Friday, April 30, 2010

The value of using cognates in translation

Everyone knows the argument for not using cognates. Even people who don't speak Spanish know that embarazada doesn't mean embarrassed. And I'm certainly not saying you should use cognates blindly - they're called faux amis for a reason.

However, there is some value in using cognates. It makes it easier for partially bilingual people reading in their second language to understand, and it makes it easier for partially bilingual people to land on the right word when speaking or writing in their other language. If packaging or objects have to be physically labelled, it saves valuable space if the name is the same in both languages.

From the reviser's point of view, departing from the cognate to something that doesn't work as well is far worse than using cognates when there are better words (or even mistakenly using faux amis). Unless the translator is a student or a trainee, the reviser doesn't always necessarily look at the source text and the translation side by side (nor should they have to when revising the work of a fully qualified translator). They're more likely to review the translation on its own merits, and refer to the source text when they feel it's necessary. As trained and qualified translators, revisers can quickly recognize calques, faux amis, and other common traps that arise from the overuse of cognates. These are errors, but they're easy to fix because the reviser can see exactly how you got there.

However, if you depart from the cognate in a way that ends up not being quite right, I might not recognize it. It won't ping as an error. I'm more likely to assume that was the concept used in the source text, and I won't even think to go back and check. Furthermore, if you depart from the cognate to something worse than the cognate, then I can't trust any of your word choices. The mistakes and suboptimal choices you are making are difficult to see and may even be invisible, so now I have to read the whole text side by side, which takes quite a lot of time and raises my frustration level. (Intellectually I know that I should be all zen and not let my frustration level affect my evaluation of a text or the product to client, but realistically I'm just not strong enough to do that.)

To use rather simplistic examples (because I can't think of perfectly analogous fake examples and I don't want to pick on any real translations), if the source text says ministère and the translator translates that as "ministry" for a jurisdiction that uses "department", I can see exactly what the translator did there and it's easy for me to fix (and easy for me to give them clear and specific feedback to prevent it from happening again). However, if the source text says Président and the translator translates that as "Executive Director" but the person's actual title is "Chair" (or, worse, "President") then I have to double check every. single. term. because I can neither trust or predict the translator's word choices.

So what's the solution? You need to be able to justify every departure from the cognate. Every time you choose not to use an available cognate, you must be able to explain "I departed from the cognate because ________". "Because it's a cognate" is not a good enough reason. "Because it's a faux ami" is. So is "because it's the proper terminology", "because the cognate is unidiomatic in English", "because the cognate is not the best word to express what the source text really means", and "because the cognate made my inner 12-year-old snicker". If you can't justify your departure, stick with the cognate. Even if it's wrong, it's wrong in the most painless way possible.

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