FYI France: Digital Library reference -- translation
.. aaaaand a very large truckload of very smelly cheese to...
Charles Krauthammer...
Time Magazine, July 12, 2004
"Why the French Act Isn't Funny Anymore : Their
resistance to helping in Afghanistan and Iraq is now
downright dangerous"
by Charles Krauthammer
"It is easy to make fun of the French and their pompous
pretense... the grandeur they shed a half-century ago...
second-class power... Gaullist anti-Americanism...
ostentatious self-aggrandizement... France's willful
obstructionism... dangerous and deadly... That
obstructionism was on amazing display at the recent NATO
summit in..."
-- etc., etc., ad nauseam...
<http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1101040712-660973,00.html>
It is time, it seems, for the Anglophone and Francophone worlds
to brush up on their mutual translation abilities. Recently too
much, which once might have been consigned to the fuzzy although
entertaining areas of "l'ironie" and "double entendre", has begun
to stray over into the far more dangerous and apparently far more
crystal-clear arenas of "politics" and "national policy", where
these days there is too little humor left.
A first step might be made by considering the art of translation:
particularly on the Internet, where too much of momentous import
gets imperfectly researched and discussed and defined, nowadays.
It never is entirely obvious, what another who knows it
imperfectly is trying say in one's own language: "meaning" rarely
enough is obvious even among native-speakers, let alone among
those of us who learn another's language imperfectly and only in
school or at college or even later on in life.
Translation at least pretends to ease the communication process.
To someone French struggling with the meaning of an American
phrase such as, say, "pre-emptive strike" -- or to someone in the
US attempting to figure out a French term such as, say, "force de
frappe" -- it can be reassuring to have a rendering of terms and
explanations in one's own native language to turn to. Assuming,
that is, that the rendering is correct... and that it explains
policy nuances, and context, and subtleties, and history...
A brief exploration of language "translation" alternatives
currently available follows here, then: perhaps useful to
websites, researchers, writers, libraries "digital" and
otherwise, Internet developers, even to political columnists --
* "Commercial" translation services.
One current commercial leader in the translation field is the
"Language Line" service, begun by a San Jose police officer and
developed by AT&T --
<http://www.languageline.com/home.php>
-- an airport police officer, tackling a suspect who protests in
some strange argot, or comforting a bewildered elder sobbing in a
weird-sounding gibberish, now has only to dial a password -
protected telephone number to gain rapid access to fluent
speakers of 150 human languages...
So criminal situations get sorted out more quickly now, and lost
passport situations resolved, and health emergencies dealt with
-- in this Globalizing world characterized, daily, by tense
situations involving every one of those 150 human languages.
And this commercial service -- just to begin, here, with a
commercial example -- offers many other forms of "translation"
help. Increasingly services like this one are being sought by
governments, and corporations, and many others, as we all cope
with said Globalization. But the services of commercial firms
like "Language Line Inc." are not free: their document
translation fees, for example, currently are advertised as --
Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Japanese, Korean,
Russian, Vietnamese
$9.50 per 25-word block
All other languages
$13.50 per 25-word block
<http://www.languageline.com/pdf/DocTrans_Att_A_102103.pdf>
I would expect that such prices are the most expensive rates, and
that discounts must be available for any customer -- or
consortium of customers, say... -- which could promise such a
firm a steady business flow. Still, though, such "translation" is
not cheap: something for legal and business documents, perhaps,
and for emergencies. One senses that Internet access might be
useful, in this, but one senses as well that "security" issues,
or at least worries, might complicate that.
Another "commercial translation service" variety nowadays
includes those which are directly online, on the Internet.
Altavista's "Babelfish" is one established example:
<http://world.altavista.com/>
-- another is "FreeTranslation.com" --
<http://www.freetranslation.com/
-- or consider "Google Language Tools" -- offering translations
to & from Pig Latin! --
<http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en>
All this is the much-lampooned land of "machine translation":
where input such as "la plume de ma tante" gets rendered as "the
feather of my aunt"... or ponderous Biblical sayings such as "the
spirit was willing but the flesh was weak", get transformed into
the very non-Biblical "the whiskey was good but the steak was bad"...
Nevertheless... such free services, and their many not-so-free
extensions now getting built up around them by their providers,
can be useful. For getting "the gist" of a foreign phrase or
document, if not its exact meaning: for example nowadays at least
someone French is able, very easily online, to render a tortuous
American English language passage such as, say,
"For centuries, international law recognized that nations
need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take
action to defend themselves against forces that present
an imminent danger of attack."
("The National Security Strategy of the United States")
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss5.html>
-- into the parlance of Voltaire, or sort of, thus --
"Pendant des siècles, le droit international a identifié
que les nations n'ont pas besoin de souffrir une attaque
avant qu'elles puissent légalement agir pour se défendre
contre les forces qui présentent un danger imminent d'attaque."
-- even though, rendered back à l'américain, the passage does
appear to have changed a bit --
"During centuries, the international law identified that
the nations n'ont not need to suffer an attack before
qu'elles can legally act to be defended against the
forces which present a d'attaque imminent danger."
("Babelfish", URL above)
-- nevertheless perhaps, as Mercutio put it, "'tis enough, 'twill
serve": the French reader can get the general gist, at least, of
what the Americans are trying to say. Not that this makes her/him
feel any better about the message, in this particular case. But
understanding the language used is a start: later, then, for the
"context", and the "entendre double"...
So there are "commercial translation services" available now:
some of which can be expensive, but also some of which, although
they can be less "perfect" than the others, still are useful, and
are free of charge.
Other alternatives not so commercial and not so expensive now
exist too, though, for "translation", many of these thanks to the
new global networking capacities of the Internet:
* "Campus" translation services.
Any "campus", academic or corporate or government or other,
nowadays contains enormous and largely-untapped human language
translation resources: in the large and growing segments of
campus populations composed of native speakers of other
languages, people who often even are fluent in several.
Consider any large university, nowadays, with all of those
"foreign" students and researchers and professors and staff... Or
consider any large hitech or other company anywhere, now, where
multiple nationalities pass each other in the halls constantly:
all of those people "know other languages", and each of them
could "help with translation"...
Even government agencies and departments -- those which have
remained politically open-minded enough to still employ recent
immigrants and foreign nationals, anyway -- there too, when
"government" emergencies and other language needs arise, there is
a huge and largely-untapped language translation resource, simply
in the daily workstaff of most such organizations. Someone in
"the department" who speaks Urdu, or someone fluent in Bengali...
or a typist who, it happens, was born and raised in Paraguay
and may know Guaraní ("anybody else know Guaraní?")...
Or a computer technician who as a teenager fled troubles in her
native land but still retains her knowledge of Yoruba, or of Ibo:
when the documentation on some new problem in Lagos comes in, and
even the English in it appears to be indecipherable, passing it
by that native speaker, on the chance that she might understand
some double meaning or other context involved, might be very
productive for the department. Or say it's a radio transmission,
and she can tell others that the speaker is not, in fact, where
he says he's from, just by his accent...
Would that we in the US had had more such capacity for
translating and interpreting various forms of Arabic, for
instance, over the last few years, in our "government
departments"... we had it, but we didn't use it... there might
have been more realistic "alerts", and greater understanding...
The language translation problem on any campus, I suggest -- in
any campus situation, for we now have the virtual campus,
increasingly, scattered across the planet but tied more and more
closely together by the Internet -- is the problem of reaching
the translators when we need them.
They are there: Globalization plus multi-culturalism plus our
shrinking planet increasingly guarantee that foreign language
speakers are nearby, no matter where we happen to be. But as
generations of librarians have discovered with OPACs, "you can
lead a user to the catalog but you can't make her use it"... The
problem is tieing in these foreign language speakers to a system,
so that those in need of translation can get to them, rapidly and
effectively, when needed.
The Internet... Would it be so difficult, on any campus, academic
or corporate or government or other, to assemble databases of
people with language abilities, and a system for putting people
in need of such capacities into contact with them?
Would it be expensive? Would the translators be paid? Depends on
local conditions... But would the coordination of such a
"language translation network" be possible, and easy? Yes, I
would think, using the Internet: sounds to me like just a simple
list, in the simplest case -- email addresses.
To offer a concrete example, taken from a very traditional
library context:
Translation services for digital libraries:
at the online reference virtual "desk"
A recent FYI France issue, that of May 15, presented the new
"Guichet de Savoir" service of the Bibliotheque municipale de
Lyon. Several correspondents since have asked about the
multi-lingual access capacities of such a service. The BM Lyon's
proud and generous reply has been,
"We'll answer any language we understand. Danish, I don't
think, but Chinese yes !! If you are inscribed, you may
change your profile and get a skin in English..."
But then of course the BM Lyon is in a position to make such a
reply: they are an enormous library, amply-endowed with
collections both ancient and extensive, and multitudinous and
talented staff, and good government and international connections
-- not all libraries wishing to provide online reference service
enjoy such exalted status, and resources, as does the BM Lyon.
Lyon also prides itself on being somewhat of an international
city -- "European", at least -- and "trans-national", even. The
city does healthy international / trans-national business, and
boasts a major airport and TGV link, and a notable university,
and other such resources: a library can draw upon all of these,
perhaps, for language translation work.
But _need_ any library do so, any longer? Shouldn't it be
possible for any library, anywhere, to obtain language
translation assistance simply by using the Internet?
All that is required, in principle, is an email to someone, and
an email back: "Here, we have this Ural-Mongol-Finno-Turkic
online reference desk inquiry which I need to understand: if you
would be kind enough to translate it for us, we promise to do the
same thing for you, the next time you need something translated
into _our_ specialities, French / English / Spanish / Tagalog..."
Something along the lines of Inter-Library Lending, perhaps: but
so much easier, and cheaper, as all it would require would be
Internet email organization... a Language Translation Network...
(If anyone reading this knows of working examples of such
"campus" or "campus situation" networks for human language
translation -- already in existence or under construction,
informal or otherwise -- academic, corporate, government agency
or department, libraries "digital" or other, or anything else --
I would like very much to hear about them. Pls send me email at
kessler@well.com.)
* "Independent" translation services.
The traditional publishing industries long have used
"translators". As a trade, as an industry, as an art form,
"translation" has employed the talents and dedication of
countless individuals, drawn from all walks of life, for
centuries.
>From Michael Ventris poring over the mysterious scribblings of
"Linear B", to Joseph Needham wading through the nuances of
thousands of years of Chinese scientific effort, to Champollion's
personal mastery of Hebrew & Arabic & Syriac & Chaldean & Chinese
& Coptic & Ethiopic & Sanskrit & Zend & Pahlevi & Persian (!),
translators of human language and cultural traditions have been
remarkable individuals: as focussed as Ventris, as encyclopedic
as Needham, as eclectic as Champollion.
And nowhere near as omnipresent in the past as they now are,
thanks to the Internet... I would think that any "campus" or
other translation effort -- one to mount multi-lingual web pages,
for example, or one to provide translation services for students
and researchers and others -- might take advantage, easily, of
the global reach of networked information, to tap into
language translation abilities located far from "home".
How many Tamil-speakers, fluent also in English and even in
French and other languages, reside now in Tamil Nadu? Once a long
way away, now merely a URL or an email address... So the
documentation in the terrible political fight now brewing in the
US over "foreign outsourcing callcenters" might be translated
from Tamil into English, and from English into Tamil, and from
both into Hindi and vice versa, the better to enable participants
and journalists and researchers on all sides to understand the
issues. No, everyone "out there" does not, "_really_ all know
English ok, don't they?"... as a very young American Internet
developer once pointedly demanded of me, over a decade ago...
Or consider the AIDS crisis: the views, and concerns, and
realities, of people faced with this problem in Cameroon, might
best be expressed in translations from their own native English,
to people in France -- or from their own native French, to people
in the US -- or perhaps "really" from their own native Fulani, to
people in both places.
And, if English and French translation happens to be plentiful,
in France and the US, what about Fulani?... Nowadays, though,
Fulani translation is a simple step away, via the Internet: find
someone in Yaoundé who knows it -- just a mouse-click away.
So why aren't we doing more of this? Why aren't all libraries,
and other organizations as well, offering global human language
translation services? It seems simple.
The Internet reaches most nations, now, and most international
language groupings: if all 6000 or so human languages are not
yet fully "online" they will be soon, via Unicode, and in the
meantime there always is voice & fax transmission, once the
initial contact is established via email. So there seems to be
little excuse left, nowadays, for the purely-linguistic barriers
in human communication at least, language translation being so
readily available now via Internet.
* Confidentiality and Competence
There do seem still to be a number of generic questions involved,
though, in the process of human language translation, no matter
how eased this process has become thanks to digital
communications. Among these are confidentiality and competence.
The question of confidentiality has come up in the emotive
political noise now surrounding the increasingly hysterical
"foreign outsourcing callcenter" issue of the US presidential
campaign. Notorious incidents have included that of the
outsourced worker in India who, cheated of her pay by the US
"backoffice" service bureau which hired her, threatened to reveal
online the medical records of patients at a major US hospital.
Also, now, there are worries about outsourced "contractors" of
the US military in Iraq, who unlike official military personnel
appear to be subject to neither the laws of the US nor those of
Iraq, nor of anyone else, and who recently have been implicated
in Abu Ghraib and other scandals... and whose revelations under
pressure might prove to be embarrassing to many...
The question one needs to ask, however, regarding the
confidentiality of the "foreign outsourcing" of anything -- of
military contracting or recordkeeping or language translation or
anything else -- is how relevant the "foreign" aspect of this
really is, to concerns such as reliability and security.
If the worst, or among the worst, "terrorism" and other such
incidents in fact are committed by a nation's own citizens upon
one another -- the Oklahoma City bombing still ranks as among the
worst, in the US, and that was a crime not committed by
"foreigners" -- then perhaps concerns for confidentiality, in
"foreign outsourcing", are overblown. If we use the Internet to
get human language translation done, then, we should be careful
-- there are all sorts of "nuts" online, on the Internet -- but
not all of them are "foreign"... _most_ of them aren't, maybe...
And as with "confidentiality" so with "competence", and perhaps
so with most other concerns about turning to our global Internet
for language translation. The question is not so much where to
obtain the "best" translation, as it is where to obtain one
"better" than another.
Certification of translation is an imperfect process itself, even
in the most formal and official procedures used by courts and
government agencies, in the US or France or elsewhere. Human
language is a supple and imprecise communications tool at the
best of times, and two human translators no matter how expert
rarely will come up with the identical rendering of any phrase at
all complex or significant, let alone of any document of any length.
So the question becomes whether to settle for "imperfect"
translation: the answer being that we'll make do, and when
something "perfect" comes along well then maybe we'll change to
that...
Still, though, improvements can be made: native-speakers
generally do a better job of understanding a language than do
those who have acquired their proficiency in it later on in life.
So the new ability to reach more native-speakers in more places,
than we ever have in our history, thanks to the Internet, would
seem to indicate that human language translation ought to benefit
from this new access in some way.
So, competent to translate? Well, perhaps... But perhaps the
more relevant question to ask is that asked of the "machine
translation" which can garble phrases on occasion: Mercutio's
whether "'tis enough, 'twill serve"?
For a court document perhaps not, but all translation is not just
court documents. For French Internet readers worried about a new
American pronouncement on "pre-emptive strike", though, perhaps
it is enough at least to get the best translation of such an
awful-sounding phrase which can be found -- and a native speaker
of French who also knows American "official" English well, and is
acquainted with the general context and history of the phrase,
might translate this more usefully than someone American
possessing only high school French.
Likewise for "force de frappe": we now have many native speakers
of American English available, via the Internet, who know the
French context and thus can translate both syntax and semantics,
and context and history, for those of us in the US wondering and
worrying about such a phrase.
It might do us all well to work on expanding such translation
capacities, then: at a time when, ironically, we have such
wonderful technological capacities to aid us, but at the same
time our intellectual understanding for and sympathy toward one
another seem to have taken a few severe hits -- an era of much
heat but little light, and as such always dangerous.
* Translation is an art, not a science
The last word on "competency" in translation, though, is the
gentle reminder provided by the example of Arthur Waley, the last
century's famous British translator of ancient Chinese classics:
that human language translation is an art not a science.
Waley was a true artist: his wonderful renderings of Chinese
poetry and other literature into English have mystified many
Chinese, as well as English speakers in possession of exacting
knowledge of the classical Chinese language themselves. But
Waley's work nevertheless did its job better than any other,
reaching and inspiring generations of Westerners to open and
enjoy and appreciate Chinese works which, but for Waley, would
have remained inaccessible and unknown to them.
The merits of Waley's translations, and their eccentricities, are
memorialized in the title of an "appreciation and anthology" of
his work, "Madly Singing in the Mountains" (Berkeley : Creative
Arts Book Co., 1981, c1970) -- which is a phrase from Waley's
translation of a 9th c. Chinese poet, but one which only could
have been uttered by an Edwardian English Bloomsbury gentleman...
The most general point being, I suppose, that human communication
itself is an art, not a science. As observed initially here,
"meaning" rarely enough is obvious even among native-speakers,
let alone among those of us who learn another's language later on
in life, and imperfectly... Nevertheless, we must make the
attempt: to translate what we say and write, to and about one
another, and to communicate, and to understand. And we all need
to try harder than we have been, recently: between the Americans
and the French -- old friends who seem to be having some fallings
out -- and with other old friends, and among friends and enemies.
There is too much at stake now not to try. "Walking a mile in the
other man's moccasins" may not be practical, in world affairs,
nor even "standing in his shoes", but at least translating and
understanding what he has to say would be a start: all of our
websites need to become multi-lingual -- our children, too. All
"libraries" need to offer all languages. Translation services
need to be provided, and the Internet can help.
As for columnist Charles Krauthammer... and other France-bashers
on the western side of the Atlantic, or for that matter
America-bashers on its eastern shore... the Republic founded in
1776 might do well to heed a few of the sincere warnings sent to
it by the Republic founded in 1958, following Kent's advice,
Think'st thou that duty shall have dread to speak,
When power to flattery bows? To plainness honour's bound,
When majesty stoops to folly.
Reverse thy doom; And, in thy best consideration, cheque
This hideous rashness: answer my life my judgment,
Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least...
For France has faced all these current things since long before
1958, after all: the threats and temptations which America now
confronts are as old as humanity. So Americans might do well to
"translate" what our foreign friends are saying to us nowadays
very carefully, and to understand it well: so that we Americans,
again following Kent's advice, might,
See better, Lear...
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071-5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
/ \ Any material written by me which appears in
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--hjlm--