翻訳 - 原文

翻訳が依頼される場合、特にマニュアル関連文章では、お客さんが既に何かの商品を輸出の為に英文のマニュアルを作成しているから、依頼の場合「本当の原文＝日本語」ではなく英語からドイツ語への翻訳になる。
しかし、その「英語」は取り分け素晴らしい。幾つからの例をあげましょう。
• "Position of the transport"
• "Information behavior"
• "When the Information sound occurs, XXX performs the following behavior."
• "displays the screen for checking the message."
• "To prevent infection, disposable product is a single-use."

さて、翻訳者は「翻訳作業」を行っているとき、特に翻訳会社が「忠実」の訳文を要求している際、原文を持ってそのまま他の言語に移し替える。上記の例を「そのまま」ドイツ語に翻訳すると全く分からない戯言になってしまう。
しかし、「原文」をちゃんと意味の通る文章にするのは「翻訳」ではなく、copywriting, writing, creation になる。作業の内容が異なるし、本来それに支払われる値段も異なる筈だ！！！

過去+30年の翻訳している間、依頼主からそういう余計な作業は別当に払う・・・　聞いた事ない夢の世界だ。

「出来た」所

最近よく翻訳会社から「部分訳」が依頼される。つまり似た文章は以前もあったため、変更箇所のみ翻訳対処となる。
それはそれでいいですが、今まで見た件数の中では例の「出来ている所」が問題だ。
「出来ている所」は「完成」＝手出し不要と言う意味だ。しかし、ちらっと見たところ（本来私のやるべくことではない）で複数　/　多数の妙な箇所が目に入る。
例えば医療分野で使われるポンプ類のマニュアル、恐らくお客さんは勝手に英文を作って、それをドイツ語訳を依頼した、には "Machtschlüssel" と言う単語に出くわした。見たことも聞いた事もない。ネットで調べて、ヒット数も極めて少ないし、出て来るコンテキストは政治かパソコンゲーム。いずれの場合誰が勝手に作った造語だろう。

暫く考えて見ると、私は知らない原文（なにしろ、私の仕事ではない！）では恐らく "power key" となっているではないか。だったら誰でも分かるドイツ語は "Netzschalter" になる。

このような意味不明な「脱線」はきっと会社　＝お客さんも、翻訳会社も、値段を抑えて商品を格安に仕上げたい願望に由来するだろう。結果：日本人は自分たちを恥さらしにしてしまう。
ご苦労様だね。

WFAS 2016 --- oh, please ...

I have thought for a while, whether I should say/write this here. Finally I made my decision.
  In November this year a world conference about acupuncture (WFAS 2016)  will be held in Japan. People working in this field probably know this  for a long time already.
 When I registered the other day via the  website set up for the WFAS 2016 I noticed, that the English of that  website is of embarrassingly poor quality. Although I contacted (mail)  first the secretariat of the conference and second the secretariat of  the "Japan Society of Acupuncture and Moxibustion" (JSAM = organizer),  neither of these offices considered it necessary to reply to my mail ..  or what would have been MUCH better .. correct the mistakes.
I have been trying to 'advertise' the good aspects of Japan (and/or Japanese acupuncture) to the world for about 20 years.
  This website looks to me like a deliberate attempt at demonstrating to  the world at large, that the Japanese are stupid and don't give a dime  about what other people think. Thereby also thwarting my efforts to  promote the "MADE IN JAPAN" brand.
I am not really open to the  suggestion/excuse, that the organize has not enough money. The general  participation fee is about USD 500. Assuming 500 participants register, a  not very unrealistic figure, the organizer collects USD 250,000 to run  the show. There surely should be 500 USD to ask an agency to draft a  proper text. If anybody would ask me (which nobody does!), I would call  it a disgrace.
Please! Send them a note. Maybe if a number of  non-Japanese people would complain about the strange English, the people  in charge might finally wake up ...

Download links

A while ago, I believe, I mentioned here that I wrote apart from one printed book three other ebooks.
Since they do not sell AT ALL (unfortunately), I decided to put links to the files on my website, so they can be downloaded for free (I would appreciate, though, if maybe 1 or copies were bought ...):
http://www.einklang.com/Books.htm

When I tried to access the files from somebody elses computer, I noticed that the links were broken.
Hopefully I have fixed those now. The "Google Drive" link allows to view the files without downloading.
Thank you for your interest.

puter

Well, everybody nowadays seems to be in an unbelievable hurry.
Likewise everybody seems to be obsessed with millions of "time saving" little tricks. Or is it fashion???

Today I came across this expression in a post on a mailing list:
"The puter I'm trying to run it on is ..."

Maybe someone can enlighten me.
What exactly is "gained" by omitting the three characters "com".
It takes maybe 1.4 seconds to type them. If you "save" 1.4 seconds, what are you using them for later???
Or is there somewhere some other hidden "added meaning"???

I guess, this is just one of the million things I will never understand.
After all, I am about 300 years behind my time ...

Instractions

The other day I receive a translation job, which came with very specific "instractions" from the client.
They were very concerned about "Be sure to perform spelling error check on MS Word."

"Mistranslation, untranslated texts, misspelling are not allowed for this project. Be sure to check all of them before you deliver the file."

Let's have a little look at those "instractions", and 1-2 samples from the source text, that needed to be translated "word-for-word".

"These texts was written so that they will be translated in many languages and used in different countries."





"Do not allow liquids, combustible materials, metallic objects, or any other foreign matters to enter the device."
"The accidents may damage your camera or other equipment."


Be my guest to form your own opinion of this source material.
As "instracted" I tried to render them as closely as possible to the original - which did result, naturally, in an unacceptable (to my taste) mumble jumble.
Only for some passages that were simply too far out of this world, I took the liberty of bringing them in the translation at least back into the upper atmosphere.

The readers will surely have their fun - and most likely make fun of the maker that provides this kind of nonsense.

成果移住

変換ミスやミスタイプ（英語ではよく "typo" = typographic error とよばれる）は日頃誰にでも、どこでも起き得るものだ。
そのようなものに直面すると、暫くこれは「本当」の事かそれとも左記のミスなのかを悩んでいる。（明らかのものを除いてしまう）
悩んでいる場合当然まず色々と調べる。

先日どうやら高校生の発表に関するもので出てきたものはそう言った悩みの種があった。
「成果移住」　-　暫く考えて、色々と調べた。
そのうち言ってみれば関係ない所で「世界中」と言う言葉が目に入った。
題名の「成果移住」は結局「世界中」の変換ミスであった。

これはちょっと苦労した！