Over the last few weeks, series lovers and streaming platforms have undergone a high-profile revolution due to a South Korean drama (action and thriller) called Squid Game. This production has had an unprecedented impact of immeasurable proportions on several areas of society: the South Korean audiovisual industry has gained greater visibility and much more recognition, and it has increased interest in this country’s culture, but it has also given rise to several debates. Who hasn’t heard of schools banning costumes based on this series for Halloween? Who hasn’t thought about the responsibility of greater awareness of the content consumed by children? Or, on the contrary, who hasn’t thought of the need to learn to develop an understanding that enables reality to be differentiated from fantasy fiction? Although these are all extremely interesting questions, they are not the aim of this discussion. However, we could say that Squid Game has highlighted a reality in the translation industry, as well as its inner workings.
The translation of the series has been widely criticised by translation agencies and fans alike. In general, they point out that the translated version often does not reflect important nuances of South Korean culture or key aspects in order to better understand the characters and their development. The news gained increased coverage when the company entrusted with the translation reported that automatic and indirect translation had been used. Of course, the media sought to publish basic ideas about the concept of “automatic translation” so that everyone was aware of the different options that are available when localizing material. Although many professionals have expressed their disagreement with this decision (since automatic translations do not usually use the turns of phrases found in expressive language, which are essential in the seventh art), the audience was most surprised by the use of indirect translation. But, what is it exactly?
Indirect translation (not to be confused with inverse translation) is a resource that consists of producing a translation of a source text through an intermediate translation. This is why it is also known as “intermediate translation” or “pivot translation” – please excuse the pun in the title.
Although it may seem absurd to the inexperienced, it is in fact just another arrow in the quiver for translators. Normally, it is used when translators for a specific language combination are not available, since this combination might not be common in the agency’s market, or when the cultural differences between the languages of both cultures are very marked and a more neutral version is preferred in order to contrast these aspects. For example, what would happen if a typical Spanish agency were to receive an urgent assignment for a translation from Urdu into Spanish? If they do not have professionals for these language pairs, it is more than likely that they will use indirect translation in English, which is one of the working languages in this type of situation.
This is exactly what happened for Squid Game. Given the complexity (taking into account deadlines) of translating from Korean, the translation team worked using a translation of the script in English, by way of post-editing. While it is possible to reach a functional translation, the fans and pundits knowledgeable in this issue have given a greater voice to translators, since they believe this is a series with many layers that have not seen the (green) light in the Spanish version. Currently, there are numerous articles and videos about this on the Internet, and we recommend two articles: one about some obvious mistakes and another containing the views of a member of the translation team responsible for the project.
In a more practical vein, it must be noted that indirect translation also entails a significant economic advantage, given that the cost of translating two times between common language pairs (e.g. Urdu > English, English > Spanish) is much lower than requesting a translation between more uncommon language pairs (e.g. Urdu > Spanish). However, this by no means makes it is a less valuable resource. By implementing the proper quality controls and in the necessary cases, indirect translation can become a very useful and efficient solution as an interlinguistic translation tool. However, it must be recognized that in almost all translations there is an inevitable loss of information when one language is converted into another, and the greater the difference between the languages, the greater the loss. Therefore, the client, agency and the translator must take into account the inherent risk in each project in order to determine which translation strategy is the most appropriate.
Ref. de la imagen: https://wallpaperaccess.com/squid
