Interview w/ Sophia Salles

Interview w/ Sophia Salles, bilingual translator of DE-PT and EN-PT.

1 - Why did you choose the degree in translation?

I chose translation because it has always been the career path that I wanted to follow. I always had contact with different languages, mainly because I am bilingual, this was perhaps the bigger influence on me and that led me to choose the translation as a profession. I was always interested in "Human Studies", I confess that sciences and mathematics have never been my greatest strenghs.

2 - What does it mean for you to translate?

This is a very interesting question, I will try to answer briefly. For me to translate is not only the translation itself, that is, there is a whole range of factors for me mean that mean "to translate". Firstly, the translator turns out to be an author of the text it translates. Second, it is the one who "assembles" the whole puzzle trying to convey the ideas, thoughts, in a way it is also the author of the text. In short, to translate means to create, to build and rebuild texts from other texts.

3 - How do you deal with the difference between your literary preferences and translating the style of each author or document?

I believe that each translator deals with the stylistic and literary differences of a work, or text document very (and I stress) subjectively. I would say that each case is unique, each translation is a different translation. There are not two translations that are equal and there are no two identical ways of seeing the world. Of course, there is always preferences. In my case, I love legal and technical translation but I do not exclude the literary field. Although it gives me more pleasure to translate texts of the types I mentioned, we do, however need to be versatile. Facing each translation as a challenge, almost as an objective. Since the purpose is to try to convey as accurately as possible the meaning of the text as well as trying to keep the writing style of each author, in the case of literary translation, to respect the rules of the legal text, the same applies to the translation of scripts and all the other subjects, such as audiovisual.

4 - The fact you are a translator influenced, in some way, your point of view as a reader?

I can say that in fact influenced me a lot. It made me have that "critical eye", made me see the text beyond the text, if you know what I mean. Since I am a translator and even when I was still studying, it happenned to me to be reading the translation of a book from English to Portuguese and I could feel the English language behind the translation, which led me to compare translations, doing my own and finally led me to prefer to always read a book in the original version, provided it is not in Russian or any language that I am not fluent. in Being a translator led me to read in Portuguese only if I know that the author is Portuguese, or as I said earlier if I do not know the language. And it led me also to understand that when we read a translation of a Shakespeare play, for example, we lose many features of the original, the style of the writing, stylistic features, linguistic features, etc. This may seem a contradiction to my previous answer, but there is always something getting lost. As I said, the translator should try his best to keep the style of the original, which is not to say he can do so in all situations.

5 - What do you consider more pleasurable to translate? And most difficult and problematic?

When translating, what I consider more pleasurable is the search for words, the search for the meaning. The most difficult and problematic is, as I mentioned earlier, keeping the stylistic marks of each text, author.

6 - At a time when amateurs "translators" arise on the internet, looking for microjobs, is it of most importance the work of the official translator?

Today and given the socio-economic circumstances of Portugal and Europe we have to be multiskilled. But in my opinion, I consider important the role of an official translator not only for the quality but also for new generations of translators. I don't mean that translators "online" do not have quality, on the contrary, I consider important the existence of both.

7 - And finally, as a translator, do you feel threatened by machine translation programs such as Google Translator?

I do not feel at all threatened by machine translation systems such as "Google Translator". In my opinion, it still needs a lot of improvement, nothing replaces the translator. It is we, the translators that "put to work" this systems, so to speak. The machines do not work without Man.