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Cutting across language barriers
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The Hyderabad Translation Bureau which has translated over 10,000 books, documents and research papers in about 50 different languages, plans to start foreign language courses soon.
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TRANSLATOR'S TASK: Bridging the gap between reader and writer.
IF GERMAN appears Greek-n-Latin to you, what would Greek and Latin be? None will disagree that life would have been a lot more plain and simple if there was only one language spoken all around the world. Bizarre it may appear in the present-day environmental context, but long, long ago there was only one language on earth. According to the Genesis (11:1-9), The Bible, God came and confused the tongues so that his subjects did not understand each other's language and this would propel them to strive for more knowledge.
The origin of one of today's much sought-after breed of professionals, translators or interpreters can be traced to those possibilities. The world can now communicate and understand a few thousand languages and dialects through these multi-linguists, whose services cut across geographical boundaries and transcend all language barriers.
The Hyderabad Translation Bureau (HTB - Tel: 27613355, 55633221) is one such institute that began in 1990 with only language — Russian, and now offers services in over 50 languages.
Arabic, Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Indonesian and Korean among others, are the foreign languages, while Oriya, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi and all South Indian languages, finds a place in the `Indian tongues' segment.
Till date, the HTB has translated over 10,000 books and research papers related to aeronautics, chemical technology, telecommunications, software and hardware, pharmaceutical industry, machinery and equipment, and refineries technology, among others. Defining the job of a translator, HTB chief executive P. Sreenath says, "A good translator conveys the original message fully and accurately across the linguistic and cultural barriers that separates the writer from the intended reader.
Only highly skilled individuals, deeply rooted in both the source and the target cultures, who are familiar with the specific lingo of the subject matter at hand, can produce good translations."
DICTATING DIRECTIONS: HTB CEO Sreenath plans language learning classes.
The HTB has a panel of about 150 registered translators based in the country and abroad, who are specialised in different areas of interests — for instance, engineering, medicine, electronics, textile, instrumentation, law and literature. "With help from our network of translators, we have translated several thousands of papers, documents and books," says Sreenath.
That Hyderabad can now boast of persons, who can repair cell-phones, hard disks, calculators and laptops, is because of HTB-translated books.
"Most of the documentation on trouble-shooting of high-end electronic items are either in Korean or Japanese, and we have translated the largest number of such literature," says the HTB chief executive.
The one-of-its-kind translation bureau plans to start classes on foreign languages shortly. "In today's times when the world is fast becoming a global village, it makes sense to know as many foreign languages."
And these days when most MNCs are setting up Global Service Centres (GSC) in India, Hyderabad in particular, it certainly pays to know several foreign languages to be able to facilitate better customer service around the globe. A few companies are increasingly stressing on knowledge of other languages as prerequisites for selection. Foreign language learning is all set to assume serious magnitude in India.
SOUVIK CHOWDHURY
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Metro Plus
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