You can crash a car, the Stock Market, a party you weren’t invited to, or cymbals together to make a sound. You can describe a flowering plant as a noxious weed or a more desirable garden flower. Maybe that plant is yellow, but your hair is blonde. You can create, but what do you mean when you use create? Are you building, building, erecting, composing or imagining? When you use the word human, are you talking about a man, a woman, a child, an adult, a bachelor, a father, a mother, a sister? Are you taking your money to the bank or are you sitting on the bank of a river? If you use the seemingly simple word “about”, how will you use it? Is it a preposition? Is it on top or on the table? Maybe it’s an adverb where you put your shoes on? Or an adjective when you’re putting the game in 20 minutes? The list is quite long for such a small word; he can be on call, on the roof, in the clouds, on edge, on fire, on purpose, or on the phone.
So many meanings, so little time, so many ways translation can go wrong. You simply cannot translate without reflecting on the meaning behind the words, the semantics. As we well know, translation based on one-to-one substitution is rarely and never acceptable in this case. Here are some problems you may have encountered in your work and some ways to solve them.
find the meaning
Word meanings evolve over time as language evolves. The British word, molasses, now means treacle, but its definition was not always “a thick syrup produced by the refining of sugar.” It is derived from the ancient Greek word for the bite of a wild animal. The meaning was later expanded to refer to any injury. From there, it became the medicine used to treat injuries. It then evolved to refer to the sweet substance that is added to medicine to make it taste better. The most recent version is one of those sweeteners that we all know: molasses. It seems like a strange path to follow, however, the previous meanings of the word motivated its metamorphosis. Words develop and change, acquire meanings and lose them. What happens to a word in one language will not happen in exactly the same way in another. This adds complexity and difficulty to translations.
When the Spanish speak of fish that swim, they use fish, but if they catch that fish and cook it for dinner, they call it fish. In English, fish is fish, whether it’s part of fish and chips or in our lakes and streams.
Translators deal with these dreaded multiple meanings all the time; so they need to have a deep understanding of both languages and the ability to deal with differences in meaning that seem insignificant until crossed over into the other language, something no computer can do. It’s job security for translators, really.
Paying attention to multiple meanings is especially important in marketing and advertising, where puns are often used and multiple meanings abound. Take the word “power,” a favorite of pharmaceutical marketers. Imagine a headline “The Power to Change Your Life,” accompanied by a photo of an electrical cord. In the headline, power is intended to indicate strength. But power also means electricity. Now consider other languages. Spanish uses the colloquial alternative to electricity, or “lights.” So the double meaning would be lost in translation if the original title is used, unless of course your company is a lighting company with such exceptional products that they truly change people’s lives.
Be specific… or not
Multiple meanings must be handled with sematic criteria, both general and specific. Knowing the overall theme points translators in the right direction, allowing them to choose how different words will be used in the target language. For example, the word “running” is generally known to indicate a faster pace than jogging. But what if a river dries up, or someone is running a business, or a meeting lasts a long time, or someone runs over a man? Did he hit him with a car, did he speak against him or hit him? Fortunately, most words and phrases don’t appear in isolation, so context clues can save the day.
Knowing whether the topic is general or industry specific can mean the difference between calling a bus, a vehicle to transport multiple people from point A to point B, or a computer component that cards can be placed on.
Consider the context
Being sensitive to the total context, your audience, and important details like regionalisms and culture is key. For example, ‘thank you’ in Japanese depends on whether or not the person being thanked was required to perform the service and how much effort she put into the service. In English we can say ‘thank you very much’ or ‘thank you very much’, but in the highly educated culture of Japan, those two words are much more complex and convey much more meaning in different situations. It’s something to consider.
An example of how an insensitive translation can have serious repercussions is the Cold War comment made in 1956 by Nikita Khrushchev, head of the Soviet Union, who had been complaining about the United States. His offhand comment translated to “we’ll bury you.” This comment left an indelible and infamous mark on the minds of all Americans. Believing that communism is a superior system to capitalism and predicting that communism would outlast capitalism, Khrushchev said something like “Like it or not, we will be present at his funeral.” Assuming that the Russian word for “bury” could only be translated one way, such as “we will bury you,” it unnecessarily increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, perhaps unnecessarily prolonging the Cold War.
So, you see, multiple meanings are always present and important. Know how to use them well and be prepared for any instance that comes your way. And stay tuned for next month when we discuss how multiple meanings are by far the biggest reason computer translations fail (and always will) when it comes to accurate language translation.