What is a translation agency doing at a construction fair – or how not to embarrass yourself in front of foreign partners
Around 2006 I was working for a company that offered consulting on construction and infrastructure projects. I was still a student at the Technical University of Civil Engineering in Bucharest. My main job there was to draw: I put on paper what the people carrying out the works would later use on site. In 2007 we were about to become Europeans, so pretty much everything we did there was translated into English: technical and architectural reports, tender bids, and the construction drawings too – my drawings, into which I put so much soul… The texts, written in Romanian, went off to a translation firm and came back translated. Quick and efficient – after all, you do not put an engineer to translate, even one who knows English. His time costs more; every good manager knows and applies that rule.
All was well until the translated text arrived for me. I had to take it and place it neatly on the drawing, in place of the Romanian text, so that Mr. Smith would understand what I meant on the formwork plan.
“PLATE EYE” jumped out at me. I was hungry, and the first image that came to mind was a fried egg on a plate. Nah, I thought, that is a “sunny-side up”, and in Romanian an “eye” (ochi) is also what we call it – and I would rather eat a beef steak anyway. I went back to the drawing and understood instantly. “Plate eye” was the translation of ochi de placă, a void in the floor slab. Very good: placă – plate, ochi – eye. The word order is right, except…
I inherited from my father – although my mother is a French teacher and he was an engineer – a talent for foreign languages, which told me at once that something was wrong. It was obvious, at least to me and to Mr. Smith on site, that the hole in the floor slab that Ion calls ochi is called an “opening” by John, and that the slab is not a “plate” – although sometimes “plate” does mean placă, it is not always a dish. In reinforced-concrete construction it is called a “slab”, and the hole is an “opening”.
I tried in vain to explain to that translation firm how things stood from my technical point of view. Fine, thank you, I said, I will do it myself. And that is how I started translating, willingly or not.
Around 2011 I decided I no longer wanted to be an employee; after all, I could earn that money with less effort, on my own. I wanted to continue with technical drawing – which, I admit, still attracts me – but I got a phone call from my cousin Mihaela in Italy, who had been working since 2005 in a translation agency there: “Hey, you knew Italian, don’t you want to translate? We have technical stuff like this.” Yes, I said, I will try. And it went wonderfully. I enjoyed it too. In less than a year from the first user manual I translated (for a company that makes bar-bending and stirrup machines), Mihaela and I opened our own translation agency, Syncro Translation Services.
Now, after building a team of translators who know the difference between a slab and a plate, and creating an impressive portfolio of major international clients, I can say with my hand on my heart that we can do it, and we do it with professionalism and love alike. If you work in construction or industry and want to avoid mistakes like “plate eye”, write to us and we will gladly explain, over a coffee or online, how important technical translation is for your company.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Warm regards,
Dragoș Vișan
Syncro Translation Services