| Pagina's in het onderwerp: [1 2] > | Poll: When translating, how often do you turn one sentence into two, or vice versa? De persoon die dit onderwerp heeft geplaatst: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "When translating, how often do you turn one sentence into two, or vice versa?".
View the poll results »
| | | | neilmac
Spanje
Local time: 13:33
Spaans naar Engels
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Whenever I think it's necessary. The same as when I'm proofreading/correcting text for publication.
| | | | | field and language | Jul 20, 2020 |
I would say this is more a question of the field and language you translate into than style. As a legal translator, some of my source texts (in both my working languages) have sentences that are longer than a page, which is perfectly reasonable in those languages but not in English. Translation is after all more than just words and we have to consider all levels of text, such as punctuation. Thus I'm not sure what value the results of such a poll has or is intended to have.
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I never turn one sentence into two, or vice versa. I am always faithful to the sentence structure of the source texts. But other translators do such things. This means they are not competent.
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Jennifer White 
Verenigd Koninkrijk
Local time: 12:33
Frans naar Engels
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| "I'm not sure what value the results of such a poll has or is intended to have" | Jul 20, 2020 |
Agree, but isn't that the case for most of the polls here? They just seem to give a platform to those who like to massage their own egos IMO
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If I feel it flows better that way and in any case it’s much more usual for me to turn two sentences into one than the other way around as in Portuguese we tend to use longer sentences than English do. The same rarely happens when I’m translating from French, Spanish or Italian (my source languages) as they tend to use long sentences too…
| | | | Sadek_A
Local time: 15:33
Engels naar Arabisch
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| 2 into 1, 1 into 2 | Jul 20, 2020 |
a sure recipe for omissions, mistranslations, twisted meanings, messed-up representations of source ideas and, ultimately, a substandard target content.
The concept could be good for hair products, but not for translation.
All the times I saw it while proofreading others, concerned translator was either incompetent or trying to pull a fast one on the client.
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The comma splice is frequently used in the French source texts I translate, so I either use a semicolon or turn it into two sentences.
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Liena Vijupe
Letland
Local time: 14:33
Lid 2014
Frans naar Lets
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| talking about the benefit of the doubt | Jul 20, 2020 |
Jennifer White wrote:
Agree, but isn't that the case for most of the polls here? They just seem to give a platform to those who like to massage their own egos IMO
Geez, people. Sometimes a question is just a question, simply ignore it if it's irrelevant or not interesting to you.
(I've never submitted a poll, I just find it ridiculous that almost every time somebody takes time to complain about it in the comments).
| | | | Ventnai
Spanje
Local time: 13:33
Duits naar Engels
+ ...
| Just a bit of fun or useful information | Jul 20, 2020 |
These polls can provide useful information or make you consider aspects of translation that you might not have thought about. Or it can just be a bit of fun. I don't think anyone is massaging their ego. I don't feel the need to have it massaged. You can choose to read the poll discussion or not.
| | | | Kaisa I
Canada
Local time: 07:33
Engels naar Fins
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| Agree with both | Jul 20, 2020 |
Liena Vijupe wrote: Jennifer White wrote:
Agree, but isn't that the case for most of the polls here? They just seem to give a platform to those who like to massage their own egos IMO Geez, people. Sometimes a question is just a question, simply ignore it if it's irrelevant or not interesting to you. (I've never submitted a poll, I just find it ridiculous that almost every time somebody takes time to complain about it in the comments).
I often fail to see the point of these polls but end up voting and seeing the results anyway, as I am curious. And that's all it is, a bit of entertainment.
| | | | | Relevant poll... | Jul 20, 2020 |
... because of the results.
I join and split sentences all the time.
I would argue that anyone who doesn’t isn’t doing their job properly as a translator.
But clearly the community in general doesn’t agree.
Is this because of Trados et al? Or has it always been that way?
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Kevin Fulton
Verenigde Staten
Local time: 07:33
Duits naar Engels
| Split, join, rearrange as needed | Jul 20, 2020 |
Although the authors of the technical articles I edit or translate may be experts in their respective fields, their writing style is often on a secondary school level. Consequently, 60-word single-phrase paragraphs have to be broken down into more easily understood sentences, or 6-word fragments need to be joined with others to make a complete grammatical construction. I use a CAT tool, thus rearrangement is necessarily performed during a second pass through the document outside the confines of ... See more Although the authors of the technical articles I edit or translate may be experts in their respective fields, their writing style is often on a secondary school level. Consequently, 60-word single-phrase paragraphs have to be broken down into more easily understood sentences, or 6-word fragments need to be joined with others to make a complete grammatical construction. I use a CAT tool, thus rearrangement is necessarily performed during a second pass through the document outside the confines of the tool which occurs in any event. ▲ Collapse
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If I happen to be translating a post-modern novel or memoir (and even if I were translating one from the 20th century), I think it's important to reflect, through the translation, the original author's stream of consciousness and not turn the sentence in question into two or more.
For the translation of other kinds of texts, however, such as history books, I have been known to do it.
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Sometimes a writer in the source text rambles on, linking sentences with ´and´ or ´but´ (og or men in Danish). After ´but´ has been used two or three times, I have to read the passage several times myself just to work out where the argument is going. It is far better style in English to divide the sentences up.
The Danish equivalent of ´however´ is a conjunction, and it often sounds clumsy to write ´but, however, ...´ There are several solutions, but one is... See more Sometimes a writer in the source text rambles on, linking sentences with ´and´ or ´but´ (og or men in Danish). After ´but´ has been used two or three times, I have to read the passage several times myself just to work out where the argument is going. It is far better style in English to divide the sentences up.
The Danish equivalent of ´however´ is a conjunction, and it often sounds clumsy to write ´but, however, ...´ There are several solutions, but one is simply to use a full stop, and start a new sentence with: However, ...
It is perfectly acceptable style in Danish to repeat the name of a person or a company at the start of a series of short sentences, but this does not always work well in English. I regularly join two sentences with a relative pronoun instead of repeating the name.
I may join or break up sentences for other reasons too.
My motto is ´translating the message, not just the words´. To me, that means writing good, natural English, so that the reader is not distracted by source-language style. That is one difference between a human translator and machine translation.
And of course, I use a CAT tool that allows me to split or join sentences as needed!
[Edited at 2020-07-20 16:55 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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