Thai To English Translation And Mfa Legalization

[Ratsima]

My wife works in a law office where she is often called upon to translate documents from Thai to English and vice versa. She frequently asks my help to clean up the English a bit. Generally this is no problem. However, there are times when her English translation has to be certified by the MFA as the document will be used for legal purposes.

In these cases she will brook no significant changes to the essence of the Thai original, including grammar (or lack thereof) and word content. She says that the MFA will reject any translation that does not contain the English equivalent of each and every Thai word in the original. Usually this isn't a big problem as it is possible to twist out an English sentence that is grammatical, meaningful and faithful to the Thai original.

Sometimes it is a big problem.

The other day, in an attempt to molify the MFA, she translated this: เรื่องทรัพย์สินก่อนสมรส และการจัดการทรัพย์สินให้เป็นไปตามสัญญาก่อนสมรสตามที่แนบท้ายทะเบียนสมรสนี้

Into this: A property prior their marriage and a property management shall comply with the pre-marital agreement attached herewith.

Tearing my hair out, I offered up several alternatives that were actually understandable and, I thought, reasonably precise renderings of the meaning of the original Thai. She rejected them all as certain to fail the MFA test.

What's the best way to deal with this situation? Is there some secret to obtaining MFA approval in cases where a word-for-word translation produces incomprehensible English?

[luteplayer1981]

Yes Ratsima

I'm afraid I can't offer a solution for this problem that would satisfy the MFA but I do encounter this problem on a weekly and sometimes daily basis and have thought about its causes. I work in a university with Thai ajaans who despite years of English language training, including experience abroad in anglophone environments, still adhere to what I call the 'naive' theory' of translation. I am required to edit their articles and English language pedagogical materials including the occasional translation from Thai to English. They all have been taught somewhere along the way that when translating from Thai to English, they must avoid 'interpreting' (tii kwam) the material. For them, this means sticking to as literal a translation as possible which they take to mean that one word in L1 will have one or more exact corresponding terms in the L2 and adhering to this one to one word by word translation will result in the most faithful rendition. Of course, this is nonsense as it does not take into account the fact that words derive part of their meaning from context. Given the problem of polysemy, this can lead one to deviate very considerably from the meaning of the original sense. In addition to this is the fact that they fail to grasp that languages express concepts, relationships and even concrete referents in often radically different ways. Often in fact, one language will have a term or expression for some phenomenon for which there is no corresponding term in the L2. As an example of mistranslations from Thai to English due to different usage patterns in both languages, take the term kii kiat. This is often translated as 'lazy' in English. However, this will not do in a sentence such as ' kii kiat pai talaat' which I often here translated as 'I'm lazy to go to the market' etc. The correct term in common English usage would be something like ' I don't feel like' or ' I don't want to go to the market' as the collocation 'lazy to + infinitive' doesn't exist in standard varieties of English (excluding Tinglish that is). The problem is, since for the Thai native speaker the collocation 'lazy to + infinitive' makes perfect sense, as it is the word for word equivalent of the Thai original, they do not recognize that it is not acceptable as a translation in English on both pragmatic and syntactic grounds . That is to say, it is grammatical, but meaningless and does not convey the meaning of the original Thai into idiomatic English which reflects current usage because the structure does not exist in English. This is the crux of the problem as the non-native speaker does not perceive the ungrammaticality of their 'tinglish' translation. They also lose track of the goal of every translation which is to convey meaning in context accurately. This cannot be achieved by simply stringing together a series of single word translation equivalents and hoping they will retain the meaning of the original text. This attitude ignores the fact that syntax and pragmatics determine meaning, not simply lexical equivalency.

The case of your legal document is not quite so complicated however, as the meaning is quite obvious and can be conveyed in a straightforward sentence. The task is to inform the Thai speaker that their word for word translation does not retain the same meaning as the original since Thai syntax and word usage patterns are not the same as English syntax and usage patterns.

Sorry for the long reply. This post hit a nerve which I have to deal with frequently. The linguistic naivete of the educated Thai translator/editor is a source of constant frustration and astonishment for me .

Edited February 12, 2012 by luteplayer1981