| Страниц в теме: < [1 2 3 4] | More on native capabilities Автор темы: Balasubramaniam L.
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| Point taken, mediametrix … | Oct 18, 2006 |
mediamatrix wrote:
Any language can be (ab)used to convey mis-truths and cover things up. Indeed, much of Man's suffering in the past several centuries has been triggered by the deliberate abuse of a variety of languages. Such is the nature of human language and such - alas - are the diverse objectives of human communication!
… and it’s a good point, and I really do take it. It’s clearly true. But my long experience of International English in international development organizations is that the language they use goes beyond being something that is merely distasteful to a ‘pedant’. It’s a language that gets in the way of what those organizations are supposed to be doing. It’s willfully dense, and virtually impenetrable, and it distorts thought. And it prevails as a kind of etiquette, something designed to exclude others, which confers in-group membership on its users.
There is no conceivable circumstance in which it is helpful to say ‘our operations in Country X will seek to optimize stakeholder buy-in so as to maximize local ownership and guarantee enhanced input for the deliverables’. It is no exaggeration to say that such a sentence is pretty typical of Int-Eng as written in the international development ‘community’.
Of course, if you (I don’t mean you, mediametrix, I mean ‘a person’) can’t write too well in standard English, then being given an opportunity to write like that is fantastic. It covers a multitude of sins. And it means you can get the document onto your boss’s desk by the deadline without having to think too hard about what a ‘stakeholder’ in Managua or Lagos actually is, or what their ‘bought-in ownership’ might actually entail.
And then the people running the actual operation in Country X feel they have to emulate that language, because that’s the language used to transmit the cash. So you get wretched Spanish neologisms like ‘entregables’ (‘deliverables’) – an invented translation of an invented English word. And you forget how you used to say it in, say, the ancient 1980s, before we had ‘deliverables’.
I suspect that if Int-Eng as spoken in the international organizations continues as at present, eventually it will lose all contact with reality. It will become what Orwell called ‘Newspeak’, perhaps even his ‘Duckspeak’.
I hope my input has maximized your buy-in of my point and enhanced the empowering benchmarking required to deliver a diagnostic of our dialogue, so as to facilitate a holistic and integral mainstreaming of the modalities I am endeavouring to conceptualize.
| | | | mediamatrix (X)
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| Rest assured, ... | Oct 18, 2006 |
Jackie Bowman wrote:
I hope my input has maximized your buy-in of my point and enhanced the empowering benchmarking required to deliver a diagnostic of our dialogue, so as to facilitate a holistic and integral mainstreaming of the modalities I am endeavouring to conceptualize.
... it most certainly has! And I agree with many of your sentiments (and not only on the linguistic front).
Having said that, my only direct involvement with the international undevelopment organizations was at a somewhat more down to earth level - literally - going back as it does just 30 years to the time I spent in Guatemala getting local radio stations back on the air after the earthquake in February of that year. We didn't bother too much about buying-in anything other than gas for the generator, nor empowering anything more substantial than wobbling antennas - although it's true there was (were?) quite a lot of holistics at play where eating, accommodation and travel arrangements were concerned.
MediaMatrix
| | | | Balasubramaniam L. 
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Автор темы ЛОКАЛИЗАТОР САЙТА | We are digressing, can we come back to the main issue, please? | Oct 19, 2006 |
To Jackie:
The distortions that you speak of visavis international English, are actually a much broader phenomenon and can be found in any language when it is used at the governmental or bureaucratic level. It is there in Hindi too and probably in all languages that are used by governments and bureaucracies.
The reason is that this kind of writing is impersonal. The person actually doing the writing, a hired language expert in a secretariat, is not writing about someth... See more To Jackie:
The distortions that you speak of visavis international English, are actually a much broader phenomenon and can be found in any language when it is used at the governmental or bureaucratic level. It is there in Hindi too and probably in all languages that are used by governments and bureaucracies.
The reason is that this kind of writing is impersonal. The person actually doing the writing, a hired language expert in a secretariat, is not writing about something that his own mind has generated, but something that is the product of a meeting or a committee, consisting often of conflicting interests. Words, sentences, and phrases have to be kept at a level where they cannot give offence to any of the conflicting interests and often legal requirements or protocol prevent a spade from being called a spade, one is forced to use lengthy and vague euphemisms for it.
This kind of writing is disembodied writing, a special kind of writing in which there is a marked dissociation between the mind of the person wielding the pen and what is being written. This is why there is grotesqueness here, because it is deprived of the balancing influence of the mind that can make writing clear and expressive of our thoughts. In fact no “thought” as such is involved here, if you define “thought” as something arising in a person’s mind, which is then coherently and effectively expressed in words. Here what we have is the debris of the clash of several conflicting thoughts that have to be somewhat strung together so as to make it appear like human language. No wonder the results are macabre, for languages are not designed for this sort of thing.
But this is an entirely separate issue, and was not in my mind when I began this thread.
What I wanted a discussion on was merely the assumption that a non-native person can never acquire so much competence in a language as to be able to translate effectively in it.
I had propounded that this is a fallacy and goes against the intellectual and learning capabilities of humans and is a baseless and unscientific notion. Many people either by force of circumstance or by inclination acquire capabilities in some languages that can match native capabilities. Recognizing this truth will make our profession more competitive and effective and also improve translation quality across the line as certainly it would be incorrect to assume that all native translators are good translators, just as it is incorrect to assume that all non-native translators are bad translators.
Now can I have your opinion Jackie, on this:
What is the real reason behind people getting passionate about this nativeness issue?
Is it the fear of economic competition and loss of income and fall in standard of living? Some kind of protectionism as practised by the developed countries when faced with cheaper, and often better, goods and services from newly emerging economies?
Often these sentiments come couched in holier than thou terms, like the products involve child labour, or don’t confirm to certain obtuse environmental standards, or violate human rights of some section of the people, etc., just as here people swear that non-native translators are by definition bad translators, and therefore, all non-native translation is trash. But the real reason is fear of competition, and an inferiority complex that what will happen to me if all these people start excelling in a domain that has so far been my exclusive preserve and begin to compete with me? Damit, some of these upstarts are good and can give me a run for my money!
[Edited at 2006-10-19 05:24] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
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Автор темы ЛОКАЛИЗАТОР САЙТА | A suitable metric for measuring translation abilities | Oct 19, 2006 |
One of the objectives of starting this thread was to explore what could be a suitable metric for measuring translation abilities in a fair and accurate manner.
Mediamatrix has made two suggestions:
1. The ability of a translator to earn a steady income by translating into that language.
2. Peer evaluation of forum posts of the translator for a certain level of proficiency in that language.
The first one is not useful to an outsourcer for judgin... See more One of the objectives of starting this thread was to explore what could be a suitable metric for measuring translation abilities in a fair and accurate manner.
Mediamatrix has made two suggestions:
1. The ability of a translator to earn a steady income by translating into that language.
2. Peer evaluation of forum posts of the translator for a certain level of proficiency in that language.
The first one is not useful to an outsourcer for judging the quality of a translator.
The second has some obvious drawbacks too. In forums people generally write in an informal way and often use colloquialisms that would be avoided in a formal translation situation. Also we tend to do away with cross-checking spellings, facts, references, etc. in forum postings, for these posts are conversational in nature. Therefore the forum writings may not truly reflect what a translator is capable of.
A more serious drawback than this is that as of now forums exist only in a few languages and therefore forum writings cannot be used on a more general scale for evaluating translator capabilities in the hundred odd languages listed with proz.com.
So what then could be such a metric?
To my mind, it could only be some kind of test in each language which when passed, a translator may be permitted to call himself/herself a certified translator in that language. I don't know whether such a test exists, and if it exists, covers all languages. For example I know that ATA does not conduct such a test for Hindi.
Can proz.com as the premier translator workplace administer such a test and provide this certification to translators?
Given the immense popularity of the site, its certification will hold weight and value.
And it has enough translators in every major language who can quickly put together an evaluation test in that language.
A small fee could be charged for providing this test, which could cover the expenses involved in administering this feature.
I don't know how practical or feasible this idea is and would welcome your views on this.
Once we have this metric and certification in place, we can perhaps do away with the nativity nonsense. ▲ Collapse
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| Non-native competence | Oct 20, 2006 |
Balasubramaniam wrote:
What I wanted a discussion on was merely the assumption that a non-native person can never acquire so much competence in a language as to be able to translate effectively in it.
That assumption is demonstrably false. There is, however, much evidence to support the assertion that relatively few who have acquired a non-native language have acquired native-like competence in that language and consequently are able to produce translations that are indistinguishable from those produced by native speakers.
Many people either by force of circumstance or by inclination acquire capabilities in some languages that can match native capabilities.
Some non-natives do, but it is also true that many more who acquire a non-native language never achieve native-like competence. If the objective is to have a translation that reads as if it were written by a native-speaker of the target language, then the odds of that objective being achieved are simply greater if a native speaker of the target language is chosen to do the translation.
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
Индия
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Автор темы ЛОКАЛИЗАТОР САЙТА | These numbers may not be insignificant | Oct 20, 2006 |
Michele Fauble wrote:
... relatively few who have acquired a non-native language have acquired native-like competence in that language and consequently are able to produce translations that are indistinguishable from those produced by native speakers.
With the world integrating rapidly and transportation becoming cheaper and modern technologies making long distance connectivity simple, and of course the prolonged colonial interaction with many European languages, a substantial number of non-native people have acquired excellent command over these languages.
I can speak of the case of India where you can find millions of people with superb command over English which is demonstrably un-inferior to the command held on this language by native English speakers. I am not talking here of those Indians who are second generation speakers of English for whom English is the native language (mother tongue), but those who have another Indian language as the main language and have learnt English at school as a second language.
Some of these Indians have attained international fame as writers, diplomats, scientists and journalists. I can even name a few here:
Armatya Sen, a Bengali, who won the Nobel prize in economics.
Dr. Manmohan Singh, a World Bank economist of long standing and the current Prime Minister.
Kiran Desai, who recently won the Booker Prize.
Salman Rushdie, who spent his formative years in Bombay.
Nirad Chaudhari, another Bengali, who was more British and imperialistic in his inclinations than even the British themselves!
Another nobel prize winner in English literature, V.S. Naipaul, had Hindi as his home language in Trinidad.
Some of the largest circulating English dailies of the world come from India. Now who would like to claim that the English they use is pidgin English?
And if you move behind in time, all our national leaders at the time of the independance struggle had good command over English - Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru (who was supposedly the finest prose writer of English in the world of his times), Rajagopalachari, Srinivas Iyengar, and Dr. Radhakrishnan, to name a few.
The same situation should prevail in other countries with a colonial background.
Today there are more non-native users of langauges like English than native-speakers. Not all of these users have a faulty command over the language.
| | | | | Native language still relevant | Oct 20, 2006 |
I understand your point to be that a significant number of non-natives attain a command of a non-native language equal to that of a native speaker and that these non-natives are fully capable of translating into the non-native target language. I concede this point, and I don't think many translators would dispute this. If I understand you correctly, you also believe this makes the issue of native language irrelevant. While this may be the case for the individual translator who has acquired nativ... See more I understand your point to be that a significant number of non-natives attain a command of a non-native language equal to that of a native speaker and that these non-natives are fully capable of translating into the non-native target language. I concede this point, and I don't think many translators would dispute this. If I understand you correctly, you also believe this makes the issue of native language irrelevant. While this may be the case for the individual translator who has acquired native-like competence, for the larger number of translators, who do not have native-like competence in a non-native language, and often for those who employ the services of translators, it remains relevant. For the former because they will produce better translations in their native language, and be more successful translators, and for the latter because many translators offering to translate into a non-native language will produce sub-standard translations due to a lack of target language competence.
As to the question of why many are so "passionate" in advocating translating only into the translator's native language, there is no more reason to suspect the cause is native speaker fear of competition from non-natives than there is to suspect that those who argue that native language is irrelevant are doing so out of fear of competition from native speakers. I'm convinced that the reason has to do with the many poor translations that are seen that are produced by non-native translators.
[Edited at 2006-10-20 13:12] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Getting passionate about the nativeness issue | Oct 20, 2006 |
Dear Balasubramaniam,
You posed a direct question to me. In responding, I hope not to digress.
Balasubramaniam asked:
Now can I have your opinion Jackie, on this:
What is the real reason behind people getting passionate about this nativeness issue?
I don’t know the answer to the question. It’s a question best addressed to people who get passionate about that matter. I don’t get passionate about it, and I never have.
Quite the contrary, in fact – I have strong and recorded views in the opposite direction. I have colleagues who write in English but whose mother tongue is not English. Their native language might be Danish or Dutch or Spanish or Portuguese. And they’re not even professional translators. They’re economists or political scientists or anthropologists. And I would not hesitate for a single second in assessing their English prose as superior to that of almost anybody within a 50-block radius of my old house in the north of England.
Is it the fear of economic competition and loss of income and fall in standard of living? Some kind of protectionism as practised by the developed countries when faced with cheaper, and often better, goods and services from newly emerging economies? …
Often these sentiments come couched in holier than thou terms, like the products involve child labour, or don’t confirm to certain obtuse environmental standards, or violate human rights of some section of the people, etc.,
That might be the reason. Again, I can’t really comment because the views you suggest are light years away from mine. In fact, I have written repeatedly and at considerable length about such views (and with specific reference to Indian translators into English) in this thread: http://www.proz.com/post/411452#411452
It’s possible that if you read my contributions to that thread you might appreciate that my views are fairly close to yours.
… the real reason is fear of competition, and an inferiority complex that what will happen to me if all these people start excelling in a domain that has so far been my exclusive preserve and begin to compete with me? Damit, some of these upstarts are good and can give me a run for my money!
That might be right. In all honesty I don’t know, so I’m not the best person to ask in this respect.
But I don’t want this post to be a catalogue of my ignorance, so I should acknowledge that I do in fact know some stuff. One thing I know is that some people who write for a living can write well, and that many more people who write for a living can’t write well.
The curious thing is why that assertion should ever give anyone pause for thought. Nobody with any sense would ever challenge the proposition that lots of people play football for a living, and that some of those people play football well, and that many more of them play football much less well. The proposition isn’t really a proposition. It is an inescapable fact of life. But when it comes to the written expression of thought … oh, how we resist that proposition.
When I hire a English-language writer or an English-language editor or a translator into English, it matters nothing to me where they live or what their mother tongue is. What matters is how they write English.
PS. I was careful to put the comma after your name this time. Perhaps our colleague who commented earlier on its absence will find that acceptable.
Edited to remove the typo in 'acceptable'.
[Edited at 2006-10-20 18:51]
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Dyran Altenburg (X)
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| The proof is in the pudding | Oct 20, 2006 |
Balasubramaniam wrote:
Today there are more non-native users of langauges like English than native-speakers. Not all of these users have a faulty command over the language.
True. But I wouldn't be surprised if most had a faulty command over the language.
A few notable exceptions do not make non-native competency a non-issue. Quite the contrary.
Furthermore, I don't think a very elaborate test would be necessary. More often than not, all you have to do is read the forums. Non-competency (particularly in English) sticks out like a sore thumb.
--
Dyran
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