atw: Re: Censoring humour in translation (STIR)

Geoffrey :

Thought I'd never flush you out.   And stop trying to drag me into the wrong 
marsh by
suggesting I was demeaning you. I was writing about management, and kept aside 
a special
note of sympathy for people who find they often have to go along with 
management. If I'm
going to have a go at you, pray let me do it in my own terms. See below.


You wrote:
> Peter Martin,
>
> "Someone using your name wrote...". Oh Peter, you might think your customary 
> opening
> line is humorous, but all I can  muster is a groan. See? Your humour just 
> doesn't work
> for me.

Yeah. Agreed. I tend to cut out the automatic text more and more these days. So 
move on.
I didn't get much out of the first few pages of "Cloud Street", but then found 
jewels.
Despite the terrible distraction, I see you did manage to find other things to 
worry
about at some length. If there was humour burn-off, the patient seemed to 
recover.  So far.

>
> Since you brought me into this thread with your very first posting, for 
> reasons that
> escape me, and made it clear to readers that you and I have opposing views on 
> this
> issue, it behoves me to comment, especially after your recent, inane 
> supposition that
> I, and all who oppose you, may come from the "tight-arsed Anglo-Saxon 
> stiff-upper-lip
> [school] of management". (Time to change those pills, perhaps?)
>

No I didn't suggest that. And I didn't suggest it about you. Get the quote 
right, and get
your own pills.   You're finding offence where none was offered.

I was talking about management who don't like jokes because they think somehow 
they
undermine authority.

You couldn't have been more distant from my thoughts in that phrase.

I refuse once again to bother defending something I didn't say..   Of course, 
you want to
confess that humour in the workplace affects you that way.... mmm?  If so, 
you've hidden it well.

> Peter, you might be one of those few who immediately understands every single 
> joke that
> comes your way. But you would be lucky. I've told your hunter joke, and 
> scores of
> similarly simple jokes, to many folk who just haven't got it. Such humour 
> might seem
> simple and universal to you, but to some others (maybe many others) it just 
> isn't so.
> (Perhaps an appreciation of humour is like an appreciation of music: you 
> might think
> that music is so universal that everyone must hear what you hear. But it just 
> isn't the
> case. There are folk who are tone deaf; folk who can't keep beat; folk who 
> couldn't
> pick out a cor anglais from a French horn. It's the same with appreciation of 
> pictorial
> art. Many gaze in rapture before a Tiepolo; others walk by unimpressed.)

Some people like some parts of "straight" technical documentation, others 
don't.  So
what's different ? Some like diagrams, others hate them. Some like to have 
overviews,
others find them superfluous. Some insist on indexes, others don't want them 
and consider
them a waste of time.    So, to paraphrase the Bard, first let's kill all the 
pictures,
wipe out the overviews, forget the index and get down to the really detailed 
boring stuff
no-one reads.  The ultimate communication: a one page abstract every time.

Lots of everyday things don't work all the time for all the readers in all 
contexts. We
live with it, daily.

>
> So, are we to run usability tests, or engage focus groups, in order to test 
> whether a
> piece of humour we are inclined to include in a technical document will work, 
> will
> engage the humour sulci and the instructional gyri of all our intended 
> audience? That's
> hardly worth the effort when the very purpose of our mission, as technical 
> writers, is
> to disseminate practical knowledge, a mission much more easily accomplished 
> with words
> and illustrations stripped of connotation and emotion.
>
Do we have focus groups on all documentation techniques ?

No, like all writing, we learn to pick the bits that we think work at least 
with some
readers we hope to inform. Do we really imagine that every line we write in 
"straight"
technical writing is working for all the readership all the time ? We just try 
to limit
the field and try different things at different times. I've already limited the 
humour field a
little for you by suggesting we're probably better in translation to skip all 
puns and
word play and ethnic stuff in international translation.  There's still a broad 
field
there.

And why is "connotation and emotion" a Bad Thing or Bad Things ?  Do you really 
think
they have no role in everyday communication or -- more to the point -- can even 
be
excluded from English ?    Isn't this a bit like a crusade against "Zeal" or 
somesuch?
English is not a context-free language. Never was. Never will be.  Again, live 
with it,
mate.   You'll never purify the language of connotation and emotion, no matter 
how hard
you try.  You're doomed as soon as you want to say something +must+ be done or 
can +never+
be done.

Some people really +hate+ that.  :-)

So hey, relax and try something different for a change.

> You mention Shakespeare. Well, of course his works got translated. But he 
> wasn't
> writing a user guide and he didn't write to be translated. If he took 
> translation into
> account, he may well have written differently (depending on the size and 
> influence of
> whatever non-English audiences he had in mind). But this is beside the point. 
> You will
> not find a bi-lingual professor of English literature who has not complained 
> that a
> translation of Shakespeare fails to capture the subtleties and nuances of the 
> original
> text. That is because translation is so damn difficult, especially where the 
> language
> is of the emotions.
>

Wait a minute ....    So on that basis, you'd not have Shaksper's difficult 
bits ever
translated ? Is there even one of those bi-lingual professors who then say: 
"Shouldn't
have bothered with this, it's all too difficult ?      Baby and bath-water 
stuff ?    Bah
humbug...   Let's try Goethe instead...."

(And by the way, if none of the metaphors ever came through, do you really 
think any non-
English reader would ever bother with Shakespeare ?)



> But let's get back to the spark that ignited this thread. You, Peter, were 
> challenging
> Kloiber's documents on how to write for translation. Kloiber's company 
> specialises in
> technical documentation, and that is the context in which to interpret his 
> proscription
> against humour. If Kloiber was asked to translate a newly found Shakespeare 
> comedy, he
> wouldn't knock back the job. But no one reads a technical document like they 
> read a
> play, poem or novel. (That's so even your old favourite, the Idiots Guides, 
> whose
> humoristic style might work for you, but which irritates this supposed 
> "tight-arsed
> Anglo-Saxon".)

Geoffrey do try not to punish yourself unnecessarily.   I know you're not 
tight-arsed
-- unless of course, you've suddenly converted, and found that humour in the 
workplace
+is+ undermining of authority -- which is where that came from. Check the 
context. That's
not a role I cast you in.


> Readers of technical documents usually just dip into them. They don't read 
> them from
> cover to cover. They consult them when they can't work out for themselves how 
> the
> product works. They are usually frustrated because the product isn't working 
> as they
> thought it would or should, or because the product is challenging their 
> assessment of
> their own abilities. What they want (and what we, the technical writer, 
> should give
> them if we are to continue in our role as the user's advocate) is the 
> practical facts
> they are after in simple, clear, utilitarian, economical English. Well- 
> written
> instructional text can be maximally economical; well-written instructional 
> text laced
> with humour (and potentially misunderstood humour) is by definition not 
> maximally
> economical. And why should we be fussed with economy of words? Because every 
> extra word
> that the reader has to read in order to get the instructional fact they are 
> after is
> deprivation. You are depriving the reader of time they could spend on other 
> things. If
> you take 200 words to explain what could have been explained in 100 words you 
> become a
> thief of your readers' time.

Ah then we DO differ, remarkably, on this point.   I think that's Dead Wrong.  
Why would
we then have introductions and overviews and abstracts ?   What else are these 
but
"uneconomic" redundancy, if not repetitive simplification? Some form of 
repetition is
sensibly valued in education as an important and invaluable aid to learning. 
It's not
just the 7 times table involved, and good tech writing needs and uses it all 
the time.

It's what we do when we say:  "Let me put that another way..." in conversation.

In tech writing, it's what we do when we add an illustration to a document that 
has
already described something in words.

Dammit, it's what we do when we have a Table of Contents.  (Why bother 
repeating headings
in another context?)

It's not "economical" to do that:  just useful, valuable and often essential.   
 We use a
variety of tools to say the same thing from different perspectives.  Because 
+different+
readers have +different+ perspectives on some things, and some who don't get it 
one way
will find enlightenment if it comes to them in another way.

And most of us like to have some sort of (redundant, uneconomic) map of where 
the text is
leading us, and different ways of trying to pick up complex patterns in 
technical
subjects. It's part of the reason why you, like other good editors, often pick 
up on a
word that is repeated too frequently in a limited context: it's not economical 
to change
to a different word: just helpful.

All tools are imperfect, most are used redundantly. Sometimes, just sometimes, 
a totally
different approach might be useful to get the right perspective for some minute 
part of
the readership.  Even humour, or just plain fun, I suggest.

Julius Sumner Miller sprang to mind easily. Humour, fun, physics.  Who would 
have thought
it ?

Is he really such a terrible demon and hard to translate?



> If it is humour your readers want from a user guide, go ahead and (try to) be 
> funny.
> But you would be living in a different universe. Readers of our documents are 
> not after
> that, don't expect to see it, and may find that it indecipherable, inane or 
> just well
> past its use-by or spew-after date. They will also not appreciate the extra 
> time it has
> taken them to chisel out the information they were really after.

I wasn't actually thinking of indexing a pile of jokes and sticking them in at 
random, as
you seem to want to imply. As I said earlier, some readers already find 
overview text
inane, not worth including, and something to whinge about. So let's ban all 
overview
material and leave them with what they were really after?    Just as soon as 
you can work
out which bits everyone really wanted to read or didn't really want to read.   
There you
go, there's your usability test requirement.

>
> As for metaphor and idiom, you are wrong, Peter, in thinking that no one 
> proscribes
> such devices in text that is to be translated. Every comprehensive manual on 
> writing
> for translation advises against non-idiomatic English.

I will assume you meant "idiomatic" English rather than "non-idiomatic" here. 
And I've
seen some of those manual rules, and some of them are silly, too. (e.g assuming 
you can't
use elisions and terms in common spoken language use) but let's save that for 
another
day. It's part of the same argument.

Returning to the metaphor, if we may, do you really imagine for a minute that a 
competent
translator cannot +ever+ handle metaphorical language in English ?

That not only demeans translators abominably:  it also overlooks the 
metaphorical origin
of many phrases ("frozen metaphors") buried in your own "straight" English. 
English is
largely constructed out of extended metaphors that initially sound silly if 
directly
translated into another language, but sometimes actually have their origin in 
that other
language.

And on a slightly different tack, what else is so much of Shakspere but 
metaphorical
language? Huge chunks of both idiomatic and non-idiomatic English  started as 
his pure
metaphors.

That sort of stuff is really daily bread to the translator these days. (Ooops)

Once again, an "absolute" rule looks silly in relation to the operation of the 
real
world.  Limit the extent and types of metaphor use if you will, but trying to 
ban them is
pointless: the horse has already bolted.

And it's not as though metaphors are somehow unknown or not understood as such 
in other
cultures. It is often the case that metaphorical language is used in the first 
instance
in foreign languages when new technology is introduced which has no immediate 
equivalent
in the target language. So metaphors are being swapped all the time. It's not 
rocket
science to do the swap.  Check the original Mandarin word for a ball point pen,
("yuanzibi" = "atom pen".) People are used to metaphors all over the place, 
even if
they're not always conscious of them as such.

> Which brings me to a point of pragmatism. Peter, you say that translators 
> should bust a
> gut to get a translation right and figure out the humour and idiom.

No I don't.  I say good translators are perfectly capable of getting many 
things right
without busting a gut.   And that they do it everyday, sometimes without being 
noticed by
people who are worrying about other things so much that they may not have time 
to notice
what's been rendered right.

> But languages are such rich, multi-layered beasts that even those you have 
> postgraduate
> degrees in say, French, or even English, don't profess to know and understand 
> all the
> subtleties of the language, nor profess to being able to keep up with the 
> ever-changing
> language. Are you suggesting that a translator, well-down the academic 
> pecking order,
> should have a better grasp of their languages than those with greater study.

Am I ?   Don't think so.... and you might note I've been pointing out that 
there are
areas where translations of things like puns and word play should generally be 
passed
over.

> Crikey: give the translators a break. Let's help them along by giving them 
> language
> that is strong on denotative meaning and with little or no connotative 
> meaning, without
> native idioms and emotional artefacts (such as humour) that simply make their 
> life that
> much harder. And all for what purpose? Just to give some sub-set of readers a 
> chuckle
> when all they wanted to know what how to remove the shim or reconcile their 
> accounts.

You demean my purpose.  I've not suggested +anywhere+ that the idea or purpose 
was just
to "give a chuckle" to everyone for a chuckle's sake.

(I do wish you wouldn't make up some of this stuff.)   [Now I've got that out, 
I +can+
take that pill.]

I've suggested rather that there may just be even an occasional point where a
Inquisition-like total ban on all humorous utterances (feel free to take 
exception to
that) might be eased to allow someone to use humour to make a point.   You may 
not have
found the example joke I gave as funny  (but I confess I found it on a web site 
dealing
with joke translation which said it worked quite nicely and popularly in a 
whole range of
languages cultures, so you've just reinforced my point that some local 
differences may be
more significant than international differences).



And further, you and others might note I didn't have to turn into a highly-paid 
comedian to
"borrow" it.  More importantly, I did specifically point out where it might be 
used to
further the purpose of a piece of technical writing, rather for some irrelevant 
"chuckle"
effect.   And context is relevant.   I might want to insist on having an 
overview, but I'm not going
to insist on bunging it into the 3rd item in a 6-item numbered list. Same with 
humour. Use it
appropriately -- or if you don't want to, fine: just don't imply I'm stupid 
enough to stick silly stuff
in all the wrong places just because I want to try one lousy simple gag for a 
change.

>
> Finally, my company has had hundreds of documents translated over the years, 
> and we
> have used, and then rejected, quite a few translation companies: here, in the 
> USA and
> in Ireland. Why did we reject them? Because even with simple, plain, factual, 
> non-
> emotive English, it is only too easy for translations to go awry. It's partly 
> the
> skills of the translators, and partly the methodology used these days in 
> translation
> houses. First, documents are machine-read (which produces a rough translation 
> based on
> previous translations from a similar domain). Then, a translator works 
> through the
> machine translation and corrects errors. If the machine translation seems OK 
> to the
> translator, it stands. This is a process geared to maximum throughput, not 
> maximum
> quality; and it often produces terrible clangers, which we don't hear about 
> until the
> client's customers start complaining. Yes, an over-reliance on translation 
> memories and
> machine translation, and cut-throat competition, is lowering the quality of
> translations worldwide.
>
> So, given that the translation of simple, plain, factual, non-emotive English 
> is so
> fraught with danger, why on earth would I want to make it even harder for the
> translators by asking them to translate humour?
>
Presumably so they might get some relief from the hordes of people complaining 
about
machine translation effects :-)

I feel for your experience and bow to it....   but that does suggest that if 
some
mangling is going on, there's a clear need for some "non-economic"  enhancement 
of the
context of existing boring text to try to clarify what the meaning of the 
straight stuff
was before it went into the mangler.  It may not be "economically rational"  
and maybe it
won't be humour that will work or needs to be added.

Sounds like you need a Rosetta Stone, for a start.   And you could do with a 
laugh, you
really could.



-Peter M
-peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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