Am Phibian if I Say This is Easy!
Hi guys! I haven't written an entry in a while, so sorry for the delay!
This blog will be a little bit different than before: my last few entries, and my original purpose for my blog was to practise using my other languages. For the next four entries, I will be focusing on my first forrays into Translation!
Wow. Translation is NOT easy. Writing well is pretty easy. Learning languages is mentally challenging, but not *that* hard. Translation? Well, that's just a whole new muscle. It's like jumping into a lake to learn how to swim. Not easy.
I won't go into each of my classes yet, but for one class we're learning all the translation tools and technology. For this class, I had to pick a subject and look up some "authentic texts" that would be both representative of the subject, and reliable. Well, the subject part seemed easy, but it wasn't particularly. It was very difficult to know how much information I would need for the terminology assignment I'll have to do later on, and even harder to know how narrow a field had to be in order to find good bilingual texts. I'm still not quite sure how I did on that element.
For my subject, I wanted to do herpetology - the study of reptiles and amphibians. Maybe that was my first
mistake. I love herpetology, but the mere fact that I have to explain the term
to anybody I mention it to should be an indicator of how widespread of an
information base there might be. I wasn't deterred. I also wanted to incorporate
a field that I thought might be valuable in my career later on. Medicine and
biochemistry are very big industries for translation, it seems. I still don't
know whether I would be able to make use of my newfound knowledge later on, but
at least the subject is relatively practical.
In the end, I settled on "the applications of animal toxins
in medicine." This should allow me to use research on many different kinds
of animals, instead of limiting myself to one kind of animal. I know there will
be a lot of overlap in the terminology used because the substances should be
relatively similar - they're all toxins that act on the human immune or nervous
system.
I suppose I should say a bit about how I evaluated my subject. I think
I could have done better at evaluating it, but maybe not in the way that might
be supposed. My primary requirement was that the subject should not be covered
by term banks. My subject isn't fully covered by term banks, but it also doesn't
seem to be covered much by translators in general, making it difficult to find
bilingual texts. In any case, many scientific terms were in Termium (a term
database available through the Canadian Gov). Scientific names are a moot point
because they're all uniformly in Latin. There will be plenty of terms to put in
a database of my own. That shouldn't be the problem. The challenge will be
getting them there.
It has been difficult to find bilingual sources. I'm hoping that a
bit of elbow grease will allow me to use coordinating texts instead of parallel
texts. So far the technology we've explored will only give me the most common
terms in either language. This is far from useless, because a lot of the words
are visually similar in English and in French. I'm hopeful. I'm also going to
keep looking for better bilingual sources.
I think the hardest part of this whole thing has just been that I
don't know what I'm doing yet in Translation. This is really a big learning
experience, and trying the water takes a LOT of time.
Anyway, the more you do it, the easier it gets. So I guess I'll
just keep at it!
Possible terminological questions to ask to generate my 3 term
records: I didn't realize we were making three! Actually, this makes my life easier,
since I was torn between a few different directions. I wonder if they're too disparate.
- What new and unrecorded terms have been generated by the
combination of animal toxin research and biochemical application in medicine?
- What terms that already existed in the field of biochemistry
have been modified by their association to toxicology?
- What reptile and amphibian non-Latin names do not have direct
equivalents in French?
- What reptile and amphibian non-Latin names are very difficult to
locate in French?
- What colloquial words have surfaced in the field of herpetology
through repeated use by herpetologists?
Anyone care to add an idea?
