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| User | Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff Poll: Is it important for your professional career to visit the country of your working languages? |
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ProZ.com Staff 
United States
Local time: 15:21
 Member (2011)
SITE STAFF |
This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Is it important for your professional career to visit the country of your working languages?".
This poll was originally submitted by Cristina Heraud-van Tol. View the poll results »
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Simon Bruni
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:21
 Member (2009)
Spanish to English
| | It's not important | Jan 21 |
It's essential. I don't see how one can gain and maintain the language skills and cultural understanding needed for translation without long periods of complete immersion in the source-language "locale", and then, at the very least, plenty of "refresher" trips. That's my excuse anyway!
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Julian Holmes
Japan
Local time: 07:21
Member (2011)
Japanese to English
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Otherwise, you'll never learn the things - the really interesting stuff  - they don't mention in the text books.
Happy translating!
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Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:21
English to Italian
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27.6% say it's not important... I'm speechless! That's why there are so many rubbish translations floating around...
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Cristina Heraud-van Tol
Peru
Local time: 17:21
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
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| | Yes, I also think it's extremely important | Jan 21 |
Your working language is not 'a mere language' you just studied when you were young. It's a whole immersion into another culture, country(ies), traditions, and so on. And if you don't know the country, what people actually refer to, their customs, I think the result of translating non-technical texts would be very bad.
I love travelling, but while doing some research here (esp. with people of lower social classes), many people don't like it or a bit afraid, I don't know. Others don't have enough money. As South America in general has large countries and long distances, and Peru is surrounded by Spanish-speaking countries -except for Brazil but almost no-one studies Potuguese here- you really have to spend a regular amount of money to travel to an English-speaking country, for instance.
I have met several Peruvian English teachers, translators and interpreters who have never travelled, and let me tell you that their level and knowledge of English are quite basic. They can't understand slang, idioms, local sayings, or others. You can see that they also don't read much (reading helps a lot with vocabulary). I would be afraid to take an English class with them or have a look at their translation work!
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Oliver Lawrence
Italy
Local time: 00:21
Member (2008)
Italian to English
+ ...
| | Also essential if you live in your source language country... | Jan 21 |
... in order to keep in touch with language and cultural developments (and friends and family, of course!) back home.
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Georgia Morgan
Brazil
Local time: 19:21
Member (2011)
Portuguese to English
| | native language country too | Jan 21 |
I agree wholeheartedly with the previous post. If you live in a country where people speak your SOURCE language , then it is important to keep in touch with your native language. I recently had someone proofreading a translation I had done, in which I had translated "batida" as "smoothie". This guy, who had lived outside the UK for at least 30 years, questioned my translation and corrected it to "milk shake". He later admitted that he didn't have the faintest idea what a smoothie might be......
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Williamson
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:21
Flemish to English
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Yes, but when you have the luxury to come very often in a tower of Babel (Brussels) or in a multilingual country like Switzerland, you don't have to go that far to "visit the country of your working languages". It's next door.
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humbird
United States
Local time: 15:21
Member (2004)
English to Japanese
+ ...
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How you can intelligently translate without knowledge of people, social custom, general culture and other mandane things of the countries where the languages are spoken? I say this knowing that this principle may not amount much in translations of purely technical/engineering tasks however.
Having said that, I also know above can be a simplistic statement because one language is spoken in many different countries such as English, Spanish, French etc., that their colonialism of the past caused expansion of their tongue to other areas. But then, these languages have its own variations in where they took roots (i.e. American English is not same as British English, Latin American Spanish are different from Spanish Spanish, so and so forth).
So, again my answer is partly "yes" and partly "other" for following reason: I was raised and live in both countries where my working languages are spoken, not "visit".
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neilmac
Spain
Local time: 00:21
Member (2007)
Spanish to English
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I agree that it is essential, for the culture aspect and nuance, to get a feel for it. My working source language is Castilian Spanish, and I find that even many native Spanish (from Spain, Europe) speakers who have never travelled there have difficulty in understanding terms from Latin American countries - for example my local fruit and veg seller didn't know that "palto" was an avocado tree - and the list of similar vocabulary (and other) differences is very long.
Ideally I'd like to spend a few months in several different Spanish-speaking countries to broaden my knowledge of the language, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that will happen any time soon...
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SGHOSH
India
English to Bengali
| | It enhanses quality | Jan 21 |
Translation is also a cultural dialogue. An exposure to the country of origin of the language concerned is certainly going to add to the capacity of the translator enabling her with a better contextual competence.
[Edited at 2012-01-21 19:08 GMT]
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Hege Jakobsen Lepri
Canada
Local time: 18:21
Member (2002)
English to Norwegian
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Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
27.6% say it's not important... I'm speechless! That's why there are so many rubbish translations floating around... |
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My thoughts exactly!
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Chun Un
Macau
Local time: 06:21
Member (2007)
English to Chinese
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I spent nearly ten years studying and working in the US and UK and I think that experience is extremely important to me when it comes to understanding the Anglo-Saxon culture. That said, with the modern technologies today (the Internet in particular), I could imagine someone who has never visited an English-speaking country may still gain extensive knowledge of the language(s) and culture(s) of the anglophone communities and become a competent translator.
[Edited at 2012-01-22 04:43 GMT]
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Philip Lees
Greece
Local time: 01:21
Member (2008)
Greek to English
| | You're answering the wrong question | Jan 22 |
Hege Jakobsen Lepri wrote:
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
27.6% say it's not important... I'm speechless! That's why there are so many rubbish translations floating around... |
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My thoughts exactly! |
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You haven't read the question properly. Of course it's important to maintain regular contact with the languages we work in (although in my case I do mainly medical and technical translations, so social interactions are not that relevant), but the question is about one's professional career.
I'm a native English speaker living in the country of my source language. I doubt whether any of my clients know or care whether I visit the UK regularly or not. So in that sense, it makes no difference to my professional career.
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Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:21
English to Italian
| | Professional career... | Jan 22 |
Philip Lees wrote:
Hege Jakobsen Lepri wrote:
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
27.6% say it's not important... I'm speechless! That's why there are so many rubbish translations floating around... |
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My thoughts exactly! |
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You haven't read the question properly. Of course it's important to maintain regular contact with the languages we work in (although in my case I do mainly medical and technical translations, so social interactions are not that relevant), but the question is about one's professional career.
I'm a native English speaker living in the country of my source language. I doubt whether any of my clients know or care whether I visit the UK regularly or not. So in that sense, it makes no difference to my professional career. |
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Doesn't that include the work you do? I'm a bit baffled...
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The translation workplace 
