«whenever we are confronted by a senseless or insufficient wording, as though we had failed to translate the dream into the proper version, we have respected even these defects of expression»1.
I have already devoted space to the attempts made in the Sixties to create tools for so-called "automatic translation", back when the myth of the one-to-one matching in linguistic codes was still pursued and the anisomorphism of natural codes was not yet understood.
The energy and resources that the various initiatives spent in this field have implied gave no complete and reliable result, and practical translation continues along the same lines of the past. Much more significant, for the translator, was the contribution of computer technology not to automate translation, but to facilitate the documentation implied by translation.
In this part of the translation course we have examined many technologies useful in this sense. But if we review what we examined so far, can we say that translating with these tools is an automation? I’d say, no, we can’t. We can console ourselves thinking that these tools at least make the translator’s task quicker and less arduous.
But is that really so?
We cannot give a general answer. On the whole you hardly answer with a simple yes.
For example when I compare the possibility of finding reference texts (whatever they might be) on the internet against the need to physically go to a library to search for the needed book, get it, browse it until I find the necessary documentation, take notes of what is necessary and bibliographical data and get back to work, clearly the internet search is enormously quicker and easier. But on the whole there are many forms of quality control that are now quicker, and weren’t even conceivable before. The translation produced today is often not simply the result of quicker work, but is the result of process that is much higher qualitatively.
For example if you happened to need a Bible quotation, it was necessary to search for the passage and then find it again the target culture edition, but it was obvious that the translator limited herself to one edition, and for just one quotation she didn’t go to the libraries to make a comparative analysis of that passage in all the existing versions in the source culture and in the target culture: the very fact of finding the passage was considered a good level of documentation.
Now with lesser expenditure of energy I can not only find all the editions of the Bible passage I need, but also choose the fittest, the one in which the meaning that the prototext’s author meant to communicate is expressed in the clearest way. If now the single operation of finding information is on the average quicker, it is also true that the operations of information retrieval are much more numerous because neither the translator nor the customer no longer content themselves with what now would look like an approximate documentation.
And the same holds for terminology. Once possession of a specific terminological dictionary or glossary was considered well equipped, now omitting the consultation of terminological data bases on the internet would be considered an unforgivable omission.
If I had to synthesize the consequences of the introduction of recent technology on translation, I’d say that the translator’s work is more complex, it is no longer acceptable that a translator, owing to personal tastes or caprices, refuses to have to do with technology, in whatever field. The translation work has become much more documentable and documented because the growing communication and information channels produce a higher demand of informativity, and translators that cannot live up to it are selected out and eliminated from the market.
This is true also for publishing translations and literary translations in particular. All information concerning collocations, lexicon, structure, dislocations, and more generally markedness of utterances concern particularly the style aspects of translations of fiction and essays, above all the so-called "high level essay writing", often written by fiction writers.
The existence of phenomena of "resistance" and conservationism is more than natural and understandable. In the last two decades I saw many colleagues pass from a position of radical skepticism and hostility – i.e. towards the computer – to its use. People who were not convinced, were forced to do so by the strength of historic and economical events. The same for the internet. At first translators that "used the internet" were considered technology fanatics who were willing to apply them at all costs "even" to fields completely remote from translation. And the main opponents I knew were literary translators. Maybe the collocation of their texts at the borders of society, or better said, at the higher end, where consumers are more refined, induced them to imagine that even their ivory towers needed some channels, cables, plugs, satellite dishes and all the other technical details implied by an electronic connection to the rest of the world.
The paradox of technological innovation of translation process is that, instead of implying speed, has brought slowness. Instead of simplifying the process, it made it more complex. Instead of minimizing work time, it may have increase it.
By contrast, the great benefit of such innovation process is quality. Translation quality – if not in terms of effective product, at least in terms of potentially producible product – has been increasing. This is the trend in most of the field.
Bibliographical references
FREUD SIGMUND, L’interpretazione dei sogni, in Opere, vol. 3, Torino, Boringhieri, a cura di C. L. Musatti, 1966.
FREUD SIGMUND, The Interpretation Of Dreams, translated by A. A. Brill, London, G. Allen & company, 1913.
CHAMPOLLION YVES Wordfast, disponibile nel world wide web all’indirizzo www.wordfast.org, consultato il 23 maggio 2004.
Systran. Information and translation technologies, disponibile nel world wide web all’indirizzo http://www.systransoft.com, consultato il 23 maggio 2004.
1 Freud 1900: 446.
