Hi! My name is Krystian Aparta,
and I'm going to talk about translating terminology.
So, as translators, we all know
that because one word can mean many things,
we can't just translate a word,
but we first need to find out what concept it refers to,
and then, what words are used for that concept in our target language.
And it's usually enough to look at the context for that.
So with a word like "mouse" in the first sentence here,
from the context, we know that it refers to just our general domain
of the knowledge and experience with mice,
and in the second sentence, it refers to a more specialized domain
of computer devices.
When we're translating a word like "mouse" in the first sentence,
we just go to our general knowledge of the language,
and do a so-called "literal" or "word-for-word" translation.
But with a word like "mouse" in the second sentence
that refers to a specialized domain,
we can't really do a literal translation,
but first, we need to find out...
Well, if we didn't know anything about computers,
we would need to do some research
and find out what this device is called in our language.
And this is important,
because even though in English one word can refer to both things,
in a foreign language the specialized term can have a different, non-literal translation.
For example, in Japanese, "mouse" in the rodent sense is "nezumi,"
and "mouse" as the computer pointing device is "mausu."
And you can tell that "mausu" and "nezumi" are totally different.
I will refer to a word that refers to a specialized domain as a "term."
Now, it's usually easy to tell that a word or phrase is a term.
Very often, terms are capitalized.
So, these two phrases mean something completely different,
and they may have a different translation in your language.
Like in Spanish, the landmark sense is "la Gran Muralla China,"
and the literal translation is "la pared grande,"
which is just some wall in a house somewhere.
Also, words that seem difficult or "sound foreign" are often terms.
So when we come across a word like "velocity" or "aperture,"
we sort of get the feeling that we need to look it up.
There are cases, though, where it's hard to tell if a word is actually a term,
and then we need to, first, find out if it does work like a term in English,
and then whether there is an established translation in our target language,
or if we have to make up our own.
And I would like to share an experience like this...
that happened when I was reviewing the Polish translation
of Janna Levin's talk on the sound of the universe
by Kinga Skorupska.
And this example is used by the translator's permission.
At one point in the talk, Janna Levin uses the phrase "dust lanes,"
which was translated in Polish as "ścieżki pyłu,"
a literal translation that basically means "paths of dust."
And because Janna Levin uses a lot of specialist vocabulary in her talk,
I wasn't really sure if the literal translation would work.
So, I needed to find out if "dust lane" is a term.
I started by googling "'dust lane' galaxy,"
and these quotation marks are there to look for this exact phrase.
And I found this Wikipedia entry on the Sombrero galaxy,
which did contain the term "dust lane" in the same meaning.
So, this confirmed that "dust lane" was indeed a term in English.
Now, I needed to find the Polish translation.
And the first thing I did was to go to the Polish entry on the Sombrero galaxy,
which contained this sentence, translated literally as:
"is partially occluded by a belt (torus) of nonluminescent matter."
And at this point, "torus" seemed like a good enough candidate for "dust lane" in Polish,
but I wasn't really sure if this was only a word used in this article
or the established term in Polish.
And to find out about this, I did another Google search,
this time in Polish, for "torus galaktyka."
And I found this Wikipedia entry on the Seyfert galaxy,
containing this sentence, which literally translates as:
la la la, "closest vicinity of the active core (known as a dust torus)."
And there!
I thought I was done, and this was my translation:
"dust lane" translates as "torus pyłowy" or "dust torus" in Polish.
But then I thought they may not be that similar.
Because as much as a "lane," usually being straight,
can sometimes be used for something circular,
a "torus" is always like a circle.
So, I needed to find out if the term "dust lane" in English
was really used for something circular,
like a "torus" would be.
I went to Google again, and did a search for "'dust lane' galaxy,"
but this time an image search.
But all it gave me were these pretty images of galaxies,
but nothing to confirm or disconfirm my idea.
Then, I did another search,
for "'straight|long' dust lane',"
and this straight line works like "OR."
This is because we don't usually refer to circles as "straight" or "long."
This brought me to a page containing images and descriptions of galaxies,
and one of the descriptions had the phrase "long dust lane" in it.
But comparing the descriptions and images for other galaxies on this page,
I saw that they were all pretty similar.
So, "dust lane" did refer to something circular in all these images.
And there, I had my term.
"Dust lane" was translated as "torus pyłowy,"
or literally "dust torus," in Polish.
As translators, you probably go through investigations like these all the time.
But I wanted to share this story, because...
Outsmarting a talk that wants to hide away a term from me
is, to me, one of the most exciting parts of the process of translation.
Thank you.