Translation 101: myths and realities

Almost paradoxically, the globalization of the economy requires ever more localization of products and services, and thus translation of on-line and paper documents. Despite technological support, translation remains a difficult art, one poorly understood by most people, perhaps especially those who have never had to translate complex documents themselves. The paper reviews three enduring myths about the translation process, then proposes guidelines for the successful management or coordination of translation projects. Common misconceptions about translation are: (1) that it is a straightforward, convergent, sentence-level process and, as such, can be entrusted to any native speaker or can be arbitrarily fragmented or iterated; (2) that it can be carried out satisfactorily by software applications, at least as a first draft; (3) that it is fully out of the control of anyone who does not speak the target language and thus must be delegated blindly to translators, not to say to any native speaker for editing and proofreading. A more effective approach is to see translation as rewriting in another language and apply to it the same proven principles as for writing: select the individuals with the appropriate skills for each part of the job (translation, editing, proofreading), provide guidelines before the job, and carry out quality control after the job.