[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....
On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.
It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...] | […] Oversættere havde bare ingen anseelse og forventede ikke at tjene ret meget, bare få det til at løbe rundt. Faktisk var der ikke ret mange, der var uddannet som oversættere, men de fleste havde en solid universitetsuddannelse og et indgående kendskab til sprog – i det mindste deres eget. En af mine venner var netop i den kategori, og der kom flere oversættere til i min vennekreds. Jeg fandt dem meget mere interessante som mennesker og opdagede, at vi ofte havde samme slags livserfaringer. Jeg havde aldrig svært ved at få venner men følte mig altid "anderledes", og det gjorde de helt sikkert også. Da min ven gik på pension, anbefalede hun mig som afløser. Jeg holdt nu indtog i genforsikringsverdenen, som jeg ikke havde den fjerneste anelse om. Jeg var også den eneste oversætter der, og jeg havde ikke meget at falde tilbage på. Det var dog endnu et trin op … I mit nye job begyndte jeg at læse gennem sagsmapper og spørge mig frem, og jeg fik virksomheden til at melde mig til forsikringskurser. Forsikringsakademiet lå på den anden side af gaden, og jeg studerede brandlovgivning, forsikringspolicer og kataloger over brandslukkere i dets bibliotek. Jeg lærte noget, som jeg aldrig før havde haft den luksus at kunne gøre: at researche. Første gang jeg skulle oversætte et tilbud på forsikring af et atomkraftværk, blev jeg ringet op af chefen for den pågældende afdeling, der roste mit arbejde. "Det er bedre end det, vi er vant til," sagde han. Sikke en god nyhed! Det foregik på den måde, at for at få hjælp slog jeg op i et dokument i arkiverne, der lignede det, jeg var ved at tackle, men da jeg så, at min forgænger havde brugt ordet "nukleus" i stedet for "kerne", konkluderede jeg, at jeg ikke kunne bruge dokumenterne til noget. Jeg gik over på den anden side af gaden til biblioteket og slog "kernekraftværker" op. Jeg fandt straks al den terminologi, jeg havde brug for. Der skal selvfølgelig meget mere til for at være en god oversætter i dag. […] |