For the past 2 days I have been saddled with the unenviable task of translating presentation materials from English to Malay which has me bent over my desk scratching my head 90% of the time.
Now, I'm as adept as the next person who calls himself "Malaysian" at translating anything to Malay in a casual context, but when it comes to sales materials or formal documents, it's a whole different ball game all together. They might as well be speaking Swahili.
Like how do you translate a phrase like "Our System Pays For Themselves"? "Sistem Kami Membayar Sendiri"? Even a simple word like "lock" which is "mangga" in Malay and can even mean "mango" has me pondering for hours. You just can't use words that sound fruity in a formal document now, can you?
Lucky a small portion of these things have been translated previously, so I just have to copy and paste them, else I'll really be sporting a bald spot by the end of the week. The online dictionaries are also no help, especially with the more technical terms. They give you a direct translation of the word then you have to figure out how to fit it in the context of your material.
At this rate, I'm probably gonna be at it all week. I wonder how my fellow colleagues are faring.....they get to translate the damn thing to Chinese.
Wanna know what the irony is? I wrote some of these things :p You would think that will make it easier to translate. Think again!
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