Viktori Fashion – is it me, is it the hour, or is it the text?...

You all know the feeling. It's two p.m. Or one, or three – whichever is your lowest ebb time… You are either starving, stomach rumbling, or else full and lethargic (too many chips with your schnitzel?...) Your eyelids are heavy… your shoulders sag… You stare at your monitor, and/or at the text on your desk, your clipboard, your copy-holder… and nothing makes sense. The words are just blobs of ink or a concatenation of pixels…

Well guys, cheer up. I think it's not your fault. It's definitely the text!

I reached this encouraging(?) conclusion after gritting my teeth through the translation of a fashion house PR text.

What's with them? Just because they know(?) how to make clothes, does it follow that they're also qualified to write about it? If they're as successful and rich as they imply, can't they hire a copywriter to write a 2-page advertising thingy for them?

Here are a few select paragraphs from the company's – let's call it Viktori – advertising blurb (I've converted it into a .jpg so that it doesn't come out as gibberish on your computer):

Those of you who read Hebrew – I'm sure you share my anguish… And I actually rendered that stuff into half-decent English! Only half-decent, mind you, because I'm not being paid to do copywriting in this case. I can only tell my contact person that she should, diplomatically, suggest to the client to have the Hebrew "edited" before handing it in for translation.

In my lecture at the ITA conference in January 2005, and later in a similar lecture I gave at Bar Ilan University in December 2005, I spoke about the problem of dealing with badly written source material. I supplied amusing examples, illustrating a painful point. But my conclusion was: We translators have no choice; we can't adopt the GIGO approach, it will only backfire. We have to do the best we can to produce a decent text. I'm not saying "brilliant", but decent. Passable. If you have other solutions – I'll be only too happy to hear them.

Who's responsible for those awful speeches and press releases?...

Every once in a while I am called upon to translate, Hebrew>English, a speech or a press release originating from this or that minister's bureau.

Invariably, I tear my sparse hair out as I read the long, clumsy sentences; the non-sequiturs; the needlessly flowery or abstruse language that doesn't say anything – least of all what it purports to say; the poor syntax, etcetera, etcetera etcetera, as the King of Siam was fond of saying (or at least Yul Brynner.)

At some point I said to myself, said I, Well, a Good Minister does not necessarily have to have superb writing skills; he or she can excel at other important things relevant to his/her job; they may be brilliant economists or diplomats. If that is the case, let someone else help them with their writing.

"Silly," says my cousin G., a superb translator, "You don't really think ministers write their own texts?..." Well then, anyone who's seen The West Wing knows that that is A Good Thing! Politicians having brilliant speech writers working for them should be out of the woods. Problem solved. So how come their speeches suck?... Who on earth are Israel's mysterious speech writers who write so abominably, and why are they still in business?

Now, before you get all het up and say that you happen to translate or write for Minister Hotshot and you do a fine job, let me make it clear: Naturally I only get to see a fraction of the speeches and press releases emanating from government offices. Some of them may indeed be just peachy. Or at least very properly written. (Is the "very" superfluous?) But what about those that aren't? Don't they do the country damage? Our hasbara efforts are lame enough as it is; why don't government ministries insist on hiring the best writers and translators around? And we know that we're out there, right?!?...

It's Cold Out There

I was translating some brief company profiles, and for that end checked out the companies' websites. Inter alia, I came across the following 2 lines of Hebrew + description in English:

שם מפעל: "קירור הקוטב בע"מ"

תחום הייצור: ייצור ושיווק של מערכות קירור, מקררים ומקפיאים מסחריים

Shalom@kirur-kotev.co.il

KIRUR HAKOTEV is in no way a "new comer" to the commercial refrigeration industry.

Rigorous on going quality control efforts assures a quality product.

All computers controlled of course!

Two things bothered me: the company name, which in correct Hebrew is written with a tzeireh and should be pronounced and transliterated as kerur, not kirur; and, more obviously perhaps, the mistakes in the English.

However, as I and a colleague of mine found out when we tried to approach some companies and point out glaring mistakes on their websites, the reaction is less than appreciative. Chilly would be an understatement. More like, Yeah? Who asked you, Miz Know-it-all? Just mind your own bizness, willya?

Having paid good money to have their website translated, they don't want to hear that the result sucks. Then again, maybe they asked a non-professional friend or neighbor to do it for them as a favor. Or else, they really don't care.

Why should Shalom of Kerur Hakotev care, when none of his web visitors know that the word is kerur, (with a tzeireh) not kirur (with a hirik)? Aren't his web surfers the same people who say "kansu, kansu!" on chats and forums?...

And if the odd web-visitor is a foreigner who doesn’t know any Hebrew, surely it's all the same to him/her if the name says kerur or kirur?

So why on earth do I care?...