What the guys said, the way they said it, as best we can
Published first in the Translation Journal, October, 2002 It was a Powerpoint presentation, written in English in the U.S., translated into Portuguese in Brazil. The client had just called to say that the translation was unacceptable and they would not pay for the job. Too literal , the secretary had said. Now, I don’t think literality in itself is a problem. A translation is unacceptable if it violates the rules of the target language, if it belies the meaning of the original, or if it introduces needless changes in the style of the original. These three capital sins are as common in freer translations as they are in more literal ones. Once, I wrote an article on translating gobbledygook for the Translation Journal (reproduced here ) and I do believe technical translators, who often deal with unrevised and carelessly written texts, have the right to simplify or clarify a text that would otherwise be tenebrifically befuddling to its intended audi...