Donald Trump is like the bad chiropractor the world never wanted. A president is meant to fix things, but instead Trump is leaving us bruised, sore and bringing to light problems we never knew we had. One such issue is translation.
Historically, Brits don’t care much about translation. Let’s face it, almost everyone speaks our language. World leaders, music, sports, it all comes in a handy English package. And while we hope our future becomes a little more multilingual, for the moment, we’re happy to leave translation in a long-forgotten classroom where it belongs.
The same can’t be said for the rest of the world. If they want to know what’s happening with western superpowers, they’ll need it all translated. And if you think being Trump’s barber is bad, imagine being his translator.
The Language of Lunacy
Translators and interpreters have a seriously tough time of it. First out, they have to be totally fluent in at least two languages, though often many more. I mean fluent to the extent where political jargon has to be second nature. These guys really do have to know words, and have the best words.
That’s just the baseline. Then we bring in Donald Trump, a man whose syntax, grammar and vocabulary is like nothing we or they have ever seen before. Why? Because honestly, he has a pretty poor grasp of the English language.
Let me explain. He rambles like no one else, which means he often starts a sentence in one tense around one theme, then loses track only a few words in. His sentences change, the meaning changes, and everyone gets lost including Trump. Those transcribing his speeches are also having a hard time – they haven’t been writing full, grammatically correct sentences for months.
The Power of Incomprehension
For some reason, many people appreciate his approach. Researchers have suggested that he’s earned the presidency by confusing people into believing he knows what he’s talking about. Don’t understand the presidential candidate? Must be because he’s better educated and informed than you are. For many, it makes total sense.
Yet this is a man who just makes up words. The best example thus far is ‘bigly’. He hasn’t just used ‘bigly’ once, mistakenly, oh no. He’s used it repeatedly. Trump also has a tendency to pronounce words in a confusing manner. Most US satires have picked up on his way of pronouncing China like ‘Gy-na’ and huge and ‘yuge’.
His recent press conference, deemed all manner of madness across the media. It quite literally left people speechless – numerous anchors were reduced to a simple “…wow”.
The Dangers of Sanitising Speech
So with all that in mind, we come back to our point. How on earth does someone translate a speech without sentence structure, full stops and filled with words that aren’t actually words. Interpreters have a responsibility to retain authenticity, style and message of the speaker. But many also work for businesses and networks that expect grammatically correct translations.
It’s a real quandary, one that many have no clue how to solve. It doesn’t matter what language you’re speaking, whether Mandarin, Swahili or sign language – you’re screwed. They usually end up faced with two choices. Some risk the ire of bosses by translating the garbled speeches word for word, confusing everyone who’s listening to it (surely a president doesn’t speak like that?). Others are ashamed to write in such a way and so tweak, improve and correct what Trump says.
This is by far the more dangerous of the two options. It’s vital that what a political says and how he says it are broadcast word for word. We cannot have people around the globe believing that Trump is more coherent and comprehensible than he actually is. When US news deems his press speech “unhinged”, its important for everyone else’s safety that it comes across like that.
For those translators, I can only say good luck, bonne chance, buena suerte, ganbatte and bit-tawfīq. You’ll need it in every language you know.
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