Misleading headings/Titres bizzares

I have noticed that newspaper titles are used in many different ways, especially when they serve as a link to the story. I was somewhat taken aback this morning when I found a heading on the Globe & Mail website that said:

Building permits plunge.

A bit intrigued, I clicked the title and lo and behold found:

Building permits plunge

Canadian building permits unexpectedly plunged to their lowest level in a year, paced by declines in Toronto and Vancouver, as the weather turned colder…..

So it was not an animated building that decided to try the waters.

On the French side of things, on the CBC especially, the Google and MSN transcribers have a rough time. French titles are usually preceded by a qualifying statement, for example: Vie sociale – De l’importance de votre cortex. Without the explanation, the title is much harder to understand.

Another one was: Crise politique en Ukraine – Le premier minister tend la main au président. On a referral French page, only the second (main) title is shown: The prime minister reaches out to the president. Could it be Harper and Bush? Without the word Ukraine, any guess is ok with this little context.

Reminds me of the classical heading translation example:

“PROFESSOR BURNS LEAVES ON COMMENCEMENT.” The all-cap approach conceals the fact that Burns is a proper name, not a verb. You can image what a beginner translator might do with this and describe a new ritual of burning leaves at a graduation.

Context is everything in translation. Make sure you provide all of it to the translator you hire – otherwise, he too might take the plunge.

Diagramme de cause à effet pour la traduction

Back in May of last year, I posted this translation fishbone diagram but failed to provide a French version - here it is.

Voici la version française de mon diagramme de cause à effet sur la traduction. J'ai découvert que mes clients industriels comprennent mieux ce genre d'explication que des explications écrites.

90th Anniversary of the battle of Vimy Ridge/90e Anniversaire de la bataille de la crête de Vimy

Durham Region Special Features, Special Reports, Special Sections, ...

Une collègue vient de me décrire un grand voyage qu'elle entreprend avec sa fille pour commémorer le 90e anniversaire de la bataille de la crête de Vimy, près d'Arras, en France, pendant la Première guerre mondiale.

It is touching to see that so many young people are interested in History and in the sacrifices that the Canadian forces made 90 years ago. CBC television will be covering the ceremonies, attended by the Queen, our Prime Minister and the French government representatives.

Je compte surveiller les nouvelles et visionner une partie des reportages télévisés.

Tom Stoyan at AIC/ Tom Stoyan à l’AIC.

Attended an interesting meeting organised by AIC which featured a presentation by the well-known Tom Stoyan. In his own, inimitatable style, Tom was able to capture the interest of the audience, draw them out, challenge traditional attitudes to selling and show, by example, that selling does not mean “hitting the customer on the head with a canned monologue”.

J’ai eu le plaisir d’assister aux présentations de M. Stoyan à plusieurs reprises et dois avouer qu’aucune d’elles ne se répète ni ne se contredit. Il est évident que Tom est un vrai converti et qu’il prêche du fond du cœur (avec chiffres à l’appui). Mes collègues anglophones ont de la chance qu’ils peuvent comprendre les allocutions de M. Stoyan – il serait peut-être utile de mettre ces renseignements au service des francophones.

If you are interested in improving your sales, by all means, get more info on Tom’s approach – it will help you to reap great benefits. Qui sait, peut-être Tom consentirait de traduire son message en français également et ainsi augmenter la portée de ses présentations.

Musical musings/ Réflexions musicales

Over the years, I have dreamed of portable music. In the days of portable transistor radios, I dreamed of something with headphones (Sony read my mind). Then came the cassette player and the CD player, sometimes with a radio thrown in. In each case, each device was easy to load and play but the amount of music was limited by the media. Then as the MP3 appeared, its name started to change almost immediately because the MP3 format was no longer the only one available.

Ne pouvant plus résister, je me suis récemment acheté un lecteur Walkman NW (appelé en anglais Digital Music Player par Sony mais lecteur MP3 dans la version française de leur site). Sa mémoire de 4 Go (4Gb) est absolument énorme – j’y ai versé 15 CD jusqu’à présent et il me reste encore beaucoup d’espace libre. Le lecteur est également muni d’un récepteur radio FM qui marche fort bien et la réception (à Toronto) est excellente.

Une autre surprise agréable : le casque d’écoute à réduction de bruit. Lors de ma promenade quotidienne aujourd’hui, je me croyais en salle de concert tellement la musique était bonne! C’est alors que j’ai compris pourquoi les jeunes gens branchés à leur IPods semblent être dans un univers différent! Le monde extérieur disparaît et est remplacé par le monde interne de la musique.

I suppose we are going to have blackberries with cameras and mp3 players next. My concern is what do you do when the phone rings and you are listening to music or watching a downloaded videoclip, while driving your car? I know, the automotive manufacturers will come up with intelligent cars, which do not need drivers and who will take you along a programmed road to your destination while you listen to your favourite Mozart concerto.

Surrounded by killer whales - Épaulards partout!

Surrounded by killer whales - Aftenposten.no


Surprising set of photographs of killer whales in a Norwegian bay. Attention, les épaulards ont débarqué!

Bilingualism & dementia/ Bilinguisme et la démence sénile

Because Women’s College Hospital was affilitated with the Sunnbrook Health Centre for a short time, I subscribed to the French version of their Women’s Health Matters newsletter. Today’s issue covers a very interesting article on bilingualism and dementia which I would like to share with all my bilingual (and multilingual) colleagues.

Here is the lead French paragraph:

“Des chercheurs canadiens ont découvert des preuves étonnantes selon lesquelles l’utilisation de deux langues pendant toute sa vie aiderait à retarder de quatre ans l’apparition des symptômes démentiels, comparativement à l’utilisation d’une seule langue.”

http://www.femmesensante.ca/news/news_show.cfm?number=298

On the English side we have the following:

“Canadian scientists have found astonishing evidence that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of dementia symptoms by four years compared to people who are monolingual.”

http://www.womenshealthmatters.ca/news/news_show.cfm?number=599

I had mentioned this in my post of January 12 but thought that this new write-up would be of interest. J’avais mentionné ce sujet le 12 janvier dernier mais voici qu’il est à la une de nouveau. Je vous en souhaite bonne lecture.

CTTIC error criteria

In July 2006, I wrote about professional exam preparatory courses provided by ATIO and the interesting experience as a tutor that I have had over the last several years. Today, I want to share with my readers the criteria that are used to correct the course translations. They are of two kinds: comprehension and language:

Translation errors (Comprehension)

(T) Major errors - serious mistranslation denoting a definite lack of comprehen-
sion of the source language, nonsense, omission of a phrase or more.

T Minor errors - mistranslation of a single word, omission/addition affecting
meaning, lack of precision, wrong shade of meaning.

Language errors (Errors of expression)

(L) Major errors - gibberish, unacceptable structure.

L Minor errors - syntax, grammar error, ambiguity, convoluted structure,

unidiomatic structure, unacceptable loan translation.

l Minor errors - breach of spelling, punctuation or typographical conventions.

The first denotes the knowledge of the transfer mechanisms that are at play. A candidate deficient in this area would probably not have the target language as his mother tongue. He would also not have a very good grounding in recognizing the importance of the various elements of a sentence. He would thus omit or conceal certain elements, thinking that they are not important. My earlier post about Natural Canadian Spring Water is such an example where spring was translated as the springtime instead of small river.

Deficiencies in the second one usually denote lack of knowledge of the language proper. Errors in the use of the idiom, the syntax, the way sentences are built, the importance of signs such as accents and punctuation. Thus, in the post on Cultural interference, the Yield to Bus sign using the word Cédez, instead of Donnez la priorité or Priorité. Véhicule prioritaire would have been another way of expressing this.

This way of analyzing a translation is part and parcel of the method used in university translation courses so it should not be foreign to the aspiring candidate. A linguist who cannot tell the difference in these areas would not make a good translator.

Cultural interference in languages/Interférence de la culture dans la langue

When American companies started using the Best before formulation on food and food packaging, the world took notice and little by little, the same formulation appeared elsewhere. Thus, when the Canadian authorities set about implementing this system, they went with

Best Before and in French - Meilleur avant

While in English, one can use a comparative without formally mentioning the two compared products, according to French grammar, the two things compared must be mentioned. (so to a Frenchman or someone from another French-speaking country, this expression sounds somewhat strange).

In English, the sentence does not say This product is best before. There is also no explanation of what best means.

On packages from France, the DLC acronym is used; it stands for Date limite de consommation (deadline for consumption, i.e. should be eaten before…). The French is much more categorical – one should not eat the product after a certain date. It is like saying this passport expires on….. So it is not valid after that date.

A similar confusion is found with the Yield to Bus Act enacted by the Province of Ontario in 2004. Here is an explanation of how this works:

“When a bus displaying the Yield to Bus sign signals its intention to leave a bus bay by activating the left turn signal, drivers approaching from the rear in the lane adjacent to the bus bay are required to slow down or stop to allow the bus to re-enter the lane, unless it is unsafe to do so.”

So the original idea is to yield the right of way, or yield in short. The verb céder in French has somewhat different meanings:

- to give up (to let somebody have something)

- to sell or dispose of

- to give way to somebody (céder le pas à quelqu’un)

- to give in (sa mère lui cède en tout – his mother always gives in to him)

In the language of driving legislation, one speaks of “donner la priorité à quelqu’un”, to give someone the right of way.

Unfortunately, both Meilleur avant and Cédez are here to stay and the public at large has come to recognize and understand these expressions. The astute translator will have to take into account the culture of the end-reader and convey the expression in that reader’s understanding.

Comments on a blog/Commentaires sur un blogue

La traduction française du mot Blog avait été au début Carnet, ce qui implique un monologue de l’auteur sur une série de sujets divers. Comme tout autre phénomène sur Internet, le blogue évolue et se transforme en une tribune de nature personnelle ou commerciale. Les réactions aux dires de l’auteur constituent donc une particularité marquante d’un blogue.

The business blog thrives on feedback; that is the reason most business related blogs allow comments from their readers. A comment not only allows an alternate opinion, but also allows to leave an Internet trace with a feedback to the commenter’s blog or website.

And yet, many readers do not leave a comment. To encourage my Internet readers to do so, I am providing a link here to the explanation on how a comment is formulated, how it works and what the various choices the commenter has. Three are available: a) an anonymous comment, b) a Blogger signed comment, or c) a comment under an assumed name.

J’encourage donc mes lecteurs de s’exprimer si mes messages provoquent chez eux des réactions – que ce soit de sympathie ou de contrariété. Merci.

Networking as a process/Le réseautage - une méthode

Alors que mon message précédent parlait d’une occasion de réseautage et de ses résultats positifs, je voudrais décrire ici une présentation dynamique faite par Michael J. Hughes hier soir, lors d’une réunion de l’AIC , association que j’avais mentionnée dans ces pages auparavant.

Michael, a former executive, has found a valuable niche in the independent worker movement and is able to convincingly demonstrate the various elements of networking, the importance of each one of them and various ways of optimizing the experience of networking.

The introduction or greeting we use when we meet a new person can be structured in such a way as to foster the human element of “sympathie”, of sharing, of belonging to the same world. It is only when the listener understands that you care for him/her as a person, as a fellow entrepreneur, and that have common values and aspirations, that a spark is generated which can form the basis of a lasting relationship.

Je ne prétends pas être devenu un réseauteur (néologisme?) en une soirée, mais je suis reconnaissant à l’AIC d’avoir invité Michael nous parler. Je vais, de ce pas, étudier cette approche, et compte l’inclure dans mes prochaines occasions de réseautage.

Microsoft Vista: Not 'People Ready' - Forbes.com

Microsoft Vista: Not 'People Ready' - Forbes.com

Je parlais récemment de la publicité de Microsoft dont la devise "People ready" posait des problèmes de traduction. À juger par l'article dans Forbes, le lecteur anglais pourrait également avoir des problèmes de compréhension.

I guess I was not very far off the mark when I stated that the meaning of the People Ready tag line could be interpreted in several ways. I appears as though Daniel Lyons of Forbes could not quite figure out what Microsoft meant.

Business networking/Réseautage d’affaires

A winter’s evening, -15º C and leftover snow from yesterday's storm covering Burlington. What better time than to gather in the cosy Fireside Room of the Burlington Art Centre to socialize and listen to an impactful and dynamic presentation on financial planning by Thie Convery, entitled Financial Tips for the Self-Employed.

L’Association HPCA, dont je suis membre depuis quatre ans, est composée d’indépendants oeuvrant dans le domaine de la communication : relations publiques, rédaction publicitaire et autre, traduction, graphisme, etc., organise des réunions mensuelles pour ses membres. Celle d’hier soir a été particulièrement bien réussie grace aux efforts des organisatrices Anne von Rosenbach et Judy Snyder .

It is amazing how useful networking can be, especially for self-employed professionals. Thank you to the organizers for such a productive event!

Ethical translation/Conscience professionnelle

It is always tempting, especially for a translator in private practice, to accept work outside of his field of expertise; what businessman would pass up lucrative work! I am sure that many other professionals have to deal with the same dilemma.

Some years ago, an apprentice translator (who had just started translating) after a career in another technical field, boasted to me that he was doing translation about atomic reactors (he was in aeronautics previously). I was astounded to say the least and did express my concern that he may not always understand what he translates and he said “Yes”!

The Code of Ethics of ATIO, organization that I belong to since 1971, specifically states that:

“Members shall not accept work for which they lack the necessary qualifications. In accepting work, the member provides a moral guarantee that the service provided will meet the highest standards of quality”.

For various reasons, he never became a member of the ATIO, which was a relief to me.

Do you quiz your translator about his expertise, his experience, and his track record BEFORE hiring him to do work for you?

Visitors from other lands/Visiteurs du monde

As the number of hits on this blog increases, I am constantly amazed by the variety and the global character of the visits. This morning, for example, I had a visit from the city of Chennai, formerly Madras, in India.

My knowledge of Madras being strictly limited to the madras shirts that were popular a few years ago, I did a quick Internet search and found that Madras is now called Chennai and that it is a thriving 6-million strong city on the eastern coast of India, just north of the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon).

Pour ceux de mes lecteurs qui ne connaissent pas mon site de recherche de visites (Sitemeter), je voudrai juste mentionner le détail que chaque rapport me donne. Ainsi, en plus du nom du fournisseur de services internet (ISP) du visiteur, je peux également apprendre son pays et sa ville d’origine. Indiqués aussi sont le temps de la visite, la durée de la visite, ainsi que les sites qui précédaient le mien ou qui le suivaient (Visit entry page, Visit exit page). Toutes ces données sont également disponibles sous forme de graphique ou de tableau.

Récemment, j’ai reconnu des collègues qui avaient consulté mes messages par l’adresse de leur fournisseur. À juger par la multitude d’articles sur les blogues, c’est surtout les liaisons qui existent entre eux qui importent. Ainsi, l’auteur d’un blogue mentionne dans son message la page (ou l’article) d’un autre « blogueur » et y joint un lien. Ces liens forment une véritable toile d’araignée de gens qui écrivent et lisent les blogues. Faites-en l’essai avec mon nom, suivi du terme blogue. Vous serez surpris.

How well do you know your customers?

The magazine Enterprise carries in the January 2007 issue an interesting article by Lior Yitzhaky, entitled ” How well do you know your customers” . Here is an excerpt:

“A number of years back, during my first week working in the head office of a national retailer, I was asked to produce a distribution that would allocate a special buy of bread makers to every store in the country. .. The analysis revealed that every store in the country had sold out of the bread makers with the exception of stores located in the province of Quebec. In fact, the stores in Quebec had not sold a single bread maker. While the usual suspicions of the stores not receiving the inventory – or not displaying it – were made, the reason for the discrepancy was very different. Further analysis revealed that due to the cultural differences in Quebec, they were unlikely to buy bread makers at all. You see, the culture in Quebec emphasizes home cooking and many Quebecers bake their own bread at home. The bread maker is considered a sort of insult and people would be embarrassed to have one in their home. What affected me the most from the above situation was not the realization that Quebecers did not like bread makers, but the fact that many employees at this retailer knew of the issue and yet failed to take actions that could enhance their performance. A simple misallocation such as this, lead to loss of sales, alienation of customers and unproductive inventory.”

I do not believe the employees felt that it was their call to question the decision of the head office. In our day of specialization, the product manager who ordered this item did not look at the cultural significance of the item and the possible reaction of customers to it. This falls into the same category as the Mist Stick hair curler, which an American company tried to sell in Germany, not realizing that the word Mist means “manure” in German. Or the intention of General Motors of selling the Buick Lacrosse sedan in Quebec until it was pointed out to them that lacrosse happened to be a swearword

A translator can often help a customer in pointing out these discrepancies and avoid embarrassment. In my own experience, that is what happened when a customer needed a bilingual chocolate cake package and thought that the approach would fly.

Has your translator offered this sort of help to you?

Schubert for two/Schubert pour violon et guitare

La musique classique est, chez nous, celle que nous écoutons sans nous lasser. Dans toutes ses formes, elle rafraîchit, elle réjouit et remplit le cœur. Lors de notre pèlerinage annuel dans notre magasin favori de disques classiques, l’Atelier Grigorian quelques jours après Noël, un disque de musique de violon et de guitare nous avait charmés. Cela faisait longtemps que je cherchais une musique calme, réservée, pour écouter pendant un repas. Nous sommes tombés sur le CD intitulé Schubert For Two, avec Gil Shaham et Göran Söllscher, de Deustche Gramaphon.

J'ai heureusement pu trouver sur Internet, un lien au CD en question . Je pense que cette approche est meilleure que d'essayer de copier un passage.

I visited the Blogger site and found some material on Posting audio clips. There are some explanations but I would have hoped to read a more detailed explanation. Uploading photographs was rather easy. I can now either use my own pictures or those that are available on the Internet.

The music piece available on the link above will give you an idea. The selections and arrangements of Schubert’s music are very well done (to my ear) and provide just the kind of music a quiet tête à tête requires. I would almost say that it would make a nice Valentine’s present.

The recording was made at the Glen Gould Studio, in Toronto, and is numbered 4715682.

Our business is folding (?!?!)

As I was driving on the Highway 401 in Toronto this morning, a panel truck passed me which bore on its side the company name (or tag line?):

Our business is folding

with underneath, a picture of a multifolded piece of paper.

My translator’s mind started to speculate what one have to do to create a French equivalent. If the motto is always used with the illustration, the meaning is quite clear; one could say:

Le pliage, c’est notre affaire! (Folding is our business!)

If, on the other hand, it is a company name which is not always accompanied by the graphics, the English becomes more difficult to understand. Imagine the receptionist answering your call and saying: “Our business is folding”, Jennifer speaking.”

It is the other meaning of folding which bothers me – is this business closing its doors?

There is often a play on words in marketing and advertising, which may be be quite successful in one language and one culture but which cannot be duplicated in another.

Translation is all context and that means not only language but culture, social milieu and country. Things which would be successful here can be a disaster in Europe and vice versa. It is like the story of the Mist Stick hair curler, which, in German, became the manure stick (since one meaning of mist in German is manure!)

Machine translating a heading/Traduction machine d’un titre

The following heading appeared on an Internet business website:

US factory orders jump

Using machine translation, the French equivalent by the LDS engine was as follows:
1) Les ordres d'usine d'États-Unis sautent

Using the Altavista translation engine, the following was provided :
2) Saut d'ordres d'usine des USA

Two vocabulary mistakes first of all :

1) the French word for order (meaning a promise to buy) is called commande.

2) Whereas in English jump may mean a) to spring clear of the ground, to leap; b) to rise suddenly; c) to rise suddenly in amount, price, etc., the verb sauter means to jump(a), to blow up or to fry. So the French can be read as United States orders blow up (?!)

To express the idea of a sudden increase implied in the verb jump, we could say augmentent soudainement. The syntax or word order and grammar in translation #1 are not correct: we could say instead

Les commandes des usines

since these are orders from many factories, not just one, and to show the country where this takes places, we would say

Les commandes des usines aux États-Unis.

So putting everything together, we would get

Les commandes des usines aux États-Unis augment soudainement.

One notices that sentence #2 just changed the word order and substituted orders jump with jump in orders. Otherwise, still the same ordrer/commande error as well as the jump/augmentent error.

Moral of the story: beware of machine translation if no native speaker is handy to touch up the results. You might offend the reader and lose a customer – is it worth it?

La plupart des glaciers auront disparu des Alpes d'ici 2050/Most European glaciers to disappear by 2050.

Un article dans la Cyberpresse relate les derniers constats des scientifiques à Vienne que les glaciers d’Europe pourront bien disparaître d’ici 2050.

In western Austria’s Alpine province of Tyrol, glaciers have been shrinking by about three percent a year, meaning their mass decreases annually by roughly a metre.

The only European glacier that I saw up close is la Mer de Glace, near the Haute-Savoie city of Chamonix. The summer camp that I went to for several years while a young boy always use to have an excursion to the Mer de Glace.

L’excursion se faisait en autocar et prenait toute une journée de notre camp qui se trouvait à Publier, sur la rive sud du Lac Leman (Lac de Genève). Google Images abonde de photographies de la Mer de Glace, dont j’ai tiré l’image ci-contre. Pour les adeptes de Google Earth, je vous recommande une visite virtuelle à Publier et sur les bords du Lac Leman.