Translation lessons from the field.

Going through the motions doesn’t work. Using just any Translation won’t do. A text needs to be translated correctly, from beginning to end, if you want to effectively communicate with your target audience, meet your organization’s goals and… not shoot yourself in the foot. Anything less is not worth the paper it’s written on, and I’ll show you why.

Continuing our 100-part series on Bad Translation, today I’d like to highlight three recent cases where it was pretty darn important to get things right. Nevertheless, bad translation and insufficient quality control undermined these organizations’ efforts, resulting in some negative PR I’m pretty sure they didn’t need. So let’s take a closer look at what happened.

Mythically Bad Translation

Big problems in the United Kingdom over a Brexit white paper translation cock-up. The British government laid out their plans for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union in a policy paper they translated into all of Europe’s official languages. But it turns out that intentionally bypassing the European Union’s translation infrastructure didn’t go as well as planned.

Critics blasted the German translation as “very mythical” and “archaic.” “Unreadable.” “Awful to read.” A “national humiliation.” Yikes! The Dutch translation didn’t fare so well either.

While there are many opinions swirling around about Brexit and the UK’s future, all can agree that a “mythical” translation will get you into big trouble. Where politics are concerned, a good translation backed up by solid quality control is simply the best type of translation there is. The one that’s so good, the only quibbles are policy-based.

Testing 123

Some tests can change the course of a life. Will I go to med school, for example? For students in India wishing to study medicine or dentistry, taking the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), administered by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), is a necessary hurdle. Test takers can opt to take the exam in English, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali or Tamil. Recent events, however, have put student rankings into question.

This year’s exam sitting saw complaints about the Tamil translation, alleging that 49 questions were mistranslated. As a result, the Madras High Court instructed CBSE to award Tamil students 196 extra marks, but the CBSE pushed back, saying that doing so would be discriminatory to other students.

No matter what ends up happening, some students may be left wondering if their future might have been different if the Tamil version hadn’t been mistranslated in parts. That’s not a good look for a standardized test!

Island Problems

South Korea’s Jeju Island, with its mild climate and beautiful landscapes, is a popular holiday destination. To encourage visitors, the provincial government has a website with information in Korean as well as an English-language website. So far so good. But the English version used a translation service that paired real-time translation software with allegedly daily proofreading to devastating effect.

The government recently had to take the site down for corrections after a Korean newspaper asked about the site’s errors. The site suffered from grammar problems and mistranslations, in addition to the fact that texts were systematically cut off mid sentence.

Linguistic errors plus technical errors? This is why quality control and quality assurance will never go out of style.

Tune in next time for another installment of our blog post series on bad translation.

Quality Translation Starts Here

Responsive Translation can spot bad translation a mile away, but we also know good translation when we see it. More importantly, we know how to produce good translation. This will always include translation, editing and proofreading by qualified and experienced professionals.

We’re a full-service translation agency. Certified for ISO 9001, Responsive Translation works in more than 200 languages and dialects. For more information about our range of foreign-language services, please get in touch at 646-847-3309 or [email protected].