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31st translation contest: "A translator's life" » English to Swahili

Competition in this pair is now closed, and the winning entry has been announced.

Discussion and feedback about the competition in this language pair may now be provided by visiting the "Discussion & feedback" page for this pair. Entries may also be individually discussed by clicking the "Discuss" link next to any listed entry.

Source text in English

[...] Translators just didn't get recognition, they didn't expect to make much of a living, just get by. Very few people were actually trained as translators, but most had a solid college education and a solid knowledge of languages, at least their own language. I had a friend who fell exactly into that category and my circle of friends expanded to include other translators. I found them to be much more interesting as people, and discovered that we often had similar life experiences. I never had trouble making friends, but I always felt "different" and I'm sure they felt it too. When my friend retired, she recommended me as her replacement. I now entered the realm of Reinsurance, of which I knew nothing. I was also the only translator there, and didn't have much to fall back on. However, it was another notch up....

On my new job, I started looking through the files, asking questions and got the company to enroll me in Insurance courses. The College of Insurance was across the street, and I consulted fire codes, insurance policies and fire extinguisher catalogs in their library. I was learning what I had never had the luxury of being able to do before: research. The first time I had to translate a proposal for purposes of insurance of a nuclear plant, I got a call from the head man in that department, congratulating me on the job I had done. "Compares favorably with what we are used to," he said. What an upper! What happened was that I consulted a document in the files similar to the one I was tackling for guidance, but when I saw that my predecessor had used the word "nucleus" instead of "core", I realized that the files were useless to me. I went across the street to the library and looked up "nuclear plants." I immediately found all the terminology I needed.

It takes a great deal more than that to be a good translator these days, of course. [...]

The winning entry has been announced in this pair.

There were 10 entries submitted in this pair during the submission phase, 3 of which were selected by peers to advance to the finals round. The winning entry was determined based on finals round voting by peers.

Competition in this pair is now closed.


Entries (10 total; 3 finalists) Expand all entries

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Entry #34676 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Winner
Voting points1st2nd3rd
389 x41 x20
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry4.564.78 (9 ratings)4.33 (9 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • 1 user entered 1 "like" tag
Kando na kutotambuliwa, watafsiri hawakutarajia kupata namna ya kujikimu,
Flows well
Natural re​ndition
Fredrick Juma
Entry #35006 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
163 x41 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry4.324.50 (8 ratings)4.13 (8 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #34997 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Finalist
Voting points1st2nd3rd
101 x42 x22 x1
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry4.094.50 (6 ratings)3.67 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags


Non-finalist entries

The following entries were not selected by peers to advance to finals-round voting.

Entry #35128 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Tanzanian
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.954.20 (10 ratings)3.70 (10 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #35326 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Kenyan
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.924.00 (6 ratings)3.83 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #34814 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Kaleem Akbar
Kaleem Akbar
Paquistão
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.673.50 (6 ratings)3.83 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #35174 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Tanzanian
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.603.63 (8 ratings)3.57 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #35530 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.413.67 (6 ratings)3.14 (7 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #35216 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.403.40 (5 ratings)3.40 (5 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags
Entry #34768 — Discuss 0 — Variant: Not specified
Rating typeOverallQualityAccuracy
Entry3.333.83 (6 ratings)2.83 (6 ratings)
Entry tagging:
  • No "like" tags