Let the Translators Have the Last Word

My business was once asked to translate an inscription on a public monument. We were beyond thrilled. Who can say their translation work is literally carved in stone?

So we did our best and covered our bases. We checked, double-checked, polished and shined. Our words, that is. The work on the actual stone was someone else’s job.

The translation was delivered as a Word document which our client then sent to the masons.The monument was installed, unveiled and dedicated. But before we could go down to actually see it, we received a complaint. A bilingual participant of the dedication noticed “horrible mistakes” in the text. She called our customer and complained that “the translators did an awful job”. Upon closer inspection, we did, in fact, confirm that the inscription on the monument had “typos” in it. There were letters added, letters missing and two words were joined into one.

We showed our customer the final version of our product which was flawless. The attention turned to the masons who then agreed to replace an entire slab of granite for no additional charge. The excuse was that no one at the masonry shop spoke Spanish so they could not double check what they carved into the stone.

The point of this story is that translators should always have the last look at any text that is about to go public. Sure, the granite story is sort of a nightmare-ish scenario but we have had our share of similar experiences: a translated book that went into print with a last minute mistake on the cover page inserted by the client’s employee; brochures printed by the thousands where a graphic designer accidentally missed the fact that not all text was showing; posters printed with missing diacritical marks because the print shop employee did not know the font used for typesetting did not support the target language.