A conversation between Jane Jazrawy, CEO of CarriersEdge, Marie-France Dunn, Translation Specialist, and Kristen Hernandez, Founder of Ally Translation.

This blog has been edited down for conciseness. To listen to the entire conversation, please check out CarrierEdge’s October episode of the Inside Webinar series they have on their YouTube Channel.

The experts at CarriersEdge been working on creating a French and Spanish translation library of their work. Having a translator on staff is vital, because a lot of customers, especially in the trucking sector, have people in French and Spanish-speaking areas. CarriersEdge has been working with Marie-France for the last two years translating not only course material, but pretty much everything else that CarriersEdge does into French, and in the past six years, they have been working with Ally Translation to expand their Spanish translation library. 

Translation in the trucking industry is extremely important, as well as having humans do that translation. 

The troubles of translation in Canada

Jane: First of all, what I wanted to do is talk about is how French in Canada works. Most everyone, say 95% of people, have to take French when they’re in school. Besides regular French classes, you may be in a French immersion setting, where English speakers are dropped into the French language and learn everything in French, or there are French language schools where it is essentially the opposite. But what you often have in Canada is English-speakers with what I call “cereal box French.” And this is what I know. This is my this is my comfort zone. My knowledge of French is pretty much limited to being able to read product labels, because in Canada you must have the French version of a label as well as the English label. 

For example, let’s look at a Cheerios box. So I know that this is Honey Nut Cheerios, but in French, it’s actually written a little bit differently, and that’s one of the things that I want to talk about today is how the French language works. In very basic terms, you use the noun first and then you do all the adjectives at the end. So it’s not Honey Nut Cheerios. It’s actually Cheerioswith honey and with nuts. 

Marie: This looks exactly like we speak. French is a very precise language, and so we set the scene immediately, and then we qualify the noun. In English, you can just have the adjectives. In French, we will have what’s called preposition so if you look at the cereal box, you have “au miel,” and if we translate it into English, it’s with, “with honey.” We just can’t say “CheeriosMeil Noix,” we have to say it’s with honey. And I think it’s similar in Spanish. I love the English language for this. In English, you just have the ability to create words. You have, you know, you can add the suffix “ness” to pretty much any adjective, and you just created a new word. In French, you are not allowed to do that. And it makes the language, the English language, so much more concise and so much more full of imagery. But in French we’re not allowed. We have the Académie Francaise who has strict rules about linguistics. 

Jane: Is that the same thing that you find in Spanish, Kristen? 

Kristen: Absolutely. That’s why, in English, it has better economy of language. And so you’ll have a hyphenated adjective and then the noun. And in Spanish, it might take you seven words or eight words just to express that same concept. 

Getting into the field

Jane: Let’s go back a bit. How did you get into this field? How did you end up as a translator?

Kristen: I loved writing. I was a grammar nerd and I was an aspiring writer. I got into learningthe Spanish language through marrying into a Mexican family, which has grown my love for Spanish, similar to my love for English. It grew into a desire to connect the two worlds that Imove so freely between. I’m sure Marie would say that as well, when you move between the two worlds – the world of English speakers and the world of Spanish speakers – you automatically love the people of both worlds. And you say, “I want to have a part in connecting these two.”

Some of us feel a little bit like unicorns, because we’ve had that privilege to be born into one culture and transplanted into another, or to grow up bilingual. It’s a gift, and it’s something that you want to see how you can use it to make the world a little bit better. I’ll also add: so many people want to be translators, and so many people ask or apply for translation jobs. What do we look for? First of all, you need to have a background in linguistics and translation itself, or maybe teaching English as a second language, something where you have really specialized in language, but also you need to be a good writer in the target language. People don’t realize that. I think a lot of times they think I just need to have a deep understanding of the second language, or the source language; no, you need to be a native speaker of your target language. I think sometimes even in university translation programs, I’ve seen a weakness in that. I’ve seen an emphasis on the source language and a de-emphasis on being strong in grammar and in structure of your native language. I think that might be something that aspiring translators may not even realize. If writing isn’t your thing, maybe you should go into interpretation, because that’s another option for translation has to be writing.

Marie: I wanted to be a teacher, and so I grew up Francophone in Montreal, and in my early 20s, I moved to Vancouver, where I got a full immersion – I really loved English. I always joke I learned English watching The Young and the Restless and Three’s Company. I love those shows and the jokes and all that. I moved to Vancouver and had a true immersion there. A couple of years later I enrolled in university in Alberta and did a degree in Geography. I then moved to Ontario, and I was looking for a job – with a bachelor’s degree in Geography, there’s not much you can do. I ended up being recruited for my language skills as a junior translator in Engl/French in a financial company here in my community. I was junior, so I was supervised by others, and I fell in love with the profession. The English and French side by side, the nuances between the cultures, I really had an appreciation for my native French. English is the language of business. Everything is done in English. And so, to bring back your point Kristen, what I found most rewarding in my early years and throughout until now is the ability to create great products, great concepts, great texts, that innovation, that are created in English and bring it to the francophone markets. That for me is one of the most rewarding things. Kristen mentioned you can’t be a translator only by knowing two languages – there is a lot more to it. There are things you have to know. You must do a lot of comparison between the two languages you’re translating, understanding the syntax, the grammar, how it is said, and the emphasis is in the target language. Your reader has to connect with the material that you are writing. You have toprovide the same experience that the source text. 

The importance of proper translation

Jane: Let’s go back to the English language. What I think is really interesting are the different versions of it. Someone who, for example, on the east coast may not use the same words as me. Someone who lives in England, let’s say in Liverpool, has a very, very heavy dialect called Scouse in in Liverpool. Looking at the Canadian English versus the British English, even as that is a vastly simplified statement, is looking at cultural differences between the lived experiences of people. The British language has a whole bunch of different words in their lexicon than we do; for example, a bus or a lorry is a truck. So, if you’re in Britain writing a course about trucking, it’s going to be completely different than it is here, because the context of their lived experiences is different. And I know that for the both of you, it’s so important to get the cultural background across in your translation to assure you’re using the correct language in the translation work you do.

Marie: There’s a huge difference between the spoken French and the written French in Quebec and in French Canada in general. The differences are as different as the British English and the American or Canadian English. That pertains to terminology. But there is such a thing in Quebec, and we talked about this. It’s the “Radio Canada French.” It is very palatable to everybody, so a Parisian French will understand our news the way we speak. Here in Canada, we are very fortunate because we have two main terminology banks; we have Termium Plus that is managed by the translation Bureau of the Government of Canada, and we have La Grand Dictionnaire de la Vitrine Linguistic that is managed by l’Office Québécois de la Langue Francaise. So much of the terminology can be found in in those two terminology banks, but yes, they will be different than Parisian French. You know, I see French job postings all the time. And for Canada, they specify Canadian French because it is specific. So the way we speak, the verbs we use, and all that will be similar to what they use in Europe. But in terms of industry terminology, we stick to what the terminal terminology is here in Canada and in Quebec.

Jane: You mentioned before that it’s really strict – that you’re not really allowed to make up things as we do in English when translating. 

Marie: They’re very specific. And if we try to relate to our industry, in Québec we use la Société de L’assurance automobile du Québec (SAAQ) which regulates anything related to the roads, or trucks, everything like that. They have their own terminology, which is different than the rest of Canada. So, for example, a vehicle inspection in Canada is usually “inspection du vehicule” but in Quebec is a “ronde de sécurite,” a circle check. I have to make sure that in translating our courses, that I do adapt, and I use both terms, so that our Quebec drivers fully understand what we are talking about, and that we use the correct terminology for the other French-Canadian drivers. 

Jane: So Kristen, you have a similar yet different problem, because Spanish is all over Latin America, and the US does not have an official second language. 

Kristen: There are 21 countries that have Spanish as their official language. So if I’m going togo to the Department of Transportation site for each of those countries, I might get something different on each one. But the good thing with Spanish is, although it is very loosely regulated, as far as the terminology, our grammar, our North Star is the Real Academia Espanola, and that comes out of Spain. I believe all of Latin America and Spain have agreed to recognize that for grammar and structure. When it comes down to vocabulary, we use the Ngram a lot, which lets you see the incidents of a term in literature that is available on the internet or the Google Books and Ngram viewer will search texts for you, and it comes up with even a trend, like a graph that shows you the use of that term over time, when it was most popular, when it declined. You can compare three or four Spanish terms and see which one is more widely popular. Sometimes we pick one that’s just a hair more popular than the others, and hope that everyone will get it. One advantage is that Mexico has produced the most entertainment for Latin America. I hope I’m correct in saying I believe Mexico has produced enough television and movies that all of Latin America and Spain are used to that the Mexican dialect is familiar to most. And then you have the US and Canada, where they have their own dialect completely. If you go to Texas, they have their own Spanish, the Tex Mex dialect. But what I’m thinking about when I’m translating courses is first, who is this driver? Are they someone who is a speaker of a foreign language but are transitioning to learn a new language? If they are far along in that transition, they’ll just choose the English course. I’m thinking, the person that chooses the foreign language course probably needs more assistance and understanding, so I’ll try to be more purist. But I also remember, this person’s work environment is in English in the terminology, the safety regulations, and so I want to make it understandable. When it comes to picking between purist and practical, I’m going to stick with practical a little bit and stray a little bit from purism in thelanguage. 

Using AI in translation

Jane: This brings up a really good point, which is the whole idea of automatic translation and using artificial intelligence. How do we use it in our translation? Do we use it at all? Is it helpful?

Kristen: It is helping us to be more efficient. In the past, we would have had to type every single text from scratch, thinking through the structure. AI is very helpful to invert the structure for us, like Marie was saying, put our nouns first and our adjectives later. But it is sloppy in many ways. It alternates between the formality and informality. It’d be like, if you’re reading a textbook, and suddenly it says, “Hey, bro,” in the middle of it. So, we still need human supervision of the AI, but it does make our workflow a lot better. 

Marie: I think that AI has come a long way from the beginning, and there are better tools than Google. Kristen and I both use Deepl, which is a good tool. It can be very useful, super effective, and it’s incredibly fast. You put in a sentence, and a second later it’s there for you. As a translator, I’m able to translate about 2,000 to 2,300 words a day. 

AI will translate 2000 words in like 10 seconds, but there are huge limitations with the cultural aspects and some of the terminology. And what happens is that you can lose your readers. “Glad hands” was a really good example. If you put it in AI, it literally translates to happy hands, “mains heureuses,” when it should be “coupling heads,” “tetes d’accouplement.” Then all of a sudden, you have a very structured and technical text about vehicle inspection or whatever, and then you have “mains heureuses” – this makes no sense!

There’s no doubt I do use AI to help me with some terminology, some sentences, and for speed. But you have to know as a translator, you have to know what you’re talking about. You have to have industry knowledge, you have to understand how people speak in the industry. That is absolutely crucial. Humans are still humans. And we catch what’s important. If English uses a gender-neutral pronoun, it will be translated in the wrong way in French – it will go to plural instead of keeping it singular.

Jane: Let me interrupt because you bring up a really good point about inclusive pronouns and formal and informal because in English, the way that you show formality is by avoiding contractions and slang, which makes text more formal. It’s not through pronouns. But what I find really interesting in French and Spanish, and I’ll start with you, Kristen, is how the pronouns are actually the formality. 

Kristen: Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s a lot of decisions to be made with that, like you were saying, when do we what materials need to use the informal voice? I think a lot of marketingmaterials would use the informal, whereas the storyboard and the test would use the formal. Sowe always have to make those calls. And the inclusive language, all of those things are just things that can’t be done with AI At this point.

Jane: Well, they interesting with the inclusive language, and I wanted to talk about that a littlebit because English has mostly switched to the use of the gender neutral “they”. So if you don’t want to refer to male or female, we’ll just use “they” and that like Marie said, that is a problem then for the rest of what you’re saying. Are you talking about a plural or are you using an inclusive pronoun? In French, there are female versions of words and male versions of words, and you can’t combine them. Is that the same in Spanish?

Kristen: Yes. You must do other workarounds if you would like to make the text sound somewhat inclusive, it’s not going to match it. So that’s why it’s important for the translator to be aware of trends that are happening in English to be able to detect that so that you cancommunicate clearly in the other language that you’re translating into, the target language. Andthere are many debates that are raging about whether we’re sticking with the pure form or goingto start to make adaptations. We’re always on standby just to see what they what they do with that

How the trucking industry affects translation

Jane: How does the trucking industry affect the language? Are you finding that there are words you don’t know and have to research?

Marie: There’s no doubt that translation is a sort of miles wide, inches deep situation. Especially in freelancing, you have to know a lot about a lot of things. But again, if I go back to my terminology banks, that we are so fortunate to have in Canada, which are also free, to use that is unbelievably helpful. I’ve worked in in different industries. I’ve worked in in disaster management. I’ve worked in in the in the food industry, in technology, and now here in trucking. The first thing I do when I have a new job or when I’m in a new industry is read about theindustry to get immersed in it. I also started watching a show called Coeur de trucker that is created in Québec that taught me a lot about who my audience is. 

Wrapping up

Jane: Thank you both for joining me for this. This has been a very interesting conversation about language and how it’s used in translation today. To close, how do you see the future of translation, Kristen, and how where would you like to be in in five years? 

Kristen: I see a lot of wringing of hands among fellow translators because of AI, and I love what a fellow translator always says. He says mathematicians did not panic with the invention of the calculator or the Excel spreadsheet. So, we will always be needed, but AI will allow us to take on more volume, be more efficient, and probably more precise. And so in the future, I think we just need to focus on honing our knowledge in different fields so that we can be providing that human expertise to whatever area and just filling in the gaps that the AI cannot do. And so it just makes sense for us to continue to focus on the theory, the linguistic knowledge and whatever thecomputer cannot help us with instead of wringing our hands that the computer is doing most of what we used to do. 

Jane: Marie?

Marie: Kristen just said it extremely eloquently. That’s where we’re going. I think we have to be careful a little bit. Translators have skills that are really important. AI seems to be diminishing that in the perceived mind, like, if Google translate can do it, why would I hire you to do it? And I think this webinar has been explaining very well why human translators are still absolutely needed. And I think we’ll continue. We’re translating for humans, so there has to be a human heart and soul in the writing and into what we do.

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