Well, fuck.

[luzula]

You have possibly seen me complaining about a long report from my environmental organization that I am helping translate into English. First, I was supposed to do a third of it, which I did. Then one of the other people didn't have time and I had to do half of his part. And NOW, it turns out the third part, which someone else has just finished, is...not okay. IMO the report was not that well written even in Swedish, and I tried to improve on the language when I translated it. But she's just gone and translated it with the same sentence structure in English, which DOES NOT WORK.

Which means I now have 27 more pages to proof-read and partly rewrite, and I have to find a way to be diplomatic about it to that person, who has after all put a lot of effort into it. AAAAARRRGH. /o\

Comments

[meresy.livejournal.com]

I remember when, back in undergrad, I had to write a psychology project with five other people. I took on the editing with an iron fist, because any kind of consistency was impossible without it. And the one kid could not write to save his life. I was nice about it, I think, but neither did I back down. I did more of the writing than I should have, probably.

I have only one language (well, one and a half. I can read French easily enough, as most Canadians can) an even I know that word-for-word translation without playing attention to the structure and grammar is going to end in tears.

[luzula]

I'm not actually sure now that I will be doing the work of straightening out her part--I've realized that an alternative is to shrug and say that I've put all the energy into it that I'm going to. If it's inconsistent, then it is. At least her part is in the middle of the report; most readers will probably read just the intro and the conclusions.

[meresy.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I was being graded on the psych thing, so I was a little more invested in its final form. Extracurricular translation may not be the hill you choose to die on, lol.