Specific Project Guidelines and Duties
A foremost priority for IIIT translation publications is achieving the highest standard of quality in both accuracy and style. Towards this end, the translator must be prepared to commit to the following guidelines:
Accuracy: Commitment to accuracy is essential. This, however, should not be interpreted as producing absolute and literal translations. The translator has discretion to move away from a specific expression or idiom of the original where it does not render well in the target language. The translator thus has the freedom to restructure sentences and paragraphs and bring in specific expressions or idioms from the target language with equivalent impact, even though the images and metaphors may differ.
Style: The translated work must read as if it has been written in the target language. Therefore, the translator must be able to find an alternative to anything that sounds awkward. Doing so may require the translator to go beyond the strict lexical meaning of the original into functionally and emotionally equivalent forms.
The following guidelines (adapted from the American Translation Association and John B. Jensen’s “On Becoming a Literary Translator”) are important to the process of translation and support the aforementioned IIIT goals of achieving high quality in accuracy and style:
- Read the original work before even attempting to translate it: IIIT recommends reading the entire work first, or at a minimum, portion by portion (e.g., read a chapter or a range of pages fully before attempting to translate it.). Though this may seem tedious, it can provide greater facilitation to achieving the aforementioned goals, as well as reduce the duration of the overall project. This first step will ensure that one grasps the work’s concepts, theme, and style, and identify and preserve the author’s voice, ponder any problematical translation areas and solutions, and ensure complete accuracy.
- Sentence and Paragraph Length: Arabic, like many other languages, has what seems to the English reader to be an enormous tolerance of, or even penchant for, long sentences. Sometimes the long sentences are referred to as “comma splices” or “run-ons” and can be simply clipped apart. More commonly, however, it is necessary to do some reformulation, such as adding in the subject again or substantially changing the word order. One thing that cannot be done, except occasionally, is to leave them in place. (See Clifford Landers’ Literary Translation: A Practical Guide for thoughts on dealing with overly-long sentences.) Paragraphs, like sentences, may seem endless. The English-language reader demands white space on his page, that is, frequent breaks in the paragraph that correspond to changes of direction. To comply, introduce many new paragraph breaks (complying with English standards for paragraph breaks, significantly altering the appearance of the page and increasing the friendliness and accessibility of the text).
- Reread Each Paragraph Before Proceeding: While translating a chapter or some portion, stop to reread each paragraph. This minute reading will catch the grossest of errors, such as omission or duplication of lines, or sentences that make no sense. Nonsensical sentences almost always have their basis in a single word skipped or misread, or misunderstanding of the sentence structure, especially in long, complex
- Allow Time to Pass: Once a chapter is finished, allow at least a day to pass before reading the entire unit again, checking once more for completeness, mistranslation, and nonsense, but also with the ear closely attuned to the cohesion and flow.
- Resources: You should have at all times on-screen dictionaries available for consultation. You will make very frequent use of a thesaurus as you seek a variety of words for a particular concept, or in order to have access to your passive vocabulary—words you know and recognize but might not think of using immediately.
The online IIIT Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Glossary should serve as an invaluable resource for authors, editors, and translators in identifying accurate renderings of specialized terminology. The Glossary provides comparative translations and definitions of terminology from leading scholars and canonical references.
- Vocabulary: You owe it to the author not to “dumb down” their vocabulary. On the other hand, you must avoid the use of really strange words that will bog down or mystify your reader. Even if the original author is trying to dazzle their audience by reintroducing outdated words, or creating new ones, you must use extreme care before attempting to use such devices.
The following should be performed by multiple stakeholders in the project, including the translator, translation managers, editors and proofreaders. Though this layering of reviewers ensures greater oversight of the project which should lead to a higher quality end product, each stakeholder should not simply rely on other stakeholders but should perform their duties to their fullest capacity.
- When Finished, Reread the Entire Book: Concentrate on flow and style, eliminating awkward phrases, words that do not sound quite right, idiomatic expressions that may have been translated literally or inadequately. It is important to read fairly quickly, moving along to see how it reads as a whole. The original is available for consultation but will not be used unless a doubt appears concerning meaning or tone. Attention to English style is paramount at this point. Does it have an accent? Does it stand alone as a book written in English?
- Print and Reread: Once revised onscreen, print the book, paying attention to formatting issues like page numbering, consistency of spacing, and typography. This time concentrate on typos, misspellings, punctuation, among other things that are much easier to see on paper than on screen. Of course, you must be attentive to errors of all sorts, and may change words that had been doubtful the first time through. Any footnotes or quotations from other works are double checked and verified at this stage. This is really your last crack at the work until it goes to an editor.
The following is aimed at helping IIIT further advance the quality of translation publications and should be performed by the multiple stakeholders assigned to the project.
- Creation and Maintenance of Glossaries: As in any translation, glossary building and maintenance is very important, particularly in long texts, where it is easy to forget something you looked up before. Both to avoid repeated look-up and to maintain consistency, a usable glossary becomes especially important.
Initially create a new glossary for each chapter, using a simple table in Word with columns containing the original word, English translation(s), chapter, and page where the original was found. The latter information makes it easy to go back and find the context of the word another time it was used. After the first few chapters, merge individual glossaries into a master one. Endeavor to enter a word every time you look one up.
The online IIIT Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Glossary (IMESG) aims to be the definitive master glossary for all disciplines in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. Toward that aim, the IMESG Editorial Team appeals to translators to contribute to the IIIT IMESG through the site’s “Community” page: https://iiit.org/en/islamic-studies-glossary/community/.