Providing Accurate German Translation Service Is Focus Of New University Curriculum
Many people don’t understand how mistakes can be made in document translations and this article attempts to provide some of the reasons. Because a translator realizes that translation is subject to error, he talks about translation from inside the process, knowing how it’s done, possessing a practical real-world sense of the problems involved, some solutions to those problems, and the limitations on those solutions (the translator knows, for example, that no translation will ever be a perfectly reliable guide to That’s why during the 1990′s leading scholars in the subject began working together to develop a curriculum that would promote higher quality methods. This led to the development of a degree in translation studies with the goal of giving greater precedence to ensuring that word meanings and cultural nuances are carried over.
As more German Translation studies programs were developed, a formal curriculum was developed that included a history of translation theory, beginning with the ancient Romans and encompassing key twentieth-century structuralist work. Once coursework in the historical aspects of translation were completed, students would move on to take courses that address common problems in literary translation, medical translation and other forms of legal and scientific translation.
One of the most fundamental lessons in a translation program involves reliability. To put that differently, translation students must know the causes of error because future actions and decisions will be based on the translation. Perhaps the first lesson that students learn is that simple word by word translations have tremendous disadvantages. For an explanation of why this is so, one simply needs to use an internet translation product. Sometimes translation workers must use this type of translation strategy when involved in medical translation, Legal Translation or another form of highly technical translation. The following true story attests to the difficult issues encountered by professional translators.
Several months ago, a major healthcare provider sought the assistance of a Medical Translation worker in the United States. Consequently, the project required some travel to Dresden, Germany. Although his native language was English, he spent a semester in college at a German university. However, it’s important to note that while this person was a native speaker of English, his German language skills were somewhat limited. At the hotel, a service desk attendant asked him if the temperature in his room was acceptable. He understood the question, how he would reply in his native language and the translation of those words into German. Since he was quite warm, he responded answered by saying that he was feeling a tad bit too hot. He made a common mistake that people from English countries overlook. There is a huge different in what he should have said, “it is warm to me.” and what he actually said, “I am hot.” Unfortunately, the service worker looked befuddled and amused which suggested that the reply was incorrect for the occasion. What the American had done was made a sexual remark instead of indicating something about the temperature of the air. In German, there is a big difference between the two statements, even though in English the statement “it is hot to me” is a bit awkward and cumbersome.
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