Jan Faber moderating the online awards ceremony for winners of the European Delegation contest for best translation into Czech. Screenshot from a YouTube video [1].
For the second year in a row, a Global Voices article was selected as the reference text for an international translation competition into Czech organized by the Institute for Language and Preparatory Studies [2] (ÚJOP) — part of Prague’s Charles University [3] and the Directorate General for Translation of the European Commission [4] (DGT).
In 2019, Global Voices (GV) was selected [5] for the first time as the sole text provider for the competition. Back then, the article selected for the 4th edition of the contest was a 2018 report about an all-female flight crew [6] in Mozambique written by Global Voices author Dércio Tsandzana. [7]
A Slovenian entrant who was one of the two winners in last year's competition told [8] GV:
I chose Czech as a ‘rare’ language at my University in Ljubljana because I was a fan of Czech literature: the Brave Soldier Švejk, but also Kundera and Hrabal. Last year I participated in the competition and our text was the Little Red Riding Hood tale, so I did not expect a story about Mozambique!
This year, an article from Meta.mk, a news outlet owned by GV's partner from North Macedonia, the Metamorphosis Foundation*, was selected by the organizers of the competition.
The article [9] describes how a Moldovan pop-rock group adapted an older song it entered into the 2017 Eurovision contest in order to educate people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year's winners are Gergana Dragoeva, from Bulgaria, Michał Patycki, from Poland, and Natalia Khonskaya, from Belarus.
Global Voices got in touch with Jan Faber, field officer at the DGT local office in Prague and coordinator of the event, to find out how the 2020 edition progressed.
Filip Noubel (FN): How many participants took part in the competition and from what countries and languages?
Jan Faber (JF): Pokud jde o statistiky, letošní pátý ročník byl skutečně rekordní. Přihlásilo se nám celkem 20 pracovišť ze 13 zemí (Čína, Argentina, Jižní Korea, Egypt, Japonsko, ČR, Polsko, Slovinsko, Severní Makedonie, Bulharsko, Maďarsko, Francie, Itálie). Studenti, kterých se zúčastnilo 75, překládali z 18 jazyků (korejština, bulharština, slovinština, maďarština, italština, makedonština, srbština, francouzština, arabština, ruština, ukrajinština, běloruština, španělština, čínština, polština, japonština, angličtina a chorvatština).
Jan Faber (JF): Regarding statistics, this year's fifth edition was really a record one. Twenty institutions from 13 countries took part in the competition. We had participants from China, Argentina, South Korea, Egypt, Japan, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Hungary, France and Italy. Seventy-five students of Czech participated, translating from 18 languages (Korean, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Serbian, French, Arabic, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Spanish, Chinese, Polish, Japanese, English and Croatian).
FN: This year, you chose a story about Europe but also about COVID-19. Why did you choose this article? How did the pandemic affect the organization of the competition, participation and the awards ceremony?
JF: Článek se nám líbil jednak proto, že byl aktuální, byl o solidaritě, hudbě. A také přirozeně proto, že byl o jazycích – vždyť písničku, o které článek pojednává, zpívají interpreti ve dvou jazycích a navíc má anglické titulky. Navíc také svou délkou a stylem odpovídal požadavkům na soutěžní text. Navíc slovy překladatelského nástroje Trados: “Perfect Match”.
Účast v soutěži byla vyšší než loni, asi díky tomu, že se hodně věcí rušilo bez náhrady, což my jsme nechtěli. Bylo to samozřejmě náročnější organizačně – příspěvky musely být buď online nebo nahrané předem. Složité je také zasílání cen a diplomů, které by si normálně studenti převzali osobně.
JF: We liked the article because it was very timely — it talked about solidarity and music. And naturally because it relates to languages — the song described in the story is sung by the performers in two languages and includes subtitles. It also answered our requirements in terms of length and style for the competition text. In other words: “a perfect match”.
The level of participation was higher compared to last year, probably thanks to the fact that many things were cancelled without replacement. It was of course harder to organize the event — the sessions had to be online only or needed to be pre-recorded. Another challenging thing is the sending of awards and diplomas, which the students would usually have picked up in person.
FN: Why do you think people from so many places, including some very far away from the Czech Republic, decide to invest so much time and energy in learning what is considered a rather difficult language spoken only in one country by 10 million people?
JF: Důvody, které lidi vedou k tomu, aby se rozhodli pro studium „malého, zdáleného, exotického jazyka” bývají různé. Často jde o rodinnou historii, zamilovanost – ať už do osoby českého pohlaví nebo do české kultury, historie nebo sportu či třeba hudby. Znám případ studenta, kterého ke studiu přivedla písnička Ivana Mládka Jožin z Bažin a dnes je z něj nadějný maďarský bohemista.
JF: The reasons why people decide to study a “small, far-away, exotic language” are many. It is often related to family history, or a love story — with a Czech person, or with Czech culture, history, sport or even music. I know the case of a student who came to study Czech because of a song by Ivan Mládek [a country music singer and famous humor comedian] called Jožin z Bažin [10], and today he is a promising Hungarian expert on Czech language and culture.
FN: What are the typical mistakes non-native speakers of Czech make when they translate into Czech?
JF: Mezi typické chyby patří “nečeský” slovosled, který je ve srovnání s jinými evropskými jazyky poměrně volný. Také samozřejmě dělají problémy koncovky, i když zrovna v soutěžních překladech mnoho chyb v koncovkách nebylo. A pak samozřejmě někdy až přílišná doslovnost, hlavně ustálená slovní spojení a předložkové vazby dělají problémy.
JF: A typical mistake is a non-Czech-sounding word order. Czech has a very free flowing order of words, compared to other European languages. Of course word endings [Czech, like most Slavonic languages flexes nouns, adjectives and verbs], although in the competition's translations we didn't have many of those [issues]. And sometimes, translations that are too literal, particularly for established phrases and prepositional constructions.
FN: You are yourself a translator. What are your thoughts about the future of non-literary translation? How do you see the relation between human translators and artificial intelligence (AI) evolving in the next five years?
JF Odborný překlad čeká další technologizace, nicméně si myslím, že stroje překladatele nenahradí. Spíše ulehčí a urychlí jejich práci. Strojový překlad se však nehodí na všechny typy textu. Navíc neupravený strojový překlad není okamžitě použitelný a vyžaduje důkladnou redakci zkušeného překladatele. Myslím si, že se dobrý překladatel bez výborné znalosti zdrojového a cílového jazyka neobejde ani v budoucnu – bez ohledu na pokrok v oblasti strojového překladu, který, a tady si troufnu hrát na proroka, nikdy nebude překládat stejně kvalitně jako překladatel z masa a kostí.
JF: Professional translation will see further use of technology yet I think machines will not replace human translators. Machines help their work, make it faster. Machine translation is not adequate for all types of texts. Besides an unedited machine translation is not immediately usable, and requires thorough editing by an experienced translator. I think that a good translator will not make it unless they have a good command of the source and target languages in the future, regardless of the progress made in the area of computer-assisted translation. If I may play prophet here, [I predict] it will never be able to deliver the same quality as a translator made of flesh and bones.
Check out Global Voices’ special coverage of the global impact of COVID-19 [11].