Today’s translation activity is inextricably bound with technology and consistently feeds off the breakthroughs in the sector. Nowadays, the concept of a production chain within a language service provider that does not consider the use of computer resources and is not in a constant search for innovation that streamlines and optimizes workflow is practically unimaginable. In this regard, in some articles we have already mentioned the usefulness of this technology for management and administration processes, for the translation activity itself (with the use of assisted translation tools), as well as for the tasks related to the quality control of a project and to follow-up to ensure client satisfaction. Specifically, one of the points generating most interest is the innovation that can be applied to the translation process, as we aim to produce translations as quickly as possible, to save both time and resources, but always with the seal of competitive quality as per industry standards and, indeed, the requirements and expectations of our clients.
In this context, we must consider the consolidation of automatic translation (AT) in our sector. At the onset, AT brought a series of difficulties to the surface that led many professionals to have serious doubts about its usefulness and future implementation. As we mentioned in other articles, AT arrived with a series of inaccuracies that made it impossible to use as a secure translation provider (inconsistencies, terminology errors, unproper language registry, trouble recognizing full sentences that were split into two segments, etc.) For this reason, the postediting step became necessary. Here, the professional translator carried out a comparative reading between the source text and the target text to proceed to correct all the errors generated and unify translation criteria (such as is the case with punctuation, which still creates problems to date). For this motive, postediting is currently consolidated as a language service in which, in order to reach successful results, a human professional must be involved to solve those issues that are still unsolvable by the AT. Along these lines, it can be claimed that automatic translation is fully established in the daily affairs of translation agencies; it is an economical resource (and therefore, attractive from the perspective of both the clients and the agencies) which, in some translation styles, can offer admissible and even quality results. Nevertheless, although said automatic translation can be recognized as a valuable tool in certain particular areas, such as the technology industry or the intellectual property field, the same cannot be said about other types of translation, such as literary translation. But, how come?
Literary texts fall within a genre that, far from documents typical of the industrial or scientific sector, plays a role that goes beyond the mere dissemination of information, the description of a product or a synthetic data exposition. What these literary texts seek, regardless of whether they come in the form of prose or poetry, is to tell a tale, transmit a certain idea or trigger a sentiment, paying special attention to the form. In other words, these are texts aiming for the reader’s attention and for this purpose, use a series of literary tools which are alluring or embody a certain type of eloquence, which helps build a story or whatever is being narrated in visual form. Essentially, literary texts can be divided into novels, short stories, poetry and theatre plays, also called dramas. Broadly speaking, these are the kinds of texts that a literary translator can face. Well, and what are their characteristics?
In short, it is a translation modality that calls for the subjective much more than the objective. Literary texts are populated by descriptions and the relating of facts and situations conditioned by the author’s perspective, an aspect that is even relevant in historic or realistic prose. The fictional component must be highlighted at this point since literary texts usher us into alien scenarios away from the nitty and gritty of our daily lives. To encompass all of this, a poetic slant, in which creativity and self-expression play a fundamental role, is indispensable. In order for all these elements to work properly, creating the desired effect on the reader, having mastery over language and style is a necessity, so we can express what’s in our mind in an alluring fashion.
It could be said that nearly any literary material that arrives at a translation agency or in the hands of a freelancer will exhibit these characteristics. Faced with this prospect, it would be worthwhile to wonder about the convenience of using automatic translation for literary work, especially when it comes to large texts with a huge word count and with deadlines that are typically quite demanding.
Well, we speak from experience when we claim that automatic translation is not the most convenient option to translate this type of texts. The reason for this is that AT engines operate by comparing corpuses of previous translations with very specific matches, so that, when translating a literary text, it will only apply the matches without paying special attention to a series of nuances that a human translator would have in mind, such as finding the general tone of the composition, deciding on whether to rearrange the elements in a sentence so that it sounds more natural in the target language, understanding the characteristic expression style of the narrator or the characters, words or expressions that gather momentum as the text advances, etc. All of this leads us to the realization that postediting would entail a total waste of time, as the style is likely to be more direct and any effort to make a text more attractive in language terms would be lost, so that the translator should practically change the entire AT-submitted text and in the end, it would have been more pragmatic to tackle the project in an individualized manner from the very start.
Of course, we can count on technology to keep progressing until a solution to these problems is found, but for the time being, quality creative translation remains intricately linked to the involvement of the human factor.
Image reference: https://ago.ca/node/32926
