| User | Thread poster: Dave Bindon "Quick and dirty" |
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Dave Bindon 
Greece
Local time: 04:57
 Member (2010)
Greek to English
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A few weeks ago, one of my agency clients asked me to be quick and dirty . She quoted the e-mail from the end client so that I'd understand what was needed and why.
I've worked for the end client several times, translating various legal documents related to a series of legal actions he's involved in. In this case one of his lawyers had sent him a document which was going to be filed with the courts in a couple of days' time. He knew that there wasn't really time for a perfect translation and, in any case, he didn't really need it: he just needed to know, in plain English, what his Greek lawyer was planning to present to the court. So he requested 'quick and dirty'.
My job (which I really enjoyed) was to say, for example, that Paragraph X used Case Law to show that such-and-such a claim was inadmissible. Simple! No need to stick as faithfully as possible to the original, no need to try to untangle the incredibly weird word-order of Greek legal texts.
In the end I wasn't even very 'dirty'; I was just 'quick'. Since my 'audience' was not a Greek lawyer or judge I could write 'they' or 'it' when the original, for legal reasons, had to be more specific. Most of the time, however, the translation was what I'd call 'good' (not what I'd normally produce, but possibly even better since this was not intended to be read by people with legal training).
As I said, I enjoyed the job. And I'd like to do more of the same. Since I'm planning to (finally) set up a website of my own I'd like to offer this cut-price "quick and dirty" service. Is there a standard term in the translation industry which is used to describe this sort of synopsis/paraphrasing?
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efreitag
Germany
Local time: 03:57
 Member (2006)
Dutch to German
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I think this is called "gist translation".
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Dave Bindon
Greece
Local time: 04:57
Member (2010)
Greek to English
TOPIC STARTER |
efreitag wrote:
I think this is called "gist translation".
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That certainly sounds more professional than 'quick and dirty'! Thanks!
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TranslateThis
United States
Local time: 20:57
Member
Polish to English
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or simply "summary translation"
not quite as exciting as "quick and dirty"
efreitag wrote:
I think this is called "gist translation".
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José Henrique Lamensdorf
Brazil
Local time: 22:57
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
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| | Quicker and dirtier | Jan 4 |
Once I had to do it. Actually it was a 70-page software manual I had written in Portuguese (so the monoglot PT programmer could check if I had put all of it, and correctly), and would translate into English afterwards, however it was needed in German pronto. There was a EN-DE translator who was familiar with an old version of that software in both languages, a speed demon on the keyboard, so I did a sight PT-EN translation of it and recorded it on MP3 and sent it. The translation went faster than acquiring all the screencaps in German to build the manual.
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Christine Andersen
Denmark
Local time: 03:57
Member (2003)
Danish to English
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| | A style worth cultivating | Jan 4 |
While there are times when the very best is barely good enough, on many occasions gisting or quick and dirty, call it what you like, is absolutely fit for purpose.
When it is done by a human who understands the target reader's needs, it will be far better than MT... but still affordable for clients who are also under pressure to save.
There are often chunks than can be shortened or left out for one reason or another, or the text is a draft, and the details will all be altered later anyway...
Abstracting is a discipline I once learned and still practice occasionally, but it sometimes takes almost as long as translating. The result has to be polished of course! But it can also be faster and cheaper for the client while still allowing for a reasonable rate for the translator.
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Helen Shiner
United Kingdom
Local time: 02:57
 Partial member (2008)
German to English
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I am often asked by researchers to pull salient material out of foreign language texts (usually primary sources) and thus only translate what the specific researcher needs for his/her work. I charge an hourly rate for the reading/selecting in combination with a word/line rate for the translation. Definitely works out cheaper than having reams translated in order to find the key passages.
I don't have a name for this service, but do suggest it to on-going clients as an option.
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B D Finch
France
Local time: 03:57
Member (2006)
French to English
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Dave Bindon
Greece
Local time: 04:57
Member (2010)
Greek to English
TOPIC STARTER |
Thank you all for your answers!
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