question for translators

[insaneneko]

I finished a initial "this will see the light of day over my dead body" rough translation and was thinking about how it'll have to go through many rounds of revisions before it's presentable, when I started wondering how other people translate. Those of you who translate, what is your process? Mine is basically do the initial "this...body" rough draft that is pretty awful, with missing words, phrases, sometimes whole sentences, absolutely horrendous grammar and other unmentionables, then go back and revise and proof and fill in. I'll work on parts that seem workable in that round, and go back to the parts I skipped in later rounds. I usually go through four to ten rounds before it's presentable. Do most people go slowly and carefully, working on each sentence and doing the best on each one before moving on to the next? I sometimes feel my way is so inefficient. :P

But then, I realized that that's how I used to take tests in school. Do the problems I know, skip the "hard" ones, then go back through in passes until time runs out. Am I stuck in my test-taking mode when I translate?

Comments

[ladysunflow.livejournal.com]

I do the same thing when I (have to) translate something. I leave untranslated words (usually I mark them with a different colour so as not to forget them later ^^;) and I generally jump from one paragraph to another. Maybe that's because I'm usually forced to translate business gibberish, but when I was translating a few episodes of a TV series for subbing purposes, I think I also did it that way... ^__^

[mitethe.livejournal.com]

(Why am I incapable of being concise? ^_^;)

My "method" (used only in the loosest sense) isn't much different from yours. Depending on the source and my mood, I vary between "perfecting this line as much as possible before moving on to the next" and "quick'n'dirty job to be heavily revised". Usually, it's somewhere between the two extremes, but even if I do the former I always let it sit at least a day before going back to edit it. And I always edit, no matter how polished the draft may seem.

My initial script always sucks. *grin* If I can't think of the right word right then and there, I force myself to use an approximation rather than waste 30 minutes figuring it out. Awkward grammar and unnatural engrish gets edited out once the script is finished. I rarely skip hard-to-translate lines and try to at least put down the rough meaning, otherwise I'll just end up forgetting to go back to translate them.

I find that letting the finished script sit for a while before checking helps me catch mistakes I might gloss over in the heat of the moment, so to speak. A little detachment also helps a lot in the checking process, and I often come up with better ways to tweak a line to make it sound more natural, and make the overall script flow better. In fact, I don't stop checking and tweaking even after I post something, which is the main reason why I prefer my "serious" translations to be linked to only, rather than uploaded elsewhere where I can't correct them. (Me, anal? Masaka :P)

(There are people who don't do the skip-and-come-back-later thing when they take tests? *blink*)

[ladysunflow.livejournal.com]

There are people who don't do the skip-and-come-back-later thing when they take tests? *blink*

Yes, there are *facepalm* The teachers are actually trained to teach this technique to their students highlighting and praising its benefits as often as possible (at least I was) because it's not obvious to everybody, it seems.

[mitethe.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, my high school teachers did go to some pains to tell us that it was a perfectly acceptable approach. Their explanations always confused me because I'd assumed everyone either did it, or was at least aware of the method. O_o;

[leviosa8.livejournal.com]

When I do a scanlation I usually work line by line, page by page and try to solve everything on the spot. Of course, afterwards I revise a couple of times, but that's quick work anyway and I usually spend more time editing, although when I have to look up a difficult word or expression, it can take me ages! However, that's also the fun part of it ^^

When it is a longer translation, a script or some "text only" source, I usually do the same you do. It depends on the difficulty of the text, but sometimes I leave blank spaces, sometimes rough versions to be edited before and sometimes I color whatever I have written to call my attention later to it.

[sargraf.livejournal.com]

I almost always do it line-by-line. For whatever reason, I can't let go of a sentence or phrase or whatever until I get it as right as I can. (That's why it takes me forever to translate...) And then, I still agonize over it, if the phrase had been a particularly brain-freezing one. ^^; Last, I skim over it all and tweak what needs tweaking.

Your method sounds more efficient, 'cause it gets the most done in the shortest amount of time, which leaves you room to revise things. When I do professional translating, I'm almost always finishing at the last second. =_=