Is there anywhere I can view examples of good and bad translations?
Thread poster: marijaflora
marijaflora
marijaflora
Australia
Local time: 07:39
Bosnian to English
+ ...
Oct 20, 2020

As a new translator, I think it would be helpful if I could see some examples of good and bad translations so that I could learn from these.
By bad I don't mean the really obvious (e.g., user manuals translated from Chinese) but more subtle things that may not seem like a bad translation to an untrained eye, but might be considered one by a client.


 
Robert Rietvelt
Robert Rietvelt  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:39
Member (2006)
Spanish to Dutch
+ ...
Bad translation? MT! Oct 20, 2020

Marijaflora wrote:

As a new translator, I think it would be helpful if I could see some examples of good and bad translations so that I could learn from these.
By bad I don't mean the really obvious (e.g., user manuals translated from Chinese) but more subtle things that may not seem like a bad translation to an untrained eye, but might be considered one by a client.


Translate a text with Google translate, Deepl or one of the other MT's available. Most of the times the translation looks OK for the untrained eye, till you really start reading it. There you have your example of a bad translation.



[Edited at 2020-10-20 18:10 GMT]


Joanna Posylek
Liviu-Lee Roth
Philip Lees
philgoddard
Philippe Etienne
Zeineb Nalouti
neilmac
 
Luca Tutino
Luca Tutino  Identity Verified
Italy
Member (2002)
English to Italian
+ ...
For what language combination? Oct 21, 2020

Just a possible avenue: you might look for blogs by colleagues translators working with your languages. A wonderful blog, including many such examples for the English-Italian combination, is "Terminologia etc." by Licia Corobolante. She launched the blog many years ago as part of her job at Microsoft so it is possible that some MS had terminologists are doing the same for other language combinations.

P.L.F. Persio
marijaflora
 
Rolf Keller
Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 21:39
English to German
Try to be(come) a good writer Oct 21, 2020

Good translators are good writers and only translate into their native language. Just look at the profile pages of translators in ProZ and read the native sample translations there. Often you will see that those texts are just bad or even faulty - you don't need to read/understand the original texts to discern bad target texts.

Many translator are mediocre or even bad writers because they focus on the foreign side ("I do like the Mediterranean region and the Romance language
... See more
Good translators are good writers and only translate into their native language. Just look at the profile pages of translators in ProZ and read the native sample translations there. Often you will see that those texts are just bad or even faulty - you don't need to read/understand the original texts to discern bad target texts.

Many translator are mediocre or even bad writers because they focus on the foreign side ("I do like the Mediterranean region and the Romance languages there") but haven't got a good command of their native language. Translators need a very good command, though. At least in my Germany one gets no good command of German, at least not in level 3 education schools.

So, try to be(come) a good writer. There are books and maybe workshops on this topic. 30 years ago I attended such a course, it was very interesting. Meanwhile such courses seem to be extinct, surely not because all people are better writers now.
Collapse


P.L.F. Persio
marijaflora
 
nordiste
nordiste  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 21:39
English to French
+ ...
they are all around Oct 21, 2020

Marijaflora wrote:

As a new translator, I think it would be helpful if I could see some examples of good and bad translations so that I could learn from these.
By bad I don't mean the really obvious (e.g., user manuals translated from Chinese) but more subtle things that may not seem like a bad translation to an untrained eye, but might be considered one by a client.


Look at the English pages of lot of websites from non-English speaking countries : hotels, tourist information, administration portals from European countries ... you should find some amazing documents


marijaflora
 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 21:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
Kudoz section Oct 22, 2020

In the kudoz area, you can see inspiring suggestions to help askers with some phrase or term, alongside some duffers and amusing howlers...

[Edited at 2020-10-22 14:42 GMT]


expressisverbis
P.L.F. Persio
ahartje
 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 21:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
Just about ... Oct 22, 2020

... everywhere. It's a wide world.

[Edited at 2020-10-22 14:57 GMT]


expressisverbis
P.L.F. Persio
 
Mr. Satan (X)
Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
IT Oct 23, 2020

There are a lot of those in the IT industry.

[EDIT]
The bad ones, I mean.

[Edited at 2020-10-23 13:19 GMT]


 


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Is there anywhere I can view examples of good and bad translations?







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