Finding The Author’s Voice In Literary Translation (While Silencing Yours)

During the 56th Annual Conference organized November 4-7, 2015 by the American Translators Association (ATA) in Miami, I attended a presentation by the Literary Division entitled “Finding the Author’s Voice in Literary Translation (While Silencing Yours.)” The presenter was Mercedes Guhl, administrator of ATA’s Literary Division and the mind behind Traduzco, luego escribo, a blog about reading, writing, and translating that is written entirely in Spanish.

Mercedes was born in Colombia, started translating children’s books in 1990 while completing her BA in philosophy and literature, and later received her MA in translation studies from the University of Warwick, in the UK. Recently, while talking to her husband―who is also a translator―he asked her whether all books translated by the same translator end up having the same voice.

While pondering the question, she realized that (a) No, books translated by the same translator shouldn’t “sound” the same because translators re-enact or re-create the author’s voice in the target language, and (b) Yes, translated books may seem to have the same voice sometimes if the originals sound the same because they belong to a series, fall in the same genre, or were poorly written in the first place. “Editors don’t understand that sometimes a book could be translated in different ways,” she added, indicating that her husband’s question doesn’t seem to be very unusual after all.

Paraphrasing Umberto Eco, Mercedes said that the best-case scenario for book translators would be to read as the ideal reader, but translate with the common reader in mind. As a general concept, by reading as ideal readers, translators can learn to emulate the author’s voice, since “the original provides a grid” for the target text to be produced.

She also mentioned the contrasts between translators from an earlier age, who translated books to understand and acquire knowledge, and modern book translators, whose work is intended for publication and distribution. Because book translations nowadays serve the purpose of being a product for mass consumption, translators must exercise their writing skills in order to “have the tools and resources required to imitate, innovate, and create when necessary.”

In order to learn more about the work process other book translators follow and how similar or different it might be from her own method, she decided to carry out a study. One of the main questions she added to a questionnaire sent out to fellow book translators was whether they preferred reading the entire book before translating it, as she does herself, or if they would rather read each page as they are translating it.

Mercedes was surprised to find out that many would rather not read in advance, since she believes that some texts “should be understood as a whole” after a thorough reading, for they could contain “landmines that need to be simmered.” One of the opposing views she highlighted was by a translator who, in turn, contended that “reading as you translate yields a more vivid and spontaneous version.”

“Do you read to understand or do you translate to understand?”

Another curiosity Mercedes had was how translators first approach a project, which she calls “the first ten pages struggle.” Because she translates mainly children and young adult books, she says “it’s easier to just turn to the teenager you have inside and go… After the first ten pages, things come together and click. You go with the flow,” she added.

As for quality standards―which is always a hot topic when it comes to book translations, given the exposure that the final material gets―she wondered what her peers considered to be a good or a poor translation.

“I’m a little fearless,” she admits. “I was trained as an editor, so I am always thinking about the poor reader. It’s like a ménage à trois, and you have to be faithful to both the author with the original and the reader with the translation.” The two questions she asks herself to assure the quality of her translations are: “Is it internally coherent?” and “Is it adequate for the market?”

Among other questions she had for her peers were:

• Is a book a 100% mind-consuming task? In other words, do translators read or work on more than a book at a time?

• When and how do you read? Or, do you read to understand or do you translate to understand?

• Do you look up criticism and reviews about the book you’re translating?

• Do you talk to editors about your translation choices?

• Do you follow a given method, or do you just “go with the flow?” That is, do you compile glossaries and take notes while reading, or just see what happens in the first draft?

• How do you deal with dated expressions? Do you research equivalents or just make something up in the target language to make it sound contemporary?

• How about loaded words? Do you provide a direct translation, replace it, or coin a new term?

• When finding the voice of an author/character who is of the opposite sex, do you usually have any problems with that?

• How do you translate dialogues?

• What is your view about footnotes? Do you see them as a way you can “manipulate” readers, or would you rather remain silent as a translator?

• During the final stages of the project, do you make minor or major changes?

• Do you always have a chance to review your translation after it’s edited, so you have the final say?

The conclusions she reached at the end of her study were as follows:

1. There are no sure methods or tried paths when it comes to translating a book.

2. Each individual profile, set of skills, and background calls for individual methods.

3. Likewise, certain projects call for a different approach.

4. Creativity rules, not only in the general method, but also in the way a given project is undertaken.

RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. She also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators.

The Translator As Author

During the 56th Annual Conference organized November 4-7, 2015 by the American Translators Association (ATA) in Miami, I attended a presentation by the Literary Division entitled “The Translator as Author.” The panel was composed of Mercedes Guhl (administrator of ATA’s Literary Division), Abe Haak (translator from Arabic, French, and German) and Faiza Sultan (Arabic and Kurdish interpreter and translator.)

Abe Haak introduced the material, which focused on the theory and practice discussed in “The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation, Proceedings of the International Conference,” an event that took place in Italy in 2009 to discuss the issue of authorship in translation.

The first topic the panel addressed was when it is acceptable for translators to delete or replace content from the book they are translating. Some examples included complementary information that supports central ideas, but become meaningless once removed from the original context: references to local history, characters, and rituals, as well as figures and statistics. In order to support the argument, a fragment of Julia Alvarez’s “How the García Girls Lost Their Accent” was mentioned, in which part of a dialog was omitted in the Spanish translation because it referred to the character’s accent, so it was turned into an explanation:

“Stop!” Carla cried. “Please stop.”
“Eh-stop!” they mimicked her. “Plees eh-stop.”

“¡Paren!”, lloró Carla. “Por favor, ¡paren!”
Los muchachos la remendaron, burlándose de su acento hispano en inglés.
(The boys mimicked her, making fun of her Hispanic accent in English.)

Another subject addressed by the panel was when an explanation or addition is welcome or even required. The scenarios presented included when the main idea could become confusing, contradictory, or plainly nonsensical once it is out of context. That would also be the case when cultural differences or historical references make more sense once they are supported by a brief explanation. Likewise, substitutions can be introduced by a translator when a statement or example is lost in translation and there are equivalent references, situations, or circumstances that can work as replacements.

Other subjects included adaptation (when information that is central to the text cannot be translated directly or replaced by an equivalent) and suppression (whether it is okay to remove passages that are considered inappropriate, and when it becomes censorship).

Lastly, Abe talked about the degrees of intimacy, when translators go from literalness to creativity, and the degrees of departure, that is, the level of interference they can resort to when intervening in the texts they are translating:

• Notional departure = inspired by

• Schematics departure = based on

• Textual departure = translated from

“The farther you go into creativity, the less money you make, it seems,” Abe joked. “General interest books; that’s where you have to exercise most of your creativity,” Mercedes suggested.

RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. She also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators.

Beware Of The Fallible Filter And Unreliable Narrator: Enhancing Professional Trust

During the 56th Annual Conference organized November 4-7, 2015 by the American Translators Association (ATA) in Miami, I attended a presentation by the Literary Division entitled “Beware of the Fallible Filter and Unreliable Narrator: Enhancing Professional Trust,” presented by Susan Xu, the senior lecturer in the translation and interpreting program at the School of Arts and Social Sciences of SIM University, Singapore. She recently completed her PhD thesis at the National University of Singapore on a topic related to autobiographical translation, and her session was based on her findings and conclusions.

Susan explained that the “fallible filter” and “unreliable narrator” are two forms of untrustworthiness in literary narratives. In the former, the narrator invites readers to enjoy irony at the expense of the character. In the latter, the author conveys a secret ironic message to his readers via the narrator.

She also clarified the difference between the “implied author” (showing the psychological and ideological points of view of a character’s consciousness) and the “real author” (showing the visual and linguistic style of the narrator’s consciousness). “Character and narrator are not the same person. The character lived in the past; the narrator is older, evaluative, and more experienced,” she summarized, indicating that there’s also a difference between the “implied translator” (whose name is indicated in the book) and the “real translator” (a collective effort by translator, proofreader, editor, etc.)

Throughout her session, Susan quoted a political autobiography to illustrate how fallible filters are transferred and transformed in the translation process in order to help translators reflect on their own practice and enhance their professional trustworthiness. The examples she presented were drawn from an autobiography written by Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, who passed away early this year. He wrote all his memoirs in English, his native language, and the book analyzed by Susan during the session was “My Lifelong Challenge: Singapore’s Bilingual Journey,” which was published in two separate, but similar editions: a 400-page Chinese edition by Lianhe Zaobao and a 388-page English one by The Straits Times Press.

Susan reminded us that translators run the risk of inadvertently interfering into biographies with their own voice and perspectives. These interferences can happen in the form of reorientations (weighing in on redundant or inadequate information), self-reflexiveness and self-referentiality (using the translator’s own idioms, polysemy, word play, and paratexts) and contextual overdetermination (omitting the author’s self-contradictions and erasing or creating irony.)

In order to avoid bringing in this “other voice,” translators must analyze foreground elements present in the narrative, so they can identify the author’s distinctive linguistic pattern. In Lee’s book, these foreground elements are marked by syntactic contrast (sudden brevity) and underlexicalization (either noticeable suppression of a term or substitution of a complex expression with a single simple term.)

One of the most relevant interferences Susan identified in Lee’s book was the manner in which characters were presented. For example, the author showed a certain level of disrespect for the father figure introduced in the book and depicted his grandmother as a nagging, authoritarian person. All of these notions are implied in the author’s choice of words, but the translation into Chinese seems to have been culturally adapted to remove derogatory depictions of these two key persons and make sure that the respect traditionally shown for elders in Asian culture is upheld.

After introducing these concepts, Susan drew conclusions from her studies in autobiography translations:

• The point of view in the interplay between the narrator, character, and readers accentuates an implied author who largely adheres to the generally perceived normative view of the autobiographer.

• The factual, attitudinal, and ideological discrepancies present an altered persona of the implied author, who departs from the norm of the autobiographer.

• The discrepancies are translator-unconscious in his effort to attune the narrative to the dominant ideology in the target-language culture and project a positive image of the implied author among target-language readers.

Lastly, the presenter gave us some tips on how to enhance our professional trust: “Every word choice makes a difference. Examine the foreground features in order to reflect the authorial tone. Also, adjust your point of view and align your consciousness with that of the narrator or character."

RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. She also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators.

The New Normal: Cuba And The Power Of Translation

During the 56th Annual Conference organized November 4-7, 2015 by the American Translators Association (ATA) in Miami, I attended a presentation entitled “The New Normal: Cuba and the Power of Translation,” presented by Esther Allen, a writer and translator who teaches at Baruch College and was selected as the Literary Division Distinguished Speaker.

A two-time recipient of National Endowment for the Arts Translation fellowships, Esther was a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She also co-founded the PEN World Voices Festivalin 2005, and guided the work of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund between 2003 and 2010. In 2006, the French government named her a Chevalier de l’ordre des arts et des lettres and, in 2012, she received the Feliks Gross Award from the City University of New York Academy for the Arts and Sciences.

Esther’s ATA presentation was based on an article by the same name, which she wrote for Words Without Bordersonly two days after the normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba was announced on December 17, 2014. She mentioned that many U.S. commentators foresaw an “invasion of tourists, traders, and investors.” ”The mentality is that Cuba existed in a vacuum and now it will be Americanized overnight,” Esther disagreed, explaining that the country is no stranger to globalization, as its founding father José Martí had already written about the diverse origins of Cuba extensively.

The presenter told us that Martí spent most of his adulthood in New York City, where he wrote about the United States, and his articles were published throughout Latin America at a time when Cuba was still a Spanish colony. Martí was killed by the Spanish forces in the beginning of the insurgency he had initiated, which resulted in the Spanish-American War that led the United States to occupy Cuba and establish a naval base on Guantánamo Bay. The rest, is history, as we all know.

Curiosity: José Martí identified the lack of secular children’s books. He was writing some material on the subject, but his funder from Brazil withdrew funds after they realized the material didn't have any religious content.

Recommended Reading:

Cuba: We Never Left
Written by Esther Allen for The New York Review of Books

As the translator of José Martí’s Selected Writings and currently a Biography Fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, working on a book about Martí’s life, Esther analyzed how President Barack Obama mentioned the Cuban founding father in his speech. “Obama turned to address the Cuban people directly. He began with a citation from José Martí: ‘Liberty is the right of every man to be honest.’”

She wondered how Obama had arrived at that precise quote from Martí, and whether he had made a conscious decision to leave the second part out of it.

Libertad es el derecho que todo hombre tiene a ser honrado y a pensar y hablar sin hipocresia
― MARTÍ, José. Tres héroes: Bolívar, San Martín, Hidalgo. “La edad de oro” (1889), part of a series that is very popular among Cuban children.

The possible sources she found were:

1. “Freedom is the right of every man to be honored, and to think and speak without hypocrisy” ― English-speaking guide at the Monumento a José Martí, La Habana, Cuba, February 2015.

2. “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy” ―Cuban student translation exercise cited in Enseñar inglés básico a partir de textos de José Martí (pedagogical study done in Santa Clara, Cuba, 2011.)

3. “‘Liberty,’ Martí wrote, ‘is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.’” ― Carlos Ripoli, letter to The New York Review of Books denouncing the “Marxification of Martí,” July, 1988.

Esther went on to say that, in the late 1800s, Martí used to write for Patria, located at 120 Front Street, which is now Wall Street. “He wrote in English as a Spaniard,” she explained, “because Americans were more interested in what Europeans had to say about the United States, rather than a Latin American from a country that did not exist yet.” He also wrote a letter disapproving of a mainstream newspaper that talked about how annexing Cuba to the United States would not have been desirable.

The speaker said that Martí’s work as a journalist was paid, but not well enough, so he turned to translations. Martí translated Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona, which came out about thirty years after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin and is compared to it because the former raised awareness of the plight of Mexican Americans just as the latter raised awareness of the plight of slaves in the United States. Martí then decided to self-publish and distribute the Spanish version of Ramona mainly in Mexico. Esther said that he used to call it nuestra novela (our novel), meaning that he believed the book spoke to the real struggles of Latinos, albeit within the context of the years following the Mexican-American War.

Going back to normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba, Esther reminded that, in the early 20th century, Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortíz coined the term "transculturation" to describe the distinctive cultural characteristics of Cuban history. “And that history holds some significant lessons about the roles translation can play in the process of globalization,” she assured. Whether the new generation of American translators will now be able to keep in touch with Cuban culture and learn more about its literature is something yet to be seen. “Canadians visiting Cuba each year don’t have Communist cooties,” she added, hinting at how our neighbors to the north, just as much as British and Australian individuals, may be better equipped at attempting to bring literature from Cuba to English-speaking countries at the moment.

RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. She also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators.

Attending Translation Conferences and Not Being a Whiner

I'm still pumped up from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference, which ended yesterday in Tucson, Arizona (session reviews will soon be available at eWordNews . com!) And I'm already looking forward to the American Translators Association (ATA) conference that will start next Wednesday in Miami, Florida. To celebrate this conference season, I'm updating my YouTube channel a few days earlier than usual to talk about the benefits of attending professional events. Hope you enjoy it!

Trials And Tribulations Of Translated Literature From The Margins

During the 56th Annual Conference organized November 4-7, 2015 by the American Translators Association (ATA) in Miami, I attended a presentation by the Literary Division entitled “Trials and Tribulations of Translated Literature from the Margins.” The presenters were Vivan Steemers, associate professor of French at Western Michigan University who has published Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire, a book about sub-Saharan Francophone literature translated into English, and Faiza Sultan, Arabic and Kurdish interpreter and translator and founder of DarSafi, a publishing house that specialized in translating and publishing literary and creative works.

Vivan started the presentation by saying that, for sub-Saharan authors, the very act of writing is an act of translation because, instead of writing in their native language, they write in French―the language of their former colonizer―in order to have more exposure.

She highlighted that, despite the fact that publication of sub-Saharan authors continues to be modest, the number of sub-Saharan books translated into English has increased since the 1950s. Two of the main books to start this wave were Camara Laye’s “The African Child”―which had originally been published as “The Dark Child”―and Mongo Beti’s “Cruel City.”

According to her, this increase is especially true thanks to the African Writer Series published by Heinemann Educational Books between 1962 and 2000 and, more recently, the creation of smaller, independent publishing houses. Still, “cynical, commercial publishers” in France act as “gatekeepers of ideas,” for they aren’t as aware of these authors writing in French and may not push for their translation into English. “These writers are left at the tender mercies of the Paris literary establishment,” Vivan wrote in her book.

Next, Faiza Sultan talked about another group of authors living on the margins, more specifically those producing Arabic literature about the Kurdish people, and how few of them are translated into English.

She emphasized the fact that publishers in Iraq aren’t authorized to publish anything before getting the approval of the Iraqi government. “They called it editing, I called it censoring,” she added.

Likewise, Iraqi readers don’t have access to some books coming from different parts of the world, which are banned for political, cultural, social, and moral reasons―and those who smuggle books face government persecution, even execution. Due to this censorship, Faiza explains it’s much easier for expats to get published and, consequently, most of the works written about the Kurdish people are in Arabic and Persian.

Faiza then talked about her own initiative to establish a small publisher to bridge the gap between East and West and tell untold stories about her people. The title she introduced to the audience was Salam Ibrahim’s In the Depths of Hell, the touching story of a man who survived chemical warfare in Iraq.

RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. She also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators.

Four Free Tools to Streamline Your Translations

On October 2nd, I presented a webinar about Four Free Tools to Streamline Your Translations, which is a combination of web-based solutions I use to organize my projects, invoices, and project orders.

We covered the following topics:

• Color-coding emails
• Using labels to organize messages
• Organizing project files in the cloud
• Scheduling projects to plan your work day/week
• Entering invoicing information
• Keeping an eye on the billing cycle

Below you'll find questions that were asked during the webinar, as well as some other comments from attendees that were sent to me by email. If you purchase access to the video, have questions after watching the material, and don't see your concerns addressed here, feel free to contact me and contribute to this Q&A list.

Q: What emails do you save, and for how long?
A: I usually save important messages from clients and colleagues concerning projects we have worked on, just for the sake of creating a paper trail. If it's something interesting, like an article, audio, or video material about translation, I can read, listen to, or watch it and then share it to my social media channels, but I delete the email because I don't need to keep a copy of it. However, sometimes we need to clean up our mail box, especially when dealing with clients who send out "heavy" attachments. So, when I see that I'm running out of space in our corporate Gmail inbox, I go back to all messages I received up to a certain date (i.e. 3-5 years ago) and I delete everything that had large attachments, so that frees me some space. In other words, you can use filters and remove messages that either don't apply to you anymore or that contain heavy files that are taking too much space.

Q: If you get a domain name for your translation business, do you have to use their webmail or mailbox client?
A: No. We have a domain name at our company, WordAwareness.com. However, we use Gmail not only to receive messages, but to send them as well, and recipients see our corporate address, not our Gmail address.

Q: What concerns me about using free webmail solutions is all the advertising and spam I get based on my searches. How do you deal with that?
A: I usually don't even see spam messages, because Gmail does have a good filter to catch those messages, so they never make it to your  inbox. In the even that a client calls me or gets a hold of me through social media, saying that they've sent an email and I haven't replied, I do check the spam folder if there's nothing in the inbox, because things happen. It's very rare, but then all I have to do is move that message to the inbox and flag it as a legitimate email, so it won't be considered spam again. As far as advertisements, there's not much you can do about it, because online ads have become part of our lives nowadays. I just try to ignore them, whether they show up while I'm reading an email inside the Gmail window, or if I'm doing a Google search, or I open Facebook. Because 99% of my emails are about languages and translation, and that information becomes part of coding and cookies if you're using your computer plugged in to the internet, sometimes Google or Facebook shows me advertisement about language classes or translation software. I just ignore them and move on.

Q: How do you use Dropbox to organize your files?
A: I installed their program and created a folder inside my computer, where I save everything that is work related. Because it is a cloud system, a copy of everything I place inside that folder in my computer is available online, but kept private inside my Dropbox account. That means I can be on my desktop computer and download an attachment sent by my client, save it within my Dropbox folder, then turn on my laptop and log into my Dropbox account online in order to access that same folder. I can also access that same file through the Dropbox app on my smartphone or tablet.

Q: Do you use Dropbox for backup purposes?
A: Yes, especially for our translation memories and glossaries. Our backup program runs late at night while I'm sleeping, and a copy of our TMs and terminology gets saved to a backup folder inside Dropbox. Apart from that, all files inside the Dropbox folder in my computer get saved and synched automatically, so there's always a backup of it in the cloud in case something happens to the file on my computer.

Child's Play and Acquiring Vocabulary

Here's an update to the "Tools and Technology" YouTube channel. This month I'm talking about ideas on how to acquire vocabulary by keeping your translator's brain on. And the obvious comment of the month includes scouting for words used in your daily life, so you can recall them in your working languages.

How to Transcribe and Translate Subtitles in DotSub

On September 25, I presented a webinar about How to Transcribe and Translated Subtitles in DotSub, which is the online platform that I use to work with video files.

We covered the following basic steps

• Uploading video files to DotSub
• Transcribing the original audio
• Using hotkeys to control video playback
• Translating subtitles into different languages
• Exporting the finished subtitle file into frequently used formats
• Brainstorming negotiation techniques for subtitling projects

If you missed the live presentation, 
the video is now available for purchase HERE

Below you'll find questions that were asked during the webinar, as well as some other comments from attendees that were sent to me by email. If you purchase access to the video, have questions after watching the material, and don't see your concern addressed here, feel free to contact me and contribute to this Q&A list.

Q: Is the program available for Mac?
A: Since DotSub is a web-based platform, it is available for any operating system. There is no download and installation involved, so all you need to do is visit DotSub.com and create a free account to start using it.

Q: Is there a feature to avoid subtitle overlapping?
A: Yes! DotSub will prevent you from entering a subtitle before the previous one is off the screen. In other words, if you set one subtitle to begin before the previous subtitle ends, there will be an error and you'll have to enter start and end times again for those subtitles to be aligned correctly and shown in sequence.

Q: How much editing usually goes into subtitling projects?
A: It all depends on the video, really. How fast is the person speaking? How clear is the audio? It is a documentary with many transitions with soundtrack only, and no speaking? Sometimes you have someone who talks veeeery sloooowly, so you're able to type what you're hearing without going back and forth because you missed something. Other times, you have people who talk too fast, so it'll take you longer to type everything, or you'll have to edit the subtitles because you didn't catch a word or two the first time around. I personally like working on it from beginning to end to catch as much as I can the first time around, then I watch the video and read the subtitles to do some editing, not only in terms of words I may have missed or typos that pass me by, but also to make sure that everything fits nicely on the screen and I'm getting that "pyramid effect" that allows people to read it more comfortably while watching videos with subtitles.

Q: How fast can translators usually work on subtitles?
A: There's no magic number, but one thing that definitely works is practicing, so you can learn more about yourself. Of course you may work faster when subtitling a video about a subject you're familiar with. Other times, it may require some research during the editing process, which increases the amount of time that goes into completing the project. However, if you work on some samples, not only to become familiar with the subtitling platform you're using, but also to learn more about yourself (Are you typing too slow? Are you more comfortable typing everything and correcting it later? Would you rather correct each subtitle as you go, so once you're done it's all ready?) I'm sure you'll be able to find an average number of minutes of video you can work with in one hour, and use that average as an estimate when quoting on future projects. That way, you can give yourself enough time to complete the project by the proposed deadline.

Q: Is it possible to import subtitles into CAT tools?
A: Absolutely. Once you're done with the transcription, you can export the text only and then use your favorite CAT tool. That will be extremely helpful if you're working with the same client on a regular basis and want to keep a translation memory. You'd also be able to use your glossary to assure terminology consistency, which is always helpful. Once you're done with the translation as you're used to while working with your CAT, you can import the material back into DotSub and synchronize the translated subtitles in order to complete the audiovisual project.

Q: What happens when you're not doing the transcription, only the translation to go directly into the subtitle?
A: That is tricky, because you're doing two things at once, as in hearing one language and typing another. If your client refuses to pay for transcription and requests translation only, meaning that they want only the subtitles in the target language synchronized with the video, try to estimate the time it'll take you to complete the project as being 1.5 or 2 times longer than it would have taken you to do the transcription and then the translation. So, let's say that you can work on 10 minutes of video in one hour, estimate that you'd be able to finish those 10 minutes in 1.5 to 2 hours instead, just to give yourself enough time.

Q: Can you share some ideas on how I could charge for subtitling projects?
A: As mentioned in the presentation, the main thing you must do―as in all types of translation projects, but especially in subtitling assignments―is make sure you're on the same page with your client. Some clients may think a 5-minute video will take 5 minutes to translate, subtitle, and synchronize. Others don't really want to know exactly what you're doing, as long as you get it done. And a few want all possible details of the work process, so they can understand what services you're providing. Having said that, you may quote a flat fee after you weigh in all your variables (video length and the time it'll take to finish the project, considering transcription of original audio, translation, and synchronization of both subtitles.) You may quote a per-minute rate, depending on the length of the video (keeping in mind all the aforementioned steps.) And, if your clients don't expect a final price beforehand, you can show them the breakdown of each task that went into completing the process, thus charging a per-word rate for transcription (usually half your translation rate), a per-word rate for translation, and a per-minute rate for synchronization after the job is done.

Q: How do I find the going rates for subtitling projects?
A: As in regular translation rates, you can always ask more established professionals if they feel comfortable telling you what they charge. You can also contact companies and inquire about their services. A good idea is to keep an eye on surveys with language professionals and see if they mention subtitling rates as well. That kind of research should give you a good idea of what the average rate is for your language pairs.

Credit where credit is due (or "Let me Google That For you")

As translators, one of the technological advances that has revolutionized the way we work is this little thing called Google. Since the late 1990s, a world has opened up to us, language professionals, so that we could research terminology and read articles in our second language not only to keep up with trending expressions, but also to acquire more targeted knowledge in our specialty areas.

Well, it's been almost 20 years since this great search engine was invented, so how come people still don't know how to use it?

These past few months, I've been stunned by at least three separate issues that could have been easily resolved with a simple action: googling it. Having worked with book translations and covered the subject in my capacity as Content Curator at eWordNews, I'm always amazed by the fact that, to this day, translators still don't get credit in the media for the books they translate and, worse yet, sometimes journalists completely ignore that the book is even available in their own language!!

Okay, let me take a breather... And a couple of steps back before I lose my train of thought.

In my "past life," I went to Journalism school―all while working as a translator and language instructor―so I have a good insight on how things work in the media. Even more intensely now than back in the early 2000s when I was in college, the news nowadays is largely moved by press releases, because it's easier to report on something when you've already received all the information in a press kit put together by companies and event organizers. In other words, all the leg work involved in reporting is already done for you and, as a journalist, you just need to get the word out through the media outlet you work for.

So, let's get some specific details on the three issues that triggered this post:

1. Really? You couldn't even look up the publisher's website to get the correct information on a book?!

We all know that book reviews rarely give any credit to translators, whether the review is on the media or on a blog. So we should praise publications that point out (1) that a book was indeed translated and (2) who the translator was. Or so we thought...

Fellow Brazilian translator Cláudia Mello Belhassof specializes in book translations and noticed that Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo ran an article about one of her translations. Philomena: Uma mãe, seu filho e uma busca que durou cinquenta anos became famous because the original book in English inspired a movie by the same name starring Judi Dench.

Cláudia read through the review and not only was it mentioned that the book had been translated into Portuguese, but credit was also given to the translator! (Maybe not everybody knows it but, believe it or not, books don't translate themselves...) And, to her surprise, credit wasn't given to her, but to ANOTHER TRANSLATOR!

This mistake could have been easily avoided by one simple trick: googling it!

And, of course, googling it is not always enough. Checking the credibility of sources returned by the search engine is what makes a difference―as we all know, since translators must research reliable terminology in order to complete their work accurately. In this case, going straight to the most credible source means visiting the publisher's website, which will most likely point out exactly who worked on a book translation they published.

2. Really? The book is yet to be translated and released in Portuguese? How come I have a copy?!

"Amon," written in German by Jennifer Teege and Nikola Sellmair, was released last April in English (translated by Carolin Sommer) with the explanatory alternative title "My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past." But I've had a paperback copy of the book for more than six months now―in Portuguese! When I heard about the story and learned that a dear friend, Petê Rissatti, had translated "Amon: Meu avô teria me executado" from German into Portuguese, I asked my parents in Brazil to send me a copy for Christmas.

Following my theory that journalists feel more comfortable processing and roughly translating press releases―or even foreign news from prestigious international media websites―and simply "forget" to research information when writing their own articles, this is the only explanation for Brazilian newspaper O Globo to have completely missed the fact that "Amon" had already been translated and published in Brazil before the English version became available. The newspaper most likely had access to a press release written by The Experiment, which published the English version of the book, and decided―rightfully so―to report on this incredible story.

As any good book translator should do, Petê likes keeping tabs on news stories and reviews on translations he helped make available to Brazilian readers. But, to his surprise, O Globo originally said in its story that the title remained unpublished in Portuguese...

This mistake could ALSO have been easily avoided by one simple trick: googling it!

Petê contacted the newspaper to let them know that he himself had translated the book from German into Portuguese and that publisher Agir had released it in 2014. Since the story ran on April 5th, the Brazilian newspaper removed that section of the article, updating it three days after the original publication to finally mention that the book came out in Brazil in September 2014.

While searching the newspaper archives, I also found this story from 2013, which was probably published when they received a press release after the original German edition was published. It seems that NO STORY was published last year by the same newspaper when the Brazilian version came to light.

3. Really? You decide to translate the title of a book "freely" even though it was published in the target language decades ago?

After Hillary Clinton confirmed that she was running for president in 2016, Brazilian magazine Veja published an article about ten things readers probably didn't know about the former First Lady. You would think that, when writing about such a prominent figure as Mrs. Clinton, journalists would double check all sources to make sure they got things right.

Nope! While probably "translating" a story found in English, the journalist responsible for the article in Portuguese didn't even bother to research the name of a book Mrs. Clinton wrote back in 1996, when her husband was still in the White House. The Veja story brought this "Did you know?" fact to Brazilian readers, mentioning that "It Takes a Village" could be "loosely" translated as "Leva apenas uma cidade"...

This mistake, too, could have been easily avoided by one simple trick: googling it!

É tarefa de uma aldeia, which is the correct title in Portuguese, was published in Brazil in 1997 by Revan.

And, to make things even more entertaining, Mrs. Clinton recently wrote yet another book, entitled "Hard Choices," which might as well be in the process of being translated into Portuguese and could be released in Brazil any moment now. When running a brief article about this new book, Agência Estado freely translated the title as "Escolhas difíceis". Nothing wrong with that, since there's no official title in Portuguese, but they didn't pay attention to how the original name is actually spelled and ran the story mentioning "Hard Joices". Close enough, right? :-O

In any case, my little article is only intended to point out the lack of attention that books in translation get from the Brazilian media, but I can assure you that it's a worldwide problem. We often read the translator's name in a publication when the reviewer is pointing out something they didn't like about the book and that could only be attributed to a translation mistake, obviously―even when reviewers themselves aren't able to read the original in order to have enough grounds to support their gut feeling about the so-called mistake. When reviewers don't find anything wrong with the book, they usually don't even mention that it was translated, maybe because it would go against their views to actually praise a translator for a job done well...

Having said that, since this is the month we celebrate International Translation Day, let's raise awareness of what translators do and how we contribute to worldwide communications. Revisiting a wonderful campaign initiated in September last year by the Brazilian Translators Association (ABRATES), let's urge publishers to always mention the translator's name on their website and all press releases they sent out to the media. Let's also urge the media―including blog reviewers―to always indicate the translator's name as well when reviewing an international book made available in the local language.

In Portuguese, the hashtags created for the campaign were #NomeDoTradutor, #CadeOTradutor and #QuemTraduziu. I'd like suggest the following counterparts in English: #NameTheTranslator, #WhoTranslatedIt, and #TranslatedByWhom. What hashtags could you use in your language?

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RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. In addition to acting as content curator at eWordNews, a collective blog about translation and literature, she also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators, and coordinates Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories (CBSS), a project to promote Brazilian literature worldwide.

Keep Up and Use Your Language Well

Here's an update to the "Tools and Technology" YouTube channel. This month I'm talking about ideas on how to keep your native language fresh if you live in a country where it is not spoken. And the obvious comment of the month includes using your languages well. After all, languages are our main work tools, right?

Launching a YouTube Channel to Talk About Tools and Technology

A new online session of Tools and Technology in Translation will start September 29 as part of the UCSD Extension Certificate in English/Spanish Translation and Interpretation and I'm excited to add another resource to the list of materials that students and peers can use to learn more about how to incorporate technology into their daily work life.

The purpose of these videos is to share tips, some insight, and talk about the little stuff that either helps or hinders us during our routine.

Here's the first installment added to a dedicated YouTube Channel that will be updated every month with short clips on a variety of topics. Feel free to leave a comment there with ideas or your own experiences on the subject.

I look forward to hearing from colleagues in the T&I industry!

3 Ideas To Avoid Boredom And Stress On A Tight Schedule

Working on multiple projects is a big challenge. Each item needs your undivided attention so you'll meet your deadlines, achieve your goals, and keep clients happy. But you can only work for so long before you run out of steam, right? And, even if you have a flexible deadline, the smallest disruptions can bring about chaos. Here are 3 ideas to manage your boredom, meet your expectations, and get all projects done on time without giving in to stress or finding a way to procrastinate.

1. Follow your schedule and rotate different tasks around

First of all, you gotta organize yourself! You can use a daily planner, a whiteboard, or an online calendar, but PLEASE plan your day beforehand to avoid any headaches. For example, I work with multiple translation projects and, besides completing my own translations, I also supervise colleagues who translate the same documents into their own language. If we didn't use a scheduling system, it would sure be a disaster―that means, missed deadlines and unhappy clients.

So, step one is setting up the slots of time you'll dedicate to each project. If it's something short and simple, it'll be over and done with before you take a break and move on to the next task. But if it's a larger project you're dealing with―let's say, a 10,000-word corporate sustainability report that is only due next week―plan yourself to dedicate a couple of hours to it here and there, intertwined with some much-needed downtime and tasks of a different nature to give your brain a break and still meet the deadline.

Using this 10,000-word translation as an example, one way to approach it is to schedule a couple of hours in the morning to get it started, take a quick break when the time is up (go get some coffee/tea/juice) and then do some unrelated task for the next half an hour or so (managing social media posts, writing a blog entry, answering emails, making phone calls...) Go back to the translation project for another hour and you'll most likely get a boost of productivity and work more easily on it, since it's now familiar to you, while still making progress on your to-do list and keeping your productivity up before it's time for lunch.

Even if you still do the same kind of task, but use a different approach, you're already allowing your brain to switch gears, restart and keep going for longer without getting tired. For instance, let's say I'm translating a long Portuguese-to-English document, so I take a break from it after a couple of hours and fit in a small English-to-Portuguese task to reboot. Otherwise, I run the risk of hitting a roadblock―my brain gets stuck―and my productivity drops.

THE KEY HERE IS TO STAY ORGANIZED and let all the pieces of the puzzle fall in the right places to make your tight schedule work. Still, don't overschedule yourself and leave room for unforeseen circumstances. Few things are really worth stressing about and sometimes it's best to just take a quick break.

Recommended reading:

• 10 Smarter and Less Stressful Ways to Get Your Daily Work Done
  Schedule a 15-Minute Break Before You Burn Out

2. Find your ideal "attention buffer"

Have you ever suffered from the Watching-the-Clock Syndrome? I guess everybody has, at one time or another. It's not that you dislike the task you're working on in that particular moment―okay, sometimes you keep at something for way too long and end up getting bored! It's usually just a matter of feeling that you're not making enough progress. Sometimes you think you should have written/translated/compiled X pages and you feel like you're trapped in quicksand and not moving forward at all.

Well, besides the "take a break and switch gears" approach above, there's one trick you could try: Implement an "attention buffer!" What I mean by that is simply something that will keep one of your senses preoccupied, providing some sort of time reference, so you don't feel you're lagging behind.

Some people think it's about multitasking and are completely against having any of their senses connected to something other than the task at hand, but what I'm actually talking about here is just allowing your brain to have some sort of an escape, so you don't get tired fast.

I'll explain: if I'm translating a document from Spanish to Portuguese, I like having some Brazilian music playing in the background―especially if it's Wednesday and I get to enjoy the 100% Brazilian mix that Lumen FM plays that day of the week. (And, before you ask me, yes, we speak Portuguese in Brazil... Here's some historical reference if you're still confused about it!)

Listening to something in the language I'm writing in or translating to/from actually helps me relax and stay focused at the same time. Had I been listening to English or Italian while working on the Spanish/Portuguese language combo, then it'd certainly be a distraction! Sometimes, when I switch to an English-related task, having an NPR interview, a TV show, or a movie in the background actually works as motivation to get more mundane tasks done, including project management, scheduling, invoicing, etc. 

It also works when I'm eventually stuck on a translation task and, I have to say, more than once Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have actually helped me find the perfect word I was looking for while eloquently making their point across in some of their seriously hilarious reports. You might not have realized it, but these two and their writing staff are true word nerds. Talk about serendipity!

All I know is that, if I have absolute silence while working, I actually feel uncomfortable and restless, as if I weren't making much progress on my tasks (30 minutes end up feeling like 3 hours!) and I soon get tired, distracted, and frustrated. However, there are always exceptions, of course. I usually can't have much going on in the background if I'm translating a novel, for example, because I need to be completely immersed in the universe that the author has created, as if I could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch everything that the characters are experiencing. So, in that case, music is indeed a distraction―unless it's a soundtrack mentioned by the author in connection to characters and events.

There are many naysayers when it comes to having background noise while doing creative work. Well, THE KEY HERE IS THAT DIFFERENT PEOPLE FUNCTION DIFFERENTLY, so what works for me may not work for you. I highly encourage you to find an "attention buffer" that works for you, though!

Recommended reading

• Music Multitasking: How 'Background' Listening Enhances Life
• What Multitasking Does to Our Brain ― Listening to Music While Working Isn’t Multitasking

3. Exercise to get a boost of productivity

Okay, this is definitely my favorite trick, because it not only helps me increase my productivity, but it also keeps me healthy and sane. In addition to running, I take a few group classes at the nearest YMCA every week. When people try to make a point that I'm exercising "too much," I tell them I need some endorphin to manage stress―but what I actually mean is this, this, or this!

Anyway, getting up, breathing in some fresh air, stretching and sweating a little bit is a welcome change when your work has you chained to a desk for hours on end. Gardening, walking the dog, chasing your kids around the park, going for a bike ride, dancing, and lifting weights... You can even prancersize if you want to, just get moving already! These are all great ideas to fill in your breaks with some physical activity to compensate for all that mental hard work.

When you exercise, you'll get the obvious health-related benefits, but you'll also be giving your brain a much-deserved break and possibly allowing it to solve any issues you may have encountered. In my case, it's usually a sentence that is difficult to crack, or a word that I can't quite translate naturally. People say they have their best ideas in the shower or when they're about to fall asleep; with me, it usually happens when I'm in the middle of a workout session and my brain can find an answer while working more passively.

Oftentimes you use all your energy to get the job done that you get completely drained, bored, stressed, and frustrated. So, instead of procrastinating, a better way to get things done without driving yourself mad is to get moving and push those problems to the background, so the answer can come to you more organically and without so much struggle.

In conclusion, you don't need to become a marathon runner or a triathlete to start enjoying the benefits of getting your blood flowing and your heart pumping. THE KEY HERE IS TO FIND AN ACTIVITY YOU TRULY ENJOY―otherwise, it's just more added stress!

Recommended reading:

• Regular Exercise Could Boost Creativity
• Deskercise! 33 Smart Ways to Exercise at Work

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NOTE: Article also available in Portuguese at eWordNews.com

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RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. In addition to acting as content curator at eWordNews, a collective blog about translation and literature, she also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators, and coordinates Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories (CBSS), a project to promote Brazilian literature worldwide.*

Taboo: Translating Into Your Second Language

It is clear for everyone to see: translators translate from a foreign language into their native language. However, there's always an exception for every rule. I was born in Brazil and grew up and went to school there for the first 22 years of my life. Then I moved away. I could already bring English and Spanish to the table, since I had been working as a translator for at least five years by then, although I was only translating into my mother tongue at the time.

The change of address also triggered a change in demand. There are few people worldwide who make a decision to learn Portuguese, and those who do so usually have a pretty good reason: personal (most likely a Brazilian spouse) or professional (working for a company that has commercial ties with Brazil). And, among these very few individuals, the amount of English speakers who end up going into translation is even smaller. That is why, unfortunately, we see a lack of foreigners translating from Portuguese to English.

As a Brazilian who immigrated to California, I started to receive requests for translations from Portuguese into English. At first, these were personal or business documents. There were many diplomas and school transcripts from Brazilians who wished to continue their studies in the United States. There were many agreements, contracts, business communications, and brochures from Brazilian companies who wished to do business with American companies.

In both cases, these translations can be done fairly easily, especially with the help of the Internet―when I started translating back in 1997, Google still didn't exist and it would only take flight in Brazil during the turn of the century. Nowadays, it's easy to research the curriculum of several universities to learn more about the classes they offer and, consequently, be in a better position to compare the subjects studied by a Brazilian and those taken by foreign students in the same area of interest. And, when it comes to corporate communications, many translations from Portuguese to English can be done (almost) with your eyes closed, considering the amount of English jargon and style that is either kept or adapted into Portuguese in this segment.

But, what about book translations? In 2010, I started to diversify my portfolio because literary translation is what had first attracted me to this industry. That was when I created a project dedicated to translating Brazilian short stories into English. And what a pleasure it was―and still is! What a great way to exercise my creativity, after it had been pushed to the far corners of my mind!

And, what about the challenge? The challenge was even bigger! What can you do when you come across a diversity of voices, styles, and slangs that exist in a country with continental dimensions, such as Brazil? The way I found was to research equivalent expressions exhaustively, always trying to get as close as possible to what had been said by the author. That certain Brazilian flavor may get lost sometimes, but the feelings and emotions experienced by readers is somehow conveyed in English.

In addition to these short stories, I also translated several books by Brazilian authors who wished to have their work available in English. These translations, while equally rewarding, are way more intense. Short stories are ready in a short amount of time; books take months until they're finally ready to go. And, when you're translating into your second language―no matter how fluent you are in that foreign tongue―you are always prone to having more questions than you'd have in your mother tongue, that language that provides you that “gut feeling” deep down that tells you, “This is right! But that's not cool. This reads very naturally! Now, this looks like Translationese.”

Prepositions... These are the true villains when you translate into English. These short, little words can be a huge pain in the neck! In, on, at, out, off, up, away. Use the wrong preposition, and you'll change the entire meaning of a sentence. Instead of putting out the fire of desire, you actually put off your reader. And, if you no longer have the reader's attention, you're doing a disservice to authors, who hunched over their manuscript for months or years, trying to find just the right word. Well, that is true of any language, though.

And what happens when you hit a roadblock? That's when you have to be resourceful and grab a “native” to help you in your translation cause. I turn to my husband and ask, “How would you say XYZ in English?” I send out a text to a friend, writing a sentence and leaving _____ in the middle of it, so that she can fill in the blank with a verb or preposition she would use if she were writing it in English, her native language. I sometimes play charades when I have friends over, just to clear up some term that may have been pending.

We try things out, make things up and learn something new. And this kind of learning doesn't always come on demand. Sometimes you're watching a movie, a TV show, or listening to the radio in the car and then it clicks. It's a constant exercise in capturing an instant in that language to preserve it in your mind, just in case you might need it later.

Book translations are made of sensations: imagination, colors, flavors, and smells. When you catch one of these sensations just like that, while it's hanging up in the air, you must cherish it and incorporate it, so that one day―whether it's a distant or near future―you can make it fit like a glove in one of your translations to trigger that same sensation you've experienced in the language you started learning from the time you heard the first sound from the outside world. After all, in order to translate into your second language, you must live in it with both feet on the ground, but with your heart back in your homeland, always.

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NOTE: This article was originally written in Portuguese as a guest post for Brazilian blog Ponte de Letras.

Thanks Jane Lamb-Ruiz for the constructive criticism!

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RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. In addition to acting as content curator at eWordNews, a collective blog about translation and literature, she also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators, and coordinates Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories (CBSS), a project to promote Brazilian literature worldwide.*

On Translating Linguistic Variants

On June 5-7, 2015, I attended the 6th International Conference organized by the Brazilian Translators Association (ABRATES), which took place at the Rebouças Convention Center in São Paulo. On Saturday, June 6th―the first day of presentations―I spent most of my day in Room 5, where several presenters talked about literary translation.

The fourth session I attended was On Translating Linguistic Variants, presented by Solange Pinheiro Carvalho. She talked about her academic research on the work of Andrea Camilleri, an Italian author born in 1925, when few Italians were bilingual and most only spoke their regional language.

Solange explained that, for Camilleri, Sicilian was the "language of affection," while Italian was the "language of authority." Back then, it was not possible to talk to elderly people in Italian, since they only understood their own dialect. As for young people, they started to learn Italian at school, then oftentimes moved out of their hometown and, upon returning, could no longer understand the local dialect. This Italian reality is shown in Camilleri's writings, mainly as a way to indicate a character's language register, as well as the (social and hierarchical) interactions between characters.

The presenter studied different approaches from academics, such as Pym, Lane-Mercier, Morvan, and Eco to base her research, but warned that "It's impossible to think about a general translation theory; we must analyze each particular case separately." In order to illustrate this linguistic reality, the researcher compared the evolution of national language in Italy and Brazil: While multilingualism was the rule in Italian territory―where minority or regional languages contrasted from standard Italian―in Brazilian territory there has always been a multiplicity of dialects that are mutually understandable.

However, she emphasized that translators should avoid attempting a localization that could create an incorrect parallel between a dialect in the original and an accent that is characteristic from a Brazilian state, for example. In other words, it would be wrong to change a Sicilian character into someone from a northern Brazilian state.

READ MORE: 
"The Translation of
Literary Sociolect: a Study About Wuthering Heights"
―a thesis by Solange
Pinheiro Carvalho
(in Portuguese)

Solange said this Italian multilingualism causes conflicts in both Camilleri's writings and translations, because what is considered "the educated standard" clashes with the translation of linguistic variants. "In the general consensus, we're able to match different linguistic norms," she stated in regards to the translation of a standard language into another. "But how about the linguistic variants that exist within the same language?"

As an example, Solange mentioned some fragments of one of Camilleri's books, in which a character is talking to his girlfriend and ends up mixing some Sicilian with Italian, which deeply irritates her―since she only understands the latter. The presenter then reflected about how to manage this conflict in a translation into Portuguese: Instead of translating everything into the target language, which would certainly change the interaction between characters, she said some adaptations are required.

"Sometimes you must find another language to create this foreignness, especially if one of the characters will resolve this conflict throughout the dialog," she suggested, mentioning that she found inspiration in minority languages from the Iberian Peninsula, such as Galician, Aragonese, Mirandese, and Asturian, which are somehow connected to Portuguese―at least enough to be understood by the reader, while creating the same effect present in the original because of some terms that are indeed out of place and incomprehensible.

In some other instances, she opted for misspelling something to cause this oddness. During her explanation, she highlighted a piece of dialog from Camilleri's book in which the word signora (or "Mrs." in Italian) had been written as signura and, in order to be true to the author's intention and making the reader feel a bit off, she'd misspell the Portuguese senhora as sinhora, which is actually used in Galician.

"By introducing Galician into the text, we're able to show that the character doesn't quite speak the standard language used in the original, thus keeping the same level of oddness in the translation," she assured. "I just don't know how far this solution would be considered acceptable at a traditional publishing house, because we all know there's some resistance to regional variants," she reminded the audience, adding that Camilleri's work in Italy isn't as widely accepted as it should because Italian readers think his writings are "too difficult."

"If I were to translate it this way and a published put the book out like that, I'm sure they would receive many complaints about the book being badly written," she lamented.

RAFA LOMBARDINO is a translator and journalist from Brazil who lives in California. She is the author of "Tools and Technology in Translation ― The Profile of Beginning Language Professionals in the Digital Age," which is based on her UCSD Extension class. Rafa has been working as a translator since 1997 and, in 2011, started to join forces with self-published authors to translate their work into Portuguese and English. She also runs Word Awareness, a small network of professional translators.