Hacklog: Blogamundo — poking holes in the language barrier since approximately 1 month from now

Reddit.com is a popular site where users submit interesting links, and then other users vote the link up or down, and discuss the submissions. The great majority of submissions are to content in English. I posted once before about the relationship of translation and aggregation.

This post on Reddit got me thinking about the topic again. Here’s the unwieldy title:

Without a doubt the most beautiful and moving expression of a father’s love and grief I’ve ever read. [I’m not sure how well reddit receives stuff in other languages, but please if you don’t read French leave this alone instead of downvoting it for that reason — I did my best at translating it into English in my comment.] (reddit.com)

The submitter found the French article so moving that he or she felt compelled to translate it in its entirety, and to submit the translation as a comment.

And that’s where the episode takes on separate layers of interest―linguistic layers: how do other users on the site react? And, just how much does their reaction depend on the nature of the translation?

This comment is undoubtedly in very poor taste, and that’s why it’s now voted into hidden status.

However, the commenter explains that he or she doesn’t read French. And if you consider the translated paragraph in question (which begins “Her liver is now in the belly of a two-month old infant…”), at least some of the commenter’s unease is explained: the English translation really does come off as more brutal than the original. While frank and painfully honest, the French version somehow does not convey they same clinical tone.

And so we have a whole conversation which is based on the tone of the translation, not the original. It takes a truly skilled translator to be able to convey such nuance. A professional translator would have better captured the tone, not just the meaning.

But this is the internet, right? What about collaborating to improve translation?

Well, we see some of that even this informal translation-in-a-comment. Here, a commenter suggests an improvement, and submitter incorporates the suggestion.

Could more of such collaboration have produced a professional quality English version? I kind of doubt it, to be honest. Many a Wikipedia article is separated from professional quality by a healthy bout of proofreading, after all. Nonetheless, the article improved. At least it was possible to incorporate suggestions.

These sorts of problems are problems of process. Translations have the same vagaries as any text. Their chimeric character is part of their charm and challenge. No technology will change that. (Certainly not machine translation!)

But can we streamline the process of translation on the web? Can we make it feel native to the web? We hope so―that’s what we’re trying to do around here. It’s taking us a long time. But it’s worth doing right.

More soon.

PS: I hasten to point out that there are also serious questions about the legality of this translation. After all, it’s copyrighted, and translations are derivative works. This separate topic merits a few bazillion more posts…