Japanese patent translation expert Steve Vitek writes a great article for the
"Translation Journal".
Steve has mastered the unique skill it takes to
participate in the arena of Japanese patent translation
and explains his experience in a very entertaining way. He
has written numerous articles many of which reside on this
web site. Click the link at the end of this paragraph to read the article in
its entirety.
Some 15 years ago when I lived in San Francisco, a
Japanese
patent translation agency in downtown called and asked whether I
could come to their office to have a look at a patent. It
had been faxed to them by a law firm but they were not
sure whether it was legible enough for translating
because, like most translation agencies, they could not
read Japanese. So I took the bus downtown and then an
elevator to the agency's office on Market Street to have a
look at what appeared to be a third generation fax. It was
hopeless. Nobody can possibly read these illegible blobs, I said to the disappointed agency owner and went back to
Market Street to wait for my bus for the ride back home,
surrounded by the colorful, multilingual, and smelly San
Francisco human Zoo that populates the downtown bus lines.
(I used to put on my earphones to blend into the
environment and turn the radio off to listen in on
conversations in foreign languages if I knew the language,
or listen to music if nobody talked about anything
interesting or if they talked in a tongue that was foreign
to me).
Anything that creates unity and harmony and dispels distrust and hatred is a step forward. The translator, obviously, has a very important role to play. I think I am carrying out a task which, in their way, my parents wanted me to perform, and I know that all those teachers and friends from the older generations who guided me and helped me along wanted me to do this, too. The microcosm and the macrocosm converge somewhere—by imposing a tiny bit of order in a communication you are translating, you somehow are carving out a little bit of order in the universe. You will never succeed. Everything will fail and finally come to an end. But you have a chance to carve out a little bit of order and maybe even beauty out of the raw materials that surround you everywhere, and I think there is no other meaning in life.
Donald L. Philippi
Some 15 years ago when I lived in San Francisco, a
translation agency in downtown called and asked whether I
could come to their office to have a look at a patent. It
had been faxed to them by a law firm but they were not
sure whether it was legible......
Click
Here to Read the Whole Article!
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