Translation principles

The first time you’re tasked with translating company financials, or a letter from the CEO in Hannover to the American production manager in Texas, or a genealogical document, you realize that the standards you learned and adhere to in ASTM F2575 or ISO 17100 are indeed important, and yes, you must mind them.

But if you were to ask twenty professional translators how they implement or view or interpret those standards, you’d likely get thirty answers. You may never footnote or annotate! You must footnote or annotate! You take your reader into account! Ignore your reader, the text is the text! Never guess what the author intended! Always guess what the author intended! There is only one correct translation! There are a bazillion correct translations! Always use machine translation first! Never use machine translation! You should correct bad grammar and authorship, so the translation is better than the original! You should never correct bad grammar…

You get the idea.

The only hard and fast rule – and it applies more to ethics than to standards: As a translator, you should not advise the reader what to do with the information. Especially if your translation is for a law firm or CPA, you should not tell them, “There’s a gap in their methodology on page six, paragraph three, that you may want to look at.” I made that mistake exactly once, innocently enough, and never forgot the reprimand. Forty years ago.

I’ve therefore taken translation industry best practices and developed my own unique methodology for translation projects. The official DBA I established in late 1989 and chartered in early 1990 is called Translations Verbatim, not because I do word-for-word translations. Especially with German-language documents, such a translation would be unreadable.

The reason for that company name: Unless my clients specifically request that I not do so (rarely happens), every translation comes with a Verbatim Report^SM, which can be in the form of a covering page with my notes, or as footnotes directly in the text. I personally prefer the latter, because it’s easier to understand. But if the translated document is to be included in e.g., a loan application, the bank or lender may want the notes for their review, but also need a clean copy of the translated financials for that loan application.

All subcontractors who do translations for other languages, or for scientific German, on behalf of Translations Verbatim follow the same internal standards I developed for the company in November 1989.

It’s almost as if Translations Verbatim were preparing me for White Rose research, beginning in 1994. Because I took those same principles and applied them to translations of Gestapo interrogation transcripts for my Microsoft Access database. (You can buy the English translations of those Protokolle here.)

Here are those standards.

Format

Whenever possible, I follow the format of the original document in the translation. Unless a paragraph is five pages long (German!), author’s paragraph breaks are observed. If I simply must break down a paragraph for reading comprehension, I note that in the Verbatim Report.

If it’s an older typewritten document (“older” could mean as late as 1990s) where the writer s p a c e d o u t w o r d s for emphasis – a common practice for typewritten documents – I boldface in the translation, and note that in the report. If they underline, I underline; if they italicize, I italicize. And I “translate” exclamation points only if they are in the original document.

If someone has drawn a heavy line to the left or right of a paragraph to call attention to it, I note that in the Verbatim Report.

Handwritten documents – I italicize and place the translation inside forward-slashes. /I should not be included in this trial./ Or, “Father’s birthplace: /Hannover/.” This is most helpful when the handwritten portion has been inserted into a typewritten or printed document. But it also helps e.g., historians or genealogists who need to know what was from a standard birth or death record and what was information handwritten in the form.

Grammar

If the grammar is bad in the original, I leave the bad grammar in the translation and note that fact. When translating the Gestapo interrogation transcripts, this was most true with Freisler’s handwritten documents.

If a word is implicitly implied by the text, but not included, I put it in [brackets] in the translation, and note that practice in the Verbatim Report. If a word is in (parentheses) in the translation, that means the original also included those parentheses.

If a customer specifically requests that bad grammar in the original be cleaned up in the translation, I will happily do so. But I'll still let the customer know. It could be an important tidbit they may not have thought about.

Style

If the writer has penned a five-page sentence, I will break it up into manageable parts. Even native German speakers have difficulty deciphering those five-page sentences. Universities that administer “German for reading knowledge” exams to graduate students lo-ove to throw those in. I think it’s an intimidation tactic.

If a document is written in a scholarly or “wissenschaftliche” voice, then I translate it that way. If it’s chatty and breezy with lots of slang or dialect, I will use chatty and breezy English with lots of slang. If a wannabe has written a “scholarly” document and it’s not scholarly at all, I emulate the shortcomings. In other words, for non-legal, non-financial documents, I try to “hear” the voice of the writer and match it.

If the writer of the original document used the same word over and over and over again, I do so as well. I don’t try to make it “better” writing in English.

I also write out dates, even if they were not written out in the original, for clarity’s sake. Again with White Rose research, many conclusions have been reached in error because the translator for Inge Jens’ Scholl letters mixed up German and American dating, or because wannabe scholars don’t understand how Germans write dates. This is equally important, if not more so, for legal, financial, and genealogical documents.

If someone wants a literary translation that improves on the original text, that wish must be in the statement of work. In those cases, the Verbatim Report is not optional. But it will be as covering letter, not footnoted.

General

I don’t try to “read” illegible sections. This is less of an issue for 21st century word-processed documents. But anything typewritten, microfilmed, or handwritten frequently has illegible sections. If I can make an educated guess, I will add that guess in a footnote or Verbatim Report, not in the text proper.

This is true even when there are other documents that point to logical conclusions. For example, if a letterhead on one legal document is legible, but letterhead for a second legal document is illegible, even if it is written by the same person, I don’t assume the letterhead is the same. I also do not assume that an illegible signature belongs to the person whose name appears on the letter. Especially with German documents, where we frequently see “i.A.” and then a signature – with i.A. meaning im Auftrag von, or “on behalf of” or “by order of” – and where frequently a person will scribble a signature and leave off the “i.A.”, it is not safe to assume that signature and letter-writer match.

If a word can be translated several different ways, even in the same context, I will always translate it the same way and footnote or include in the Verbatim Report. Again, White Rose work provides a clear example. In the indictments and court documents, the prosecutors and judges frequently referred to prisoners using incorrect legal terminology. They would refer to an unindicted suspect (an Angeschuldigter) as a defendant (Beschuldigter or Angeklagter). They would refer to an indicted person (an Angeklagter) as one already convicted of the crime.

I left the false terminology and footnoted. Among other things, this sort of attention to detail provides historical context.

This principle is equally true outside White Rose documents. In regular letters, for example in genealogical work, it matters whether a person is called a Bekannter, Kommilitone, Kamerad, or Freund/Freundin. In order, those terms for friends mean 1) Someone you know, period; 2) A classmate, either in school or university, in other words, you have a connection to them; 3) Comrade, in war-time, a military buddy, but in peace-time, someone who’s not quite a friend, but someone you spend time with; and 4a) If a woman speaking about another woman or a man of a man, a close friend, but not a romantic partner; and 4b) Serious boyfriend or girlfriend (both heterosexual and homosexual), the last step before partner or spouse.

If a translator translates every single one of those terms as “friend,” they have done their client a disservice. The nuances are lost.

And those nuances are what make translation fun.

In 1979, I lucked into a postcard collection in an “antiques” store in my great-grandfather’s hometown of Hof. The couple who wrote these postcards to one another were not related to our family, but they lived and wrote in the time immediately after he left Hof for the United States. The rest of his family stayed in Hof, so this little collection gave me a good idea of how Tante Ida and Cousin Berta lived – the hot topics in town, the special occasions, local gossip.

Fascinating to me as well: The development of the relationship between the two. In the 1880s, they were incredibly proper, the woman demure, the man speaking primarily of his military service. Gradually, their language thawed. By 1905, the date of the last postcard, they were married and receiving happy, congratulatory postcards from friends and family. The birth of a child. An anniversary.

A good translation will pick up that evolution. There will be a difference in the postcard Fräulein Lotte received in 1888, the note she wrote her beau in 1892, and the happy anniversary in 1905.

Nuances are even important in legal and financial settings, not just personal correspondence. In the early 1990s, I made my client extremely happy, and their potential client extremely upset, because of the Verbatim Report I provided my client – a bank. The bank had received a loan application that included the parent company’s German financials.

Even more so than US GAAP, German GAAP has specific terminology and practices that must be observed. German GAAP is based on the Handelsgesetzbuch (HGB) or German Commercial Code. It is still common for German companies to have two presentations of their financials: One according to German GAAP, and the other accord to IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards). The latter is quite similar to US GAAP, with equivalents to FASB and other US financial reporting standards. But the former?

Things such as revaluation of assets, or balance sheet format, are different between the two systems. IFRS permits revaluation of assets, German GAAP does not, with a tiny number of exceptions. IFRS has no set format for balance sheet presentation, as long as all information is clearly delineated. But German GAAP requires formulaic presentation.

So, when this bank’s client presented German parent company financials, ostensibly according to German GAAP, but the format and terminology was all over the place, the red flags announced hurricane-strength abnormalities. I had already learned my “ethics” lesson, but my Verbatim Report detailed deviations from German GAAP requirements. Forty-plus years later, I still remember that they had pretzeled themselves in an attempt not to use the standard word Rückstellungen for “Accrued Liabilities.” Instead, they had called that line item in liabilities something creatively not-formulaic.

The simple note regarding deviation from German GAAP was all it took for the bank to ask questions. And decline the loan application. The bank’s underwriters became my best friends. That German company, not so much.

Perhaps in the end, the thing that matters most is experience in the field. I likely would not have caught an engineering anomaly, for example. Legal, genealogy, literary, financial, administrative, yes. Engineering, not so much. That’s why I hire subcontractors for things outside my area of expertise.

Expertise matters!

Additional services that can be included in Statement of Work

Fraktur – no additional cost. I have been reading Fraktur (see bottom photograph) since 1967.
Old cursive – slower turnaround, and requires larger writing sample and order. But we can do it! And have done it. Minimal additional cost.
Certification of translation: $25 + notary cost.
Documents that require notarization of translation, e.g., immigration documents: $50 + notary cost.
Apostille service: Ask when contacting us for quote. These are a pain, but we do them, because we know they are necessary sometimes.
Marketing documents or anything where the translation needs to be “better” than the original. We do these, but the Statement of Work is stronger, it’s more expensive, and turnaround is slower.
Documents written/ghostwritten for your German-based company. No original document, just a concept.
Multiple professionally-printed copies of a translated document.

Postscript: We do not use machine translation. That is how we get a “feel” for the original document.

You can order and pay online: Translation Services.

Please note that we do not consider our literary, genealogy, or historical translations – whether done by me personally or by a subcontractor – as “work for hire.” Those translations will come with a stipulation in the Statement of Work that subsequent use requires our permission and if applicable, a license agreement.

This is the way copyright law views translations, but too many translators lose “control” over their work and wind up in court. Up front, know that usage of the translation will be clearly defined in the SOW, along with remuneration for your subsequent use of the document.

This does not apply to the vast majority of translations, because it’s for informational purposes at a specific point in time. Financial statements or contracts, for example, will indeed be deemed work for hire, unless you intend to publish and sell.

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Image credits: Top photograph--Manipulated photo of an actual Protokol (Alexander Schmorell). Photo derivative © 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Bottom photograph--photo of a page from the Lutherbibel an aunt gave me when I started taking German... in 1967. © 2024 Denise Elaine Heap. Please contact me for permission to use.

No part of this post may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the “fair use” of quotations that are properly cited and credited, including identification of the translator if applicable. No part of this post may be included in any Large Language Model without proper licensing from the copyright holder, Denise Elaine Heap.