At the 2012 ATA Annual Conference in San Diego, Amy Lesiewicz,
an SLD member, was awarded the S. Edmund Berger Prize for Excellence in
Scientific and Technical Translation. The Berger prize is one of several prizes
awarded annually by the American Foundation for Translation and Interpretation,
a non-profit entity closely linked with ATA. Jen Guernsey interviewed Amy about
the prize and her translation career.
JG: Congratulations,
Amy! Tell us a little bit about your prize-winning translation.
AL: Let me clear this up right away! In the past, the Berger
Prize has been awarded to a senior translator for demonstrating excellence in
scientific or technical translation. This year, rather than recognizing someone
at the end of his or her career, the American Foundation for Translation and
Interpretation decided to award the Berger Prize to an up-and-coming translator
to promote the start of a career. I don’t want anyone to have the impression
that I’ve translated the collected works of Andrei Sakharov or something like
that! I’m very honored by the award, but humbled too.
JG: Who nominated you
for the prize? Did you know your work had been submitted?
AL: Last fall I was laid off from my in-house translation position
at an engineering company. Although I had been translating full-time for five
years, the vast majority of that was in-house, and I suddenly found myself a
freelancer. I made all the rookie mistakes and was feeling a bit lost when I
looked at the ATA website one day and saw an invitation to apply for their
mentorship program. The application process was straightforward and painless,
and before I knew it I was matched with a wonderful mentor, a German to English
translator named Amanda Ennis. She helped me focus on reachable goals,
including highlighting my scientific specialization and preparing for my first
ATA conference.
Unbeknownst to me, Nick Hartmann from the Foundation asked
Susanne van Eyl, the director of the mentorship program, if there were any
scientific translators in this year’s mentee class. She gave him a short list,
and the Foundation selected me. I was completely surprised and very grateful.
JG: I find that most
US-based translators have ended up in the translation field in a roundabout
way. From what I know of your career, you fit that mold to some extent. Tell us
about your background and your translation career thus far.
AL: I was a chemistry major and much focused on academics; I
came to college with 22 credits already under my belt from advanced placement
tests and some college classes I took while still in high school. This gave my
chemistry advisor the impression that I was headed for a PhD and a career in
academia. Therefore, he advised me to take at least two years of French,
German, or Russian so that I could read the major chemistry journals in another
language. The French and German classes conflicted with my chemistry schedule,
so I took Russian, and I immediately fell in love. My instructor, Dr. Irina
Ivliyeva, was a wonderful teacher, and a perfect fit for her science and
engineering students. I wonder if my science (and maybe even music) background
helped with the initial learning process: some students seemed to struggle with
learning a new alphabet, but for me it was natural and easy to learn a new
symbol and associate it with a sound and/or meaning. Perhaps this is similar to
learning chemical symbols and associating them with elements, bonds,
structures, and compounds.
By my fourth year in college, I realized I was disenchanted
with potential careers in chemistry; my last semester’s course load included
nine credits of Russian and only one credit of chemistry. My advisor was
studying biimidazole chemistry, a field that had been extensively researched in
the Soviet Union. One particular article hadn’t been translated into English,
and he asked me to translate it. With only three semesters of Russian behind
me, it was well beyond my level of understanding and beyond my little pocket
dictionary too, so one Friday afternoon I claimed a table at the back of the
library and built a little fortress out of dictionaries and went to work. When
I realized I was hungry I looked at my watch and was surprised to find it was
after 9:00 pm. That was when I realized that translating is fun; it’s like
solving a complex logic puzzle.
From there, it took me a long time to feel qualified to call
myself a translator. I finished my chemistry degree, worked various entry-level
jobs, went to Michigan State University to earn a BA in Russian, and then
realized I still wasn’t qualified, so I went to the University at Albany to
earn an MA in Russian and a Certificate of Advanced Study in translation. Since
they didn’t have any summer classes in the Russian department, I decided to try
to find a summer job or internship in Russia. I ended up with a year-long
position as an in-house translator at Language Link Translations in Moscow. It
was a great learning experience and introduction to the profession.
JG: In your
translation work, are there any particular parts of your experience that you
drew on, aside from the obvious language-related capabilities?
AL: With each new assignment, I find myself doing roughly
equal parts scientific research and linguistic research. For example, my work
log for the last month shows that I translated a journal article on hydrocarbons
and heavy metals in the water surrounding Vladivostok, test reports on the
efficacy of various fungicides against diseases in several different crops, and
back translated an informed consent form for banking umbilical cord blood.
For each assignment, I had to research the proper
terminology used in those fields. I think it’s really fun!
A couple of years ago, I was translating a long regulatory
document on fire safety of industrial buildings, when I came up against a
stumbling block: заполнение проемов.
This could mean a door, window, shutter, curtain, hatch, lid, or anything that
closes any kind of opening in a wall, floor, or ceiling. The concept is
relatively simple and the words are easy, but it took me hours to find the
right term in English. At one point, I literally banged my head on my desk,
which startled a passing co-worker (this was while I was working in-house).
When I finally found a reliable source text (fire safety regulations from the
state of California) that defined this exact concept as “opening protectives,”
I was so excited that I actually felt a rush of endorphins. It’s not even a
particularly exciting or elegant phrase, opening protectives, but it was the
right term for the right concept, and it was a wily little guy.
I also get a kick out of unexpected translations. I was
translating a contract for wellhead completion services a couple of months ago
that mentioned фонтанная установка
(literally: fountain device). Turns out, the English term for this thing is a
“Christmas tree.” My project manager emailed me after I delivered the
translation, suggesting that I find another translation, because “Christmas
tree” couldn’t possibly be correct. So I sent her links to websites with
pictures of these big stacks of valves (which look nothing like Christmas trees
or fountains, if you ask me) and to the Schlumberger Oilfield Glossary.
In cases like those, I sometimes use the Google images
search function to double-check that I’ve got the right term. If searches in
both languages return pictures of the same thing, I think I’m on the right
track.
JG: What
recommendations would you make to translators interested in specializing in
technical translation, or conversely, technical specialists who would like
to transition to translating?
AL: There is a wide spectrum of scientific and linguistic
skills, even within a relatively narrow subject matter. For example, my
linguistic education is broader than my BS in chemistry, and so my working
areas are somewhat broad (from chemistry and the pure and natural sciences to
engineering and even non-technical texts). I have met other translators with
PhDs in chemistry who focus on a smaller subject area but work from several
source languages. Each area and degree of specialization has its advantages.
As a college student, I was frustrated that I couldn’t find
a teacher to help me find the intersection of my two interests, science and
language. I tried contacting chemistry professors who had emigrated from
Russia, but they had not maintained any ties to Russia or the Russian language—they
read and published in English—and were not interested in working with me. I
tried translating a chemistry journal article on my own and asked one of my
Russian professors to review it, but he got confused by the science in the
second line of the text and gave it back with no input. During my first trip to
Russia, I was delighted to find science textbooks in the bookstores, and I
spent a year poring over an introductory chemistry book for thirteen-year-olds,
looking up every word I didn’t know and writing down all of its collocations
and standard phrases. When I was in Moscow, I carried little paperback study
guides intended for high school students preparing for college entrance exams,
and I read them on the metro during my daily commute. So I guess my advice for
language students is this: Don’t wait for someone to teach you scientific
vocabulary and style in your second language. Perhaps you will be lucky enough
to find a language teacher with a science background, but in America they will
most likely be interested in poetry and history. It’s going to be up to you.
JG: I remember an
article in which Kevin Hendzel pointed out to us translators, “You’re only as
good as your last translation.” I’m sure you have no plans to rest on your
laurels just because the stellar quality of your work has been recognized.
Where would you like to head with your translation work in the future?
AL: I’d like to focus on gaining clients who send me “higher
quality” source texts. I’ve done a lot of work in the petroleum engineering
field, and let me tell you, engineers are not always good writers! I enjoy
translating scientific and medical journal articles, because they are well
written and have been edited for publication. I’ve just joined the American
Chemical Society, and I signed up for some upcoming online courses on medical
terminology and the chemistry of drugs in the brain. I plan to start reading
chemistry journals in English more extensively. Chris Durban said something at
the last conference that really struck a chord with me: as a specialized
translator, I should be able to rub elbows with scientists in my field and pass
for one of them, if only for a few minutes. So in the coming months I hope to
network with chemists in my area.
JG: We look forward
to hearing more from you in the future. Thank you so much for taking the time
to answer these questions!
For more information
about AFTI, the Berger prize, or other AFTI activities, visit www.afti.org.
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