Uniformised vs Standardised

Ok, nevermind the spelling. It's British. The American spelling is "uniformized and standardized".

I've had a sleepless night over the word "uniformised" which I've used to translate the Malay word "diseragamkan". Seragam in Malay is "uniform", so diseragamkan is to make create a uniformity of someting, hence my translation "uniformised".

The Malay phrase in question is... "harga akan diseragamkan di semua kawasan", which I translated "the price of goods will be uniformised in all areas".

But my superior said the correct translation should be "standardised". So the correct translation should be "the price of goods will be standardised in all areas". I kind of agreeing with him. The term is definitely more commonly used, at least in Malaysia.

But to me, standardised has the meaning of having achieve a certain level of quality while uniformised is just about making things looking the same. Had my English was better, I would have argued with him.

But no. I had better learn first.

Sixty Per Cent Knowledge, The Rest Is Guesswork And Research

Sixty per cent knowledge, 10 per cent guesswork, another 30 per cent research. That's the amount of competency I could muster when I do translation job.

The ratio needed for good English translators would be 90, 0, 10. Guesswork must be set at zero because you must never allow second-guessing to creep in the translated copy. You must be very sure of the grammar and the choice of words.

First Translation Job

Several weeks ago I posted an offer to do free Malay-English and English-Malay translations. Well, guess what, there was finally a taker, a guy who wanted me to translate a blog comment.

The original text was a mix of English and Malay but written in a very colloquial way. Most of the sentences had no proper construction, so I had problems digesting the train of thoughts, something which I must establish first before I could reproduced them in a coherent manner.

Anyway, I've done the translation and emailed it back to the sender, free-of-charge. I'm not sure how he would rate my translation. I hoped it was okay.

I hope also that the guy would at least drop me a note about what he thought of the translation.

My offer still stands. If you want my free translation service, just email me at jaxonsblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Thinking In English And The Asian Way Of Saying Things

It was another day at work yesterday until my superior came over to my desk in the afternoon and whispered to me to take a look at one of the translations I did earlier in the morning.

"This is very Asian way of saying things," she told me.

The paragraph in question is about a man being struck by lightning at so and so time. I had translated the paragraph literally from the Malay copy without changing the structure of the sentence.

In the original copy, the paragraph was: "Dalam kejadian pada pukul 7 petang itu, Ali, 27, sedang bermain bola bersama rakan-rakan apabila kejadian itu berlaku," -- which itself is already a badly written copy.

So I translated it thus, "In the 7pm incident, Ali, 27, was playing with several friends when the lightning struck."

My superior said the better way of translating the paragraph would be: "Ali, 27, was playing with several friends when the lightning struck at 7pm." I kind of agreeing with her. It does sound better this way.

By the way, in case you want to know the story, the man died in the incident. And according to eye witnesses, the weather was fine at that time. The picture above, taken by yours truly, is for illustration purposes only.

Translation: Pandai Berkata-Kata

Dia pandai berkata-kata: he has a glib tongue; he is a person who is so glib with his tongue.

Antonym -- Lidah kelu: tongue-tied, inarticulate, quiet.

Claiming That Racial Tensions Have Increased...

Pembangkang mendakwa bahawa ketegangan kaum meningkat. I wouldn't know how to translate this without changing the structure of the sentence, all because of the inability to utilise the word "mount".

The sentence can be translated without changing the structure, like this: "The oppositions claims that racial tensions have mounted".

Free Translation Service For Bed Engish Readers

I provide Malay-English and English-Malay translation. Although my English is not top-notch yet, I'm a competent Malay language writer, so translating English documents into Malay will not be a problem.

It's the other way around that can prove to be a problem. But I'm learning; and eventhough I may have to take more time to translate Malay documents into English, I should be able to deliver to job, provided the subjects are not too complicated.

I can't do rocket science translation though, whether in English or in Malay. This also applies to complex articles for medical journals or legal documents. Other than that, I'm yours. Signed, sealed and delivered. I'm yours.

If you feel I can be of any service to you, feel free to contact me at jaxonsblog at gmail.com. I'm providing this service as part of my learning process, so it will be free-of-charge for documents of up to 600 words per 24-hour day.

Here's the deal. I'll take one translation job per day but if you have a long article, say 2,000 words, I can still translate it for free but I'm going to need some days to do it. That will work out to be around four days.

But what if I receive translation requests from many people at the same time? If that is the case, I'll still be sticking to my schedule of one job per day. So it will be on first-come first-serve basis. I will try as far as possible to accomodate every request though.

Is there a catch? Yes, but it's not binding. It's only that if you find my service to be of any commercial use, then we can of course work out something. A deal of sort that is not too straining for both sides.

Translation: Pemulihan Cara Kerja/Terapi Cara Kerja

I was searching high and low the other day for the correct translation of the Malay phrase pemulihan cara kerja which is also known as terapi cara kerja. If you translate it literally you will end up with work methods rehabilitation or work methods therapy or the closest will be, work rehabilitation or work therapy.

Basically it's about efforts to rehabilitate the disabled so that they can either work or resume working after a period of disability.

Then the word just came in. It's occupational theraphy or occupational rehabilitation. I managed to find the correct translation after Google-ing the Malaysian Health Ministry's website.

When I keyed in the phrase "cara kerja therapy" in the search function, it came back with a list of jobs and one of them is Occupational Therapist, if I was not mistaken. Then I Google again the term occupational therapy just to double check and bingo! It's the right translation.

Lampu Terpasang Sejak Siang

How do you translate "Beliau menelefon polis apabila mendapati lampu di rumah jirannya terpasang sejak siang"?

"He called the police upon noticing the light in his neighbour's house is switched on since...?"

How Do You Translate "Pintu Air"?

Recently, while I was translating a Malay copy, I came across a noun, "pintu air". If you translate it literally you'd get "water door".

Frankly, I've never heard of the word before. At first I thought the phrase referred to areas somewhere near the rivermouth but it didn't make sense. Why would you call a rivermouth "pintu air" when you already have the word rivermouth to describe what you meant.

Anyway, I asked my Malay colleague about the meaning of pintu air and was told that it had something to do with irrigation. "It's a structure you build across the irrigation canal so that you can slow the flow of water or stop it altogether," he said.

In the end I settled for "water outlet in irrigation system". Alas, the correct word was "sluice" (see picture)