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Rites of Passages: One Translator's Rituals of the Craft
ENGLISH WRITING SAMPLE
Rites of Passages: One Translator's Rituals of the Craft
by Kirk Anderson
Translation's been around for as long as different cultures have bumped into one another, and although I don't know if St. Jerome had any specific rituals when he sat down to work on the Bible, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to imagine him petting his lion and lighting a candle atop that skull he always seems to have present, before getting down to business.
Not having a lion, and concerned about fire hazards during the dry season, not to mention the nest of paper I call an office, I've had to cultivate a different, although no less ritualistic, approach to work. I think all freelance translators must do this, consciously or otherwise, if only to maintain the illusion of discipline and continuity in the isolated world of our craft.
Although I have to admit that I do have a little altar atop one of my rickety bookcases overloaded with dictionaries, including postcards of paintings and sculptures of St. Jerome from a variety of museums around the world, a statue of Lao Tse from a Taoist temple in Beijing, a Buddha from Nepal and stone replica of an indigenous saint from Chichicastenango, Guatemala, my rituals aren't nearly as mysterious as the craft of translation itself.
Being utterly incapable of working without first invoking the spirit of another of my patron saints, Juan Valdez, without exception, I start each day with a homemade double espresso, with just a dash of milk. With my spirit thus cleansed, my first duty is to get the Word from on high, to commune with the gods, or clients as we sometimes call them, by checking my e-mail. Once I have a sense of what the day holds in store for me, I roll up my sleeves, and get down to work.
Almost everyday, sometimes even before the Valdez invocation, I get a call from one of my favorite clients, requesting the translation of a press release for publication on the Internet. This is usually my first foray into the mystery of translation. Requiring a quick turnaround for same-day publication, this gets my creative juices flowing, and sets the tone for the long day ahead. Once complete, I send it in, checking with the e-mail gods just to see if there's any news, and then proceed to the more major work at hand.
By this time, I usually have a sense of what needs to be done. I organize my projects in a prioritized pile on my desk, and usually start with the shorter jobs that need quick attention. Since I translate three different languages, I also try to bundle projects by language combination. Although I have many friends and colleagues who seem able to switch between languages as effortlessly as one might change socks, I was not blessed with this gift. For me, it seems, switching between languages requires a complete reboot of my internal hard drive, not to mention a reorganization of the dictionaries on my desk and in my computer.
Once the short jobs are out of the way, I move onto the more meditative work of the longer jobs. If everything goes my way, and distractions are kept to a minimum, at some point after lunch - my prime time for productivity - I find I'm able to get into the "zone," or enter that translator's state of mind where the first draft of a contract or set of bylaws will flow off your fingertips like wine from the winepress. The pauses for dictionary fingering and online research meld seamlessly into the process while output reaches its peak.
Then often, time permitting of course, I'll take a break to change hats, once again, or shift gears into editorial mode, once the translation is complete. For me this is another key to quality work. Letting a translation sit, settle, rest or gel, and letting my mind wander in other directions is crucial if I want to come back to the text with a fresh, more critical perspective.
Finally, when I come down from the daily linguistic high, hang up all my hats and put the gods to bed, more often than not, I'll turn to another kind of cleansing brew to set my mind at ease. And as I hang up my translator's cape for the day, I may tip my hat to those friends on the bookcase in silent thanks for another good day's work.
Kirk Anderson is an ATA-accredited translator (Spanish and French into English and English into Spanish) who also translates from Chinese. He specializes in legal, commercial and marketing texts and can be reached at paellero@aol.com .
Originally published on TranslationZone.com in February 2001