We’ve ben translating some short kid’s stories from English to Arabic the last couple of days and I’m getting a little frustrated. The teacher keeps changing things to the way he thinks they ought to be instead of translating the text. Maybe I’m being too anal about this, but if the exercise is to translate, the meanings should be as similar as possible. In my mind, this means not changing indefinite into definite articles, altering quotes, etc. Some examples:
“One of his uncles” gets translated to “His uncle”
A quote from a character in English is “Mother told me to stand by the door.” He translates it to “(his) mother told him to stand by the door.” When I protested that the charecter didn’t say that, he replied that it was more “correct.”
“He saw people from his window” turns into “He watched the people from his window.”
My teacher didn’t tell me that I didn’t understand the Arabic, but he didn’t see the difference. His versions were more “correct” in his mind. I really don’t think it’s the job of a translator (or a student trying to translate as an exercise) to “correct” the style or shades of meaning in the original. If the author said “He sat by a window,” in the original, there’s no reason to change it to “He sat by the window…”
The other, and more likely but depressing thought, is that his English comprehension just isn’t all that good. Normally I’d forgive this, but he is finishing up his degree in English, he just took an exam on “Macbeth.” True, it was a multiple choice (!?) exam, but still, he shouldn’t have any problems with the stuff we were doing. He certainly shouldn’t be corrected by his student… Grrrr… I don’t mind being wrong, but there isn’t any indication that I am…