the ultimate online exercise system!

Following a fascinating meeting with like-minded colleagues in Hamburg, we agreed that professional translators must pass through three phases of linguistic awareness:

First, the substitutive phase, where word is substituted for word ("le chat" = "the cat" and so on), or phrase is substituted for phrase ("qu’est-ce que c’est" = "what’s that" and so on). This is what we are taught at school, and as a basic teaching technique, it gets us quite a long way. But it’s only a starting point – as we start to study language in more depth, we soon realise that direct substitution is effectively just wishful thinking. Alas, this kind of thinking is positively encouraged by segment-based computer-assisted translation tools. But more of that elsewhere.

Second, the idiomatic phase, where one comes to believe that one’s command of one’s own language is vastly superior to any non-native speaker’s, and indeed to that of many – if not most – native speakers. One takes a more liberal approach to translation, and scoffs at attempts to restrict vocabulary or grammatical complexity. Linguistic legerdemain is the chief characteristic of this stage in a professional translator’s evolution. The translator takes a fierce joy in words, and in his (or her) command of language. But there is still more to discover…

Third, the collaborative phase, where one realises (sometimes rather belatedly) that language is a practical tool, designed for achieving certain objectives, and that while stylistic fireworks may have their place, it is more important that one should write for a carefully defined target audience, in close collusion with one’s clients. It is during this phase that one starts to discover the truly organic subtlety of language and the infinite permutations of style, register, tone of voice, use of vocabulary, length of sentence, presence or absence of subclauses, qualifiers, nominal adjectives and so on. This phase demands an analytical attention to detail that is hard, intellectually, to achieve – a poised state of awareness between subjective immersion in and love of language, and objective assessment of the desired effects and outcomes. It’s the state of mind attained by the best authors, and it is intensely satisfying but also quite exhausting.

We’re quite sure there’s a fourth phase… but three is kind of neat, so we’re going to leave it there!