Day Two: Editing Translations

Have you ever looked at something translated from another language like a chip bag or a website and thought that with a little editing it could be so much better? I've certainly thought that given a few minutes I could easily fix the minor grammatical errors that occur in translation. In some cases this is the case. Take for example the following excerpt from the DP Hanoi website:

"Hanoi Disabled People Association (DP Hanoi) was established by the decision No. 266/QĐ-UB dated 16th January 2006 of the chairman of Hanoi People's Committee. The officially first General Assembly in order to establish DP Hanoi was organized on April, 12th 2006 and the second was on April, 12th 2009. DP Hanoi is a social organization of the disabled in Hanoi City area, who come from any background, ethnicity, religion, gender, social status, causes of disabilities, and who are voluntarily willing to participate in any activities of the disabled and for the disabled."


It took Mary and me only a few minutes to correct it to roughly the following: (I had to reproduce our edits from memory because they were saved on one of the organizations computers... Mary and I did a better job originally)


The Hanoi Disabled People Association (DP Hanoi) was established by decision No. 266/QĐ-UB on January 16th, 2006 by the chairman of Hanoi People's Committee. The first general assembly to establish DP Hanoi was held on April, 12th 2006, with the the second on April, 12th 2009. DP Hanoi is a social organization for the disabled in Hanoi City area, which welcomes individuals from any background, ethnicity, religion, gender, social status or causes of disability, who are voluntarily willing to participate in any activities by and for the disabled.


However, once we launched into the real editing work with the Vice President of DP Hanoi I realized that tons of work had already been put into these few sentences. Over the next two hours or so Mary and I worked in close collaboration with the VP of DP Hanoi to translate and edit 3 short paragraph news articles -- roughly 12 sentences. Yes, that's a rate of 6 sentences per hour. 


So what took so long? Turns out translating things into english requires a really complex knowledge both of English grammar and of the actual situation your writing about. We spent approximately 20 minutes establishing the relationship between 4 organizations to determine where to place the organizations in the sentence. Was the Me Linh Disabled People's Association established with permission from the Ha Noi People's Committee or the Me Linh People's Committee? What organization was the mobilizing board associated with? Eventually we produced the following sentence:


With assistance from the Hanoi Disabled People's Association and the Me Linh People's Committee, the Mobilizing Board for the Establishment of the Me Linh Disabled People's Association received permission from the Hanoi People's Committee to establish the association. 


Basically my point in telling you all of this is editing translations is hard work with real genuine challenges. Afterwords my head felt like it had been through a nước mía machine (sugarcane juicer). I really hope that the work we did today goes to real use and that someone who reads it feels motivated to learn more about the association and the life of disabled people in Hanoi.