We live in an international economy. A Japanese company can have its head office in America, its manufacturing plant in Brazil, and its primary call center in Pakistan. That’s just the way it is and, as such, companies need to invest both time and money in ensuring that they are communicating effectively across cultural and language barriers.
I certainly appreciate the efforts of companies from non-English speaking countries to translate their product descriptions and marketing materials into English, but oftentimes, the net result leaves much to be desired. So much gets lost in translation and transliteration. That’s because so many companies suffer from the exact same issue.
The Typical Translation Formula
Let’s take a Chinese or Taiwanese company as an example, since the Internet is filled with countless examples of Chingrish. When they have a document written out in Chinese, they turn to the employee with what appears to be the best English skills and they ask her to translate it for them. This strategy has two critical faults:
- She is usually not a professional translator. She could work in any number of other departments. For this kind of work, it’s best to turn to someone who translates for a living.
- English is not her primary language; Chinese is.
The second issue is actually the larger problem here. So many companies assume that they need someone who has a strong grasp of the original text in order to get an accurate translation, oftentimes at the risk of having poorer skills with the destination language.
Here’s How to Fix It
All translation work should be done with the person who is strongest in the target language, not the source language. Going back to the Chinese-to-English example, you’re better off hiring a native English speaker with slightly weaker Chinese skills than the other way around. That’s because this person can still ask for clarification of the original text when needed.
By doing so, you also have a much better chance of having a final translation that reads as if it were written in the target language in the first place. And that’s what you want. The writing ability of the translator certainly comes into play, but the core language skills and the native understanding of the nuances of the target language are more important.
Target Language Comes First
The reason why “Chingrish” looks so bad is because it was written by someone who is fluent in Chinese and weak in English. Hire a translator who is the other way around and you can avoid these issues much more easily.
Looking for translator work are we?
I would… if I could read Chinese.
I know exactly what you mean, I spent a few months in China and 99% of all the English was incorrectly translated, Even that used by large companies on national products.
BTW: did you get the new season 15 of top gear in Canada at the same time as us on Sunday?
I run into this in stores & restaurants run by foreigners.
I find it entertaining & amusing. PC mag has a small section in their magazine that highlights stuff like this in different places.
I could not agree with you more. I am sure most of you have seen one of Patels sites engrish humor. It is a whole site dedicated to bad translation.
Worst of all are places that use automatic translation tools rather than having an actual person do it.