Occasionally, I like to think about why I like words so much. What is it about a page filled with words for me to translate that makes me so happy?
Translation is my happy place. It is where I go when I need to refocus, when I need a good workout for my mind and soul.
The other day, I was watching a series on Disney Plus on people who work at Pixar (Inside Pixar). One of the episodes was a portrait of Cynthia Lusk, Director of International Production. I loved it. When describing the main goal of her job, she said, “No matter what language you speak, or where you live, or how young or old you are, you get to feel that connection.”
Localization, neutralization, and translation
She then went on to talk about the importance of “localization” in their movies. “Localization is really about changing the movie for our international audiences. It’s the process of creating versions of our films for people who aren’t watching the movie in English,” she said. While she was not only focusing on the translation of one text to another – her job includes all elements of communication, such as signs for example – my heartbeat sped up as soon as she mentioned that they work with translators all over the world.
They talked about “neutralization” where the graphic is not strictly translated but they “find ways to make the same point” using, for example, pictures. However, she went back to translation for those elements that can’t be bypassed – in her case, a letter written by the father of the character from the movie Onward (Unidos, in Spanish, Onward – Oltre la magia, in Italian, En avant, in French). It was a letter filled with feelings that needed to be translated.
How can you translate feelings to another language? That’s it! That is the beauty I was talking about, where translation becomes my happy place, my Wonderland. It is not only about words anymore. It is here where I can see the difference between knowing a language and being a translator. You might be good at the former but not necessarily at the latter. You read your documents, sometimes you enter a totally unknown territory that requires a lot of research, then you start interiorizing it, until you feel you’re seeing the world through someone else’s eyes.
Is it all about feelings?
No, of course not. After the “interiorization” process, the technical aspect comes in. Translators have to know both languages, their grammar, their writing rules. They also need to be interpreters able to avoid interferences and discrepancies between the two languages. If I wanted to describe translators in a few words, I would say they are a hybrid between poets and engineers (I am sure they both are going to disagreeJ).