Translators, Smiths of Words

Reaching professionalism in translation and delivering great translation services is not as simple as some may think. A translator is not a machine that takes a text and converts it into another product, a target text. If it were that simple, automatic translators would be kings. I believe that it will always be the case, they are not good enough for the job. Even if automatic translators are set to recognize some expressions, each and every expression can not be entered in the translation software. Let me put to you an example of an automatic rendering of my brother's name from Arabic into English. A machine will translate "محمد حسن" as " Laudable Fine". Both my brother's first name, "محمد", and his middle name "حسن" will be taken literally as adjectives by the machine. Thus, as long as automatic machine translation will be subject to this kind of misunderstandings, human translation will be needed.

But if a translator is not a machine, then, who is he? The first idea that comes to mind is one of a crafter. Indeed, a translator is a crafter. A translator is no more than a baker, or more likely, a smith. I used to think of translation merely as a job in which someone is involved in rendering some sort of services to others. Honestly speaking, this thought had really took me up until I come across a very nice example that explained to me the obvious link between a translator and a smith. As simple as it is, both are artists and crafters. Here, I present to you the example I liked. Let's take the case of a smith making a sword. "He takes pieces of iron, turns them red in order to shape them into a blade. During this step, he can achieve different levels of quality, different levels of sharpness. At this stage, the pieces of iron look like a sword, but a blade made of iron easily breaks. That is why there is another step afterwards. The smith adds coal powder on the hot blade in order to turn iron into steel. Once the blade is strengthened, the smith may sell his work. However, the client will still see hammer impacts on the blade. Would you buy a sword that is not smooth and shiny? Polishing the blade is indeed the last step to be carried out by the smith. Not that simple, eh? "

Again, a translator no more than a smith and he acts in the same way with the source text he is given. He starts with making a draft for the text. But this does not mean his task is over, as for the sword now the text is translated but it lacks the "coal powder" or as we say, proofreading. This means that the translation is still neither smooth nor fluent. "The real task for a translator is to hide the translation marks", since the reader should be conceived that the target text is not the result of translation services but of the original document. "Once all these steps have been carried out, this professional translation will be as sharp as the sword and achieve what it was made for."