une 25th, 2013, Roman Mironov 

What is the best compliment for a translator?

A common belief is that the best translation is one that does not sound like a translation at all. Readers do not even realize there was another mind between them and the author. This is often the case with literature, especially classic literature. Take, for example, the French translations of Edgar Allan Poe by Charles Baudelaire, which many consider superior to the original.

While this definition of a perfect translation is generally correct, it’s not universal. Some translations call for a different approach. Let’s look at two reasons why this standard may be impossible or even undesirable.

1. Formal documents. A legal document follows a structure and rules specific to the source language and therefore does not lend itself to this type of “perfect” translation. No matter how hard a translator tries to make the translation feel more natural, he/she is limited by this structure and these rules. To make it feel more natural would require a complete overhaul. This is impossible, however, because no one wants a translated legal document that is substantially different from the original.

For example, a license agreement translated from English to Russian is bound to feel like a translation, because Russian legal documents are simply written in a different way. A Russian agreement begins with a clause about who is concluding the agreement and when, whereas an English agreement often begins with several “whereas” clauses. An English agreement often uses a lot of terms with relatively similar meaning, such as “indemnify, defend, and hold harmless” or “indirect, special, or consequential damages,” whereas a typical Russian agreement uses just one or two.

The bottom line is that regardless of how a translator attempts to create a perfect translation, a formal document will still have an “aftertaste” of the original language.

1. Accuracy vs. style. The second, and even more important, reason is accuracy. The general principle is that the more literally accurate a translation is, the worse the style and the less natural it feels. The source and target languages are often miles away in terms of how a well-structured sentence looks. Going for 100% of the original meaning in the translation—and this is what literal accuracy is all about—leads to the feeling that even though the words in the translation are, say, Russian, the text actually reads like the source language, English. To eliminate this feeling, a translator needs to do two things:

• Omit words that are idiomatic in the source language, but are superfluous in the target language.
• Go for idiomatic phrases in the target language, even though they may not convey 100% of the original meaning.

Very often, however, this is not an option. When translating a user manual or a clinical trial protocol, accuracy is so important that choosing style over accuracy is completely out of the question.

Another reason that translators choose accuracy over style is the fear of being reprimanded for doing otherwise. With accuracy being one of the main evaluation criteria used by translation agencies and direct clients, how many translators have the courage to stray from it in the ways suggested above? Not many, I guess. Most translators prefer to be on the safe side, putting accuracy first and style second. This makes it important for clients to voice their expectations. For instance, with marketing translations, some clients ask us to avoid a word-for-word translation and make a “transcreation” instead.

SummaryMaking a translation sound like it is not a translation at all can be a challenge. With more formal documents, it is next to impossible. With less formal documents, it is easier to achieve, as long as a translator feels it is okay to sacrifice accuracy for style. Because the translator doesn’t know what is right for a specific client, it is important that clients let translators know their expectations about the balance of accuracy and style.
translation?

http://www.velior.ru/blog/en/2013/06/25/does-high-quality-translation-always-have-perfect-style/

Each year on Sept. 30, a holiday is observed by people all around the world that has been celebrated since 1953. It's a feast day that was originally designated for a patron saint (Saint Jerome), but it has grown to transcend all barriers of religion or geography. This year, I am personally sending out greetings to thousands of people in 70 different countries in observance of this important day -- that's far more than I send out for any other holiday.

Yet, if you're like the majority of people, you've probably never heard of this cause for global celebration until now. It's International Translation Day. You might not think about how translation affects your everyday life, but in reality, there is hardly anything in your life that isn't touched in some way by translation. As I explain in my new book, Found in Translation (co-authored with Jost Zetzsche), here are 10 reasons why translation is so significant:

1. Translation saves lives. Did you know that right this very minute, a massive translation project is scanning the international news to catch words that help identify and contain global health outbreaks, protecting the lives of you and your loved ones? And, countless medical interpreters work in health care facilities, whether it's a wealthy patient visiting from overseas and paying for treatment at the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, or a refugee who is being treated after surviving violence and other horrors.

2. Translation prevents terror. Intelligence gathering is critical for terror prevention, but no matter how helpful the information obtained, it is useless if no one can understand it and analyze its potential impact. Just consider the fact that the words "Tomorrow is zero hour" were intercepted in Arabic on Sept. 10, 2011, but were not translated until Sept. 12, the day after the 9/11 attacks. As you read this message, foreign media analysts are scanning all kinds of information from Iran, Syria, North Korea, and other important hotbeds of potential conflict. They translate that information in order to help prevent terrorist attacks from actually being carried out.

3. Translation keeps the peace. International diplomacy would simply not be possible without translation. The interpreters and translators at the United Nations and the Department of State do far more than just convert speeches and official documents. Translators are often involved in helping draft the exact wording to be used in peace treaties so that it will be agreeable to both sides. Interpreters are involved in conversations and communications between world leaders, and have the power to nurture relationships, providing insight and guidance to prime ministers and presidents, preventing them from making cultural faux pas and helping them to make the best possible impression for themselves and the nations they represent.

4. Translation elects world leaders. In many countries -- such as the United States, where one out of every five people speaks a language other than English at home -- translation plays a significant role in politics. It's no accident that both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have translated versions of their websites in Spanish, and routinely rely on interpreters to communicate with voters who speak other languages. The U.S. government also requires precincts with large percentages of non-English speakers to provide ballots in other languages. These language specialists have the important task of safeguarding democracy by helping people vote correctly, even in situations where a term like "hanging chad" can barely be understood in English.

5. Translation creates jobs. The translation market is worth $33 billion in 2012, as a recent report from Common Sense Advisory shows. There are more than 26,000 companies throughout the world that sell translation and interpreting services. Most of these are small businesses, a vital contributor to any healthy economy. Not only do these companies employ translators, but people who work in finance, sales, technology, marketing, project management, and even engineering.

6. Translation fuels the economy. Global businesses cannot sell their products and services without translation. Pick any Fortune 500 company, visit their website, and chances are it's multilingual. If not, those companies are likely to employ workers who speak other languages, even if they only cater to domestic markets. Without translation, these companies would be unable to meet the expectations of customers -- and shareholders.

7. Translation entertains us. Whether you're a fan of soccer, baseball, hockey, or some other sport, just look at your home team, and chances are you'll find an interpreter or translator on the field or the court. Sports are becoming more international than ever before, and geography is no barrier to recruiting the best possible athletic talent, but language is. That's why professional athletes rely on interpreters when moving from country to country. But other important sources of entertainment, like movies and books, also require translation. How successful would The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have been if everyone were forced to read it in Swedish?

8. Translation tests our faith. Many people read a translation every night before they go to bed, in the form of a sacred text. While some holy books are read in their original language, most followers of religions are not able to access those sources of spiritual information without translation. Indeed, translation is often the source of controversy in religion, whether it's a discussion of whether the Quran should be translated or left in its original Arabic, or whether a new translation indicates that Jesus was married.

9. Translation feeds the world. The people who work in the fields where food is grown often speak different languages from the people who buy the produce picked by their hands. The same is true of meat processing plants. And, major food and beverage companies like McDonald's, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks sell their products globally, but only thanks to translation. All of these businesses rely on translation to communicate with workers who speak other languages, which means that human resource manuals, training software -- and sometimes, worker's compensation cases -- must be translated to put the food on the table.

10. Translation makes us fall in love. Yes, people fall in love thanks to translation. Whether it's thanks to a translated love poem by Pablo Neruda or a translated Hallmark greeting card, translation can help ignite a spark between two people. Having worked as an interpreter for countless "cupid calls," in which two people in love defy the odds by engaging in sweet talk across languages, I can attest that love knows no barriers -- as long as there is translation to hold people together.

And speaking of love, this word seems to be an appropriate way to describe the translation profession. When we polled translators and interpreters for our book, we saw that they love their jobs -- 96.4 percent of respondents reported that they were satisfied with their work.

So, to do your part for International Translation Day, take a moment to consider this profession that is often overlooked, but critical to society as we know it. And perhaps even say thank you to a translator or an interpreter. They're out there, each day, touching your life in ways that are unseen, but that truly make the world go 'round.

Posted: 06/28/2013 11:24 am


What (and how much) gets lost in translation? How does the translator operate the difficult task of rendering an author's words and stylistic choices into often completely different languages? How do politics, aesthetics and culture influence and affect translation? The answer to these and other fascinating questions are presented in this new anthology of diverse and enlightening essays by some of the world's leading writers and translators including Haruki Murakami, José Manuel Prieto, Eliot Weinberger, Peter Cole and David Bellos. Readers may be surprised to find out for example that translation has alternately been considered a sign of divine grace for its exactitude (as in the Greek biblical translation known as the Septuagint), or instead punishable by death for changes deemed to be unacceptable or sacrilegious. The Italian witticism "Traduttore, Traditore" ("Translator, traitor") sums up the historical view of translation as a subversive or treacherous practice.

The anthology is intelligently edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky and also presents pieces on and literary history that will be of interest to the general reader as well. In one of her two essays here ("The Will to Translate: Four Episodes in a Local History of Global Cultural Exchange") Allen, a noted translator of Spanish and French and a tenured professor at Baruch College, ties in the history of English language translation of Latin American texts to President Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy in fascinating ways.

Allen's co-editor Susan Bernofsky, perhaps the world's most noted German-English translator also makes a sensible contribution with her essay on translating Walser and Kafka: "Translation and the Art of Revision." In it, she reviews her own process of translation in some detail: Bernofsky admits to producing no less than four edits of any text. Maureen Freely's essay on translating Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk amidst threats from the so-called Turkish "deep state" is enlightening for the politics involved as well as the difficult linguistic choices she has made over the years. Perhaps the most playful read comes at the end of the anthology in the form of Clare Cavanagh's witty essay "The Art of Losing: Polish Poetry in Translation."

Cavanagh introduces Elizabeth Bishop's villanelle One Art and its translation or "re-creation" into Polish by her sometimes co-translator Stanislaw Baranscak as a starting point for an extended commentary on the necessary "losses" and creative metamorphoses that the translator must employ in order to create any noteworthy new text. Good translations it turns out are almost never entirely "faithful to the original" -- the whole art form can turn in fact on knowing instead when to move away from an original and seemingly immutable sentence structure or etymological choice -- it's the translator's own artistic license, one might say.

There's a little bit for everyone to enjoy when reading In Translation. If you have ever wondered exactly what a translator does beyond the obvious (i.e. translate): what choices he/she must make, how he or she chooses between one word form or phrasing rather than another, but also how translators often resolve (or not) often difficult relationships with editors, writers and even readers at times, then you are most likely to find this a most useful volume. Granted, these types of questions may not keep the average American up late at night, but they are fascinating nonetheless.


In Translation, Edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernoksky, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013 is available at: here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-atamian/when-you-cant-read-the-original_b_3507039.html

[Date: 2013-06-12]

European cooperation is based on our ability to understand each other. Given that there are presently 23 official EU languages, the availability of online tools to facilitate accurate translation is fundamentally important. 

An EU-funded project has developed an innovative online tool that will enable web-content providers to automatically create publishing-quality translations. This tool has been calibrated to apply to specific professional fields, yet requires no specific training to use. 

A number of online translation tools are currently available to the public. Some programmes are already used by many people worldwide, and improve the quality of their translations through machine learning. In other words, these systems use feedback to learn from their own mistakes. The disadvantage to this, however, is that explicit grammatical rules are the exception rather than the rule. 

This is where the EU-funded MOLTO ('Multilingual on-line translation') project comes in. The project, which finished in early 2013, set out to develop a system with grammar rules already in place. The ultimate objective was to create a translation technique so accurate that people could produce texts using the translations directly, without fear of mistakes. 

As a demonstration, the project aimed to produce a set of translated articles in the domain of cultural heritage on the Wikipedia website. An important point to note is that while existing online translation tools are often designed for consumers of information, MOLTO targeted producers of information. The quality therefore needed to be good enough so that, for instance, an e-commerce site could translate their web pages automatically without fear that the message would change. 

This project is expected to have a major impact on how automated translation is viewed. The field is currently dominated by open-domain browsing-quality tools, which are not always accurate and not always trusted. Using existing tools, potential mistakes can arise where the system might have translated a price of EUR 100 into, say 100 Swedish Crowns (which in fact equals around EUR 10). While the customer might realise that there has been a mistake, this could prove costly if company does not notice the error. 

On the other hand, domain-specific, high-quality translation can be both expensive and cumbersome. As a result of MOLTO, it should now be possible for a producer of web documents to automatically generate them in many languages. The MOLTO project makes it easier to provide high-quality translation across a number of domains. 

Indeed, potential areas - in addition to MOLTO's case studies - cover distant learning, electronic commerce, encyclopaedia articles, contracts, manuals, and user interfaces. Other areas include, for example, the translation of patent descriptions, along with descriptions of cultural heritage and museum objects. Another important area of development has been the translation of mathematical teaching material. 

The MOLTO project has succeeded in ensuring that content producers will be able to use this innovative technology without necessarily being fluent in the language in which, say, the patent description was written, or without being a computer expert. 

This means that, in the future, information producers will be able to freely download this tool and translate texts into several languages simultaneously. This technique has the potential to be applied to a wide range of web documents, within sufficiently well-specified domains and clear semantics. Ultimately, it could revolutionise automatic online translation, to the benefit of citizens everywhere.

http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS_FP7&ACTION=D&DOC=1&CAT=NEWS&QUERY=013f38036557:ce5b:226b2c67&RCN=35794

For more information, please visit: 
http://www.molto-project.eu/

By Palma Chatonnet-Marton, M.Sc.
certified medical and legal translations

Objective

This small compilation aims to help translators quickly find information on nomenclature and abbreviations from reliable sources in order to better adapt themselves to the market.

Introduction


It is essential to thoroughly understand the subject before starting translation...In nature, the specialization of a species is detrimental to its long-term adaptation to an ever-changing environment. Does translators’ survival follow the theory of natural selection? Specialization seems a must and clients require that translators strictly follow the jargon used by the professionals who will use the target documents. However, this does not mean that translators cannot adapt to the evolution of the field. Contrary to biological evolution, where both specialist and generalist species co-exist in a dynamic equilibrium to share niches, the struggle for life of translators is more efficient when they are specialized but have tools and information to adapt themselves to the large variety of needs of clients.

Nevertheless, this adaptation raises myriad questions for a translator: where do I find information quickly? Can I rely on the source? Shall I be able to explain my choices to the clients?

Furthermore, even for a professionally trained translator, if the time spent on foraging for nomenclature, abbreviation and jargon is wasted at the expense of time necessary for ensuring proper linguistic quality, then fluency and clarity of translation can be jeopardized.

Thankfully, there are many ways of supplementing our initial knowledge with minimal cost and energy in order to fulfill the requirements of the market.

The aim of this paper is to share some website addresses and references for medical translators. If there is a naivety in promoting open source and sharing hints, we wish to advocate the idea that it is necessary to share as many good standards as possible in order to foster good comprehension. We can take it as a duty and truly a literally academic endeavor or win-win game.

It is without a doubt easier to specialize when we have degrees in the sciences, medicine, pharmacy, engineering or aeronautics. Nevertheless, anybody can earn experience by following three simple rules: we understand our source texts, we use good terminology and we keep ourselves updated on grammar and style issues. These three rules will be our guide.

1. Thou shalt understand thy source text

It is essential to thoroughly understand the subject before starting translation. It means knowing “everything” on the subject. Nevertheless, finding a good starting point for reading is not an easy task. The most easily accessible sites such as Wikipedia can be useful for rapidly understanding the background of a subject, but they can be misleading if we rely solely on this type of source. The quality of expert review is not homogeneous and jewels stand side by side with poor-quality articles (reports).

There are other ways to find peer-reviewed information on health-related subjects.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) houses the site of “PubMed,” the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) National Institutes of Health database of all the scientific literature related to health: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

With more than 22 million citations from biomedical literature, it is considered the Holy Grail for getting up-to-date information. With the PubMed Central initiative, not only article summaries are freely available but also full-text pdf. At first glance, it may seem overwhelming; however, data mining in this place is made easy with user-friendly tools.

Other related sites of the NLM are also very valuable resources: “Genetic Home Reference” is a guide to understanding genetic conditions: http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/ while “Medical Subject Headings” is a dictionary of medical terms:http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html.



Translators working on medicine release documents and clinical trial reports should be aware of the differences between the European Union and US legislations, which still need to be resolved. The International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) guides are useful: www.ich.org/products/guidelines.html. See also the sites for multidisciplinary guidelines—the ICH medical terminology (MedDRA), the Common Technical Document (CTD) and the development of Electronic Standards for the Transfer of Regulatory Information (ESTRI) among others.

The site of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on ICH is:

www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/guidances/ucm122049.htm; and the ICH Guidance Documents can be found here:

www.fda.gov/.../ucm219488.htm

The guides on Good Clinical Practice in English, German, Spanish, French and other languages with their incorporated glossaries can be found at: http://ichgcp.net/download

http://www.ich.org/.../E6_R1__Guideline.pdf

http://www.gcphelpdesk.com/index.php/glossary/8-a

Guidelines on good pharmacovigilance practices: 
http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Scientific_guideline/2012/06/

The European Medicines Agency’s site informs us on human and veterinary medicines:

http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/

2. Thou shalt use the proper terminology

For gene and protein names (always a source of confusion for all of us), we can find useful information at:

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/pages/scientific-nomenclature.htm

The HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) has assigned unique gene symbols and names at: http://www.genenames.org

and again the NCBI for chemical database PubChem:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/chemicals-bioassays/

The http://tinyurl.com/2wzxrrs link refers to the European Medicines Agency’s templates for product information for use by applicants and marketing-authorization holders for centralized procedures, mutual-recognition, decentralized and referral procedures in the official EU languages. Quality Review of Documents (QRD) conventions to be followed for the EMA-QRD templates can be found at the link:

http://www.emea.europa.eu/.../WC500005091.pdf

Below, we present some sites not really specific to biomedical translations, but which may turn out useful as legal, environmental, and more general public safety issues are involved. There are two important reasons for using these sites:

Researchers, laboratory workers, medical and clinical staff are more and more subject to internal and external audits. Keeping abreast of regulations helps them fulfill successfully standardized requirements. Translators who follow these updates and understand these systems can become real specialists in these fields.

Multilingual sites offer true parallel corpora for the linguists. By definition, “a parallel corpus is a corpus that contains a collection of original texts in language L1 and their translations into a set of languages L2 ... Ln. In most cases, parallel corpora contain data from only two languages. Closely related to parallel corpora are "comparable corpora", which consist of texts from two or more languages which are similar in genre, topic, register, etc. without, however, having the same content.” Source:

http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Parallel_corpus

Unidirectional (e.g., from French to English), bidirectional (e.g. from German to English and vice versa) or multidirectional parallel corpora are always much more efficient sources compared to dictionaries (see the legislation of the European Union from English into the official 23 languages of the EU and vice versa at the eur-lex site: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm). Two advantages of these resources are obvious; on the one hand the terms appear in different contexts while on the other hand, these parallel corpora can be easily found online with a click without wasting time searching through heavy dictionaries. Despite the fact that I have an entire collection of “those heavy books,” I work under the pressure of the demand of a high quality output in the least possible time (although we all know that lack of time plays against quality; however, that is an issue that deserves another article). As mentioned above, if translators can reach a site where they can find terms from reliable sources with a click, they can use the saved energy and time to polish the quality of their work.

The freely accessible eur-lex site (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm) containing the European Union law is available in the 23 official languages. This huge multilingual corpus is the source of many pertinent medical (e.g. bird flu), environmental, pharmaceutical terminology in the EU-27 languages with its Simple and Advanced Search interfaces.

The IATE (InterActive Terminology for Europe) database regroups all synonyms and variants used by the different institutions of the EU:http://iate.europa.eu/iatediff/SearchByQueryEdit.do.

The 229 Corpus-Based Monolingual Dictionaries: http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.dehosted by the University of Leipzig offers "mega-meta-search": examples of sentences, frequency analysis, graphical word compilations for words of all languages which have corpora.

Another storm is brewing at the interface of environmental or medical science and legislation.

For decades, a huge number of chemicals has been manufactured and released on the market in Europe, sometimes in very high amounts, without sufficient information on the hazards that these compounds might cause to human health or to the environment. This realization led to the REACH initiative. REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemical substances) is the European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm.

Under these upcoming laws, industrialists, manufacturers and importers are required to produce information on the properties of their chemical substances, which will facilitate their safe handling. The information has to be registered in a central database run by theEuropean Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the central point in the REACH system.

This agency hosts the databases necessary to operate the REACH, coordinates the evaluation of suspicious chemicals and is currently building a public database with chemical safety-related terms and information on alternative chemical names in mixtures. The agency also addresses the same safety issues for nanomaterials. The database includes CLP (CLP stands for Classification, Labeling and Packaging), Chemical Safety Reports (CSRs), Predictive Toxicology (QSARs), the Chemical Safety and the Exposure Assessment, as well as the IUCLID database and the REACH Guide:

http://www.reach-compliance.eu/english/compliance/CLP/CLP-Notifications.html

The ECHA link on REACH in a multilingual version: http://echa.europa.eu/reach_en.asp 
and the ECHA glossary in English on main terms can be found here:

http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/public-2/glossary.htm?lang=en

The eur-lex link for parallel corpora of the REACH directive (EC 1907/2006) in EU-27 national languages (Celex number: 32006L0102) is: http://tinyurl.com/68thcnh

3. Thy mother tongue shall be the language of science

There is a universal style for writing science. It differs from the literary one, and we write in a universal scientific style whether we translate from English into another language or vice versa.

In the book some consider as the bible for technical translation methods: “Vinay, J.P. et Darbelnet, J., Stylistique comparée du français et de l’anglais. Méthode de traduction” (Paris, Didier, 1958), the authors state that in technical translation the target text has to be almost identical to the source, quite contrary to the French literary translation tendency at the beginning of the 20th century, which advised translators to read the book, then to close it and write a new one.

We can find our correct style somewhere between these two extremes. Nowadays, one of the basic requirements is consistency—that is, we have to use the same terms and verbs without synonyms in a consistent manner throughout the translation—even at the expense of literary style. We can nevertheless render our translations colorful and keep terminology consistent while being stylish using a few simple tricks. Here is a non-exhaustive list of hints, style guides and grammar links:

1. Use strong, active verbs—you can access a non-exhaustive list here:http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~cainproj/writingtips/preciseverbs.html

2. Unless an acronym is “fixed” and well-known (like AIDS, WHO) or a brand name, and unless space is drastically limited, you do not necessarily have to abbreviate all illnesses, pharmaceutical forms, names of health organizations, etc. Rules for translation of acronyms differ between languages, but remember in all cases that too many acronyms play against fluency and coherency.

3. You should not be afraid to use the Gerund in our translations: e.g. “The brain stem controls many of the body’s basic functions, including breathing, chewing, swallowing, and eye movements.” Just ensure that it is used in a consistent manner in the same sentence (source: http://www.iristrial.org/teleforms/documents/stroke.pdf)

4. Although polished, fluent and journalistic style requires employing the active voice more, in scientific translations we are often forced to use the passive voice. Simply bear in mind that the active and passive voices represent two different points of view when translated. Translators have to decide which grammatical subject is highlighted in the source text and translate accordingly. This is easy to follow in Latin and German-based languages. However, other languages like Hungarian use the active voice almost exclusively since the 19th century linguistic reform; nevertheless, the syntax of the language allows easy transposition of the passive voice of the source into an active one.

Other useful links:

1. You can polish your style by following the Clinical Chemistry series:http://www.aacc.org/publications/clin_chem/ccgsw/Pages/default.aspx#

2. How to Write, Publish, & Present in the Health Sciences: A Guide for Clinicians & Laboratory Researchers, by Thomas A. Lang (American College of Physicians, 2010).http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scientific-Style-Format-Authors-Publishers/dp/0521471540/

3. Writing Guides and Style Manuals in the Biological and Health Sciences from the University of Minnesota: http://hsl.lib.umn.edu/biomed/help/stylemanuals

4. The AP Stylebook http://www.apstylebook.com/, the American Psychological Association: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/

5. http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

6. The Associated Press vs. Chicago Manual of Style: http://www.apvschicago.com/

7. The EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English by the European Association of Science Editors:http://www.ease.org.uk/publications

8. The MLA Style Manual by the Medical Library Association:http://www.mlanet.org/publications/style

9. The Guidance on Scientific Writing EQUATOR Network: http://www.equator-network.org/resource-centre/library-of-health-research-reporting/guidance-on-scientific-writing/

10. And the http://blog.amamanualofstyle.com/

11. The Grammar Girl’s free newsletter: http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com

12. http://www.grammarbook.com

13. http://grammarist.com



Conclusion

This short article is not exhaustive and should not be taken as an exclusive list of available resources. We apologize for the omissions of authors of other valuable sites. We only hope that this may serve as a little step in a path that other translators might want to follow.





Published - March 2013





http://www.translationdirectory.com/articles/article2429.php


This article was originally published at Translation Journal (http://translationjournal.net/journal/).

.

By Behnaz Sanaty Pour,
freelance translator and an English teacher in various English schools,
M.A. student in Translation Studies in Islamic Azad University, Shahreza Branch
Iran

bsanatypour at yahoo com




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Abstract:

Translation has many challenges, one of which is the problem of translating proper nouns (PNs), a term used here interchangeably with the term 'proper names,' adequately from one language to another. The focus of this study lies within translation of personal names, which are a subclass of proper nouns. Notwithstanding the fact that a challenge that translators often encounter in their work comes from personal names, this paper presents some translation techniques proposed by various researchers in this regard. It should be mentioned that this paper does not intend to prescribe any special rules.

Key words:

Personal names, Proper nouns, translation strategies

Introduction

Generally speaking, nouns are divided into common and proper names. Proper names refer to a specific referent, that is, these names serve to distinguish a particular individual from others, for instance, Peter, Mike, Alice. Common names, on the other hand, refer to a class of individuals such as man, woman, and boy. It is noteworthy that distinction between these types of nouns gets blurred in some cases. Since it is outside the scope of this paper to present a full account of this issue, the present study tackles only personal names, which fall into the proper noun category.

There is no doubt that translating personal names should not be assumed to be an easy issue inasmuch as it can turn out to be very troublesome in practice and needs very sensitive decision-making on the part of the translator within the translation process. A growing body of research shows that different translation procedures are applied in the process of translating personal names.

Albert Peter Vermes (2003) asserts that:

"The translation of proper names has often been considered as a simple automatic process of transference from one language into another, due to the view that proper names are mere labels used to identify a person or a thing. Contrary to popular views, the translation of proper names is a non-trivial issue, closely related to the problem of the meaning of the proper name."



Translators do not always use the same strategy for translation of all personal names in all kinds of texts.
Personal names in some cases can reveal some information by themselves. The translator's knowledge of such information can sometimes be very effective in the translation process. In this regard, The Columbia Encyclopedia states that "English surnames developed in the late Middle Ages and, apart from patronymics (Adams, Jefferson), have a variety of origins; they come from places (Lincoln, Garfield) from trades (Tyler, Taylor), from personal traits (Stout, Black), and from the calendar (Noel, May)." In this respect, Mike Campbell (n.d.) states that most surnames fall into four categories: a) they are derived from given names such as Johnson, and Williams; b) they refer to the person's occupation like Clark, and Wright; c) they are derived from the location where the bearer lives; d) surnames can de derived from nicknames such as White, Young.

All languages have particular personal names, some of which are deeply rooted in the culture of the speakers of the specific language; consequently, they can pose unique difficulties in the comprehension of culture-specific texts. It is interesting to note that some personal names have specific connotations, and omitting this implied information results in unacceptable translation. For example, in the Persian culture, Hatam Taaei—the name of a very generous man in Iranian stories—is a symbol of generosity; accordingly, if a translator, who unaware of this fact, encounters this sentence "My father is Hatam Taaei" in a conversation of two friends talking about their fathers' characteristics, the translator may erroneously assume that the speaker introduces his or her father's name, not his personality.

Bachman (1990) specifically points out that the knowledge of cultural references and of the figurative use of language should be considered as a focal element in the translation process. He holds that the readers and listeners need this type of knowledge to make sense of culture-specific names whenever such names occur.

In the case of personal names, there is another point relevant to a peculiarity of some languages; translators must consider the fact that the order of first name and surname is not the same in all languages. In the Korean, Japanese, and Hungarian languages, for example, surname comes before first name, whereas this order is reversed in English, French, and most other Western languages.

The rest of this paper is arranged in three sections: first, the definition of proper name, personal name, and various types of personal names; second, the explanation about some procedures of personal name translation; third, the conclusion.

2. Preliminary Considerations

2.1. Definition of Proper Noun

According to Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, a proper noun is "a word that serves the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about, but not of telling anything about it."

Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines the proper noun as "a noun that designates a particular being or thing, does not take a limiting modifier, and is usually capitalized in English—called also proper name."

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary says that a proper noun (or proper name) is "a word that is the name of a person, a place, an institution, etc. and is written with a capital letter" (p.1016).

A proper noun has these distinctive features in English: 1) It will be capitalized, no matter where it occurs in a sentence. 2) A proper name is a mono-referential name, i.e., it refers to a particular person, thing, or place. 3) It is not regularly preceded by a definite or indefinite article. 4) It is not used with limiting modifiers, like a lot of or any.

2.2. Personal NamesAnna Fornalczyk (2007) states that anthroponymy, the study of the names of human beings, encompasses personal names and group names. She also considers that anthroponymy, in literary works, involves names of personified animals and fictitious creatures, as well.

Wikipedia categorizes personal names into human personal names and non-human personal names. Wikipedia defines human personal name in the following way:"A personal name is the proper name identifying individual person, and usually comprises a given name bestowed at birth or at a young age. It is nearly universal for a human to have a name; the rare exceptions occur in the cases of mentally disturbed parents, or feral children growing up in isolation."

Based on Wikipedia, some humans give individual non-human animals and plants names, usually of endearment. For instance, the names of pets and sporting animals are often the same as human names. Nevertheless, this can be offensive and disrespectful to the person of the same name in some cultures such as the Chinese and the Iranian cultures.

Moreover, Wikipedia mentions that an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences claims that humans are not the only living creatures that use personal names. Researchers from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, studying bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay, Florida, found that the dolphins had personal names for one another. In this case, the interesting point is that a dolphin chooses its name as an infant.

The World Book Encyclopedia talks about personal name in this way:

"Practically everyone since the beginning of history has had a name (...) Almost all names have meanings. Early people bestowed a name with a definite consciousness of its meaning (...). But today, people give little thought to the meanings. Most people have a given name and family name. Many also have a middle name, and some have a nickname” (vol.14, p.5).

Mike Campbell (n.d.) states that a personal name is a name that belongs to a person. He categorizes personal names in the following way:

• Given name / first name / Christian name / praenomen / middle name
  
  
• Family name / surname / last name / nomen / cognomen
  
  
• Nickname / agnomen / pet name / diminutive / byname
  
  
• Generation name
  
  Patronym / matronym / filiation
  
  

2.3. Definitions of types of Personal Names

With this section, the author attempts to approach the concept of different types of personal name in order to delimit the object of the study. It is important to stress that not all types of personal names exist in all languages. Moreover, the translator must take cognizance of these different categories, since familiarity with them helps in the translation process.

In relation to the translation of personal names, translators should take this point into consideration whether or not it is possible or necessary to show that these classifications are different in the source and target languages.

As mentioned previously, Campbell (n.d.) divides personal names into various categories. He defines them as follows:

Number

Type of Personal Name

Definition

 1Given name

A given name is a name that is assumed by a person at or after birth. As opposed to a family name, it is generally not inherited.

2

First nameorChristian name

In Europe and North America, where the given name precedes the family name, given names are called first names or forenames.

 3Praenomen

The praenomen (plural praenomina) was the ancient Roman given name. With a nomen and a cognomen it formed a complete Roman name. In Roman documents the praenomen was often abbreviated to one or two letters.



4

Middle name

In the English-speaking world, the middle name is a secondary given name. When the full name is presented, it is placed between the first name and the surname. People can have more than one middle name, though it is unusual to have none.

Many people include their middle name as an initial in their usual name, for example George W. Bush. Others prefer their middle name and use it instead of their first name.

5

Family name or last name 
or surname

It is a name passed from one generation to the next. In many cultures a woman adopts her husband's family name when they are married.

6

Nomen

The nomen (plural nomina) was the Roman gens's (that is clan's) name. In the typical Roman name it was preceded by thepraenomen and followed by the cognomen

7

Cognomen

The cognomen (plural cognomina) was one of the three parts of the typical Roman name. It followed the praenomen and nomen. Originally cognomina were nicknames, but by the time of the Roman Empire they were inherited from father to son. Thus the cognomen in combination with the nomen functioned as a surname, breaking families into smaller groups than just the nomen alone.

8

Nickname

A nickname is a substitute for a person's real name. It may be used because it is more familiar, more descriptive, or shorter than the real name. For example, Sue is the nickname of Susan.

9

Agnomen

The agnomen (plural agnomina) formed an additional part of someRoman names, usually following the cognomen. Usually they werenicknames acquired at some point during the lifetime, but, rarely, some agnomnia were inherited.

 10Pet name

A pet name of a given name is a short and/or affectionate form. Often they are only used by friends and relatives.

11

Diminutive

It is the same as a pet name. They can be formed through various methods in different languages. Two of most typical ways in English are presented here: a) are those that are short forms of the original name, very often from the first syllable or sound of the name. For example, Alex is from Alexander; b) they can also obtained by adding a suffix, to the original name or short form of a name. In English, the -y/-ie suffix make diminutives such as, Debbie, Charlie,Johnny, and Abby.

12

Byname

A byname is a secondary name used to further identify a person. They were often nicknames (for example Erik the Red) or patronyms(for example John, son of William). Bynames can be consideredsurnames when they are inherited from one generation to the next.



13Generation name

The generation name is used by some Chinese and Korean families. It is a name given to all newborns of the same generation of an extended family.



14

Patronym

A patronym (or patronymic) is a name derived from the name of the father or another paternal ancestor. Some surnames are patronymic in origin, like Peterson = "Peter's son". Some cultures, such as Iceland, use uninherited patronyms instead of surnames.

15Matronym

A matronym (also matronymic) is a name derived from the name of the mother or another maternal ancestor.



 16Filiation

A filiation attached to a name describes the bearer's paternal descent. The complete Roman name sometimes had a filiation.

Table 1. Types of Personal Name (adopted fromhttp://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/name)

3. How to Translate Personal Names?

Personal names often constitute a major problem in translation. For translating proper nouns, different models are suggested. In this respect, seven models presented by Hervey and Higgins (1986), Newmark (1988), Theo Hermans (1988), Farzane Farahzad (1995), Anthony Pym (2004), Lincoln Fernandes (2006), and Heikki Sarkka (2007) will be defined here.

1. Hervey and Higgins (1986) present these strategies for translating PNs :
   • Exotism: The name should remain unchanged from the SL to the TL. In this method no cultural transposition is occurred (p.29).
     
     
   • Transliteration: The name is shifted to conform to the phonic or graphic rules of the TL (p.29).
     
     
   • Cultural transplantation: The SL name is replaced by the TL name that has the same cultural connotation as the original one (p.29).
   
   
   
2. Peter Newmark (1988b) holds that people's names should, as a rule, not be translated when their names have no connotation in the text (p.214). He adds some exceptions such as names of known saints, monarchs, and popes, which are known in the translated form in the TL (p.214).
   
   Newmark (1988a) also recommends that, in communicative translation, a personal name, along with its connotation, should be translated where proper names are treated connotatively (p.151). In spite of that, the PNs must be transferred in semantic translation (p.151).
   
   In addition, with regard to names that have connotations in the imaginative literature such as in comedies, allegories, fairy tales, and some children's stories, Newmark recommends that they be translated. He adds that the previous rule should be followed unless, like in folk tales, nationality is a significant aspect.
   
   In cases where both nationality and connotation are significant aspects, the most appropriate method, in Newmark's opinion, is first to translate the name to the TL, then to naturalize the translated word into a new proper name provided that the personal name is not yet current among the educated readers of the TL (p.215).
   
   
   
   
3. Theo Hermans (1988) believes that there are at least four strategies for translation of names. He phrases them,
   
   "They can be copied, i.e. reproduced in the target text exactly as they were in the source text. They can be transcribed, i.e. transliterated or adapted on the level of spelling, phonology, etc. A formally unrelated name can be substituted in the target text for any given name in the source text. And insofar as a name in a source text is enmeshed in the lexicon of that language and acquires 'meaning,' it can be translated" (p.13).
   
   Hermans contends that some other alternatives are also possible, namely various combinations of the above methods, omitting the source text (ST) proper name in the target text (TT), substitution of a common name in the TT for the PN in the ST, the insertion of the PN in the TT while no PN exists in the ST (p.14).
   
   
4. Farzanne Farahzad (1995) states that transliteration and transcription are used for translation of personal proper names. The latter is the replacement of one letter of the alphabet in the source language (SL) by another letter in the target language (TL). The former occurs when the letter of the target language shows the pronunciation of the PN in the source language (p.43).
   
   She expounds that transcription suffers from the following defects:
   
   
   • There are no established rules for transcription.
   • The transcription of personal names varies on the basis of various accents such as American and British.
   • The transcription may be influenced by the translator's pronunciation, which may lead to an incorrect transcription.
   • The exact transcription of personal names is not always possible; that is, all languages do not have the same consonants or vowels.
   • The pronunciation of personal names' transcription is more difficult than that of their translation (pp.43-44).
   In view of the foregoing reasons, she concludes that transliteration is a better strategy to be used by translators (p.44).
   
   
   
   
5. Anthony Pym (2004) proposes that proper names not be translated (p.92).
   
   He also defines the result of transliteration operations as 'absolute equivalence' in that it results in the exact quantitative equality between input and output (p.90). In his view, the most problematic aspect of 'absolute equivalence' is that it is often unacceptable equivalence, unless much language learning is involved. In this regard, Pym contends that alternatives are imperative (p.92).
   
   
   
   
6. Lincoln Fernandes (2006) lists a set of ten procedures in the translation of personal names as follows:
   
   
   
   
   • Rendition: When the in the ST is enmeshed in the TL, the meaning is rendered in the TL. For example, translating the word 'Lady' as 'Mulher,' which means 'woman' in Brazilian Portuguese, reveals that the translator has used a 'superordinate' (woman) instead of a hyponym of woman, a specific word such as 'senhora' or 'dama' (= lady).
     
     
   • Copy: As a matter of fact, in this case, the name of the ST is exactly replicated in the TT—without any orthographic adjustment. As an illustration, Alice King is reproduced in the Arabic text—which has a different alphabet from English one-with no change.
     
     
   • Transcription: This a method in which a name is transcribed in the equivalent characters of the TL. In order to keep the readability of the TT, some other changes such as addition or shift in the position of the letters may occur e.g. Ahoshta Tarkaan is changed to Achosta Tarcaa.
     
     
   • Re-creation: A newly-created name in the ST is recreated in the TT so that it reproduces the similar effects in the TL such as Mr. Ollivander that is translated to Sr. Olivares.
     
     
   • Substitution: A TL name replaces the SL name, although they are formally and/or semantically unrelated.
     
     
   • Deletion: In this type of strategy, the name in the ST is, partially or totally, omitted in the TT.
     
     
   • Addition: Extra information is added to the SL name so that it can be more understandable and desirable to the target readers. As a matter of fact, this method may also be used to remove ambiguities in the TT.
     
     
   • Transposition: This is a change of one part of speech for another one without any shift in the meaning. In fact, this a way for translating titles that have transparent role in literature for identifying particular literary works. Because of this reason, this procedure is taken into consideration here.
     
     
   • Phonological Replacement: In this procedure, the phonological features of the original name are imitated in the TL. In other words, a TL name, which has a similar sound to the SL name, replaces the original name.
     
     
   • Conventionality: This strategy is defined as the acceptance of a typical translation of a name in the SL. In view of this case, it is interesting to know that conventionality is often used with historical or literary individuals as well as geographical names.
     
     
 

7. Heikki Sarkka (2007) reports that there are four strategies for translating PNs;
   
   
   • They can be transported completely from the TL to the SL (allowance being made for possible transliteration or transcription, depending on the SL).
     
     
   • They can be partly transported from the SL and partly translated.
     
     
   • They can be replaced with more or less different names in the TL.
     
     
   • They can be dispensed with altogether.
     
     

4. Conclusion

Generally, personal names represent a real challenge for both professional and novice translators; therefore, they merit attention from researchers and scholars in the field of translation studies. Newmark (1993) reports that proper names, which include personal names, represent a translation difficulty in different text types (p.15).

Being familiar with the culture, translators sometimes can infer some implied information such as gender, nationality, race, class, or religion from personal names. It is clear that translators must be familiar with culture of both the source and target languages, since awareness of these culture-bound names can lead to the most appropriate translation. Based on the foregoing information, it is significant to stress that the influence of culture on translation of personal names is undeniable.

Different translation procedures for translating personal names have been presented. In general, it should be noted that translators do not always use the same strategy for translation of all personal names in all kinds of texts. For example, Farahzad (1995) believes that translators should use transcription and transliteration techniques when translating personal names; however, translators of religious texts must use the most common existing equivalent of a personal name in the TL even if these equivalents do not follow the foregoing translation strategies.

Having briefly discussed some of the translation procedures in this respect, the author strongly recommends that whatever strategies translators use, especially in scientific texts, they should mention the original name with the SL alphabets in the footnotes or endnotes in order to facilitate further research for readers in the target language.

References

Bachman, L. F. (1990). Fundamental considerations in language testing, Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Campel, M. (n.d.). Personal name. Accessed 1 March, 2009 fromhttp://www.behindthename.com/glossary/view/name.

Columbia editors (e.d) (2008). Entry word "Name" in Columbia Encyclopedia [on-line]. Available at www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-name.html.

Farahzad, F. (1995). Tarjome pishrafteh (1) [Translating advanced English text (1)]. Tehran: University of Payame Nour.

Fernandes, L. (2006). Translation of names in children s fantasy literature: Bringing young reader into play. [On-line]. Available athttp://www.iatis.org/newvoices/issues/2006/fernandes-paper-2006.pdf.

Fornalczyk, A. (2007). Anthroponym translation in children's literature - early 20th and 21st centuries. Kalbotyra, 57, 93-101.

Hermans, T. (1988). On translating proper names, with reference to De Witte and Max Havelaar. In M. J. Wintle (ed.) Modern Dutch Studies. Essays in Honour of Professor Peter King on the Occasion of his Retirement. London/Atlantic Highlands: The Athlone Press.

Hervey, S. and Higgins, I. (1992). Thinking Translation. London and New York: Routledge.

Hornby, A. S. (2004). Proper noun. Oxford advanced learner's dictionary of current English (6th ed., p.1016). China: Oxford University Press.

Inc World Book editors, (1996). Name. The World Book Encyclopedia: In Eighteen Volumes (vol.14, p.5). The U.S.: World Book.

Newmark, P. (1988a). Approaches to translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Newmark, P. (1988b). A textbook of translation. London: Prentice Hall.

Newmark, P. (1993). Paragraphs on translation. Adelaide/ Clevedon/Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Nord, C. (2003). Proper names in translations for children: Alice in wonderland as a case in point. Meta: Translators' Journal, 48, 182-196.

Personal name. The world book encyclopedia (vol. 14, p.5). The United States: Field enterprises educational cooperation.

Proper name. [on-line]. Available at: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/ Proper name.

Proper noun [on-line]. Available at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proper+noun.

Pym, A. (2004). The moving text: localization, translation, and distribution. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Sarkka, H. (2007). Translation of proper names in non-fiction texts [on-line]. Available athttp://translationjournal.net/journal/39proper.htm.

Vermes, A. P. (2003). Proper names in translation: an explanatory attempt. Across Languages and Cultures, 4 (1), 89-108.

- - -

Behnaz Sanaty Pour is a freelance translator and an English teacher in various English schools. She received her B.M. in Translation Studies from Payame Nour University, Mobarake Branch, Iran. Currently, she is an M.A. student in Translation Studies in Islamic Azad University, Shahreza Branch. Her areas of interest are translation studies, interpretation, translation theories, pragmatics, and discourse analysis.More important, she is really interested in cultural translation. She can be available at bsanatypour at yahoo com.

By Penny Marinou,
Litterae,
Athens, Greece

info[at]litterae.gr
www.litterae.gr

Translating recipes and menus appears to be a simple task at first sight, but that is only one's first impression. A menu looks like a simple food-list, and cookery books might be considered as a list of recipes with sets of ingredients and simple instructions. How misleading! We have been translating cookery books and menus for many years and we still find this task a challenge.

A dish on a menu has to inform the customer about its content and also sound appetizing. This is not always straightforward and is full of traps. For example, how does one translate certain Greek dishes into English? Octopus is very popular in Greece and many dishes are based on this ingredient. One appetiser prepared with octopus looks like meatballs, but obviously cannot be translated as "octopus balls"! So what does one call them? The choices are limited: fritters, puffs or croquettes. None of these however convey the Greek word “Chtapodokeftedes”. Greek cuisine also has many dishes prepared with aubergine and courgettes, and whereas these two words are perfectly suited for an English cook, they might be unfamiliar to an American, who would prefer eggplant and zucchini. Sometimes, it is preferable to transliterate the Greek word, as in the case of Moussaka or taramasalata, and add an explanatory note, e.g.

Moussaka
Layers of aubergine and minced meat
topped with Béchamel sauce

Finally, certain things have to be changed altogether. Once, we had to translate a recipe for a type of Greek bread whose literal translation is “Peasant Bread”. The equivalent Greek word has no negative connotations, but the English one does. So another way of conveying the countryside character of the bread had to be found in order to avoid jokes of the type “place two peasants in a mixing bowl…”!

Translating food from French into English is no easier. How, for example, would you translate "nuage de pommes de terre"? It sounds perfectly good and appetising in French, but how tasty is a “cloud of potato”? Veal liver with “échalotes aux vieux balsamique” sounds wonderful but I'm not so sure about Veal liver and "shallots with old balsamic vinegar"…the word "old" is not particularly appetising; I would prefer “mature” for instance! And I certainly wouldn't like “thickly cut tuna tummy, pink cooked, covered with a sort of crumble…” (a translation of a mouthwatering French dish) for dinner!

Another challenge for food translators is total ignorance of the object of translation. How many people know what a “homity pie”or “bulgar” [also called bulgur, burghul, bourgouri, pourgouri] is? What do they look like, what do they taste of…? And what does one do with “ayam dan tembu satay”. This problem can sometimes be solved by consulting specialised dictionaries and the Internet but I still haven't discovered what “tembu” is. However, not having actually seen and tasted an ingredient or dish is definitely a handicap. Last but not least, translators who are indifferent to food or dislike anything foreign should avoid food translations.

Translating food is definitely a challenge but publishing English-language foreign recipe books, for instance, is not that much easier. Litterae recently published a book in English entitled “Aubergines”, with recipes from around the world. Before finalising the text for this book, serious decisions had to be made concerning measurements and language; two very important marketing issues.

The requirements for the British market differ significantly from those of the US and Canadian markets. We actually contacted a distributor in the USA to enquire about possibilities of distributing the book in America and, not surprisingly, the distributor commented on the use of the word “aubergine” instead of “eggplant”.

Utensil terminology is another thing one has to be careful about when publishing English language cookery books. The British use frying pans whereas the Americans use skillets. The British use the French expression “au bain-marie” for cooking an item in a container placed in a pan of water while the Americans prefer a “double boiler” [also called double saucepan].

Ingredients can also cause problems. Certain items in exotic recipes are not available in Western Europe and one has to find substitute ingredients either by consulting the author or using one's imagination. An exotic recipe from the Philippines in the “Aubergines” publication, for example, calls for the “heart of a banana flower” and although international
trade has brought many an ingredient to Europe, chances of finding banana flowers are extremely limited…The solution is an alternative ingredient with a similar taste and consistency. In this case, palm hearts or apples do the trick.

As for quantities, that is another story.
The older generation in the UK is used to pounds, ounces, fluid ounces and teaspoons/ tablespoons, while the new generation has gone metric and talks about kilograms and litres. In the US, they prefer cups.

Last but not least, make sure that you do not translate on an empty stomach as it can be real torture…