Translation studies: a waste of time?
Nature vs. nurture and other controversies
You might want to punch me in the face after reading this. Fair enough. Translation can be a stressful practice, even when the conditions of work don’t devolve into trashlation slavelancery as is too often the case of late, so we all need a little stress relief sometimes. And a fist in the snoot is definitely better than an evening of machine trashlation post-editing or rendering The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump into some unfortunate language.
Recent developments in technology have caused many to question the value and direction of academic programs for training translators and interpreters, but discussions of this kind are nothing new. Translation studies, translatology, traductology, Übersetzungswissenschaft, whatever you care to call it, have very often seemed to me to be a discipline in search of a justification, all the more so when one considers the “end products”—the graduates of these programs—and their place in the professional world and creative endeavors today.
Is it necessary to undertake academic studies of translation to enter the profession? Certainly not. Nowhere is translation a regulated profession, though certain special activities, like work as a publicly appointed and sworn translator for the courts in Germany or Austria, or public service translation and interpreting in some US jurisdictions, may require passing qualifying exams, background checks or other measures that would not apply to translating a novel or a local restaurant’s menu and getting paid.
Are translation studies a useful undergraduate or graduate degree objective? Probably not, especially at the undergraduate level. And my personal observations of specific programs in several countries for more than forty years doesn’t incline me to answer affirmatively for graduate studies in most cases either, however entertaining the programs can be. I am not one to diss liberal arts education or to say that a chemistry degree is inherently more useful than one in English or history degree. University studies shouldn’t be vocational programs but rather opportunities to explore ideas, stretch the mind and prepare it to respond flexibly to the challenges of an uncertain life ahead. But a certain grounding in reality is called for when an academic program appears to relate to a particular profession, and many translation studies programs today do not reflect usual professional practices or methods of organizing work, nor do they deal well with technology nor put the technology trends and their representative toolsets in a proper intellectual, social, utilitarian and ergonomic context.
Will such translation studies make me a better translator? Doubtful. The best translators I have met seldom have a degree related to that activity. They are usually middle-aged or older adults, with considerable experience in one or more professions or in other activities, who have acquired their language skills in quite a number of ways, many of them having little to do with university studies.
And some would say that modern technology such as neural machine translation and AI make learning languages and translating unnecessary and irrelevant. Those people are mostly full of shit, and those who make the most persuaded case for algorithmic extrusion of linguistic sausage comprised of statistically reconstituted human- or machine-trashlated legacy content often have a dubious grasp of their own native languages. Faith in the machines seems most fervent among monolinguals, and incompetent monolinguals at that, an astonishing phenomenon to me even in a world largely ruled by Dunning-Krüger poster chilluns.
But what’s the point? Where is this headed? Why bring this tired, old argument up yet again?
In the past two years I have seen a frightening attrition of experience in the translation profession. Colleagues with decades of experience are retiring early, or are simply walking away and taking up work as hotel receptionists, salespeople, teachers or whatever they can find after the false promises of LLM foolery caused sudden extreme turmoil and diminished earning opportunities in the market for freelance project work.
Some of the most desperate victims of this precipitous downturn seem to be the ones with little background in fields other than translation.
I’ve always been astonished at the belief of some that they can translate well in subjects they’ve never studied thoroughly or in which they have little or no practical experience, but the belief persists that the right dictionary, or more lately that the right translation support software and vetted data resources can make up for AI (actual ignorance in this case). Even brief access to subject matter experts is seldom enough to make up for the deficits that result in a trashlation which, at best, is flawed and in some cases might even be fatal to someone relying on subject expertise the translator lacks.
But the present market conditions underscore more than ever the need for real qualifications that add value, and in particular the value of being able to walk away and do something else meaningful and remunerative.
What that might be exactly could provoke some lively and interesting conversations. Not the least because the chaos of the translation professions is not unique, as similar confusion reigns across a wide spectrum of working societies. And in a disinformation society of festering inequalities and resentments stoked by fascist firebrands hoping to extract more from the stoned apes of our social circus, it’s hard to say what coin of illogic may buy our future.
We live in interesting times.
That smelly old anti-Semite Martin Luther said, with rare good sense, “If the world is to end tomorrow, today I’ll plant an apple tree.”
I don’t have solutions for you. I’m not even sure if I have them for me. Nor for upcoming generations who would try their luck mining the translingual wordface. But though Mephistopheles seems poised to call in payment on our professional bargain, like to make off with our immortal souls, take comfort in the habit of some to cheat the Devil of his due, as
“Gerettet ist das edle Glied der Geisterwelt vom Bösen:
wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen.”
In these efforts to save ourselves and give the next generations a framework for their professional and intellectual salvation, I think an understanding of process and the logic underlying it is critical.
Many years ago as an education sales consultant and systems engineer, I had a discussion with a school principal who was convinced of the importance of teaching students at his high school to use WordPerfect so they could get jobs after graduation. Do you know WordPerfect? It still exists, to my surprise.
I disagreed with the man, arguing that understanding the concepts of “word processing” and how these fit or failed the need to write professionally in various ways was more helpful. Software changes. Features evolve, interaction paradigms of user interfaces change, and without a contextual structure for using software tools to follow processes that are independent of a particular tool, the effort of adapting to change and growing professionally is much harder.
The principal wasn’t buying it, but two years later, Microsoft Word had mostly replaced WordPerfect in commercial offices around town while students in class struggled to master those all-important keyboard shortcuts for a program few cared about anymore.
In a university context…
I think it’s possible to pursue one’s passion for languages in a number of ways. I made it a point to read the subjects that interested me—chemistry, history, cooking and more—in other languages. I spent time with other students from around the world, drank with them and sometimes free associated in a multilingual mashup where we were never quite sure if that Japanese student understood Russian or German, but her response in Spanish seemed just as clear to us. Not one of us considered translation as a career at the time. It was just something we did sometimes if someone couldn’t read a research paper in the original language. Or a recipe.
Translation processes, including technical aspects, are helpful to understand better the necessary communication and production in many disciplines. A course or three in localization engineering or corpus linguistics could be rather useful to an aspiring information scientist, language teacher or psychologist and should be available in electives open to students from all majors. I realize that this goes against the typical narrow focus of European academic majors, but these could all benefit from more interdisciplinary exposure and activity.
Undergraduates are better off pursuing subjects that will serve as a good foundation of understanding for effective translated communication. There’s a reason that the best legal translators have coursework and often degrees in law. The best medical translators typically have studies and usually degrees in nursing or medicine or related subjects like veterinary science. And the exceptions nearly all have long salaried work experience in organizations where daily contact with subject matter experts was part of the job for a decade or more, where misunderstandings were promptly subject to gentle collegial correction.
As long as translation studies graduates were hired by organizations and companies that put them in daily contact with practical experts, the subject matter inadequacies of a translation studies program mattered less. With the outsourcing trend for translation and localization of the past two decades, these inadequacies are amplified as freelance practitioners with no working subject matter experience flip from one subject to another by the day or even hour and hope that a quick Google search or ChatGPT query can serve in lieu of knowledge ingrained by supervised work.
Bring on the Quereinsteiger!
That goofy German word refers to someone who has switched professions. I’ve often felt that it was used in at least a mildly derogative way, but in most cases it’s a good thing, and in translation, it’s gold.
You want a good translation of that aircraft repair manual? Please God let it be done by an aerospace engineer who maybe moved to the country when the wife got a high-powered job and they decided he should stay home and raise the kids since his qualifications from that Czech university weren’t properly recognized in the local labor market. Lots of experts like that out there for a lot of reasons. Maybe work as a government inspector in slaughterhouses brought on a suicidal depression for that once-promising multilingual young vet, but she found new purpose and effectiveness translating the instructions for use for medications and medical devices so they could be used correctly by other professionals.
Coursework at universities and professional training for language services should be structured more in ways to help adults with deep and diverse expertise in many subjects apply those skills and knowledge effectively across the barriers of culture and language. Not so much teaching 18-year olds how basic word processing functions work or how to edit a machine trashlation on topics they couldn’t discuss half drunk at a party.
I see more value in properly structured graduate courses related to translation and localization, populated by students from many disciplines, than in anything one could do at an undergraduate level with all its unformed clay potential.
And when the kids have a solid course of liberal arts or STEM behind them and time spent working not as translators, crossing cultures and adapting messages as part of a professional life, the gifted among them with the greater pull toward the wordface between languages will be fit to give their best in translation, to all our benefits.