[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....
On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.
It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...] | [......]笔译人员的工作就是没有得到认可,他们也并未指望通过从事翻译工作来过上优渥的生活,能够赚到的报酬仅够糊口而已。实际上受到过科班训练的译者少之又少,但大多数译者都接受过扎实的大学教育,并且他们都深谙翻译工作所涉及的语种,至少在自己的母语方面更是驾轻就熟。我的一位朋友正是属于这样的一类人。我的朋友圈子也得到了拓展,纳入了一些新交的译者朋友。我感到作为人本身的他们比起作为译者的他们更令人感兴趣,并且我还发现我们常常有着相似的生活体验。我在交友方面从来都没有遇到过什么障碍,但我总是有一种“另类”的感觉,我确信我的朋友们也有同样的感觉。我的那位朋友在退休时推荐我去接替她的职位。目前我已经投身到再保险(Reinsurance)领域,而以前我对这个领域一无所知。我也是公司里仅有的一位译者,没有什么可以依靠的资源。然而,正是这份工作让我实现了向更高层次的跨越...... 在这个新的工作岗位上,我开始翻阅文件,找人请教问题,并说服公司准许我报名参加保险课程的进修学习。保险学院就坐落在马路对面,我在学院的图书馆里查阅了消防法规、保险单和灭火器目录等材料。我在学着做以前无法奢望做到的事情:资料检索。在我第一次奉命完成一份针对某核电厂的保险建议书的翻译之后,我接到了委托部门的负责人打来的电话,对我所做的工作备加赞赏。他说道:“与我们所熟悉的译文相比,您的译文更胜一筹。”能够得到这样的肯定是多么令人激动啊!事情的经过是这样的:我找出了一些与我正在吃力地翻译着的文件相类似的文件,参阅了其中的一份,看看它能否起到一些指导作用。然而,我发现我的前任译者错误地使用了“原子核(nucleus)” 一词来表示“核心(core)”这一概念,在那一刻我意识到这些文件对我来说并没有什么参考价值。我只得前往马路对面的保险学院的图书馆,在那里以“核电厂”这一关键词进行了资料检索,很快就找到了我所需要的所有术语。 当然,如今要想成为一名优秀的译者,需要做的远远不止这些。[......] |