[...] 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 fik bare ikke anerkendelse, og de forventede ikke at tjene ret meget, bare nok til dagen og vejen. Meget få mennesker var faktisk uddannet som oversættere, men de fleste havde en solid universitetsuddannelse og en solid viden om sprog, i det mindste deres eget sprog. Jeg havde en ven der passede ind i netop den kategori, og min vennekreds blev efterhånden udvidet til at omfatte andre oversættere. Det forekom mig, at de var mere interessante mennesker, og jeg opdagede, at vi ofte havde lignende livserfaringer til fælles. Jeg har aldrig haft problemer med at få venner, men jeg har altid følt mig "anderledes", og jeg er sikker på, at de også havde det på samme måde. Da min ven gik på pension, anbefalede hun mig som sin afløser. Jeg begyndte nu at arbejde med genforsikring, et område som jeg ikke vidste noget om. Jeg var også den eneste oversætter der, og jeg havde ikke meget at falde tilbage på. Det var dog endnu et nøk op ad .... På mit nye job begyndte jeg at gennemgå filerne, stille spørgsmål og jeg fik virksomheden til at tilmelde mig forsikringskurser. Forsikringsakademiet lå på den anden side af gaden, og jeg konsulterede brandkoder, forsikringspolicer og brandslukningskataloger i deres bibliotek. Jeg var ved at lære noget, som jeg aldrig havde haft den luksus at kunne gøre før: at forske og sætte mig ind i tingene. Første gang jeg skulle oversætte et forslag i forbindelse med forsikring af et atomkraftværk, fik jeg et opkald fra lederen af den afdeling, der lykønskede mig med det arbejde, jeg havde udført. "Det er bedre end det, vi er vant til," sagde han. Det var optur! Det der skete var, at jeg konsulterede et dokument i arkivet som lignede det, jeg refererede til for at få retningslinjer, men da jeg opdagede, at min forgænger havde brugt ordet "nucleus" i stedet for "kerne", indså jeg, at jeg ikke kunne bruge filerne til noget som helst. Jeg gik over til biblioteket på den anden side af gaden og slog "atomkraftværker" op. Jeg fandt straks al den terminologi, jeg havde brug for. I dag kræves der selvfølgelig meget mere end det for at være en god oversætter. [...] |