Negócio da tradução em Shanghai
Por David Tan
Um intérprete simultâneo bom em Shanghai pode ganhar até RMB500 um a hora. Eu arreliei um amigo de meu (quem era um) esse ela tinha um trabalho ideal, e não devo parar. Faria exame em 1 a 2 atribuições um o mês, um máximo durando de 5 dias, e ganha entre 7.000 a 10.000 RMB um mês. Pelos padrões locais médios, 10,000RMB um o mês é mais do que bastantes a viver confortavelmente. O restante dos 25 dias em um mês, gasta-o que faz as coisas que gosta. Chama-se finalmente para dentro um dia que citing a “pressão”.
Pressão? Que pressão? O que é assim difícil em repetir o que alguém disse apenas. Não deve ser demasiado difícil se você for fluent em ambas as línguas? Direita?
NÃO!
Eu comecei meu primeiro gosto do negócio da interpretação/tradução recentemente. Um amigo de meus foi oprimido com seu trabalho e pediu que eu traduzisse uma parte pequena de uma apresentação de PowerPoint para ela (de chinês ao inglês). Eu fiz exame de um olhar rápido. Era aproximadamente 16 páginas com algumas sentenças em cada corrediça. Parece fácil bastante….ou assim eu pensei que… me perguntou quanto hora eu necessito. Eu respondi confiàvel que não deve fazer exame de mais de 30 minutos. 60 minutos mais tarde, eu estou esforçando-me ainda para terminar o último poucas corrediças.
Sabrina estava mais adiantado direito. Sem um glossário apropriado, sabendo o fundo/objetivo, que os receptores da informação são, é impossível churn para fora toda a tradução da qualidade rápida. Sua escrita semelhante uma letra e não saber quem você escrita para. I kept needing to backtrack and make corrections on previous slides to ensure the overall coherence of the presentations. Same words can conjure different meanings and connotations to different audiences. I kept having to ask her how these are linked to other parts of the documents. It was finally finished at a “record” time of 1 hr 20 mins.
So next time, if you ever have a translator working for you, be kind to them! Provide them with information of your target audience/recipient info, background, objective and glossary. In return, you get better quality of work out of them, in a lot less time.
David Tan, Mad About Shanghai
October 30th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
thanks for sharing. Please be nice to us translators. :)
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Like the pros of other fields, they wont feel any pressure if he/ she is a quality and efficient translator.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:21 am
When translating something, you must know the whole story and understand it thoroughly. Otherwise, like what you said, you won’t be able to translate anything decent.
Translation is not just about replacing the every words with the other language, but “replacing” the whole thing (meaning…) with another language!
November 17th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
As a professional interpreter I cannot but chip in my 2 cents (looks like a buck now though))
From the obvious undercurrent of the author’s words I gather that he is not a professional translator - then the feeling you got from translating is about right.
Like the famous saying - having two hands does not make you a piano player as much as knowing two languages does not make you a translator, - you can understand that it is a skill and it is learned and practiced. Of course translating is not an easy job - what professionally done job is easy after all? - but it is a pleasant difficulty. Like with anything - a person should have a calling for a profession, and developed skills, which outweigh the difficulty. Simultaneous interpreting is the top-notch level in the profession, the challenge and the adrenaline can give you that - je-ne-sais-quoi ‘high’, but yeah, it sure gives the brain a certain stress. Though 5 days a month - she got herself a gravy train ride:) It’s a shame she quit. On the downside though perhaps switching between Chinese and Western sets of mind while interpreting is sure more difficult than doing it between Western languages, maybe it is the reason. But yeah, it all burns down to what you are saying, you gotta understand how your interpreter works and provide all the necessary background info and all. After all, you need to have some respect for the one whom you expect to relay in real-time a report you spent weeks writing up in another language. Nice post.
November 17th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Agree. Translation not just repeat, but need to analysis. Few years ago, my foreign colleague asked me to be her translator in her lesson since there were quite a lot of hong kong people. However, the lesson content included so many techical terms. My english was not good enough, so, even the lesson ran smoothly lastly, i was not satisfy with what i did.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:22 am
Yes, it is not easy to be a good interpreter or translator. I am working as a freelance translator and interpreter in guangzhou. Last month I worked for a sluice gate manufacturer from Canada for their presentation meeting in China. I prepared 300pages of terminology in this industry and the meeting is only 2 hours. My daily translation is less than 3000 word a day as I need to find the exact meaning of the terms both in Chinese and in English.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
When you do translation/interpretation, you have to be very familar with the industry that you work for and very familar with their products and services it is providing.
This will require time to prepare yourself.
I don’t mind do some translations. It could be pretty challenging