[...] 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 priznanje, nisu očekivali bogzna kakvu zaradu, već tek toliko da prežive. Vrlo malo ljudi se zapravo obučavalo za prevoditelje, ali je većina imala solidno fakultetsko obrazovanje i solidno znanje jezika, barem materinjeg. Imao sam prijatelja koji pripadao upravo toj kategoriji te se moj krug prijatelja širio na druge prevoditelje. Bili su mi mnogo zanimljiviji kao osobe, te sam otkrio da smo često imali slična životna iskustva. Nikad mi nije bio problem sprijateljiti se s nekim, ali sam se uvijek osjećao "drugačije", a siguran sam da su i oni to osjetili. Kad je moja prijateljica otišla u mirovinu, preporučila me kao svoju zamjenu. Tako sam ušao u svijet Reosiguranja, o kojem nisam znao ništa. Također sam bio jedini prevoditelj tamo, te se nisam imao na mnogo čega osloniti. Međutim, bio je to još jedan korak naprijed... Na novom sam poslu počeo pregledavati dokumente i postavljati pitanja, te sam nagovorio tvrtku da me upiše na tečajeve Osiguranja. Fakultet za Osiguranje bio je prekoputa, a u njihovoj knjižnici sam proučavao protupožarne kodekse, police osiguranja i kataloge protupožarnih aparata. Učio sam se luksuzu kojeg nikad prije nisam imao: istraživanju. Prvi put kad sam trebao prevesti prijedlog za svrhe osiguranja nuklearne elektrane, dobio sam poziv od voditelja tog odjela, koji mi je čestitao na poslu koji sam obavio. "Izgleda dobro u odnosu na ono na što osmo navikli," rekao je. Kakvo ohrabrenje! Ono što se dogodilo je da sam kao vodilju koristio jedan dokument sličan onom kojim se bavim, no kad sam vidio da je moj prethodnik koristio riječ "nukleus" umjesto "jezgra", shvatio sam da su mi ti dokumenti beskorisni. Otišao sam prekoputa u knjižnicu i potražio "nuklearne elektrane." Odmah sam pronašao svu terminologiju koju sam trebao. Naravno, ovih dana je potrebno puno više od toga da bi bio dobar prevoditelj. |