Translation: how subjective can it get?

Every profession, science and activity has its own set of rules. Some rules are broadly established and widely accepted, while others aren’t. There are also unwritten rules, corporate policies/cultures, schools of thought when it comes to science, and probably many other types of rules, as well as each individual’s personality, which play a role in the process.

Let’s see what happens in the case of translators and their work. A translation consists of many obvious elements that can be used to evaluate it. On the one hand, we have elements such as spelling, grammar and syntax which can generally be assessed objectively based on established rules and this or that grammar etc. On the other hand, there are elements like terminology, vocabulary, register, style and flow. Experience has shown that this second category is subject to a great deal of subjectivity, often leading to diametrically opposed views between the translator and the reviser or the translator/reviser and the client.

There are several factors that weigh into the evaluation of a translation, most of which have to do with terminology and style preferences. Each client may have specific terms or a specific style in mind for his/her text, but the translator has no way of knowing those preferences if he/she has not been given any instructions (e.g a company may prefer the term customer care to customer service). This may also have to do with the text’s purpose and target audience. In most cases, corporate texts relate to a company’s organisation or its products/services. In this case, it can be very helpful if the client provides a glossary or reference material, past documents and/or the company website, which will enable the translator to follow the existing terminology, as well as instructions on the text’s style, purpose, target audience, the company’s corporate culture and the project in general.  This can help prevent problems. Another issue has to do with language variants, such as British or American English. These are some of the issues that should always be clarified from the start.

Often times, the client has not considered these parameters or does not know that translation cannot and should not be literal or judges a translation based on his/her own knowledge or perception of how it should be (this is mostly true for English translations in Greece). This problem is hard to solve and requires discussion, analysis and detailed explanation. It often occurs in cases of free translation or transcreation (used for the translation of marketing and advertising texts, among others), where there are practically unlimited choices of words and styles. Furthermore, the translator’s personal style seeps into the translation and often it is difficult for translators to meet the client’s specific —whether reasonable or unreasonable, right or wrong— expectations. As a result, sometimes the end of the project is followed by a series of discussions, negotiations and attempts to prove which are the right/acceptable/effective translation choices. Finally, some project contracts contain clauses on vocabulary, style, etc, in an attempt to prevent such disagreements or “mistakes”.

When it comes to subjective issues, which have to do mostly with style, what translators can do is have a thorough discussion with their clients before they start translating in order to understand the purpose, the target audience, the corporate culture, the client’s ideas about the project, and request reference material, glossaries etc. Unfortunately, it seems that professional translators are far from achieving widespread trust in their profession. This is why, until we do, one of our priorities as professional translators must be to keep “educating” clients on the science and practice of translation.