Daria Cavallini

From the Typewriter to the Internet: New Tools for the Translator*

My contribution presents the point of view of my practical experience as a

professional translator and as a “craftswoman” working with languages. Since I have
been practising this job for over twenty years, I had the opportunity to grow
professionally and personally in a crucial period in terms of technological evolution. I
consider myself very lucky for that, since technological evolution has enabled
translators to significantly increase productivity, which is a very important aspect of
freelance work.

As a student at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators in Milan as

well as a professional translator starting her career in the early Eighties, the
production of a translated text was a slow and fatiguing process. Just think about the
production of the typoscript. At that time, translators had to go through three very
slow, time consuming steps: 1. handwriting the rough draft; 2. editing the text of the
translation; 3. typing it on a manual typewriter while using carbon paper to make
copies. It took me an average of eight working hours to type ten pages of 25 lines (60
strokes each), even by typing with all ten fingers. Instead, the word processing
software packages available today make the task of the translator simply a matter of
changing and amending his/her first version of the translated text up to the very last
moment before delivering it – by fax or email. In other words, no handwritten draft
has to be produced any more, changing the typoscript involves only a little bit more
effort than just reading it, and it can be easily done over and over again, until the
translator is completely satisfied with the result achieved. My daily average text
output today, depending on the type of translation and the degree of difficulty of the
original text, ranges from 10 to 12 pages of “finished product”, i.e. the very exact
time it took me years ago just to type the final copy of my translated work.

Let us now describe the technical tools which also changed the lives of translators,
this time meaning their way of finding solutions to their lexical problems. In the
Eighties, translators were almost entirely dictionary dependent, because there were
basically no other sources available. At the beginning of my freelance career, I was
on a very tight budget – which is not uncommon when you start working. Buying
new dictionaries, possessing a large amount of different ones was a very big deal.
Even so, I often found myself hating dictionaries, when they proved not to be of any
help. Broadly speaking, I would look up something in a dictionary and not be able to
find it. This problem was partly due to my own lack of professional experience and
partly to the intrinsic limitations of dictionaries, i.e. the way they were structured and
organised. Sometimes users could not find a word because it was not included in the
wordlist; sometimes the word was included, but the specific nuance of meaning the
translator was looking for was not specified: sometimes the proposed equivalent was

*
This paper is a revised summary of my presentation at the round table. The general tone is therefore informal.
not satisfactory for his/her needs. Other times an idiomatic expression had to be
translated, for which the dictionary did not offer any solution and its decodification
on a word for word basis could easily lead to serious mistakes. I am not the only
translator of the Eighties who has experienced this kind of frustration, I am sure. The
problem of “not finding the word” needed was (and perhaps still is) a very difficult
one to solve. Last but not least, the problem originated from the fact that I simply did
not have all the dictionaries I needed, i.e. dictionaries covering every specialist field
that I came across in my profession. In my professional life as a freelancer I have
done translations of all kinds, for the very simple reason that early on in your career
you can hardly afford to choose the kind of texts that you like to translate. Translation
topics ranged from mechanics and engineering to medicine, from finance and
economics to consumer electronics, just to name a few, which specifically led to the
problem of the working tools. Of course you could not buy a specific dictionary for
each topic that you had to deal with in a translation – even assuming that this could
solve all your problems of specialist lexicons. Actually, when you come across
specialist lexicons, it is of utmost importance to be able to access a wide range of
sources, which was a very difficult thing to do until a few years ago. At that time,
translators ended up asking directly experts of the different fields, who could be their
friends, acquaintances or the clients themselves.
Today, problems of specialist lexicons can be much more easily solved through the
use a of a vast variety of lexicographic and non-lexicographic resources. The
translator’s main resource is certainly the Internet. Nowaday translators can access
online an enormous quantity of texts and essays, of images and entire books. The
Internet brings the world to our computer screens. It is up to the translator to make
the most of this invaluable resource. Whatever we need, we are more likely to find it
than not, provided we can rely on a sound research method that should go hand in
hand with good contrasting and translating skills. In particular, most terminology
problems can be solved by surfing the net through company websites and translators’
forums, even by following unusual paths, which can be time-consuming on the one
hand, but interesting and professionally very rewarding on the other. I would like to
give you a couple of examples of this procedure.
In 2002 I translated Globalization and its Discontents, by Nobel laureate
economist Joseph Stiglitz 1. It was an extremely interesting professional experience,
which gave me the opportunity to learn and study a lot. Of course Professor Stiglitz
wrote his book for American readers, which means that he did not feel the need to
explain concepts or expressions that were certainly clear for them, but not equally
obvious for Italian readers, however cultivated they might be. I should also point out
that this book was meant for the general public, therefore the Italian publisher
Einaudi attached great importance to making it as clear as possible also for non-
specialists. This is the reason why I introduced translator’s notes whenever I felt that
something might not be readily or fully understandable because of cultural
differences. In Chapter Three, which focussed on the so-called trickle-down
1
J. E. STIGLITZ, Globalization and Its Discontents, W. W. Norton, New York 2002 [trad. it. La globalizzazione e i suoi
oppositori, Einaudi, Torino 2002].

2
economics, I came across the following sentence: «It is not true that “a rising tide lifts
all boats”». I did not know this English expression and dictionaries did not help at all.
I tried with both tranditional and online lexicographic tools, looking under “boat”,
“rise” and “tide”, but I was unable to find any useful information. So I launched a
search in Google and obtained as many as 59,000 results. This fact made me think
that it must be a famous phrase, but it didn’t ring a bell with me. So I drilled down
and found out that this expression is associated with John F. Kennedy, who coined it
when faced with criticism that his tax cuts would benefit mostly wealthy individuals.
A JFK quote is part of the American heritage, and if you simply translate it into
Italian without explaining what lies behind it, you don’t do a good service to the
Italian reader. So I decided to add a translator’s note explaining that it was a
metaphor used by John Kennedy to uphold his view with respect to tax cuts.

Metafora utilizzata da John Kennedy nell’esporre le proprie argomentazioni

a favore di una riduzione delle imposte che, a suo modo di vedere, avrebbe
potuto aiutare i poveri molto più di altri interventi di ridistribuzione della
ricchezza. [N.d.T.] (Stiglitz 2002, p. 87, note 6)2.

Another example is given by the expression fallacy of composition. It is a mistake

that is made when the properties of the parts of a whole are falsely ascribed to the
whole. In Chapter Four, Professor Stiglitz wrote that «the [International Monetary]
Fund made the kind of mistake that we warn students about in the first course in
economics, called “the fallacy of composition”». After many years of translator’s
work, I have developed a sort of “sixth sense” as to whether or not dictionaries will
help me in a specific situation. Nevertheless, I look up words and expressions in all
possible dictionaries available before I give up. In this case, too, I was unable to find
a translation in my dictionaries and again I resorted to the Internet to find a solution.
First of all, I tried to find out whether we had a translation for this in Italian. The
typical trick is to “google” the expression in inverted commas, plus one possible
Italian word that could be included in the translation. In this case, “fallacy of
composition” + composizione. By so doing, I got 8 results (very few, indeed) from
which I was able to conclude that the possible Italian translations were errore di
composizione and fallacia di (or della) composizione. At this point, I felt the need to
compare the frequency of fallacy of composition in English (53,600 results) with that
of fallacia di composizione (22 results), fallacia della composizione (13 results) and
errore di composizione (81 results, but not all of them relevant to my case). The great
difference in the number of results in English and Italian pages led me to think that
this expression is in common use in English-speaking countries, but its direct
translation into Italian would be meaningful for probably just a handful of specialists.
Again, I opted for a translator’s note:

2
Metaphor used by John Kennedy in explaining his view in favour of a tax cut which he thought would be able to help
the poor much more than other policies of wealth redistribution. [Translator’s note].

3
 Quando si commette un errore di fallacy of composition, si parte dal
presupposto che ciò che è vero per i singoli componenti del sistema sia vero
anche per il sistema nel suo complesso. (Per esempio, A e B sono due ottimi
cantanti. Insieme faranno uno splendido duo). [N.d.T.] (Stiglitz 2002, p. 133,
note 16)3.

I really cannot imagine how I would have reached a satisfactory solution fifteen
years ago, while having only traditional dictionaries at my disposal. I mean:
dictionaries have limits, which are also due to the impossibility of keeping pace with
the continuous evolution of language and specialist jargons. It would be insane to
think that dictionaries could contain every possible word or expression translators
may need, and solve all their problems. Thankfully, today we have very many tools
that can help us make up for these limits. Nevertheless, this does not mean that
translators can do without dictionaries as their working tools, which are still vital
ones. Translators need good bilingual as well as monolingual dictionaries and every
possible kind of specialized dictionary. Ideally, dictionaries should offer not only
lexical equivalents but also grammatical, etymological and encyclopaedic notes, thus
helping users who cannot carry out in-depth Internet research to better understand the
foreign language text by providing culturally relevant topics. Looking up a word in a
dictionary and finding it means mainly one thing: someone else has done a great deal
of «dirty job» for us!

3
The fallacy of composition is the erroneous view that what is true for the parts will also be true for the whole. (For
instance, A and B are excellent singers. They will form an excellent duo). [Translator’s note].