Many people mistakenly believe that being bilingual is all it takes to offer a good translation. As a result, people often ask a friend or relative who has studied a foreign language for four or five years in High School to translate a document for them. However, translating can be considered an art and it is much more than a simple word by word exchange. With this being said, what makes a good translation?

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Firstly, can you tell the text is a translation? Does it read smoothly and sound as if it were originally written in the target language? Good translations do not look like ones. They are well written, ideas flow naturally and carry the sense and atmosphere of the original text. The information is presented clearly and any acronyms are correctly translated and/or explained.

It is also important to pay attention to the accuracy of the translation. The original document needs to be respected and translated completely, without missing any word or sentence, but it has to be grammatically correct and have no spelling mistakes as well. A wrongful translation is difficult to read and understand and can also seriously affect the reputation of the person or business organization that requested it.

Other aspect that should not be forgotten is clarity. The translator needs to ensure, when possible, that the final document is uncluttered, clear and has no complex and long sentences. In fact, it is not strange at all that the translated document is much easier to read than the original.

Finally, the audience should also be taken into consideration. This is important in two ways; on the one hand,  the translated text should be culturally appropriate for the target audience. There  should be no references to religious or political figures that may offend the reader or be controversial and the style needs to respect the tone and formality used by the original writer . On the other hand, the reading level of the audience should be accurately matched. For instance, the words used should be more complex and sentences more elaborated if the text will be read by scientists or high skilled professionals and simpler if it is written for newly arrived immigrants.

As you can see, there are several points that can be applied to determine whether the translation you are reading is good or not. You should bear them in mind next time you are handed in a translation.

The phrase “lost in translation” elicits a host of responses, be they memories of language confusion while traveling, quotes from the film of the same name, or general considerations regarding translation, its possibilities, failures, limits.  The most obvious associations for many are comical in nature, reflecting harmless vocabulary lapses or cultural naiveté. And then there are the more everyday instances of linguistic imprecision or confusing inconvenience.  Finally, there are examples with graver results, examples wherein being “lost” predicates terrible discovery.

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One such example is that of Willie Ramirez, a Cuban-American high school baseball star who, in 1980, found himself in a hospital, quadriplegic.  The culprit of this terrible realization was a simple and avoidable translation error: after Willie was rushed to the hospital for intense headaches and fleeting consciousness, a communication rupture between Willie’s doctors and family members occurred, resulting in Willie being treated incorrectly for a self-induced drug overdose, allowing an intracerebellar hemorrhage to fester, unnoticed for two days.

The rupture stemmed from a single word—predictably, a false cognate: intoxicado.  In Cuban Spanish, it is used to describe a person who’s ingested bad food or drink; it is not used like the English intoxicated, which refers exclusively to someone who’s consumed alcohol or drugs.  The words were apparently used to both inquire if Willie had ingested drugs and to state that Willie may have been sick after consuming a bad hamburger at the fast-food chain Wendy’s.

The imperfect memory of both the medical workers and Willie’s family regarding exactly what was said and who said it leave only the word intoxicado as the official record.  Once the hemorrhage was discovered, emergency surgery was performed, but the lasting damage was done.  A resulting lawsuit brought a settlement of $71 million.  The annual salary of a medical interpreter is $40 thousand.

Although the case is improbable and singular, it is nonetheless a terrible reminder of translation’s value and necessity.

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