[...] 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. [...] | [...] Prevajalci preprosto nikoli niso bili priznani. Tudi niso pričakovali bajnih zaslužkov, samo da so imeli za kruh in mleko. Zelo malo ljudi je bilo pravzaprav šolanih za prevajalce, velika večina jih je imela solidno univerzitetno izobrazbo in dobro znanje jezikov, vsaj svojega lastnega jezika. Imela sem prijateljico, ki je spadala točno v to kategorijo, in moj krog prijateljev se je razširil na še druge prevajalce. Zdelo se mi je, da so kot ljudje veliko bolj zanimivi in odkrila sem, da smo pogosto imeli podobne življenjske izkušnje. Nikoli nisem imela problemov poiskati si prijatelje, toda vedno sem se počutila “drugačno” in prepričana sem, da so to občutili tudi oni. Ko se je prijateljica upokojila, me je priporočila kot svojo zamenjavo. Nenadoma sem vstopila v svet pozavarovalništva, o katerem nisem imela pojma. Prav tako sem bila edina prevajalka, zato nisem imela ravno osnove znanja, iz katerega bi lahko črpala. Vseeno pa je bil to velik korak naprej... V novi službi sem začela prebirati dokumente, postavljati vprašanja in prišla do tega, da me je delodajalec vpisal na zavarovalniške tečaje. Šola za zavarovalništvo je bila nasproti čez cesto in tako sem začela listati požarna pravila, zavarovalne police in kataloge gasilnih aparatov v njihovi knjižnici. Učila sem se početi nekaj, kar je bil zame prej nedosegljivi luksuz – raziskovanje. Prvič, ko sem morala prevesti predlog pogodbe za zavarovanje jedrske elektrarne, me je poklical vodja oddelka in mi čestital za opravljeno delo. »Kar dobro se bere v primerjavi s tem, na kar smo navajeni,« je rekel. Kakšen povzpetnik! Zgodilo se je tole – pregledala sem dokument v spisih, podoben temu, s katerim sem se ukvarjala, da bi našla smernice, vendar sem opazila, da je moja predhodnica uporabila besedo »nukleus« namesto »jedro«, in tako sem ugotovila, da so ti dokumenti zame neuporabni. Šla sem čez cesto v knjižnico in poiskala zvezo »jedrske elektrarne«. Takoj sem našla vso terminologijo, ki sem jo potrebovala. Seveda je danes potrebno še veliko več kot to, da bi bili dobri prevajalci. [...] |