I am reading a collection of prose and poetry centred around Singapore. The anthology comprises works in English, Malay, Chinese (Mandarin), and Tamil. The pieces which were originally written in non-English were followed immediately by an accompanying full translation. After reading several pieces translated from Malay, I found myself rather upset.
The back-story is that I am currently teaching Malay. I do this freelance and I am focusing on conversational Malay. It is my mother tongue, though I will readily confess that I have thought in English since I was perhaps 8 or 9 years of age. During my last overseas posting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, I discovered that I still had a decent grasp of Malay and used it regularly in engaging fellow diplomats and other folks from Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia where Malay and Bahasa Indonesia (which is similar but also vastly different) are the main language of the land.
I was so upset that I actually searched the internet to find out more about the translator of the pieces. It was an academic, and one renowned enough to have their own Wikipedia page who was responsible. Slightly intimidated by the search results, I reconsidered what had irked me so about the translations.
Grammatically, it was solid. In terms of vocabulary, there were no words which had been erroneously used.
It was clear that the translator was well-equipped to do their job and not someone who relied on Google Translate alone. Google Translate is a helpful but incomplete tool. Never rely solely on translation software or websites.
But I felt that the translations were rather stiff. The nuances behind certain words and expressions from the Malay original were lost. The translated pieces also read like they came from a foreign rather than a Malay voice.
This is a struggle that I understand well. In preparing each lesson for my student, I have to find a way to bring each word to life and ensure that the literal meaning does not cloud other interpretations. I also undertook another project recently for a media company in which I provided on-set interpretation during an interview and also provided a Malay translation for the subtitles. When I looked over the first draft I had prepared for the subtitles, I saw that I had fallen into the trap of using literal translations. It is an easy mistake to make. As I revised the draft, I made the effort to retain the nuances in the translated copy.
There was a risk that I had misunderstood all the nuances. Further, even if I had caught them all there is no guarantee that the reader would understand them as I did. Nevertheless, I believe that by making the effort to choose one word over another to retain nuances, it adds value to the final product.
In any given language, words are more than their definition in the dictionary (if one exists). As such, it is important that their full weight is reflected when they are translated into another language. I hope that organisations who operate and/or sell products and services in the Malay-speaking part of the world will pay more attention to the translations they use. This should apply to all languages but since I don’t know the state of affairs for other languages, I don’t want to make assumptions.
And seriously, never ever rely solely on translation software or websites. If you are outsourcing to a third-party, have someone else check their work.
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