Translate the desired effect, not the words

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the limits of translation. I don’t mean those moments where you realise there isn’t the right word for something in the other language. Rather, I mean those times when you come across a whole phrase that is so imbued with one country’s culture that its translation into the other will result in something that is frankly bizarre.

Take educational attainment. In France, most people will begin their CV or corporate bio with which business school or grande école they attended. Little matter that they subsequently became the chief exec of a CAC 40 company / prize-winning novelist / President of the Republic. No, the important thing is that they graduated from ENA or HEC.

This speaks reams about the French system and how it works. But if you try to translate it into English, those cultural references don’t carry across. Over the age of 25, beginning your English corporate bio with where you went to university is at best slightly odd, and at worst, tacitly implies you’ve achieved very little since.

This is why, every time I have been confronted with the issue, I have advised French executives to move any reference to what they did when they were doing when they were 20 to the end in the English version, but keep it at the beginning in the French. For me this results in an accurate translation, one that is based on a ranking by value of what the person has achieved in the eyes of each country’s readers.

This is a very simple example, but you can take the idea much further. Take speechwriting, for example. A British or American executive, for example, needs to speak in short, clear sentences to be authoritative. Ideally, there should be humour, to show his “human side” and to convey the impression that he is sufficiently at ease to joke in front of the audience. In France, excessively short sentences make you sound cold, and jokes are definitely an optional extra.

I’m a big fan of translation that raises its hat to cultural assumptions. In fact I practice it myself. My English CV begins with the fact I have 15 years’ experience in corporate communications. The French? “Diplomée de l’Université d’Oxford…”