The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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Vol/54 No/1 2015 FEBRUARY/MARCH The Linguist 31 OPINION & COMMENT DEBORAH LANGTON At the end of 2014, the BDÜ Munich group had its usual Christmas meal. 'Here we go,' I thought, 'someone is going to ask about my specialism'. Sure enough, only into the pumpkin soup, I found myself responding to the dreaded question and concluding, rather apologetically, 'and that's the long answer'. It must be so handy if you can simply say 'law'. A specialist is a person highly skilled in a specific field who concentrates on a particular subject or activity. But not everyone has such a clear-cut specialism. My passion is literature and literary translation. But whole book contracts are hard to come by and do not usually make us rich, so translators like me have other ways of earning money, including a host of work that can feed our literary skills and wider knowledge. Wind turbine maintenance contracts, historical considerations in staging a Handel opera, the persecution of painters by the Nazi regime, Paul Klee's rather endearing ploys to avoid doing anything that might actually constitute 'work' while stationed at the Royal Bavarian Flying School, rainforest research for a documentary film, annual reports; these are just a few examples of work I have undertaken over the last few years. Does this make me a dilettante? Or just versatile? It may depend on which definition you use. The Concise OED shows us: Versatility ability to adapt or be adapted to many different functions or activities (archaic – changeable, inconstant) Dilettantism having a superficial interest in a subject but lacking real knowledge of it (archaic – a person with an amateur interest in the arts) We know why translators specialise. It might be to draw on previous professional or academic knowledge: if you've toiled away at Cisco for years, you might as well put all that expertise to good use and draw on existing contacts. It might be to keep your mind and order book less cluttered: you know who your target audience is, which makes it easier to look for work. It might be to maximise your output: repetitions make for speed, which, alongside specialist knowledge, should mean a higher income. So does the lack of a clear-cut specialism make me a dilettante? That is my fear. Yet surely there is a place for translators who specialise in being non-specialists. While we work on each project, it is our responsibility to gain a degree of specialist knowledge in that area. I am currently translating a novel about the Battle of Stalingrad, so I have read Antony Beevor's non-fiction work on the event, researched images of German and Russian tanks, analysed the implications of different types of 'surrender', learnt about typhoid and lice, gazed at archive photographs of the decimated city, and pored over maps, better to understand the rivers, airfields and distances. I have become a specialist, of a kind, on the experiences of the ordinary soldier of the time. However, if I am next asked to translate a novel about a young woman in Leipzig in the period just before German reunification, all my waking hours will be focused on that. Another specialism, but only for a while. I would call this versatility – and definitely not in the archaic sense of the word. In my opinion… Deborah Langton's translation of Christoph Fromm's novel Stalingrad: Die Einsamkeit vor dem Sterben (Primero Verlag) is out in March. TL Are translators without a specialism dilettantes or simply versatile? Congratulations are due to Eddie Izzard, who, we hear, has been voted The Guardian's Public Language Champion of the year, after performing his latest show in three different languages to mark the 70th anniversary of D Day. However, it was Sir Alex Ferguson who hit the headlines on languages, with his professed admiration for multilingualism in the world of football. The Daily Mail and The Independent were among the papers reporting on an interview screened on Boxing Day, in which Ferguson praised José Mourinho for his ability to speak five languages: 'That's an example to anyone who wants to do well,' he said, commenting on the Portuguese manager's career, which started as an interpreter for Bobby Robson. The Express reported that Ferguson had also praised the players Patrice Evra and Diego Forlán for their language skills, and in particular Forlán's ability to give a five-minute interview in Japanese when he was signed for Osaka. The BBC reported on the shortage of language skills in Northern Ireland, where global companies are being forced to look abroad for employees, while The Express headlined the cost of interpreting in West Yorkshire – 'believed to be rising because of a soaring number of immigrants'. They also quoted a councillor who said it would be more economical to employ police officers who have a second language. However, the Mail reported on a solution which 'could banish language barriers around the world': Skype's new translation tool which 'lets people talk different languages to each other on video calls'. The software is so far only available for Spanish/ English, but is being developed in a further 40 languages. One wonders how it will cope with 'sordophones' – a new coinage meaning 'words which sound dirty in other languages'. An online article inviting contributions produced some interesting examples, which are not repeatable here. Teresa Tinsley is Director of Alcantara Communications; www.alcantaracoms.com TERESA TINSLEY