How can these two aspects co-exist in perfect harmony? I’ll show you my approach, sharing five suggestions:

I meditate. Meditation has been an (almost) daily practice for me for about three years now. I started to notice the benefits from it, both at work and in other contexts, after the first year, devoting five to ten minutes to meditation a day. I haven’t reached samadhi levels yet, but I have less difficulty concentrating, and when possible I avoid multitasking. This last one may seem counter-intuitive, but the quality of my work has benefited as well!

I breathe. In our last discussion I told you how I deal with feedback; well, the first thing I do is simply breathe. Of course, we all breathe all the time, but how many times do we stop and do it consciously? Next time you’re tempted to throw your computer out the window, close your eyes instead and focus on your breath and its natural harmony for a few seconds. It’s such a small thing, but it can quickly change your whole day.

Change your location often. One of the bright sides of being a translator is that all I need to do my work is a PC with good technical capacities and a stable internet connection. As I was already used to alternating working in the office and at home remotely before the lockdown, I try to take advantage of this possibility and avoid becoming fossilised by always staying in the same space. This lets me best organise all my commitments and needs, and makes my working day lighter.

I learn new things. The subtitle of this column is a continuously (re-)written love letter. One of my tricks for keeping my passion for my work alive and finding my motivation coincides with an infallible method for eradicating stress and regaining focus: studying. I quite enjoy it, and when I’m ahead with my projects and there are no other fires to put out, I set aside a few hours in my agenda for a course to improve or expand my skills. It’s also an excellent excuse for indulging my obsession with notebooks and stationery in general…

I work in a team. Does always coming back to this point make me a do-gooder? Maybe, but it’s really important to me, because I’m also quite stubborn and rather sensitive, the type who always wants to do everything on her own and have full control over everything. Dealing with a problem related to a text to be translated or a workflow and how it can be improved is one way to broaden my view of things. Actively working with colleagues has a very obvious positive impact on harmony in the office, but I find that it is also a cure-all for my inner harmony: it helps me shift the limits of my way of thinking and welcome other points of view in my life, and not only professionally.

That’s why I’d also love to hear your views on the subject! What are your strategies for living harmoniously, both in the office and beyond?

_{Cover image: me}, _{drawn by Claudia Plescia.}

English translation and adaptation by Sarah Schneider

L'articolo ATTRAVERSO – COLUMN BY LETIZIA MERELLO (17) proviene da ASTW.

This morning, before sitting down to work, I lingered with my coffee accompanied by the usual questions and chitchat. We told each other how great our holidays were, how traumatic it was to come back to work, how things went for those who stayed in the office. But between one quip and another I don’t see them smiling, their tired eyes or hands busy at their keyboards: instead I see each of their names followed by the phrase “is writing” and three flashing dots.

It’s certainly different from being face to face or giving someone a fun shove while laughing after a nasty comeback, but it’s still something. And then, not everything has been limited to written communication: there are phone calls, video calls; certainly one of the things that I miss most is the spontaneity of communications and, no less important, the possibility of plotting pranks to have a bit of fun with my unfortunate officemates.

This remote connection has been my routine for a year now, but I’m getting ready to go back to the office soon. I have conflicting feelings about coming back in to work: I’m undeniably enthusiastic about and intrigued by the idea of seeing the people I actually collaborate with every day. But there’s also the other side of the coin, on which my introverted nature has become quite comfortable over the last twelve months.

I can’t deny that my communications with my colleagues and superiors have been reduced to the bare minimum, precisely because of the lack of that immediacy that comes from being together in the same environment. To give you a practical example: if I have to consult with someone who’ll be revising my translation because I have a doubt about a choice of terms, I don’t hesitate to do so. But when I happen to translate a patent that concerns an absurd invention (examples abound, but due to confidentiality obligations I must leave it all to your vivid imagination) I smile, perhaps laugh to myself, but then I just keep working, without having anyone to share the absurdity with.

What was once a pretext to get up from my desk, stretch my legs, take a little break and have a little laugh together has become a lonely smile that lasts mere seconds. I feel more efficient, hyper-connected and at the same time detached, a step back from it all. Is this an irreversible change?

No, I have no doubt that it will take very little time to get back on track with my colleagues. Yet on the other hand I have another thought, which is much more difficult to answer: what happens to linguists when they loses their connection?

My job as a translator is to transpose a message from one communication system to another. Technical translation, and specifically patent translation, doesn’t require great empathy or emotional intelligence, but it is still about communicating something. Not only that: curiosity, and consequently openness, are essential in adapting language to technical innovation, which is the heart of every patent text.

Obviously, keeping up to date with the news of the language sector and the different technical areas we deal with, and maintaining my relationships with the people I work with are two very distinct objectives. However, I’m convinced that our most specific abilities are shaped by our daily actions and that general knowledge feeds the details.

In this perspective, contact, listening and dialogue are values to be put into practice every day, both during work and in front of the coffee machine. And the ability to establish an authentic connection with those who work alongside us not only benefits everyone’s openness, but also the ability to constantly find new solutions by working together.

_{Cover image: me}, _{drawn by Claudia Plescia.}

_{English translation and adaptation by Sarah Schneider}

L'articolo ATTRAVERSO – COLUMN BY LETIZIA MERELLO (15) proviene da ASTW.

Today I’m going to tell you instead about a part of my job where I find that a personal voice is essential. You’ll have guessed that I’m talking about content creation for the ASTW blog.

I don’t like setting time aside for writing: I have a practical approach and stopped believing in the elusive chimera of inspiration a long time ago. As my goal is to make my profession better known, I think it’s a good idea to write my posts when I’m in the thick of it, during an actual post-editing or translation project. 

Today seems the perfect day: I’m translating a chemistry patent with some truly repetitive formulas and passages, so much so that I realise I’ve confirmed a few segments without rereading them as carefully as I should, and feel that my brain is begging me to stop and play. How can I do its bidding without being idle?

I know: I’ll pick up my blue covered notebook, take my eyes away off the computer and start writing. It’s like going for a refreshing dip in the sea on a long, muggy day.

For about ten minutes my black Biro produces an almost uninterrupted stream of ideas, some of which will end up in this post, while others might be picked up on and developed later, or end up cluttering the bookshelf in the living room.

I have loved writing since my early years at school, when I told my teacher I was going to be a journalist. Things didn’t pan out that way but perhaps becoming a translator has put me on a more tortuous path to the same destination: shaping my world through language.

I look back at the things I’ve just written, giggle at some of them and blush or even shiver at others… then there’s my internal critic, who never fails to give me his tuppence worth, but I’ve known him for a long time and I’m learning to keep him at bay when he has nothing useful to say.

I’ll have to simplify the sentences, cut out some wordy parts, but on the whole I like what I see, because I can see myself there. And this, dear reader, is precisely my goal, as well as my dilemma: am I too visible?

Every month, I sit down to write my column as a parenthesis, when I can finally get comfortable and take all the time I need. After all, I don’t have to make myself invisible like I do when I’m translating.

Here I can make my voice heard, without disguising any of its nuances. Therefore, unlike when I am translating, I don’t have to hold back from making a sentence flow better, to avoid the risk of slightly changing its meaning, or stay faithful to the text and simply report an obvious mistake in the text rather than correcting it.

It’s an excellent opportunity, but it’s always a bit scary. Both for that young girl who wanted to stay back stage and report the news, and for this woman, who uses words to convey other people’s ideas from one language to another.

You know what? Chemistry patents are not that difficult after all! The hardest translation task, the one that challenges me every day, is quite another: translating myself in a legible form. But it’s also the most exciting.

_{Cover image: me, drawn by Claudia Plescia.}

English translation and adaptation by Marc Vitale

creation

L'articolo ATTRAVERSO – COLUMN BY LETIZIA MERELLO (14) proviene da ASTW.

I’m really pleased with this translation: since I’m ahead on my other projects, I had extra time and energy to dedicate to it. In addition to the usual standard checks, I even read some parts aloud to make sure that the structure of the sentences was clear in some of the longer passages. Everything seemed perfect. Preparing my delivery email, I noticed Martina‘s note when she had sent me the job, and I suddenly remembered what she had written.

Leti, you need to fix the formatting directly in the final translated file.

And my sense of efficiency explodes into a million tiny pieces.

Fix the formatting? This looks more like a puzzle: I find myself staring at a myriad of text boxes, all to be resized and fixed. Images which include text that has to be translated (adding even more text boxes), inconvertible tables, misnumbered lists… all of which you’ll only ever realise once you’ve exported the final file if you work on the text with translation software.

Is there anything worse than text that’s difficult to translate? Yes, and I have no doubts in this regard: dealing with formatting is much worse! This aspect is not discussed nearly enough when we talk about our work, and is a skill that translators sometimes choose to acquire, but which most of the time they learn thanks to experience, turning necessity into a virtue.

The translation services  we offer may or may not include formatting the text to be translated, depending on what the client requests. The general rule in the language services sector is to deliver a document that reproduces the formatting of the original in all respects, but for patents this is not always the case.

Most of the time we receive a text from the client that has already been formatted, or a template and a list of formatting requirements to be met. In the second scenario, if time allows (and this is often the case), we sort it out in advance and send the text to one of our formatters so that the translators and revisers can focus exclusively on their specific tasks. This was not the case today: our client had a very short deadline, and since there was no time to have the text formatted in advance, we decided to convert it automatically and deal with the layout in the final phase. And then of course there was a hitch, just to remind me that it’s Monday.

Luckily I’m no stranger to this sort of “surprise” and, despite my clumsiness and my now-legendary idiosyncrasy for very useful things such as keyboard shortcuts, it only took me half an hour to fix the exported file, which is now in perfect order and ready for delivery. I reiterate that I would have preferred to spend this half hour investigating the different uses of two synonyms, but I’m sure I’ll have other opportunities to satisfy my language nerd perversions.

The ability to cope with these small problems is a factor that can’t be underestimated when choosing who to assign a translation job to. That’s why turning to an experienced translator – or, even better, to a team of experienced linguists – is like buying a Swiss army knife: there are many hidden accessories and you wonder if you’ll ever get the chance to use them all, but when the classic Monday morning setback rears its ugly head, you’ll realise that you’ve made the right choice!

_{Cover image: me}, _{drawn by Claudia Plescia.}

English translation and adaptation by Sarah Schneider

L'articolo ATTRAVERSO – COLUMN BY LETIZIA MERELLO (13) proviene da ASTW.

It starts with the linguist, who carefully post-edits his or her work, especially focusing on the known weaknesses of the translation engine used, carefully rereading everything. And then… remember my waffle from the previous episode? I like to imagine it already cooked to perfection, ready to be “served” to the reviser, who will only have to see to a few final touch-ups.

First a necessary premise: there are different types of revision, which are more or less in-depth or focused on different aspects, all depending on the critical points of the text and what the customer has requested. The type of revision I most frequently do at work focuses on the internal consistency of the text and the adequacy of the terminology chosen, without forgetting routine quality controls, of course. I must admit that I rarely go any further: the average level of the texts I work on is rather high (and I must be grateful to all my colleagues for this, both in-house and freelance!), so if you were expecting a post where I complain about other people’s mistakes, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

You may have already deduced the same, considering my peaceful disposition between the lines of this column: I’m rather easy-going. Maybe that’s why I’m a good reviser; in a sense this is odd, because I don’t like it at all! But it must be said that the details always make a difference, and some soften the blow. These include a delivery of the translation accompanied by a good glossary that will make my automatic checks easier. If the translation also includes specific, detailed notes on any problems present in the original text, it’s quite likely that the revision will be a breeze.

Translators know that distance can work miracles in the success of a job: the best solutions are often found by letting the text rest for hours, in the most fortunate cases days. I say fortunate because those who translate will know all too well that this luxury is often hard to come by. That’s why we have revisers!

The reviser does exactly what we would do if had that extra time: read the translation with “new eyes”, test it to find its weaknesses, and adjust those weaknesses in the best possible way, all without distorting it.

The latter may seem like an exaggerated clarification in the field of technical translations, where a translator has very limited space to add a touch of their personal style. But this is not the case: a good revision must always respect the initial text and avoid preferential corrections as much as possible, and a good reviser must remember that even if the final brush stroke is theirs, the signature on the job always remains that of the translator, with the relative honours and burdens.

In a sense, we could compare the noble art of revision to martial arts: an approach focused on the non-violence, elegance and cleanliness of movements, where you act in defence and not in offence, but without any mercy for objective errors.

However, as a meditation novice (as well as a yogini doomed to the eternal limbo of the beginner levels), I prefer to say that revision is perhaps the most mindful part of my work. And not just because it requires a lot of self-control in some cases…

I’m trying to say that the revision of a text another person has worked on is an excellent exercise in sensitivity: indeed, apart from the obvious objective of checking for a lack of errors, the aim is to understand whether a different nuance is truly useful to the text (for example, if it is closer to the language of a particularly specific sectoral niche) or if it’s a question of personal taste. Thus the reviser’s mission is to accompany the final text towards an ideal balance.

Being overwhelmed by a waterfall of zen wisdom on Monday morning wasn’t exactly part of your plan, was it? Well, these are the risks you run coming to visit me for a harmless coffee break!

_{The cover image is me}, _{drawn by Claudia Plescia.}

English translation and adaptation by Sarah Schneider

L'articolo ATTRAVERSO – COLUMN BY LETIZIA MERELLO (12) proviene da ASTW.