Last week I was on holiday in France, Brittany to be specific. We were staying in a beautifully secluded house halfway up a cliff that could only be reached by a dirt track only just (I can’t emphasise just HOW MUCH I mean only just!) wide enough for our car. The interesting thing that happened while I was there is we went to an aquarium not to far from Saint Malo. Now my only previous experience of French aquariums is one much further round close in Normandy on the coast. Now I won’t name any names but the translations thoughtfully provided for their English-speaking visitors were mediocre at best, meaning I left with a bad impression of the place and a feeling of astonishment at how unprofessional they were allowing themselves to appear to people who had come from such a long way away.
The aquarium close to Saint Malo, then, was the complete opposite of this. The translations were almost impeccable and left me feeling more than satisfied that they care about their customers enough to make sure the image they present is professional and carefully thought out. It is such a shame that there are places, very popular tourist destinations in fact, that don’t seem to worry about their English-speaking guests. What baffles me is the sort of mistakes being made, things that even a child can see is wrong. So I think the main difference is that the badly done translations have been done by a French person and then not proof-read by a native English speaker. By saying this I do not mean to insult the ability of French-speakers, but as my grammar tutor at Oxford always says, it is hard for a non-native speaker to truly capture the nuance and tone of the language when he/she is translating out of their mother tongue. This is why translators are recommended only to translated into their native language. Just think of the money companies could save by employing someone like me to go through and check their translations (if not do them from scratch in the first place).
Now that aquarium on the Normandy coast may or may not be aware of the problems with its translations, but I am certain that should they wish to change them it will be a costly undertaking. If only they’d called me!
~ Chris