Pros and Cons of Subtitled Films

As a sort of companion piece to last week’s post on the popularity of foreign books, I thought today I’d write about foreign films. I’ll put forward my reasons for and against watching foreign films, and hopefully we can get some more reasons in the comments. 🙂 Then I’ll take a look at why foreign films are less popular than films in English.

Why I like to watch foreign films
  • I learn about different cultures.
  • I see loads of different approaches to filmmaking.
  • I’m a linguist and a translator, so I like practicing my language skills and checking out the translation choices in the subtitles.
  • They’re great entertainment (mostly)!
Why I don’t like to watch foreign films
  • I often find them slow-moving or heavy.
  • I often find the storylines weird or unsatisfying somehow.
  • I find it hard to focus on the subtitles and the image at the same time.
  • If I know the original language of the film, it can be frustrating/distracting having two different channels through which I’m receiving the dialog.

I think that’s about it. I guess if I didn’t have knowledge of/interest in other languages, my likelihood of watching would come down to whether I enjoyed the story, and the extent to which I was willing to put up with subtitles.

My husband doesn’t speak other languages, and hopefully won’t mind me saying he is quite resistant to watching foreign films, but I have managed to drag him to some that he has enjoyed! I think the subtitles aren’t the issue for him, I think it’s more about a different film style, which is maybe disturbing, or has too little action, or doesn’t conclude the story that makes him not enjoy foreign films rather than anything to do with the language or the translation, and I can relate to that. Many English language films have subtitles during parts of the movie, and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. And personally I prefer subtitles to dubbing, as the dubbed voices, even if there’s perfect lip synchronization, sound completely incongruous with the other aspects of the characters.

So the language or subtitle issue may not be the real deterrent to people watching foreign films. It may be the unfamiliar style of the films themselves. Or maybe the lack of recognizable stars? Yesterday I read an article on Subtitled Online, a foreign film review site, which questioned the unpopularity of subtitled films, especially among English-speaking audiences. It wasn’t a great article, but it did bring up one point that I think is important, which is that interest in foreign films may be influenced by how they are promoted (or not) in the media, rather than by the fact that they are foreign, or that you have to read subtitles to watch them. I feel sure that the portrayal of these films in the media does affect people’s view of them; for example, both the style and the stars could be made more familiar to audiences by greater promotion in English-speaking countries. As well, perhaps not emphasizing the language of the film would help. And just the fact that these films can’t be found easily, or are only found on particular TV channels, or at film festivals, makes them seem less appealing than standard Hollywood blockbusters, so wider publicity could help here too.

What do you think? What do you like or dislike about foreign films? Do subtitles bother you? Let me know in the comments!

The popularity of translated literature in English

Next Tuesday, a series of workshops and discussions on translating children’s literature is taking place in London (click here for details). One of the workshops, translating extracts from Hans Christian Andersen’s stories, caught my eye because I love Hans Christian Andersen, and have done ever since I saw the biopic starring Danny Kaye when I was about 5. (Incidentally, I’m not sure it really counts as a “biopic”, as from what I can tell the life story presented in the film is entirely fictitious!) When I saw this workshop, I realized how many, maybe all, of the fairy tales I read (or watched) as a little kid were English translations. Andersen’s translators provided us with The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, and one lesser-known story that gave me nightmares of bloodthirsty hounds with eyes as big as saucers, The Tinderbox. Translators of the Brothers Grimm gave us Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and Rumpelstiltskin, and Cinderella and Pinocchio are French and Italian respectively.

Until recently I had really only read two types of translated literature post-fairy tales – “grown-up” classics, and (only as part of my language degree) a few modern German and Spanish authors. The translated versions of these modern books seemed like they had been written exclusively for us language students, as copies were only available in specific branches of academic bookstores, at inflated prices, and nobody who I spoke to outside my course had ever seen or heard of the books or the authors!

As a child, I didn’t just read fairy tales, I read a lot of contemporary books too, all of which had English authors. As an adult, almost all the contemporary fiction I read is by English authors. Thankfully in the last few years some new translated fiction has made it into mainstream bookstores, and can easily be read by non-language students! For example, novels by Isabel Allende, Paulo Coelho, and, of recent fame, Stieg Larsson.

But why is it that for the most part, classics are widely available in translation, and newer foreign novels aren’t? Is it just a perception, because the translated classics are the lone survivors from the thousands upon thousands of books that have been published over the last few centuries? Or are people less interested in translating literature (or publishing literary translations) nowadays?

Wouldn’t it be nice if, in addition to all the novels published in the English language, we had a vast array of books by Spanish, French, Polish, Arabic, Japanese authors at our disposal too? People in non-English-speaking countries have these options  – in Spain you can go into any bookstore and find almost every recent English bestseller – in Spanish – as well as dozens of new Spanish books. Why do we miss out on this variety in the English-speaking world?

As the wonderful website Three Percent points out, “only about 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation… And that 3% figure includes all books in translation—in terms of literary fiction and poetry, the number is actually closer to 0.7%”. And then take that 0.7% and consider that “only a fraction of the titles that do make their way into English are covered by the mainstream media”, and I’m guessing, sold in mainstream bookstores. In addition to Three Percent, other groups, including Booktrust, And Other Stories, and 2 Seas Agency are doing something to address this issue. But maybe authors and translators need to take it upon themselves to get translated books out there. See this blog post by Corinne McKay for inspiration!

What was your exposure to foreign literature as a child? As an adult? Is the story very different if you’re a native speaker of a language other than English? Why do you think foreign fiction is so rarely translated into English?

I’d like to hear your two cents’ on this subject, so please leave a comment below! And if you know any other useful resources on translated literature, please mention them in the comments too!

How to be productive as a freelancer

Something that didn’t occur to me when I began freelancing was how much time I would spend at home. Alone. Or to be specific, I didn’t realize how much this would bother me. Part of why I disliked working in an office was the constant interruptions and seemingly endless chatter! So I looked forward with excitement to the peace and quiet I would have at home, and the level of productivity I’d be capable of. Well, it didn’t quite turn out like that. Yes, it’s peaceful and quiet. Only the DJ on the radio, the meowing from my cat or the ringing of the phone occasionally interrupts my idyllic quiet. But I still have problems focusing. I tried turning off the radio, and that actually made things worse. I started tapping my fingers on the desk, and wandering around the house, in search of some feeling of life! (Yep, it’s bad.) I realized the noise of other people at the office had actually motivated me to work. It gave me the sensation that all around me people were being productive, buzzing away like bees in a hive.

When I’m home alone, there’s no real indication that any work should be done (the occasional urgent email or phone call aside). There’s no hive of activity around me. Well sometimes my cat flies into the room, up onto the bookshelf, leaps across the desk and flies out again. But that’s not really the type of activity that I find helpful. 😉    I need the feeling that other people are out there, working like me.

So my solution was to join a co-working space. I thought (and still think) this would be the perfect solution – I could come and go as I pleased, getting the best of both worlds with a mix of buzz there and quiet here at home. Not only that, I would have contact with other “work-from-homers” and feel part of a professional community. There’s a neat looking co-working space here in Calgary (CoworkYYC), but it’s too difficult for me to get to without a car (in an effort to save the environment, we gave up our car this summer). I’ve also heard wonderful things about Jelly, a communal work environment with dozens of locations around the world. Sadly though, no Jellys in my neck of the woods. So I came up with some alternatives.

In the next month, I am going to try two options. I’m going to try working from a coffee shop; I think this will provide plenty of “buzz”, but if everyone’s socializing instead of working, it may be too distracting. Then I’m going to try working at my local library. I think people will be working there, and it shouldn’t be too distracting. I won’t be able to get help or share freelancing stories, but at least I’ll get that air of productivity that’s sometimes lacking around my place.

I’ll post on here after my experiment’s over, and let you know how it went. If you’ve felt the same way about being home alone and found a solution, please share it in the comments. I’d love to hear how other people deal with this!

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Should you use a free online translator?

Since I started working as a translator, I’ve discovered a lot of assumptions people have about translating. My first post on this blog dealt with some of these, such as translator = interpreter, or translators can translate any type of document or subject matter. Another assumption I’ve come across is that translation software or instant translation websites are interchangeable with people who work as translators (or if not interchangeable, perhaps the equivalent of a cake from a mix to the professional translator’s one made from scratch). This ties in to some of the other assumptions, in that they all seem to come from the thinking that once you know lots of words in another language, you can translate anything – apparently there’s a simple x=y formula for converting one language to another. Which makes it clear why software would be able to translate with the utmost accuracy.  Unfortunately, there isn’t always (and some would argue there is never) a one-to-one match between two languages, so human involvement in the process is usually necessary, and automatic translation results can be laughable. In this post I’m going to try to explain the difference between automatic translation (aka machine translation) and us professional translators.

If you do translate something using a free online translator, or even paid software, you could get decent results, especially where the document is factual, with very simple sentence structures and clear language. User manuals are often cited as being ideal for machine translation. Some companies produce good results with their own custom built software that has been programmed with the company’s own writing style and terminology. But generic software doesn’t always work so well. Take a look at these results I got using SYSTRANet and Google Translate (two of the higher quality free online translators in my experience):

SYSTRANet results

Google Translate results

As you can see, the SYSTRANet translation needs some help! And I think it’s fair to say that a professional translator would prefer to see the original and just start over. However, the Google Translate version is actually pretty good.

I guess my point is, cake mixes are fine sometimes, but other times you want the quality of a homemade cake from scratch. (Can you tell I’ll be making a cake later today?) So understand the limitations of automatic translation, and when you might need to use a professional translator. And when you decide to go automatic, make sure you choose a good application (maybe not SYSTRANet?), or you might end up with something that’s not really a cake at all, but just a half-baked mess.

Have you personally had a bad experience using machine translation? Or have you obtained good results with a particular website/program? Either way, I’d love to hear about it, so please leave a comment!

The Translation Process

This week, I thought I’d give you a peek behind the scenes by writing about what I do when working on a translation. While every project’s different, I’ll go through some variation of the following process when translating:

  1. Read the document for understanding, and getting a feel for the style and intention of the piece; think about how it should be translated
  2. Draft a translation and put in initial formatting, if required
  3. Research the topic to understand specialized terminology or unusual words and find English equivalents
  4. Write up the final translation and finalize any formatting, editing as I go
  5. Revise to ensure accuracy of meaning, equivalence of style, and correct and appropriate use of English
  6. Proofread for spelling and grammar, formatting issues and things like matching up numbers in tables, etc.

The order in which these stages are carried out and the amount of time spent on each one depends on the type of document and the client’s needs (and probably also differs from translator to translator).  Almost all my work is done at the computer, though I do have a number of trusty reference books in print that I use frequently. And for longer documents, I will print them out before proofreading – I just find it easier to pore over words on paper than on the screen.  Plus I haven’t yet figured out computer equivalents for my various squiggles and symbols!

Most of my contact with clients happens at the beginning of the project. I usually find it makes things easier (and may help my clients save money!) if I get plenty of information about the translation at the start of the project. Clear communication is really important to me, as it enables the client to feel confident in my work, and it helps me to deliver the best translation I can. I find the more we communicate, the higher the translation quality will be, and the more satisfied both parties will be at the end of the project.  I appreciate that usually people just want to send me the document and leave me to get on with things, and this way, once the project is confirmed I can leave my client in peace until the delivery date (close to the end of the project, I might check in to make sure everything’s A-OK before sending out the translation).

And that’s about it! I’d love to hear your point of view, so please leave a comment, or ask me a question below. Do you have any other questions about translation or translators? Translators, does your process differ from the one I described? Do you have any opinions on communicating with clients?

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