Translation Inside-Out

One of the fundamental axioms of professional translation is that one should always translate into one’s native language.

While I would indeed not agree to take a professional assignment translating into Spanish, there are ample benefits to practicing translating “inside-out”.

The most obvious benefit is grammar practice.  I am forced to refine my active production skills in Spanish and think through every word choice with sometimes painful deliberation going far beyond a passive reading and comprehension of texts.  I’m getting my hands quite dirty with the language.

Another plus is insight into linguistic disparities.  I see myself and indeed native speakers around me stumbling over “false friends” that don’t carry over so well from English to Spanish as we thought.  I see times when it is necessary to rework structures of whole phrases and sentences so that they sound natural in Spanish.

Yet another plus is insight into cultural disparities.  By analyzing the cultural elements of the English source texts that are important to conserve in the translation, I’m gaining a lot of insight into my own culture. By exploring the ways textual elements may be conserved in Spanish, sometimes by seeking Calatonian and Spanish cultural equivalents, I’m gaining a lot of insight into local culture too.

These points may be illustrated using the sample source phrase “uniquely inspiring achievements”.

We are tempted to literally translate “uniquely” as “únicamente”.  But  -mente words are seldom used naturally in Spanish.  Constructions like “in a unique way” are more frequent.  Now that we know this, we are readier to consider translating “in a __ way” in a Spanish source text into “__ly” in English.

But we can’t readily use this whole phrase to modify “inspirador [inspiring]”, which is already modifying “logros [achievements]”.  Now our grammatical sensibilities are heightened….

Can’t we just call them “unique and inspiring achievements”?  No, because it changes the meaning just a shade!  This phrase is drawn from an article about Stephen Hawking.  Had he simply been a distinguished professor, well-liked and respected within his university community, his achievements could still have been uniquely inspiring in light of his degenerative disorder, though not especially unique.  Having analyzed this point, we are readier to guard against construction changes that bring about subtle shifts in meaning.

So what can we say?  There are a number of solutions, none of them perfect–that’s translation and life!.  I chose “logros con un poder inspirador único [with a unique inspiring power]”.

No matter the language one studies translation in, the crucial thing is learning how to think as a translator–learning one way or another how to consider all aspects of a text and all the decisions that must be made around translating it well.

A final, lucky advantage of my particular program is that because it has a highly international student body, my professors do not only accept the presence of non-native Spanish speakers, but view us, whether we are native speakers of English, Russian, Chinese or Italian, as resources that enrich the learning environment, since we enable delving deeper into the nuances of texts in our native language and raising relevant examples from our own languages that the class could otherwise not access in order to shed light on the concepts we discuss.