I borrowed the Indonesian version of Twilight from my colleague the other day, although I already bought the English version. As a translator, I'm always curious about other translators' works and I want to know how well this person does in translating the most popular novel of 2008.
Well, it was rather disappointing. Not that the translation is unreadable--actually, the words flow quite effortlessly--but there are quite a few mistranslations, and some of them are unforgivable. For example, Bella (the heroine) said that in volleyball game, her friends have learned "not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weaknesses". But the translator of the Indonesian version translated it to "not to pass me the ball...and not to step quickly..." Apparently, she thought the "not" applies to the second sentence as well *sighs*. In other instance, Bella said that in her second week in school she began to "feel like she was treading water, not drowning in it", but the translator took it to mean that she said she began to "feel that she was like a calmly flowing water" (apparently she mistranslated "treading" too). There are other instances such as "jump the gun" (translated to "explosive"), "crooked smile" ("wide smile"), "grimace" ("grin"), "impatience" ("annoyance") and "distraction" ("depression"). Really, if this person had been working in my office, she would have been fired by now. I may sound cruel but these words are everyday terms and they should not be mistranslated so badly to have different meanings altogether. I could've done a better job, and yet here I am stuck with translating Harlequin novels and enslaving myself for a legal translation office.
Anyway...I'm going to see Twilight the movie with my colleagues in a few hours. I have been looking forward to this day, but my excitement has been successfully dampened yesterday with talks about staff meeting (more like a judgment) on Monday. The director has been really pissed with frequent sick leaves among staff and looks like she's going to give us a good lecture (and probably decide the fate of the Christmas holiday). Last week she give two people warnings and cut their salary for this month because they filed for leaves with "unacceptable reasons". The "unacceptable reasons" are, in fact, foot swelling and attending a son's graduation. Fun, eh?
Well, that's for Monday. For now I just want to enjoy whatever little free time I have.
1 comment:
Sounds like a pleasant place to work. Note the sarcasm. :\
I agree. You'd have done a much better job at translating. I can't believe that many mistakes (and probably more you never bothered mentioning) got into such a popular book.
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