Learning and Breaking the Rules
By Deborah Wexler
After the ATA Conference this year, I stayed in beautiful Palm Springs for a couple of days to see the sights. I wasn’t disappointed with the three fantastic places I visited: the Indian Canyons, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and its Architecture and Design Center.
In the Palm Springs Art Museum Architecture and Design Center, I was treated to an amazing exhibit by Barbara Stauffacher Solomon, titled “Breaking all the Rules.”
On one of the exhibit walls, there was a video of Barbara being interviewed. She was talking about her work and her process. Suddenly, she said something that really grabbed my attention, “Learn all the rules. If you are brilliant, you can break them. If you are not, at least you will be efficient.” I’m paraphrasing, because I did not write down the exact quote, but it stuck in my mind as it relates to our profession.
As an audiovisual linguist, if we are masters of the rules― formatting, linguistic, time management, etc.― we will be well on our way to create great work.
And, after we learn to be efficient, we should strive to be creative. Creativity is a fundamental part of the audiovisual translation craft: it integrates elegance and style into our prose, eliminates the syntactic stiffness and redundancy, and renders a softer, more natural dialogue.
All of us have seen brilliant audiovisual translations: those that do not impede the suspension of disbelief and allow us to remain immersed in the story. One thing they have in common is that the translator either followed all the rules or broke them brilliantly.
I wish all of you a very productive, efficient, creative, and brilliant 2020.
You can check out Barbara’s wonderful work here.
