Never ever look surprised about translation

Friday, May 4th, 2012 In Fun stuff, Life of a panther, Swedish, Translation By Roman I don’t normally do this, blogging away at work. And well, if you think this is an easy job, think again. In one week at Copypanthers, I have learnt a lot! Yes! Business is business and no joke, but we can make it fun. Rule #1: stay away from Google Translate, or use it extremely sparingly, just as guidance. Rule #2: Read and listen to instructions before doing anything…. Especially on the company’s blog I could go on with rules forever, but translation is not just about rules, there must be feelings as well. You actually need to understand what the person who wrote the text means, take a walk in his/her shoes and see how that person wants to express it and put it flat onto paper. Could it be with irony, anger, humor? Is the writer bored, aggressive, interested, delighted, etc…? Here they come – feelings; life without them cannot be. And, sometimes translations still just don’t come out right. For some examples, check out our recent blog post about translating Swedish expressions into English. Just imagine someone saying, “Hello, jump in the blueberry forest!” “Whoa! That was like the cat”. No, I haven’t taken the wrong pills this morning. The first expression means, “I had a ball of a time,” and the second one is a cheerful saying for when you are surprised. Interesting, isn’t it? So how about translating that into French? A Frenchman would relate the second one to food right away, “Did you mean blueberry tart for snack, dear?” as for the first one, experiment at your own risk. What I want to point out here is that languages are beautiful and full of surprises! I am so grateful I have the chance to work within an international team, Finnish, Swedish, American-Japanese, Swedish-Turkish and Copypanthers is expanding, growing! We’ll be busy panthers soon growling at the world! Anyway, I am happy to say that if you need any French translation, or even Italian, Spanish to English and/or French, leave it with panther Stephanie. Bonsoir!