it didn't seem necessary to explain such obvious facts to a Russian audience.

My response to that was it wasn't he who was explaining, but the author of the source text. "I do not believe it the translator's job to decide what part of the original text the audience can do without," I continued, "though there may well be times when supplemental explanatory footnotes are in order."

Interestingly enough, LJer co_lum_bus weighed in with largely the same comment, adding: "The fact that the readers of the source text needed to have Sakhalin explained to them is part of what you are called upon to communicate [to readers of the translation]." [Translation and clarification mine.]

Deciding what to translate is, of course, one of the fundamental issues of the profession, along with how to translate, what register to translate in, and so on. Some professionals I know like to say they deliver translations that are better than the originals, which sounds like a pretty good deal on the surface, but is a technique that's fraught with hazard. The ability to render a vague, ambiguous source sentence in the same vague, ambiguous manner in the target language is, in my opinion, something to be cultivated and treasured.

Break's over. Time to catch up on the paperwork.

Cheers...

The hazards of browsing...

For dessert, what would you suggest to get the taste of the main course out of my mouth? (Under item 5, "Eating Out").

Really useful stuff... ;^)

Cheers...