[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....
On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.
It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...] | [...] Prevoditelji jednostavno nisu dobili priznanja, oni nisu očekivali da će puno zaraditi, samo da će se snaći. Vrlo malo ljudi je zaista bilo obučeno da budu prevoditelji, ali većina je imala potrebno fakultetsko obrazovanje i solidno znanje jezika, barem svog vlastitog. Imao sam prijatelja koji se baš uklapao u tu kategoriju pa se je moj krug prijatelja proširio i na druge prevoditelje. Smatrao sam ih zanimljivijim ljudima te sam otkrio da često dijelimo slična životna iskustva. Nikad nisam imao poteškoća prilikom sklapanja prijateljstava, ali uvijek sam se osjećao “drukčijim” i siguran sam da su i oni to osjetili. Kad je moja prijateljica otišla u mirovinu, poručila me je kao svoju zamjenu. Tada sam ušao u carstvo reosiguranja, o kojem nisam znao ništa. Također sam bio jedini prevoditelj tamo i nisam se imao na što osloniti. Ipak, to je bio još jedan korak naprijed… Na novom poslu, počeo sam pregledavati arhivu, postavljao sam pitanja i natjerao tvrtku da me upiše na tečajeve osiguranja. Viša škola za osiguranja nalazila se preko puta, i ja sam, u njihovoj knjižnici, pregledavao požarne kodove, police osiguranja i kataloge aparata za gašenje požara. Učio sam, i to ono što prije nikada nisam imao privilegiju učiti: istraživanje. Prvi put kada sam trebao prevesti prijedlog za potrebe osiguranja nuklearne elektrane, dobio sam poziv šefa tog odjela koji mi je čestitao na obavljenom poslu. “Prikladno se uspoređuje s onim na što smo navikli”, rekao je. Kakvo ohrabrenje! Dogodilo se to da sam u arhivi pregledavao dokument sličan onom kojeg sam konzultirao kao smjerokaz, ali kada sam uočio da je moj prethodnik upotrijebio izraz “jezgra” umjesto “srž”, shvatio sam da je arhiva beskorisna za mene. Otišao sam preko puta ulice do knjižnice i potražio sintagmu “nuklearne elektrane”. Odmah sam pronašao svu potrebnu terminologiju. Kako biste postali dobar prevoditelj, danas je, naravno, potrebno mnogo više od toga. [...] |