Translation Isn't Assembly Work 人の振り見て我が振り直せ

Japanese follows English.　英語の後に日本語が続きます。

Here is a question. How would you translate the following Japanese text? This is part of a letter from a professional firm to its corporate client which has decided to replace the firm with another one:

弊社といたしましては今後貴社に業務提供できなくなってしまうことを大変寂しく思っております。

Google translated like this:
"We are very sorry to be unable to provide business to your company in the future."

A human and Japanese translator did like this:
"We will miss you for no longer being able to provide services......"

Sorry for not showing the entire sentence, but I just couldn't keep reading it because I was too surprised at the term "miss." You think I'm joking? No! This is a kind of mistakes Japanese translators often make because the word for word translation of "寂しい (sabishii)" is "miss."

I understand that “miss" is used when your coworker leaves the company or your friend moves to another place, but in such a B2B case, the translation should just be like, "We hope to have another opportunity to better serve you in the future." By the way, the letter also uses "well" a couple of times. Again, "well" is a useful word especially for non-native English speakers like me to buy time to think of what I should say next while speaking, but isn't appropriate for B2B documents.

Some misunderstand that translation is assembly work and is done in the following steps:
- divide the source text sentence into words;
- translate each of these words into the target language;
- re-arrange the translated words in the grammatically correct order of the target language.

This procedure works in some cases, such as "このリンゴは赤い." "この" means "this", "リンゴは" means "apple" and "赤い" red and so they can be combined and rearranged as follows: "This apple is red." Beautiful! But we often talk about more complicated stuff, particularly, in business situations. That's why translation requires interpretation and in extreme cases, a translated text doesn't contain any word used in the source text, but still successfully conveys the intended message.

A few years ago, a man told me (by the way I did and still do translation) that I didn’t have to think of anything while translating because translation is assembly work. He is wrong. Translators have to understand the message and concept of the source text and find the best way to convey it in the target language.

Today's conclusion: “Wise men learn by other men's mistakes."

先日、他の人が日本語から英語に訳したビジネスレター読む機会がありました。ある会社から同業他社に乗り換えるお客様への、会社から会社へのレターなのですが、「We will miss you....」とあってびっくりしてしまいました。

原文（日本語）には確かに「貴社との取引がなくなることを寂しく思う」云々とあったのですが、「会社」対「会社」（つまりB2B）の場合に英語で「miss」は変だと思ったのです。

親しい友人がどこかに行ってしまうとき、同僚あるいは仕事での付き合いがあった人が帰国してしまうときなど、個人から個人へは使います。でも会社から会社へのビジネス文書だと、日本語の意味するところを意訳して、「今後機会がありましたらまた弊社をご利用ください（We hope to have another opportunity to better serve you in the future）」ぐらいにした方がいいと思います。自分の語感を確認するため、アメリカ人の友人に聞いたら、やはり、B2Bのその状況で「miss」は使わないという意見でした。ちなみにその翻訳文の中では、なぜか「well」が二回使われており、これもビジネス文書にはふさわしくないと思いました。

翻訳を言語組み立て作業と勘違いしている人がいます。それで済む場合もありますがほとんどはそうはいきません。訳文に、原文の単語がほとんど入っていないようなケース（上記の例）すらあります。それを知らないある人から、以前、「いちいち考える必要なんかない、機械のように訳せ」みたいなことを言われ、とても傷ついたことがありました。

と、偉そうに話しましたが、「人の振り見て我が振り直せ」でした。気を付けます！