Words of the trade...

<YAWN!> Good morning!

LJ friend furzicle writes:

OK, so what specifically are:
1/ target words
2/ source words
3/ despeckling?

Herewith, my answers (while I wait for all my brain cells to wake up).

"Source" and "target" refer to the languages one is translating from and into, respectively. (In my case, the "source" language is Russian - or sometimes French - and the "target" is English.)

Among other purposes for identifying such a distinction, it generally takes 15%-30% more words (depending on various factors) to say something in English than it does to say the same thing in Russian. This is important for several reasons, not the least of which is because the overwhelming number of translators in the U.S. (and a significant number in the rest of the world) invoice their work on a per-word basis. Rates are always quoted with a reference to either the source or target word count, and failures to do so easily lead to bad blood between translator and client.

Another important reason for using source count is for estimating jobs and pacing of one's work. For example: A client calls with 2,800 source words for tomorrow noon. Can I meet the deadline? Another example: A 10,000 source-word document must be completed in 3 days. Can I devote enough time over that period to translate 3,334 words a day, on the average, no matter what the target count might be?

"Despeckling" represents my 6-step approach to quality control, and verbalizes the acronym DSPCKL, which stands for:

• Disambiguate. I am always turning over my word choices as I translate, and often come up with improvements or corrections to wording. Sometimes, these are serious enough to require me to stop and go back through the text and make changes now, but generally, I can just note them down for later and do them all at the end in an orgy of search-and-replace.
• Spellcheck. Includes grammar check. In my experience, this step is often overlooked by less-experienced translators, to their detriment. 'Nuf said.
• Pronounce. I read the translation out loud, or at least parts of it, if time does not allow me to read the entire document. It's amazing how many minor goofs can be caught this way. (A little scary, too, if there are too many such goofs and not enough time to read the whole thing out loud.)
• Cleanup. I usually write translations with the aid of a translation memory tool such as Wordfast. This produces a strangely formatted file that contains both source and target texts. The cleanup process does a number of things, the most important of which is to leave a target-text-only file that can be delivered to the client.
• Keys. Graphics are generally "keyed" in a table in the text. The name of this step generally applies not only to keying figures but any other work related to figures (some figures have text boxes whose contents must be translated, for example, though strictly speaking, this should be done before the start of cleanup). This step segues smoothly into...
• Layout. Very often, clients have specific requirements for page sizes, margins, fonts, font sizes, headers, footers, etc. In this last step, I make sure documents conform to such requirements.

In the aggregate, the above is likely TMI, but I'm pretty sure I've answered your questions, even if I've carpet-bombed most of the neighborhood in the process.

Wow! Now I'm awake enough to actually get to work!

Cheers...