Keeping up with the times in the translation world

“Am I getting too old?” I thought to myself the other day as I came across a word that had been completely unfamiliar to me until that precise moment. While I was watching T.V. I heard this young girl said to her friend, “They’re DUNZO. Kaput. They’ve called it quits.” I immediately recognized the last phrase since I’d seen it several times before, especially in the weeklies, which usually rejoice to report on famous people’s break-ups. Of course, I also understood the meaning of “kaput” – I guess the term is widely recognized. Right? But as soon as the girl uttered the word DUNZO, I was completely baffled. I imagined the term had the same implications as “kaput” or “to call it quits” and that the girl resorted to a third word with a similar meaning to emphasize the idea she was trying to convey. But I must confess that this apparently hip word – which I later learnt is generally used among young people –, was absolutely new to me.

As someone who’s spent several years in college studying a language, I’ve read thousands of times how the language people use varies depending on interpersonal relationships. But never before did I see so clearly why translation teachers used to lecture us time and time again on the importance of getting the tenor of discourse right in our translations.

For anyone unfamiliar with Halliday’s theoretical concept of tenor – though if you’re a translator or you’re studying to become one some day, I’m sure you’ve read about it over and over again –, tenor refers to “the status and roles of the participants.” Therefore, linguistic choices will vary according to whether the speaker is talking to someone of his or her own age or not.

It is then up to the translator to give the text a flavour of the type of relationship young people, for example, have with their friends or people of their own age. And in the same way a translator should carefully choose a term that would convey the same meaning as DUNZO for the younger generations, he or she should also try to evoke the same kind of confusion someone not so young like me felt in front of the T.V.

It is a matter of precision and an extreme sense of accuracy. A translator should always be careful with each and every single word he or she chooses. Quite a complex task that of the translator. Right? After all, it is his or her job to try to convey every little aspect of translations and deal with all the connotations and implied meanings behind a word such as DUNZO, for instance.

And, whether it’s the dual complexity of catering for two different audiences at the same time – one thing is thinking of a teenager as your target reader, but addressing someone not so young as me is a completely different thing –, or just keeping up-to-date with the newest and hippest trends among young people, a translator has a lot to deal with.

It sounds complex and it is indeed, but I wouldn’t change this profession for the world.

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