Comments on: Are translators too reliant on the Internet? http://www.jodybyrne.com/915 Wed, 28 Apr 2010 20:58:41 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: John Kearns http://www.jodybyrne.com/915/comment-page-1#comment-4 John Kearns Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:48:00 +0000 http://www.jodybyrne.com/content/?p=915#comment-4 As a trainer a lot of my work involves getting students to distrust the Internet. Recently I showed them the scene from Double Indemnity where the Fred McMurray insurance salesman tells the deeply distrustful Edward G. Robinson loss adjustor that he takes his investigation of insurance claims too seriously: “You’re so darn conscientious you wouldn’t even say today is Tuesday without looking at the calendar. And then you’d check if it was this year’s or last year’s calendar, and then you would find out what company printed the calendar, then find out if their calendar checks with the World Almanac’s calendar.” That’s what they’ve gotta be like. In the area I do most of my translation in nowadays (historical climatology) I’d never have been able to get the necessary phraseology from the Internet (or at least not without access to a library that had big access to the major journals in the field - which is going back to print media). People don’t blog about 17th century decadal precipitation averages. It would also have taken ages to get familiar with the discourse area from reading books on the topic. The best way for me to learn that the Polish word that’s usually translated as ‘daily’ should, in climatology, be translated as ‘diurnal’ was from speaking to the guy who wrote the text himself, who - as often happens - knows all the vocab of the area inside out from his reading, but doesn’t actually speak much English. It’s hard to accept that a guy who can’t speak English actually knows more English vocab in a particular area than you do. So really getting students to distrust the ‘net is part of a larger thing of getting them to realise that knowing what’s best to trust is often counterintutive. As a trainer a lot of my work involves getting students to distrust the Internet. Recently I showed them the scene from Double Indemnity where the Fred McMurray insurance salesman tells the deeply distrustful Edward G. Robinson loss adjustor that he takes his investigation of insurance claims too seriously: “You’re so darn conscientious you wouldn’t even say today is Tuesday without looking at the calendar. And then you’d check if it was this year’s or last year’s calendar, and then you would find out what company printed the calendar, then find out if their calendar checks with the World Almanac’s calendar.” That’s what they’ve gotta be like.

In the area I do most of my translation in nowadays (historical climatology) I’d never have been able to get the necessary phraseology from the Internet (or at least not without access to a library that had big
access to the major journals in the field – which is going back to print media). People don’t blog about 17th century decadal precipitation averages. It would also have taken ages to get familiar with the discourse area from reading books on the topic.

The best way for me to learn that the Polish word that’s usually translated as ‘daily’
should, in climatology, be translated as ‘diurnal’ was from speaking to the guy who wrote the text himself, who – as often happens – knows all the vocab of the area inside out from his reading, but doesn’t actually speak much English.

It’s hard to accept that a guy who can’t speak English actually knows more English vocab in a particular area than you do. So really getting students to distrust the ‘net is part of a larger thing of getting them to realise that knowing what’s best to trust is often counterintutive.

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