Interview with Alicja Yarborough, PhD, English-Polish Scientific Translator

It seems that many scientific and technical translators take a roundabout path in their careers. Is that true for you? Tell us about how you became a translator with your specialization.

There was no defining moment. While studying chemistry in Poland, translating scientific articles from English to Polish was part of what I needed to do to complete my classwork. Due to this early exposure I became a scientific and technical translator without really realizing it. I learned to translate technical writing gradually, while working on research of scientific publications in both English and Polish.

While living in Princeton, NJ, I sent my resume to a local translation agency that assigned me to translate for a multi-national contract research organization. After moving 6 years ago to Washington, DC, requests from other clients followed. At some point I decided to change my career and focus on translation work. There were several reasons for that decision: flexibility; working from home; time to produce high-quality translations; interesting projects from several clients; etc.

Was it challenging for you to combine your scientific and linguistic interests? What advice would you give to translators or interpreters just starting their careers?

The technical part was not challenging at all. It just developed over many years. At school I was very interested in not only chemistry but also languages and writing. It was hard for me in high school to decide what to study. Eventually I decided on chemistry (to some extent due to my parents asking me, “So what will do with your language/writing degree?”).

Now the real challenge is keeping updated because the language is constantly changing. By reading a lot in both languages and accepting a variety of science and medical documents to translate, I find it easy to stay up to date. In addition, occasionally I undertake interpretation assignments to keep up with medical terminology and the language used by the court systems. Also I enjoy meeting people in these places with new stories to tell.

The most surprising and challenging part of the translation profession is the fact that we need to constantly market ourselves. As a scientist I was judged by the amount of papers which I published and the quality of the journal. As a translator, I needed to learn also how to run a business. I remember well one of the very helpful workshops on business led by Marian Greenfield. I use the tips that I learned there all of the time.

My advice is to take continuing education courses, have courses online, and read daily (out loud sometimes) in your languages. Learning from discussions with colleagues is invaluable.

What is unique about your skill set? What sets you apart?

My Master and PhD degrees in chemistry and biochemistry give me a better understanding of technical texts. Most importantly working as a scientist gave me the tools for conducting thorough research in any field and finding the correct terminology.

An in-depth knowledge of my fields in both languages has been tremendously helpful. While studying and working in academic research labs in Poland and at several medical scientific institutions in the US, including Columbia University, I learned how to reliably translate documents on a wide scope of technical subjects.

What is your favorite type of interpreting assignment or text to translate? What makes it fun for you?

I enjoy translating scientific papers and patents. I spend a lot of time on researching these texts in order to be scientifically correct. It is fun because I really enjoy the intellectual challenge of digging into the details of a field.

Can you describe a project that you’re most proud of, or one that was particularly memorable?

One of the more memorable projects was a patent that had detailed descriptions of chemical reactions. I knew that there was no room for even one error in the translation because the entire patent might be jeopardized, resulting in substantial setback in research and waste of development money.

Are there any resources you use when translating that you’d like to share with readers?

For medical texts, I refer to www.uptodate.com, a subscription information source primarily used by US physicians. When I have questions about the surgical technique or medical diagnosis terminology, this is a good source for producing better translations. More importantly, I feel comfortable that clinicians and medical researchers will more fully comprehend the text rendered as it was in the original document if you better understand their specialty. Additionally, this site has a large section on pharmaceutical agents, listed by generic and brand (retail) names. The various brand names for each medicine are listed for every country. Drugs typically have different names depending on where they are sold, so this is very important.

How can readers learn more about you and connect with you?

Contacts are most welcome. I am on LinkedIn. My email address is yarborough.translations@gmail.com. I am also working on a dedicated webpage.

The SciTech Division events at ATA's Annual Conferences have been a wonderful place to learn about others in the field. I’d also love to get involved with ATA’s mentoring program in the future.

Interview with Dee Shields, Danish-English Translator and Interpreter

It seems that many scientific and technical translators take a roundabout path in their careers. Is that true for you? Tell us about how you became a translator with your specialization.

I cast about a lot during my college years. I didn't know what I wanted to do: something in the arts or with languages, since I'd had German since seventh grade. I studied at Chatham University and Penn State, ultimately ending up with a Bachelor's degree in Liberal Arts with a self-designed language core aimed at getting a job with the NSA. This was at the end of the 70s—Cold War times. I heard they would give you six months to learn a language of their choosing, so along with the German I took a term each of Russian and Arabic just to show I could learn languages fast. I also took a ton of other courses in all kinds of subjects like engineering, chemistry, accounting, astronomy and even Russian history. During my penultimate term at Penn State, I was an exchange student at the University of Cologne, and some friends and I took a fun weekend in Copenhagen—where I met my now husband of almost 34 years. I moved to Denmark about six months later, only to discover that they didn't even know what a liberal arts degree was, much less have a concept of broad-based education. When I was studying Danish, I found I really liked translating—funny how that hadn't occurred to me before. So after about a year and a half of working as a cleaning lady and at an old people's home (although serving beer to sweet old guys at 11:00 am does wonders for your language skills), I decided I had higher expectations and took the entrance exams for what is today called the Copenhagen Business School. I started out with German and English, but dropped the German after getting a bachelor-level translation degree and went for a Master's degree in Danish-English translation and interpreting: a total of six years of higher education on top of my four in the US (no international transfer of credits back then, oh, nooooo). The degree program taught us not just about translation and interpreting, but all about the business sectors, legal systems, school systems and other aspects of the societies of the UK, the US and (indirectly) Denmark. We are trained to be professional generalists, with an emphasis on business and legal English. The degree here gives you access to the option of being granted "state authorization", which is a kind of license or certification that serves as a guarantee for a certain high level of quality of the work you produce. The market is so small here that you can't really specialize except through your choice of assignments—if you can afford to pick and choose. I've been lucky and able to choose more scientific and technology-related jobs than many of my colleagues. But I don't really specialize like so many US-based translators seem to do. On the other hand, my somewhat scattered US university experience has done me a world of good—I know a bit about a lot of things, and that's often enough to enable me to learn more so I can do a proper job.

Was it challenging for you to combine your scientific and linguistic interests? What advice would you give to translators just starting their careers?

It was challenging especially in the beginning because the Internet didn't exist: you had to go to special libraries to get the terminology. And until we independent freelancers formed our own professional association (www.dtfb.dk) in 1990, there wasn't any mentoring or colleagues supporting each other going on here.

I'm a bit of a special case, and I don't live in the US or work much for US clients, so I'd have trouble advising new translators in the US, except do what you love as much as you can. Learn to act like the professional you are and, like Chris Durban says, go for the direct clients if you can: they tend to give you the respect you deserve as a professional—although a lot of that is up to you.

What is unique about your skill set? What sets you apart?

Compared with my US colleagues, my very broad and generalist background and practice, I would think, plus what I learned here about UK English (a lot, since the Copenhagen Business School didn't "do" US English back then). I interpret, too: there's nothing better than a conference on some technical subject.

What is your favorite type of text to translate? What makes it fun for you?

I love translating anything technical. Just like German, Danish uses the passive voice a great deal when, in English, we would use the active voice (imperative for instructions, for example), which adds another layer of difficulty to it. The best part, though, is learning new things.

Can you describe a project that you’re most proud of, or one that was particularly memorable?

Proud of: translating some of the "recipes" for the manufacture of a certain type of drug before there was any Internet. (I wish I could be more specific, but everything we do is confidential by law unless publicly available.)

Memorable: interpreting at a Danish parliamentary hearing on whether to introduce a system of prescribing heroin. It was memorable both because during a coffee break I met the mother of an addict who thought the proposed program was the only hope for her son, for whom numerous attempts at rehab had not worked, and because my booth partner suddenly got heart attack symptoms and had to go to the ER (it wasn't a heart attack, thank heavens, and he's fine), and I had to talk for three straight hours before a replacement for him could be found. I had no voice the next day. I was a little worried about becoming known as a real heartbreaker to work with (sorry: couldn't resist that one).

Are there any resources you use when translating that you’d like to share with readers? (For example, www.clinicaltrials.gov is indispensable for translating clinical trial documentation; www.sokr.ru is great for finding the meaning of Russian abbreviations and acronyms.)

Here's a great site for engineering background information—when you need to learn more about what you're translating: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/

How can readers learn more about you and connect with you?

I'm on LinkedIn, but I use it as a kind of Rolodex, mostly to keep track of people I've met. I am also on Twitter (@deejshields). I hope to get a Website up and running this summer.

Don't miss the ATA 54 proposal deadline

The American Translators Association is accepting presentation proposals for ATA's 54th Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas (November 6-9, 2013).

Proposals must be received by March 11, 2013.

Submissions are invited from all areas of translation and interpreting, including finance, law, medicine, literature, media, science and technology, terminology, independent contracting, business management, and training/pedagogy. Sessions may be language specific or general. You do not need to be an ATA member to submit a proposal.

Not sure about making a presentation? It is a challenge but also an opportunity-there is no better way to gain recognition in the translation and interpreting communities.

More info here: http://www.atanet.org/conferencesandseminars/proposal.php

Don't Miss This Deadline

The American Translators Association is accepting presentation proposals for
ATA's 54th Annual Conference in San Antonio, Texas (November 6-9, 2013).

Proposals must be received by March 11, 2013.

Submissions are invited from all areas of translation and interpreting,
including finance, law, medicine, literature, media, science and technology,
terminology, independent contracting, business management, and
training/pedagogy. Sessions may be language specific or general. You do not
need to be an ATA member to submit a proposal.

Not sure about making a presentation? It is a challenge but also an
opportunity-there is no better way to gain recognition in the translation
and interpreting communities.

You can find out more and submit your proposal at the ATA Annual Conference website.

Introducing: New Blog Editor

My name is Amy Lesiewicz, and I’m the newest member of the S&TD’s Leadership Council. I’ll be joining Tess Whitty as blog editor.

I was pleased when our fearless leader Karen Tkaczyk asked me to join the leadership council, because I’ve found a home among my fellow scientific and technical translators. We’ve all heard things like “Google Translate may be good enough for technical documents, but it will never replace literary translators” or “Someone translating into their non-native language might be able to cope with a technical text, but for marketing materials you really need a native speaker”. I was even told at the 2012 ATA Annual Conference that “technical translation is easier than marketing translation”! Statements like these light a fire in my belly!

I find science fascinating, and I love learning about the science behind the texts I translate. I often spend as much time researching the subject matter as I do actually writing my translations. To some translators who work in other fields, translating fungicide test reports or chemical reactor design documentation may seem uninspiring, but it’s what I live for.

Let’s look at the word valence. In chemistry, valence electrons are those “in the outermost principal quantum level of an atom”; in other words, they are located in the outermost shell of an atom, and can interact with other atoms to form covalent bonds. The number of valence electrons determines an atom’s chemical properties and behavior. In the periodic table, elements in the same group (vertical column) have the same number of valence electrons. But the word valence has other meanings as well. In immunology, valence is the number of antigen-binding sites on an antibody molecule. In linguistics, valence is the number of satellite noun phrases with which a verb combines. The etymology of valence is Latin valentia (related to the word valiant), which means “strength, capacity,” from valere, “to be strong”. According to Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, valence also means “the attraction or aversion that an individual feels toward a specific object or event.” Another definition is “the ability to unite, react or interact successfully with another”.

That’s us, in a nutshell. We’re out on the fringes, on the edges, on the forefront, hanging out in the outermost orbitals, grabbing onto other concepts, other ideas, other disciplines, other languages. We’re reactive. We combine. We bond. We’re strong. We’re attracted to science and language. We unite, react, and interact successfully with others.

We’re technical translators. What do we make? We make connections.

Amy Lesiewicz translates from Russian to English. She started out as a chemistry student but began taking Russian classes as a junior in college and fell in love with the language. After earning her BS in chemistry, she went on to earn a BA and MA in Russian language and a Certificate of Advanced Study in translation. She spent a year in Moscow working as an in-house translator, followed by three and a half years at an engineering company in Houston translating for Russian oil and gas projects. She has been freelancing since 2011.

Note from the Administrator

As you know, teams called Leadership Councils run ATA divisions. It’s time for the Science and Technology division to renew ours for 2013. This council will run March-November 2013. By making the period less than one year we will be coordinated with annual conferences and administrator changeovers from then on.

Two people are leaving as we do this: Vincent Lai and Steven Marzuola. We thank them for what they have done for the division, especially Steve, who was so involved in getting it up and running again in 2010. We have one new council member, Amy Lesiewicz, whom a lot of us met in San Diego. Amy will be blog editor so you will hear more from her here soon.

Some other people have moved roles—the summary is below. If any of you reading would like to become involved, please drop me a note and we can chat about it. We would particularly like to hear from anyone who might want to help plan a division dinner in San Antonio.

Roles:

Karen Tkaczyk: DA, HQ communications, Twitter feed, conference prep, miscellaneous.

Matthew Schlecht: ADA, and working on the Yahoo group.

Nick Hartmann: general counsel

Tess Whitty: blog editor and LinkedIn admin

Lebzy Gonzalez: monthly website news update, website admin

Alicja Yarborough: help conference dinner planner

Susanna Weerth: blog articles

Stephanie Strobel: site tours

Amy Lesiewicz: blog editor, help with local knowledge for San Antonio.

Petra Schweitzer: Facebook and Yahoo group admin

Iryna Ashby: Webmaster and Facebook admin

If you ever have any ideas for improving divisions services, please let any member of the council know.

Regards,

Karen Tkaczyk

2011-2013 Science and Technology Division Administrator

Translation is Not About Words. It’s About What the Words are About.

By Kevin Hendzel

Subject-matter knowledge is not just “important” to translation. It’s the very essence of translation.

Buried deep in the bedrock of every profession are certain truths that are universally understood and accepted by modern practitioners. In medicine, for example, those include a recognition that the human body exists in a physical universe subject to the laws of science and not to a fictitious universe of mysterious spirits accessible to the chosen, pre-ordained few, a concept that had dominated human medicine for millennia.

As a result, medical doctors strolling through a cocktail party today would never encounter questions from their friends, patients or colleagues about the effectiveness of specific spells, incantations or charms in their medical practice. Mysticism and superstition in medicine have been duly and effectively discarded in the proverbial dustbin of history.

Not so for translation.

We translators can spend decades of rigorous effort in the lead-up to our translation careers – and certainly during such careers – developing the crucial subject-matter expertise essential to the translation enterprise.

This process involves learning highly complex concepts in science, technology, philosophy, law, finance, business, music and dozens of other fields through immersion in the lab, lecture hall, classroom, production line, fabrication plant, trading floor or boardroom.
This prolonged effort is crucial to our ability to precisely convey all these concepts across language barriers.

But no matter how many fields we master as translators, awaiting us at that same cocktail party will be the eternal question that has been asked of translators since the Tower of Babel:
“How many languages do you speak?”

It’s a question that suggests an innocent, almost whimsical notion of translation as a low-stress career of light reflection, picked up effortlessly while flipping through phrase books and sipping sweet tea in the afternoon shade.

The reality is rather more sobering. In my case, for example, I’d arrive at such parties after having worked out certain issues in my translation work such as the principles underlying optical excitation of Rayleigh waves by interband light absorption or coherent acoustic resistance to an electron-hole plasma or approaches to calculating the electronic structure of alloys.

So my response to this friendly question of “how many languages do you speak?” would be a bit playful and would always be delivered with a smile:

“I speak science.”

Words or ideas?

It’s not the fault of our polite party-goer asking the “how many languages” question, since it’s just an attempt to strike up a friendly conversation.

And there’s no help from our culture, either – especially in the U.S. – where translators are looked upon with deep suspicion as these bizarre mythological creatures of ambiguous progeny whose field of endeavor is certainly trivial and should have been rendered mute by automated translation decades ago.

At the core of this fallacy is the ancient and somewhat quaint notion that translation is just about language – about words.

This can’t be true, though, because language itself isn’t even about words. The words of language are just the symbols we manipulate to paint meaning into our world — to project pictures that convey the underlying message, concept or idea.

So translators do not translate languages or words. They translate ideas.

And in today’s commercial translation market, that means we translate the ideas of people who are deeply invested in some highly complicated activities and are willing to pay us to convey them.

Since we must understand those ideas to do this accurately, we must know not only what we know, but we must also know what they know, too.

A solitary focus on language

What happens if a translator understands the languages, but not the ideas? How do those translations work out in the real world?

Short answer: Catastrophically.

The translation world today appears to be overflowing with novice (but certainly well-meaning) translators flailing about in dangerous waters infested with their own conceptual blindness. This is an inevitable outcome of the persistent and wrongheaded solitary focus on language to the exclusion of content.

It’s why students entering translation studies programs would be well advised to learn a great deal about the world before attempting to investigate ways to convey that knowledge – which is exactly what translation is – lest they end up conveying a disturbing and very costly lack of knowledge, an outcome that embarrasses both the novice translator and the poor unsuspecting client who, after all, thinks translation is just a matter of “speaking a foreign language.”

Russian has no words for that

One of my favorite stories that nicely illustrates this dilemma originated in an inquiry we once received from a U.S. manufacturer of a water purification system based on a novel yet straightforward technology that they wished to sell in Russia. The company had hired a translator – a Russian woman – to translate their technical documentation from English into Russian. They were getting nowhere with this approach and called me up to see if I could determine why.

“Every time we give her documentation to translate she says ‘Russian has no words for any of that,’” the manager told me. “Then she gets on the phone and speaks Russian all day with her friends. I don’t understand how she can speak that much Russian and not be able to translate what we need her to,” he said. “Is it true that Russian has no words for water purification?”

I assured him that Russian has a highly sophisticated technical lexicon, and in any event, it was unlikely that the language of Mendeleev – the author of the Periodic Table of Elements, after all – would prove utterly helpless in the face of reverse osmosis.

It was certainly possible that this woman was simply unaware of the technology (or was feigning ignorance of it), but in practice her apparent complete lack of any technical awareness was derailing the company’s efforts for reasons having nothing to do with language.

Line or link?

A more problematic case are translations that describe a world that doesn’t, can’t or will never exist.

And that happens because the translator doesn’t have the real-world knowledge to know what doesn’t, can’t or will never exist.

There are countless thousands of examples of this phenomenon. One is the word “liniya” in Russian, which means a physical telephone line such as a hard-wired copper landline. Unfortunately, the exact same Russian word also means a radio link to a remote terminal, satellite or cell tower, which is what cellphones use.

The only way to know which is correct is to possess the most rudimentary knowledge of telecommunications.

Alas, there never seems to be a limit to the English translations of this word that describe a world in which a physical copper wire is magically soldered to a satellite orbiting at an altitude of 42,000 kilometers.

Endless challenges

It’s certainly true that even the most experienced, careful and knowledgeable translators will find themselves in uncertain subject-matter territory at various points throughout their careers. It’s one of the many reasons to involve an expert colleague with greater subject-matter expertise in the review process while getting up to speed on technical concepts – a process that can and does take years.

Final appeal

In the event that I’ve failed to be convincing up to this point, consider again the title of this blog post:

Translation is not about words. It’s about what the words are about.

The message here is that translation is about meaning, not about words. To illustrate this idea, I use the same words in both sentences.

The only reason the meaning conveys is that the sentences are in different frames of reference. It’s the meaning underlying those frames of reference that delivers the idea.

 

Reposted with permission from http://www.kevinhendzel.com/