烙印VS無名氏，過分潤飾，核對校稿者的校稿，一份耕耘一份收穫，一分錢一分貨。

A note about translating.

"Fidelity", "Understandability", "Gracefulness".

Fidelity takes first priority.

Of course, if the translation is not understood, or too difficult to understand, then the entire translation loses it's meaning and intended purpose.

Graceful, colorful, artistic, takes last priority.

When something foreign is translated into another language there will certainly be a feeling of it being a bit different, or one can even say a bit strange. This means it has been translated well. It appears strange, because it's something alien in the first place, something foreign. On the other hand if it does not feel at least a little bit strange then that means you haven't captured it's essence. This means that the translator was only thinking of smooth polishing at the expense of fidelity to the original meaning, which is done even more so when a translator does not quite understand what is being said and frankly doesn't care to research it since he's only getting pennies per word anyway. The most important aspect of translating regarding "fidelity" "understandability" and "graceful", is "fidelity", that is to remain true to the original meaning.

Many translators often simply take a wild guess and then just conjure up whatever they fancy without any consideration whatsoever to what exactly is the original meaning when they encounter a sentence they don't quite understand, never bothering to look up any back ground context or relevant information, because quite frankly, they don't quite understand it and well, it's not worth looking up since after all they're getting peanuts per word anyway. Hence the expression....

"PAY PEANNUTS, GET PEANNUTS".

Another important point is that almost all translations are done anonymously. If the job is well done no one will know which translator deserves the credit, and if the job is done poorly no one will know who to blame and whose reputation it reflects poorly on and who "loses face". Translation is an art, and normally in any art, music, painting, calligraphy, the artist will always leave his mark or signature, and especially in Chinese art the art-piece has no value until it has been chopped and sealed, identifying it's creator. This act of signing or chopping the final piece, guarantees the artist to do the utmost of his ability, because it will reflect on his reputation, bring positive (or negative) word of mouth, and increase (or decrease) his over all value. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, and if you do your job, it's free! Glory in victory and shame in failure. But only in the translation business are all translations done exclusively anonymously, with the exception of some books. No one knows who translated a particular piece of work, hence the translators literally just mess and guess around, with a motto of "almost is good enough" "almost is close enough" and "if you're not sure, just take a guess". The result is either a very smooth translation, certainly, of which a reader would never suspect or have guessed that it missed the original meaning by a few hundred miles, often 180 degrees in the opposite direction, or the translation is quite legible but makes no sense and is effectively, gibberish.

This is also a consideration when proof reading. A good translation is proof read at least thrice, by at least 3 translators. However proof readers (sometimes called poof readers) almost exclusively read only the target language without reference to the original language, ie. Double checking for accuracy and fidelity. Often a proof reader only checks for prose smooth reading and easy understandability, it is the translator however who must check for fidelity and accuracy. I have at least on one occasions witnessed a massive book translation of a religious nature re-done to counter act some unwanted editing that had been done to a different translation version, and the "translators" in order to save time simply took the unwanted edited version that they were translating against to counter, and plagiarized it entirely in a sloppy "effort" to save time and energy, with the result that many unwanted editings which they were trying to eliminate in the first place ended up in the 2^nd repeat-translation version, because no proof readers were used and no double checking against original language was done for fidelity. Knowing what I know about translating, I'd take anything read in the Bible with 3 grains of salt. This is what happens when people want it done almost-free and done yesterday. Hence many of the "corrections" or suggestions a proof reader makes, are only considering only prose & smoothness of reading, wording things in the most common (and crude) form of everyday language. Consider the average western educated (university graduate) person recognizes a vocabulary of some 22,000 English words, but uses only 2000 words in conversation in the course of the week. What proof readers often do is to trim and butcher a piece and force it into the peon mold. Many times such "corrections" miss entirely the mark of the original language, because the proof reader did not read the original text, and so a faithful translator will be careful to proof read again the proof reader's so-called corrections.

Many times I am flabbergasted at the requested delivery times of a book translation. I have seen demands for a 407 page book to be translated within 7 weeks, or 250 pages to be translated within a week. Consider this, how long did it take the author to research, articulate, mull over the correct wording, proof read, spell check, edit, and finalize the book? Was it really only 2 months? So if someone takes 8 months to a year to write a book, spending all their mental energy on it, then do you think the resulting translation will be of equal quality if the translator only spends 6-4 times less time and energy? Obviously not.

You get out what you put in. Period.

If someone takes 10 months to write a book and then has it translated in 2 months, then rest assured, the translation is about only 12% the quality of the original, considering they spend 5 times less amount of time and energy on the translation, AND a "good" translation often has only 60% accuracy anyway. After all, it's not the translator's book, his name doesn't go to it, what does he care anyway. If on the other hand, if a translator's name DOES go to the final piece, that's another story entirely.

If a translation has been so polished up so that one cannot detect even the slightest alien feel in it, this means it's original meaning has already been compromised, and at least partially (and often entirely) lost." 

有關翻譯

『信』，『達』，『雅』。

信，是排在最前面。

當然如果不達，那整個翻譯就沒有意義了。

雅排在最後。

外來的東西翻成不一樣的語言本來就一定會感覺不一樣，甚至可以說怪怪的。這就表示翻譯的很好。他怪，因為他本來就是外來的，異類的，如果不感到有點不一樣就表示沒有抓到他真隨，只想潤飾而沒有做到翻譯裡面信達雅中最重要的"信"，即信於原文。

很多翻譯員碰到不是很明白的句子時，往往做的就是隨便猜測，翻個大概，只要讀起來順，根本就沒有考慮到它的原意是什麼，因為其實自己也不太明白，也沒去查背景相關資料，反正一個字才幾個臭錢，這就是人講的

一分錢一分貨

而且最後的作品上面也不會有自己的名子，翻得好無光也沒人知，翻不好也不會丟臉，人家看了，看不懂也不知道是誰翻的。翻譯本來就是種藝術，書法，水墨，任何藝術品都要有烙印，蓋章才值錢，才知道是誰的作品，也因會會反映自己的面子，所以藝術家就必定萬分用心的去做，這樣才能提升自己的知名度，口碑，本錢與身價。口碑就是最有效的宣傳與廣告，而且如果翻譯員又盡責任的話，口碑這種廣告是免費的!但只有翻譯界全是用匿名，無名氏的翻譯，最後作品也不知道是誰翻的(除了一些較好的書以外)，所以翻譯員全部都亂來，他們的座右銘都是隨便隨便，大概大概，馬馬虎虎，草草了事，讓看到最後作品的人，不是讀起來覺得是很順沒錯但從來不會察覺到原來這翻譯其實根本就沒抓到原意，因為翻議員自己也不太懂，不然就是看是都看得懂啦，但也不知道什麼意思。

很多時候我看到一些要翻譯整本書的案子，他們要求的交貨日期真的讓我很啞口無言。我曾看過一個案子，有407頁的書，要求在七個星期內翻譯完成。但對方可曾想過，一位作者要寫一本書真的只花了七個禮拜嗎？而如果既然作者花了不只七個星期寫作，那麼翻譯員只花七個星期翻出來的作品，敢說有原文的品質嗎？就算只有407頁的書，作者再作研究，搜查相關資料，挑選最恰當的詞彙，作校稿，編輯，在做最後的修飾，肯定花了8到12個月。就以平均來講好了，寫作10個月，卻要求要在2個月內翻譯完工，那您放心，最後的翻譯作品絕對只有原作品質的12%，因為只花了寫作1/5的時間去翻譯，而且所謂"好"的翻譯往往也不過只有六成的準確度與原意。

一分耕耘一分收穫

，翻譯也不例外。反正書又不是翻議員的，更何況翻議員的大名也沒烙印在最後作品上，他才不鳥你呢。話說回來，如果最後的作品上會註明翻譯員是誰，而翻譯員要顧己自己的面子與風評，那就另當別論了。

校稿也是要注意的地方。

一個好的翻譯至少有三位校稿員，做三次校稿。但是校稿員做的，只是看目標語言的潤，順，達，而比較好的還會留意一下它的雅。讀起來比較費解，或不太明白的地方，他們會做些建議。但只有翻譯原本身會去核對原文，看看有沒有信，保留原意，及準確度多少。很多校稿員做的所謂"修正"，因為他只是看最後的目標語言翻得順不順，而根本就沒去看原文，所以往往做的建議不會被我採用，因為我自己也知道若照他那樣說，確實比較順沒錯，但那不是原文本來說的話。很多時候其他翻譯員就是這樣亂猜，只想潤飾，順達，優雅，卻對忠於原文有散漫馬虎之心的態度，翻出來的東西離原意就差了十萬八千里，甚至也有很多翻出來的根本就跟原來的屬反方向。

如果一個翻譯已經潤飾做到完全毫無任何的異樣感的話，這就表示這翻譯的原意"一定"已經被局部性的妥協與喪失，流失了部份真諦。