A descriptive article on the causes and damages during poor translation work. It also offers a summary on using humans vs machines during the course of a translation.

1. The cause and effects of faulty translations
The sheer volume and diversity of translation work that takes place throughout the world each
year confirms there are potentially hundreds of possible implications for defective translations.
The primary reason for inaccurate translations resides with the translator’s lack of
understanding of the content; thus, increasing the possibility of errors where such content may
carry multiple meanings.
Choosing a wrong word or splitting a sentence incorrectly in a legal document may have serious
consequences, as seen in the Convention of Warsaw of 1929 whose tainted translation from
French has been the cause of many arguments in the past. Another example affected the
political arena when, during the US elections of 2000, conflicting instructions written on ballots
for Chinese voters reversed political parties along with poor instructions. A few years later,
12,000 voters guides were recalled for errors translated into Spanish judged as horrific.
Can the selection mistake of one single word nearly push a bank to the edge of bankruptcy?
When the rumor erupted that a Japanese bank may acquire Continental Illinois, a US bank, the
word “rumor” was translated in error with “disclosure”. The idea of a rumor takeover suddenly
became a certainty that resulted in the near collapse of the bank and billions in losses.
To avoid such embarrassment and obvious non-negligible consequences, a translator’s
competence and adherence to high-quality work must be established through the use of brief
written translation tests of various themes.
Employers nowadays should seek out “translator-editors” who are able to translate, revise,
standardize and re-write. We can identify several types of editing:
1. Copyediting - Correcting a manuscript to bring it into conformance with preset rules;
2. Stylistic editing - Tailoring vocabulary and sentence structure to the readership and to
create a readable text;
3. Structural editing - Reorganizing the text to achieve a better order of presentation of the
material, or to help the readers by signaling the relationship among the parts of the
message;
4. Content editing - Suggesting additions to or subtractions from the coverage of the topic.
The ideal candidate must possess native expertise knowledge and an in-depth comprehension
of idiomatic expressions in both languages. Cultures give language different context; thus,
understanding both cultures is crucial in providing the intended adequate meaning. This could
lead to serious errors as well. When President Carter visited Poland in 1977, the translator
ended up making statement like: “…when I abandoned the U.S.” instead of “…when I left the
U.S.”, leading to great confusion.
Machine VS Man
Software may be helpful when simple context are involved; yet, should always be utilized under
the tight supervision of a professional native translator to diminish liability in poor, or wrong
translation. Even the FAQ of the Google Translate tool states:
“Even today’s most efficient software cannot master a language as well as a native speaker and
have by no means the skill of a professional translator.”
DCtechwriters.com