Translation Difficulties

The document is designed to help build compassion between the readers waiting for the latest chapter of their favorite book or a finished translation of a story and the translation team who are working to deliver that book.

Since many readers who are only monolingual don't know what actually goes into translation, Polyglit would like to break that down for you.

Still, don't use it as a "weapon" but a way to build understanding.

Learning the Language

Many people are not blessed to be bilingual. Some countries may encourage it, but that doesn't mean that it will always happen. Even in regions where both languages are consistently taught, it does not mean that people will attain bilingual speech.

In addition, even if one learns the language academically, it does not mean that one will retain a level of fluency in that language to be able to translate poetry or books. It takes a lot of dedication, asking people and looking at text in order to figure that out. Sometimes it also takes money.

Language has context, not just vocabulary and grammar

Language also has context and the meaning shifts on that context. Noam Chomsky argued this lightly as a linguist and cultural linguists spends a lot of time looking at the context of words in usage, rather than their dictionary form.

In the world of learning a language there is something that people call fluent idiots. That means one knows all the vocabulary, the grammar, but cannot apply the language in the proper context with the cultural rules.

For example, if your best friend in a café pulls out your seat and says, "Would you like a seat, your Royal Highness." in all seriousness, would you think they were being strange.

In Japanese, if you say "Please take a seat" literally in a non-formal setting instead of "Dozo" they would look at you strange.

Words have context, and culture and context drives the meaning. The translator needs to understand the other culture in order to translate well, and to be able to understand the broader context in which the sentence was written.

Some linguistics also say that each language is a way to think about and order the world. And that when a language dies, often a way of thinking dies with it.

For example, in Chinese there are no tenses. Most of the information about time is driven by context when important.

Some languages also instead of time in tenses use place. For example, the direction you are facing becomes critical to conjugating the verb.

The translator has to keep this in mind when translating.

This is also why Polyglit.com emphasizes sentences overall over individual vocabulary. In this way you can see where the same vocabulary occurs in real language and the ways it is translated.

Translation is a different Function from Understanding

People can know words separately from each other, but not know that one relates to the other because each words in its own language may have a separate set of context and meaning and feelings around it.

If you explained the difference between Mom, ma, mum, mother to someone who does not speak English in terms of context and heart, which one feels closest to you? Could you explain the feelings behind that and why for you one feels more right than the other? If someone told you that they felt one word felt more than the other, could you compare and reason out why that's the case?

Translators also go through a lot of this. Often a word will translate on meaning, but lose its feeling and context.Then another word could fit the context, but the meaning could be lost. Sometimes, too, the word simply won't translate no matter how hard you try because there is no equivalent concept in the other language.

Example: 닐당 Mildang from Korean is a shortened version of a phrase, which Koreans do often about the push and pull in a romantic relationship one creates. There is no single word equivalent in English to capture that meaning, because it was specifically created from Korean words as a portmanteau of a longer phrase.

Some age-class words, like -san, Eonni, etc are not used the same way in the English speaking world. Or even in most European languages. Sure the straight translation looks easy, but the way they are used and what it means if you do or don't use them, especially in romantic contexts changes significantly--if you leave them off, then how does one manipulate the words around it to give the same feel of when the word was there?

Translators have to often talk and sometimes argue over how to best translate words because sometimes they look exactly the same, but the context has changed the meaning drastically. They aren't translating just the words, they are translating your function to understand and wrestling with how much one should straight translate the story, versus translating the culture too much that one loses the flavor and subtle meanings of the words in space, time, culture, etc.

If you doubt this, try to straight translate a joke from one language to another--it doesn't always stick. The translator has to think if they want to change it to a similar joke and lose the meaning, or preserve the joke and hope people get it by context. Both take time and skill to think through.

Translation also means switching languages

This is not always easy to do. Some bilingual speakers also have trouble switching between languages, but translators by function have to do it back and forth.

Jargon and other specialized language

Say you are reading a medical textbook. Some of those terms in another language are something else, but not all dictionaries will have the translation for a pulmonary artery. Older texts, such as Shakespeare can also be hard to translate because the language has changed so much. One needs to understand the older Modern English and then be able to translate into contemporary English, then be able to translate that into the other language. This is no easy feat--even contemporary readers of Shakespeare have issues with understanding the language used.

So give translators dealing with jargon that sometimes doesn't translate that well at all a chance to work through it.

Translators are donating their free time to you

Most of the reason Polyglit asks that readers try to cheer on and not demand translations is that Translators are spending their free time they could be doing something else to you. Sure they get paid with a membership, and a way to learn languages, however, they could also be watching TV. They could be reading other books. They could be doing a ton of other things than translating. They are doing a favor to you, so saying that its your right to have it when the translation on the website is free for you to read is rude.

There is nothing more discouraging that having someone demanding something of you, you do out of the goodness of your own heart and interest. So cheering on translators, making their team images, badges, and things that cheer them up after their long day at work and then translating will often motivate them to work better and faster because in the end, they owe you nothing and could be doing something else with their time.

Patience will be rewarded and you can read the previous chapters, comment on it with your friends, speculate about the next chapter, try to recruit more translators, volunteer to become and editor, make things to cheer up the translators, say, "do your best, I am rooting for you", and so on--there is plenty you can do while you wait and maybe in the process of waiting you might make friends with your fellow commenters and the translation team.

Keeping the air positive will help the translation team's motivation!