The Importance Of Being A Native

The issue of native versus non-native speakers is often debated among professional translators. Native speakers sometime say that translators should be allowed to translate only into their native language. However, for example in the United States, some 60% of the members of the American Translators Association are not native speakers of English, and many of them presumably do translate into English.

There are also practical considerations that one should bear in mind. I translate mostly Japanese and German patents into English. If patent lawyers had to rely only on translators whose first language is English and who have really mastered the Japanese language for translations of Japanese patents into English …. well, only something like 1% of what must be translated from Japanese into English could be in fact translated. A large percentage of Japanese patents, perhaps even most of them, is still translated by native Japanese speakers whose fluency in English ranges from quite poor to quite good or even excellent in some cases, or by native English speakers who don’t really know Japanese all that well.

And there are also translators who “know” both Japanese and English, living in countries such as India and China. I have not really seen any of their translations, but based on the English in the e-mails that I receive from these would-be translators who think that I might have work for them, their translations are probably only slightly better than machine translation. But the show must go on and somebody must translate the onslaught of patents as hundreds of thousands of new patents applications are filed every year. I am sure that even most of these “translators” will eventually find their “niche”.

The situation is similar also when it comes to translation of German patents to English, although it s not nearly as bad, of course, because there are many more native speakers of English who really are fluent in German and many native speakers of German who really are fluent in English. And again, based on the e-mails I receive, there are many translators who were born and live in countries such as India who want to or really already do translate German to English. Again, I am not sure how fluent they are in German, but their English is sometime not very good.

First of all, what is a native speaker? I have been living away from my country of birth for more than 30 years. What is my native language? I already wrote another article with the same title years ago. The truth is, I don’t have a native language any more. I translate from several languages, but I am most comfortable in English, which is (was) not my native language. At this point, I can only translate into English.

Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translators and arguably the greatest translator in the history of translation, translated the New and Old Testament into Latin, which was not his native language. He had to move to Rome first as a young man in order to learn this language. His native language was a dialect of Illyrian.

For almost a thousand years, every book that was written in Europe and was worth reading was written in Latin, which was a dead language and thus not a native language of anybody. No mothers taught their children Latin any more, but when these children grew up, they talked to other people in a language that was “dead” and ye supremely alive, more than national languages, in many countries in Europe because it was the language of instruction at their school and university, and they wrote books in it.

Some of the greatest books of our civilization, such as De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, which was written in Latin by Copernicus whose native language was either Polish or German), were written by non-native speakers. Who knows, had he written his book in his native Polish or German, the Sun could have been revolving around the Earth for a few more centuries because who would have known about his book?

I could go on and on. Non-native writing and translation into a language that is not your own has a long and noble tradition. We should try to remember that our history did not start with the Renaissance. There was history before the Renaissance, and contrary to what some philosophers were saying not so long ago, there was more history again after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

There are also different levels of “nativeness” when it comes to languages. Let us take a look at the “native English” of the recent crop of American politicians. Dan Quayle and George W. Bush are native speakers of English and they went to excellent schools. But neither of them can speak good English. Dan Quayle did not know how to spell potato (during a visit to an elementary school, he insisted that it should be spelled “potatoe”), and George W. Bush did not know the difference between dissemble and disassemble. So much  for the all-important qualification of being “a native speaker”, at least in the highest echelons of power in our country. And the most recent crop is even more promising as illustrated by this parody on a real campaign commercial.

I think that some translators who are native speakers of English try to use the fact that they were born in a certain country as a sort of a “magic place holder” in lieu of other qualifications, especially if they don’t have much else going for them. If you want to translate into a language, you have to be fluent in it, at least at the level of an educated native speaker of that language. But that does not necessarily mean that you have to be a native speaker. Moreover, this is only one of several important requirements for a good translator.

An important one, but not the only, and in fact not the most important one. You also need specialized (linguistic, technical, legal, etc.) education, experience, and let us not forget talent. You have to be a good writer. No single person can really possess in equal measure everything that is demanded from translators these days in our fast changing environment combined in one person. In the end, just like everything else in life, it is a trade off.

The fact is, some native speakers are excellent translators, and some are not. Most non-native speakers cannot translate into their non-native language, but some can do it very well. But some native speakers would never admit that, possibly because they can’t imagine themselves being really fluent in a foreign language, so much so that they could pass for a native speaker.

But just because they would not be able to pass for a native does not mean that somebody else can’t do it either. It really is much more fun to translate from one foreign language into another foreign language rather than into your native language only. I mean, if all you can do is translate from one language into your native language, and mostly only in one or a few fields, where is the challenge in that? It is kind of like being a one trick pony, is it not?

I wish I could ask Saint Jerome how he feels about this issue. I have a feeling he might agree with me. He spent decades translating from several foreign languages into another foreign language. And he kept doing it well into his eighties.

Could it be that one of the things that kept him going in such a challenging job for so many decades was that he enjoyed the challenge of being a non-native translator?

(A commenter on Youtube where I found this video wrote: “The dude playing drums seems quite happy that the b***h is gone. LOL”).