Disagreement with translation professor

Michael Wetzel wrote:

The phrasing of your original attempt at dealing with this issue seemed awkward to me and beating this sentence into shape might be a nice exercise, even if your professor doesn't care and seems to have overlooked the issue that led you to push the boundaries of English syntax in the first place.

Michael Wetzel wrote:

In my experience, it is very rare (once per at least several dozen clients) that someone engages in the kind of thing your professor is doing. And generally, when something tending in that direction occurs, their comments include a substantial number of genuinely helpful insights or clarifications to accompany the headscratchers.

Michael Wetzel wrote:
And in a translation studies program, it seems like having everyone translate the same text and then going through issues like this and discussing alternative solutions as a whole class (or in smaller groups) would be a much more productive way of doing things. It would also be much more efficient for your professor, who is clearly very dedicated to her work, but who is probably killing herself trying to provide far less productive individual comments on a never-ending pile of exercises.

Vera Schoen wrote:

I don’t want to hijack this thread, but since you asked:

I always start by thanking the client fort his/her input. That relaxes them and shows I’m open for discussions. Then I explain my choices by providing examples to prove my point. I always use “genuine” sources (i.e. the Swedish National Encyclopaedia or, like your example, a well-known text). I try to be as pedagogical as possible to make sure the client gets my point. And to be honest, that almost always does the trick, and the client appreciates that I took the time to explain. Then there are those who don’t want to change their view. That, thankfully, happens very seldom (twice in my 15 years long career). In those cases, I let the client know, that I’m perfectly willing to make the change, but that I advise strongly against it. If that doesn’t work, I make the changes but add a statement (in bold text), that I only did the change on the clients expressed request.

And don’t worry, this doesn’t happen all the time, but often enough to require a strategy. 😊

Michael Wetzel wrote:


Back on page 1, Robert made a suggestion to stick to the original without being afraid of deviating from it. I think that can also be expressed in the form of a simple principle:
Translate more or less literally, unless there is a (clearly and significantly) good reason not to.
Any time we deviate from or "improve upon" the original or doubt our authors' ability to say what they mean, we increase our chances of missing or distorting something. That is not always a bad bet, but it usually is, because we generally gain a lot less by going from good to great than we lose by going from good to bad.

Michael Wetzel wrote:
Here, for example, if we take "ringing rocks," then the second half of the sentence suddenly makes far less sense, because "ringing" is not about using words to communicate (to a lesser extent, "babbling" is also less about communicating than "singing"). If you have to take your professor's suggestions into account, then maybe the rocks or stones can "echo." I think that is a worse solution than your "speak," but at least it fits into the categories of rock sounds and communication through words.

Michael Wetzel wrote:


In a real translation project, my tendency would be to favor something like this: "Here stones speak, water sings, and there is understanding without words": The phrase may still be slightly awkward, but then you've opened up the stones and water understanding each other, the pilgrims understanding each other, and the pilgrims understanding the stones and water.