Have any autistic people out there considered becoming a translator but found it too difficult because of the way their brain works?
I’ve enjoyed studying languages since I was at school (I particularly enjoy the grammar part, I think because usually there’s a clear right & wrong).
I studied French & Japanese at uni (bachelors), then did an MA in Translation Studies. The more things I translated during my MA (from French-English), however, the more I became aware of how exhausting I found it, and how much I had to really force myself to do it.
Having to frequently look up vocab in the dictionary (especially if the texts were very technical) was very tiring for me - not just because it was a repetitive process, but because very often, I would be unsure of which English word would work best in the context (and which nuance of the French ST word was intended - which wasn’t always obvious to me just based on context, especially if I didn’t know the French word or much about the text topic to begin with).
To make this easier, I’d usually try to find examples of the French word used in context (Linguee and Reverso saved my life many times 🙏🏻) to help me understand what situations it would be used in in French first. Sometimes this helped, sometimes it didn‘t, and sometimes I couldn’t find any examples.
A key element of translating is the subjectivity of the translator’s decisions (or their ability to make decisions based on both personal judgement - plus other factors like skopos/target audience - and justify those decisions).
However, I always struggled to do this, as I was in unfamiliar territory with most of the texts (most of them didn’t just use basic/everyday language - which I get, because that wouldn’t have been very challenging, and translating would be a very easy job!). The texts we were assigned were based on the kinds of texts real translators would be assigned, because the whole point was to prepare us for working in the industry.
Sometimes I wondered if I was overthinking it and decided to just go with my gut, but usually received feedback that those parts sounded unnatural in the TL/were translated too literally/that I’d misunderstood those parts of the ST.
So it kind of felt like my 2 options were:
- To be lazy/rush it and produce a ‘bad’ translation (even though I was always told “there are no bad translations” - but there definitely are if they can be inaccurate or nonsensical!)
- Or to give myself a headache battling executive dysfunction & decision paralysis and not get it done on time (I ran out of time on my end-of-year project - and consequently almost failed my course - for this reason).
Neither seemed sustainable for a translation career where accuracy/dynamic equivalence and the ability to meet deadlines (with enough energy to move onto the next project - if you want to make enough money to live on, that is!) are essential, which is why I didn’t pursue it as a career.
Sometimes it’s easy to be like ‘I should’ve just been more determined/persevered more with it’ but then when you try do it again you’re reminded why you found it so hard 🤦♀️
I was wondering whether anyone else has experienced anything similar because of their autism? Even if it’s not translation-related; I know many autistic people struggle with decision-making when there are many factors or unclear elements to consider.
I know there are many successful autistic translators out there who don’t seem to struggle with this (or if they do, for some reason they haven’t talked about it) but I was curious!