mari pet Poland Local time: 03:50 Member (May 2012) Spanish to Slovak + ...
Nov 14, 2011
I have just received an offer from an agency for a proofreading job.
"Slovak copy would be adapted from Czech and (...) to proofread the Czech copy and adapt it for the Slovak market."
I wasn't very clear if what I have to do is to translate from Czech or to proofread the translation. But I'm afraid, I have to do both things but under the title "proofreading". Do you think is this normal? Well, Czech and Slovak are very similar and understandable but they are two different languages with different vocabulary, syntax an so on. Now I understand perfectly why so many advertising (translated into Slovak) sound like Czech and use Czech words which try to sound Slovak and Czech syntax...
BTW, can some Spanish translator imagine that an agency sends him a text in Italian or Portuguese and he just has to proofread it for the Spanish market?
Sounds foolish, right?
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Tom in London United Kingdom Local time: 02:50 Member (2008) Italian to English
Proofreading
Nov 14, 2011
mari pet wrote:
Sounds foolish, right?
Yes, very foolish. Every time I see the word "proofreading" all sorts of alarm bells begin to ring. It often means "doing a completely new translation for half the money and no professional satisfaction".
In your case, it would appear that a careless PM no longer even bothers to think what "proofreading" really means: it means "translation".
[Edited at 2011-11-14 12:13 GMT]
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Thomas Pfann United Kingdom Local time: 02:50 Member (2006) English to German
Go and educate the client
Nov 14, 2011
Very often it is possible to simply adapt one flavour of a language into another by making a few changes here and there without having to translate from scratch - this is often called "proofreading" or "editing" and not really a problem. It is often done when different versions of a German text for the German, Austrian and Swiss markets are needed or different English versions for the British or the US market, for instance.
However, this is obviously not possible for Czech and Slovak as these are two different languages. Your client apparently is not aware of this and needs to be told. Make your case, explain the matter and why you need to translate from scratch rather than simply adapt the Czech translation. In the end the client will probably thank you for it.
At least they didn't ask for a Czechoslovakian translation.
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Rosa Grau Spain Local time: 03:50 Member (2011) English to Catalan + ...
Machine translated?
Nov 14, 2011
I think most probably your Slovak copy would be a text that has been machine translated ("adapted" in their words) from Czech. Then you have to re-translate it at half the price that you would charge if you had to translate it from scratch from SL to CZ.
Translators are becoming just machine assistants. And some of them out there still believe that translation is an art! Not this kind of translation indeed.
Rosa
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mari pet Poland Local time: 03:50 Member (May 2012) Spanish to Slovak + ...
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I don't think so
Nov 14, 2011
Rosa Grau wrote:
I think most probably your Slovak copy would be a text that has been machine translated ("adapted" in their words) from Czech. Then you have to re-translate it at half the price that you would charge if you had to translate it from scratch from SL to CZ.
I think they wanted just send me the Czech translation and I would just translate it to Slovak, because as they told me, they were waiting for the translation so that they could send it to me. I think it's the common practice thay operate because the PM presented it to me as it was the most standard practice (it's not a Czech/Slovak agency).
As for the explication and education, I see it a bit difficult, as I received two messages so far, every one of them from different PM and no answer to my question (or comment).
So maybe they are just looking for another "proofreader".
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Natalie Poland Local time: 03:50 Member (2002) English to Russian + ...
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This is NOT foolish - I think, you have misunderstood the task
Nov 14, 2011
You should clarify this with the outsourcer, of course, but my best guess is that you have misunderstood the task. I thing, the outsourcer does not require you to re-translate the Czech text into Slovak; I think they meant that the Czech document will be used in Slovakia, and you just need to check if it will be fully understood by Czech speakers who live in Slovakia. I do the same quite often with EN documents translated into Russian and intended for use not only in Russia, but in other countries where part of population speaks Russian: Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Israel, USA. Usually you don't need to do anything at all as the text should remain exactly the same, however, sometimes you need to "localize" some things, currencies, for example, or measurement units.
I would suggest asking the client if this is what they need.
[Edited at 2011-11-14 13:51 GMT]
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mari pet Poland Local time: 03:50 Member (May 2012) Spanish to Slovak + ...
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not sure about
Nov 14, 2011
Natalie wrote:
You should clarify this with the outsourcer, of course, but my best guess is that you have misunderstood the task. I thing, the outsourcer does not require you to re-translate the Czech text into Slovak; I think they meant that the Czech document will be used in Slovakia, and you just need to check if it will be fully understood by Czech speakers who live in Slovakia. I do the same quite often with EN documents translated into Russian and intended for use not only in Russia, but in other countries where part of population speaks Russian: Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Israel, USA. Usually you don't need to do anything at all as the text should remain exactly the same, however, sometimes you need to "localize" some things, currencies, for example, or measurement units.
[Edited at 2011-11-14 13:51 GMT]
In Slovakia it is not usual to create different versions for the Czech native speakers who live in Slovakia, as we are talking about 50 000 people which, I dare to claim, can perfectly understand Slovak. It is not either usual to create hungarian versions, even if there is about a half million of native speakers of Hungarian (which is quite more significant amount - the population in Slovakia is five and half millions).
Neither in Czech republic there is usual to use Slovak version, and there live few hundreds of thousands Slovak speakers.
Anyway, if it was true, I'm not the right person to do that, since Czech is not my mother language.
Of course, I can ask, but still waiting for their answer, so...
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