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Another crazy day...
Oct. 9th, 2012 09:38 pmThe highlight of the day came after I got a call (after delivering all immediately outstanding work) telling me that documents I translated had been intended to be compared against English originals to see what had changed. That would have been an entirely different mission, and doesn't change things much, really, as the failure to communicate appears to have been pretty much originated with the end client.
What made the call "special" was the news that the end client was hugely concerned because the text of my translation was so unlike that of his original English documents, so the fellow I'm working for asked me to go through a couple of the documents and comment on differences.
Most of the comments were easy: "The text in the English original does not appear in the Russian translation." (Which glibly explains why nothing even close appears in what, essentially, was my "back-translation.")
What was a whole lot more difficult was trying to explain how various other sections had been basically rewritten, in a kind of general manner, enough to where what was said was different, but it would take half a day to explain how. (I am, actually, of a mind to put these documents aside to do a detailed analysis later, to attempt to trace the thought process that might cause statement A to become statement B.)
The major question in the end client's mind—and one I am signally unable to address—is the extent to which the resulting Russian text was the result of poor translation from English and the result of "reworking" by the Russian side. If nothing else, this case serves as a poster-child case for the need for document versioning.
In other news, Hitomi will be staying with us for a few days, (yay!), my Raspberry Pi arrived (cool!), and our car is in the shop (hiss!).
Is it really only Tuesday?
What made the call "special" was the news that the end client was hugely concerned because the text of my translation was so unlike that of his original English documents, so the fellow I'm working for asked me to go through a couple of the documents and comment on differences.
Most of the comments were easy: "The text in the English original does not appear in the Russian translation." (Which glibly explains why nothing even close appears in what, essentially, was my "back-translation.")
What was a whole lot more difficult was trying to explain how various other sections had been basically rewritten, in a kind of general manner, enough to where what was said was different, but it would take half a day to explain how. (I am, actually, of a mind to put these documents aside to do a detailed analysis later, to attempt to trace the thought process that might cause statement A to become statement B.)
The major question in the end client's mind—and one I am signally unable to address—is the extent to which the resulting Russian text was the result of poor translation from English and the result of "reworking" by the Russian side. If nothing else, this case serves as a poster-child case for the need for document versioning.
In other news, Hitomi will be staying with us for a few days, (yay!), my Raspberry Pi arrived (cool!), and our car is in the shop (hiss!).
Is it really only Tuesday?
