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JAT Bulletin 175, October 1999
In this third installment, let's look at the time required to translate a book.
Books are meant to be kept in libraries indefinitely, to be referred to, quoted from, and used by researchers. Unless a book goes beyond a first edition, which is not very common, there is no way to fix errors once it is published. Earlier I mentioned that there is a financial drawback in translating books. It is really a twofold problem: it usually doesn't pay much and it takes a long time. It might happen that you want to translate a book because you feel it is too important to be left untranslated and are willing to work for little or no pay. On the other hand, if you want to earn a living with book translation, you will want to spend as little time as possible per book. In that case, you're best off picking small popular books that sell well but usually are read only once.
Unlike document translation, there often isn't any firm deadline for a book translation. When the manuscript is ready, it is handed over to the publisher's editor. But if the book is topical, it is obviously best to finish the translation as fast as possible. In general, the quality of a translation varies directly in proportion to the time you spend on it. Some translators keep revising the manuscript; as a result the publication gets delayed for years. You must know when to stop.Here are a few tips to speed up your book translation. As I wrote earlier, I hardly use dictionaries on the first pass (I do E-J). When I don't know a word or phrase in the target language, I simply enter the original text in brackets. This helps me speed up the translation and see whole paragraphs or pages take shape. Once I finish several paragraphs or pages, I sit down with dictionaries and other reference materials. On the first pass, I pay attention to every word, because I have learned that loose translation ends up taking more time to fix later. I enter the page numbers of the original text so that I can quickly check the original text. I ask the author questions frequently to avoid mistranslations and to save my research time.
Book translation takes time because books usually have hundreds of pages, the translation has to be accurate, and the translated text has to be consistent and make sense throughout. The time it takes to make the text consistent should not be underestimated. The reader must be able to perceive easily that two things that are the same in the original are the same in the translation; likewise, two things even slightly different in the original must be clearly different throughout the translation. The reader must be able to follow every episode and every argument without special effort..
Everyone knows that English and Japanese differ in word order, but the order of sentences in English and Japanese discourse structures is often different too. You will have to add appropriate conjunctions, break or join sentences, or rearrange them within paragraphs. You might also have to do some research on proper nouns and personal names in order to write them accurately in the target language. For every quotation, note number, reference, cross-reference, page number, and so forth, you must make sure that there is nothing missing or inaccurate.
Most likely you will find typos and minor errors in the original text while translating, because it is nearly impossible for proofreaders to catch all errors. At some time, you will have to stop worrying and submit the manuscript. You will have a chance to correct errors in the galley and/or page proofs; your goal should be simply to keep them to a minimum.