出版社の武田ランダムハウスが破産、負債総額９億３千万円主な誤訳はこちらにまとめられています。
出版社の武田ランダムハウスジャパン（東京都千代田区）が東京地裁から破産手続きの開始決定を受けたことが１７日、分かった。東京商工リサーチによると、決定は１２日付で、負債総額は９億２６００万円。
米国の出版社ランダムハウスと講談社が平成１５年、対等出資の合弁会社、ランダムハウス講談社を設立。しかし、２２年に合弁を解消し武田ランダムハウスジャパンに社名変更した。
合弁解消以降は大きなヒットに恵まれなかったほか、昨年８月には物理学者アインシュタインの伝記を翻訳した本の中で、コンピューターの自動翻訳をそのまま掲載したような記述が多数見つかり、回収騒ぎになっていた。
ＥＵ、単一特許制度を導入へ 翻訳費用など削減ただ、普通に考えれば、新制度導入により特許翻訳の需要は減少することが予想されます。日本でも経営的に厳しくなる会社が出てくるかもしれませんね。
【ブリュッセル＝御調昌邦】欧州連合（ＥＵ）は11日、2014年に単一の特許制度を導入する方針を正式に決めた。企業や個人が英語、フランス語、ドイツ語のいずれかで申請すれば、ほかの国でも特許を認める。これまでかかっていた翻訳や各国での手続きなどの諸費用が約７分の１になる。
欧州議会が11日に単一特許制度を承認し、1960年代に検討が開始された議論が決着した。今回の決定ではイタリアとスペインが自国の言語での申請が認められずに反対したことから、当面は両国を除いたＥＵ25カ国での制度となる見通し。
これまでは欧州特許庁（ＥＰＯ）から特許を取得したうえで、発明品などを保護したい国ごとに翻訳や必要な行政手続きをする必要があった。手続きの簡略化により約３万６千ユーロ（約385万円）かかっていた費用が約５千ユーロで済む。米国（約２千ユーロ）に比べると依然として割高だが、一気に差が縮まる。欧州委員会は単一特許制度の導入により、欧州での特許申請件数が増えるとともに、費用削減で欧州企業などを支援できるとみている。
After the interview"自分の訳をたびたび事後修正する"通訳者がどれほどいるのかは分かりませんが、これは聞き方にも影響されると思います。私もよくインタビュー後に、特定の発言の正確なニュアンスなどについて聞かれることがあるのですが、長い取材だと細かなことは覚えてないのが正直なところです。その意味では、実際の訳と事後の解釈ではニュアンスのズレが生じる可能性は十分に考えられます。ただ、コミュニケーションの本質に影響を与えるようなズレは通訳中に修正するのがプロなので、誤った事実に基づいて取材が終わることはまず考えられません。
1. Go over the interview with your translator immediately. Bearak notes in his memo that they will often correct themselves. Plus, you can ask questions about any responses that confused you.
2. If the story involves a long chronology or otherwise complex material, go over the facts repeatedly with your translator. Bearak wrote in his memo: “If you’re not aggravating your translators (making them complain, ‘You’ve already asked that!’), you’re not being precise enough.”これはある意味、危険な行為です。というのは、通訳者の記憶が一番新鮮なのは現場で通訳している瞬間であり、事後に記憶をたどって、「えーっと、あの時は確かこう言ってた気がします」というのは、記憶の上書きをする行為で、そこには改変の可能性が生まれます。正確な通訳ノートがあれば一定の正確性は担保できるかもしれませんが、あくまでも内容のおおまかな理解を目的とするべきであり、正確なコメントをとる目的では勧められる行為ではありません。
3. Get your translator’s opinion on the source. Since your bullshit detector is turned off, tune into your interpreter’s. Bearak says, “I usually ask, ‘So what do you think of who we’ve just talked to?’ And they’re always pick things up that I didn’t pick up” — namely, whether the interviewee was being evasive or had an axe to grind.前にも書きましたが、通訳者は言葉以外のコミュニケーション行為も注意して見ているので、取材対象についての印象を聞くことは問題ないと思います。あくまでも個人的な意見ですが。それに確かに、通訳者はジャーナリストとは異なる視点を持っているので、意外な事実に気付くこともあるかもしれません。
4. When you write, tell the reader what language was spoken and that a translator was used. As Bearak said in his memo, “the reader deserves to know that the words have passed through the translation process.”読者としても、通訳者を通して行われたインタビューだと知ればニュアンスに注意しながら読むかもしれませんね。良いアイデアだと思います。
5. Have the translator read the story before you turn it in. At that point, he or she may have further corrections.記事の最終確認を通訳者がするべきか。これには賛否両論あると思いますが、私は賛成です。というのも、数年前に某ゲームメディアの取材を通訳をした時、明らかに訳とは異なる事実が記事として発行されてしまった経験があるからです（私はそのゲームのファンだったので、訳した部分ははっきりと覚えていました）。本筋から離れた細かい内容だったので大きな問題にはならなかったようですが、やはり通訳者としては正直悔しいです。私が確認していれば絶対にありえなかったミスですから。
During the interview日本で通訳者が誘拐されることはまずありませんが（もっとも、ヤクザ社会に切り込んでいったジェイク・エーデルスタインのような記者に付いたら狙われるかもしれませんが）、取材対象にインタビューの趣旨を説明するのは大事なことですし、事前に通訳者に説明しておくとなお良いです。なぜなら、円滑なコミュニケーションの成立には正確性と同時に適切なスピードとタイミングも重要だからです。
1. Begin by explaining what the story is about. Omar Fekeiki, a special correspondent and Iraqi translator for The Washington Post from 2003 to 2006, was almost kidnapped when interviewing people who didn’t understand the purpose of the story. He managed to escape, and after that, always explained “why we were writing the story and explained how we were going to voice their issues and problems,” he said in a phone interview. “I always think it is better to be honest with people and they can decide whether to talk to you or not.”
2. Describe the interpreting process and find out how much English your source speaks. Introduce both you and your interpreter, and explain that you’ll be asking questions, the interpreter will be relaying them, and that the same will happen for the source’s answers. Also ask the interviewee directly, “Do you speak English?” to see whether he or she can respond and how well. Depending on how good his or her English is, you may be able to conduct some parts of the conversation more directly.通訳プロセスを説明とありますが、取材対象によっては時間がかなり限られている場合もあるので（私の経験上、最短は7分）、「通訳者を介しているので、所々確認の質問をしたり、普通の取材と比べて時間がかかってしまいますがすみません」くらいで良いと思います。
3. Face the interviewee. “Address your questions directly to [the source] even though the interpreter is doing the translating,” Chandrasekaran says. “Put the interpreter to the side. You want to be making eye contact with that person as they’re talking, and nod your head, so they’re looking at you.”通訳者の方を見ないで取材対象を見るのは正しいです。通訳者を見てもノートを取るのに必死で意味ないですしね（笑）。
4. Speak simply, slowly and clearly. This is so your interpreter can accurately relay your questions. Plus, your source, if he or she understands some English, may comprehend you directly.簡潔に、ゆっくり、明確に話すのは大事です。いきなり本筋から脱線して、おまけに二重否定表現などが飛んできたりしたら通訳者は困ります。
5. Make sure everyone sticks to the process you outlined at the beginning. Make it clear that it’s important to you that the interpreter can keep up with both you and the source. Set a pace that ensures each person has the floor when he or she speaks and waits for his or her turn. Badkhen says that if the source isn’t giving the interpreter time to translate, she has her translator stop the source and say, “Excuse me, I need time to translate.”もちろんきちんと通訳しなければコミュニケーションが成立しないのですが、通訳者が取材対象に対して「すみません、通訳するのでちょっと待ってください」的なことを何度も言うのはあまり好ましいことではありません。人にはそれぞれ話しやすいスピードとリズムがありますから、何度も繰り返してお願いすると逆に気分を害してしまう可能性があります。私もどちらかというと早口で、意識的にゆっくり喋るとストレスを感じます。
6. Have an ear out for incorrect or incomplete translations. Watch out for these red flags:トピックの本質に影響するような驚きの事実が出てきた場合、再度確認するのは良いですね。事実確認の意味もあるし、ニュアンスの確認という意味もあります。
“When you hear something surprising, repeat it just to be sure accuracy hasn’t meandered,” Bearak said in his 2003 memo.
If your source appears to be speaking longer than your interpreter’s translations, ask the interpreter to give you a full translation. Badkhen says if she still feels that the interpreter is summarizing, she will dissect the answer into parts and repeat them back to the person to make sure she hasn’t missed anything and to give him or her an opportunity to fill in gaps.
In cases where your source understands a bit of English but isn’t comfortable speaking it, he may attempt to correct the translation — a big red flag. If so, ask him directly whether his words are being accurately relayed.
Before the interview
1. Explain to the interpreter the purpose of the interview. If she knows what you are looking for, then she will be able to help you get it.
2. Review all your questions with your interpreter. Doing this will keep him from being surprised or confused during the interview, according this article by the Institute for Education in International Media. If you’ll be using any technical or obscure words, he can learn them beforehand. Plus, if you plan to ask any sensitive or tough questions, he can help you come up with a strategy for asking them.両方とも完全同意です。通訳者は一般的になんでも瞬時に訳せるロボット的な存在と見られがちですが、トッププロでも話の筋道が見えないと訳出に苦労します。事前情報がない通訳は、真っ暗なトンネルの中を携帯電話のライトだけを頼りに歩き回ることに似ています。
3. Ask your interpreter whether she thinks any cultural issues might arise during the interview. Don’t just use her language skills; also use her cultural knowledge to see whether any age, gender, class or regional differences could hamper the interview.通訳者は単に言葉の表面的価値を訳すのではなく、文化や文脈、その場の空気なども考えながら総合的に訳出しています。ジャーナリストには、その豊富な知識をうまく活用してほしいです。
4. Plan to record the interview when it’s important enough. Given time constraints in the field, this is not always possible, but for key interviews, you may want to record them and have your interpreter re-translate them to ensure accuracy.録音・録画は記者の判断ではなく、取材先の許可次第です(少なくとも日本ではそれが一般的)。日本では録音・録画が入る公式記者会見で建前が語られ、時折その後に用意されるざっくばらんとしたオフレコ会見(懇談)で本音に近い発言が期待できます。上手いジャーナリストはこの二つを巧みに使い分けて聞きたい情報を引き出している印象です。
How to find and train an interpreter
1. Start with recommendations. Unfortunately, depending on how remote of a location you are reporting in, landing a good translator can be a crapshoot. If you’re working for an organization that has bureaus around the world, it will likely already have reliable translators in the area, but if you’re freelance, you should ask other colleagues who have reported in the region.
2. Look for someone who speaks conversational English. “If your translator has only an academic background in English, their vocabulary will be substantially different from someone who has lived in America and watched a lot of American TV,” says Bearak.
3. Get a translator who will help you navigate cultural differences, or, if you’re in a politically unstable region, won’t put you in danger. War correspondent Anna Badkhen says she prizes translators who are not hot-headed: “I try to make sure that this isn’t a person who will put us in danger,” she said by phone. “I feel responsible for the lives of the people I work with.”
4. Make sure the interpreter understands the importance of accuracy. If your interpreter doesn’t have experience with journalism, explain that accuracy has to do both with both the big picture and nitpicky details. Emphasize how important it is to get the words exactly right and, if the topic is complex, to understand it completely.
“Make the point that if you’re going to put something in quotation marks, it has to be an exact translation, and not a paraphrase, of what they actually said,” says Bearak.
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who was The Washington Post’s Baghdad bureau chief in 2003 and 2004 and covered the war in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011, has the interpreter jot down his own notes, particularly about words he didn’t know how to translate, so he can look them up later.
5. Ask your translator to “get in character.” This means that when translating, she should say, “I looked for my mother,” not “He looked for his mother.” Request that your translator never paraphrase.
6. Ask your translator to translate everything he or she hears, no matter how offhand the remark. As Bearak wrote in a 2003 memo on working with a translator circulated internally at The Times: “Explain to them that a seemingly irrelevant remark like, ‘Praise Allah for this new window,’ helps you capture the flavor of a scene.”
The difficulties of working with an interpreter
1. Accuracy: The biggest and most obvious danger of working with an interpreter is that you’ll get facts wrong or misquote someone — a serious mistake when interviewing anyone, let alone a prominent figure.
2. Tone: An interpreter’s tin ear can lend a tinny feeling to your story. In a phone interview, Barry Bearak, a New York Times reporter who served as a foreign correspondent in South Asia and Southern Africa, recalls covering the aftermath of a hurricane in the Dominican Republic while working for The Miami Herald:
“I went to some village and just about everything had been washed away. I interviewed some man who had lost everything, and tears were coming out of his eyes and he was moving his hands to and fro, and the interpreter said something like, ‘I estimate the damage to my dwelling to be substantial.’” Bearak asked his photographer, who happened to speak Spanish, to interpret from that point on.
3. Bullshit detecting: When interviewing someone in your primary language, you pick up on hesitations or stammerings, hear when they start to say something and then backtrack or sense when they are putting things diplomatically, and these clues help you know when to probe further. Using an interpreter hinders your ability to read between the lines.
4. Color: Unless your interpreter is diligent about translating every single sentence, including offhand remarks or under-the-breath mutterings, your ability to add color to a scene will be impaired.