Translating Documents From Thai To English

[chiangmaibruce]

Hi. My wife knows a Thai guy who produces a magazine that has both Thai and English text. I read through one copy and mentioned to him that the English translation was pretty poor (spelling and grammar). He came back to us and said "well how about you guys try translating one article for me?" - a fair response I guess.

Now I can't read or write a word of Thai but I am an OK writer in English. My wife is Thai but speaks English quite well. So we sat down together with this article in Thai, and it was quite an eye-opener for me. I had just assumed that we could translate the Thai words in each sentence, maybe change the order of some words, and that would be reasonably ok. But oh no, by the time we found the best-fit English word (which sometimes took a while) and completed the sentence, it made little sense. Then we had to work out what the writer was trying to say and change each sentence. Still we ended up with paragraphs of very clunky English that was certainly no joy to read.

Eventually I came to the realisation that it would be much faster to just extract the main points and basically write the article 'from scratch'. My wife didn't want to do that as it would disrespect the writer, and it was not what we are asked to do anyway. At this point I gave up as it was just taking sooo long, and we were spending a lot of time trying to agree on the best and closest meaning of things, etc.

So my question to those who frequently do such translations is, to what extent do you have to de-construct the original Thai document before you can produce a fluid, meaningful English document? Is there some trick for young players to make this faster/smoother/more painless? Any other advice before we have another go at this piece? Cheers

Edited February 24, 2009 by chiangmaibruce

[KhaoNiaw]

Don't start off by looking for 'best-fit' English words. Read the whole thing through first to understand what the writer is saying. Don't then go word-by-word but work with the sentences and pay attention to how the ideas are connected. Get a rough English translation first, then work on that.

Thai can be quite repetitive in both vocabulary and ideas. You may need to cut a lot of that out for a good English version. Take time to turn it into real natural English. You cannot just extract the main ideas and write from scratch because you may be missing out on details, examples, little asides, puns, idioms etc. That means that you also need to get the writer's mood and intentions - where you may need a bit of licence if you want to capture it in English. If it's all too clunky and unnatural at the end, that's the translator's fault.

[chiangmaibruce]

Thanks to KN, and for the detailed and helpful PM I received from another member. All good stuff

[aanon]

not to be a naysayer, but it really does take someone who can fully understand the source AND make full use of the target language (preferably a native speaker) to produce top-notch translations.

besides that, I recommend working sentence-by-sentence (putting aside for a moment the fact that where thai sentences begin and end is often debatable). sometimes you will have to settle for getting all of the ideas of the source sentence into a rather unwieldy english sentence before you can whittle and polish the same ideas into something at all readable. this gets easier with practise. depending on the project, it may also be an option to re-order sentences in paragraphs to present a more logical flow of ideas for the english-speaking reader.

keep working on your own understanding of thai if you'd like to go further with translation -- or perhaps offer to edit the spelling and grammar of the original translator.

all the best.

Edited February 24, 2009 by aanon

[chiangmaibruce]

Thanks again. Based on the helpful feedback received today I have prepared and forwarded the document in question. I did have to re-order some material and make various other changes. We'll wait and see how it eventually gets published.

Given my current degree of (non-) experience though I can't say whether the changes required were due to common Thai/English differences in expression, or just nuances of this particular Thai author.

Cheers

- CB