English source text is bad translation from another language - What should you do? Thread poster: Zolboo Batbold
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Zolboo Batbold 
Italy
Local time: 12:33
Member (2021)
English to Mongolian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
It has happened to me a couple of times to recieve source texts in English which were translated from another language (Korean, Chinese etc.), possibly machine-translated and post-edited. As a result, the texts contained wrong terms/collocations, awkward-sounding sentences...just overall bad. Is this common practice? A method to bypass other language pairs?
I'm considering not accepting such texts in the future. It's time-consuming to translate such texts. What is your opinion on this?
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
| In my case... | Nov 13, 2021 |
...I try my best to translate them. Thankfully I love linguistics, so I don't mind learning some vocabulary in languages I don't speak. It also gave me a bit of knowledge about those terminologies that bent my brain beyond recognition. Once, I had to juggle between English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Turkish (I was only asked to translate from English into Indonesian). If there's something I just couldn't grasp after I've used all my resources, I ask the PM or client for some guidance or clarificat... See more ...I try my best to translate them. Thankfully I love linguistics, so I don't mind learning some vocabulary in languages I don't speak. It also gave me a bit of knowledge about those terminologies that bent my brain beyond recognition. Once, I had to juggle between English, Indonesian, Arabic, and Turkish (I was only asked to translate from English into Indonesian). If there's something I just couldn't grasp after I've used all my resources, I ask the PM or client for some guidance or clarification. But hey, that's part of the job, right?
Is it a common practice? Well, for source texts which were already translated from a different language into English, feels like it. In my language pair, that is.
At least it's still better than a guest ordering Tom Yum without shrimp. Yes, that did happen in my previous job.
[Edited at 2021-11-13 10:02 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Not uncommon | Nov 13, 2021 |
Always reject bad texts, whatever their origin.
Using English as a lingua franca is often a necessity though.
My ex translates stuff into English for a well-known Swedish retailer, and it is her English that is then translated into god knows how many different languages (including American and Australian!).
The risk of a “Chinese whispers” effect is very real though.
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I can’t remember over the years how many times I had the situation you described, but I suppose it was just a couple of times. I always refuse, the reason being that I can’t translate what I can’t understand.
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