I was honored to speak at the recent ATA conference in Portland, OR. To my surprise, the room was packed, and the audience was very engaged. The topic was “How to Handle Ambiguous or Unclear Source Sentences”. If audience size is any indication of demand, there certainly is a fair amount of unclear (English, in my case) source text in our work as professional translators. And the question is: How do we deal with it? And if we have to ask our clients for explanations or additional context, how do we phrase those queries and how do we make sure that our questions initiate a constructive and efficient process?
Just consider this example (from an audioguide text): “We had riots from anti-Semitic groups. Once there was a program in our town.” Most likely there is a typo, and it should say “pogrom” instead of “program”. This example illustrates that errors in the source text can easily be overlooked if there is perfect grammar and spelling. This is especially true for machine-translated text that we professional translators are editing/proofreading. Only by focusing and reading between the lines are we able to correct such grave errors.
Another key takeaway from my presentation is that translators and clients are working as a team, and we have to ask our clients to clarify unclear source text. Resolving such issues is a truly collaborative effort, and this is what makes translation such a rewarding profession. After all, we don’t just translate words, we also aid in communication and understanding – and help to prevent misunderstanding across cultures and geographic borders.