How To Differentiate Between Good And Bad Translation?

By Author: Ricardo Lumbardo
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Assess Good English to French Translation

It can never be answered that how one should differentiate a good and bad English to French Translation. In one way, a quality translation is the one that is carried out within the existing budget and meeting all the requirements. But, there are times when the main focus is on the quality of the text. A translated text which is easily comprehensible and written well will help in saving the time of your colleagues and will create a positive feeling in your business partners and clients. You should consider the following things in order to assess the quality of the translated text. These criteria need to be observed by a professional translator while working on your text, and they will also help in display some of the issues that arise when simple translations are made. And, some of these criteria will also apply to translations taking place between different languages.

Use of Scientific or Formal Words in English to French Translation

Check whether English to French Translation makes excessive use of scientific or formal vocabulary? The markedly scientific sounding ...
... words in English may be the straight translations of words from other languages. For instance, if you find use of the word ‘anomaly’ when ‘fault’ sounded natural, you can understand that straight translation is involved. Similarly, if ‘pulmonary disease’ has been mentioned when ‘lung disease’ would have sounded natural, is another example. These examples are commonly found in translation works done from languages like French or Spanish, in which the ‘Latinate’ word is derived naturally and sounds normal. But when translated to English, it turns into a scientific term.

English to French Translation with non-natural words

Next check whether the English to French Translation uses words that can be understood, but not completely ‘le mot juste’? Check whether the translated word uses ‘social insertion’ in place of ‘social integration’? Check whether it uses ‘eventual problems’ in place of ‘potential issues’? And check if ‘administrative situation’ is used in place of ‘administrative status’?

Next check whether descriptive phrases or adjectives have been used when compound would sound natural? For instance, in English a phrase ‘remotely accessible device’ is used, which in other languages means ‘device that lets remote access’ or ‘device that is reachable remotely.’

Next check whether phrases consisting of ‘for’ or ‘of’ have been used excessively when English would have used a compound. A simple signal of translation from different languages is the excessive use of phrases like ‘strategy for sales’ in place of ‘sales strategy.’

Next, check whether determiners like, ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘your’ have been used as in idiomatic English? An example of more than normal literal translation is writing ‘found an increased productivity’ in place of ‘found increased productivity.’ Repetition off the word ‘the’ is not natural in English, and two nouns cannot be shared for same word as suggested by the example where ‘the terms and the conditions’ are mentioned in place of ‘the terms and conditions.’

Narrative Style and Idiom

Next, check whether the English to French Translation makes use of a narrative style and idiom that seems natural in English? Everyone has seen the signs displayed by French museum that for instance say ‘the king will die in 1483.’ The clever signs of English to French Translation can be found from the excessive use of rhetorical questions. When translating to English, the use of contractions or preposition standing will have to be decided. These may not pose any problems in the source language. Check whether the style used gives the impression that your objective is to provide to your target audience? Eventually, the English to French Translation work should sound to be original, and that it has been written in order to express your message in the easy of comprehension and style that you wanted.

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