A work of fiction, yet still using technical terms. What an interesting change of pace! This piece of work not only saw me using technical terminology, it also saw me playing around with Wikidot’s (a wiki service much like Wikipedia) formatting structure, similar but in many ways different to Wikipedia’s page editing program.
The logo for the SCP Foundation, symbolizing its motto: Secure, Contain, Protect
What is the SCP Foundation?
I personally think Wikipedia’s definition gives a good overview of the SCP Foundation: The SCP Foundation is a fictional secret organization documented by the collaborative writing wiki project of the same name. Within the website’s shared universe, the Foundation is responsible for capturing and containing various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena unexplained by mainstream science (known as “anomalies” or “SCPs”), while also keeping their existence hidden from the rest of global human society.
It’s a bit long-winded of a definition, but it gets the point across. Originally starting only in English, the SCP writing project expanded into other languages, including Japanese. As a result, work needs to be done to translate articles between the languages, which is where I came in.
What I Translated
Note: The article I chose to translate contains elements that are not safe for work (primarily foul language and imagery displaying gestures that may be offensive to some).
There are many articles available to translate (note all of them are done as volunteer work), but the article I decided to translate caught my attention because of its eye-catching premise: it is a paraffin wax model of a middle finger that, if you get to close to it or its “replications” (it often spawns derivations of itself on printed media), you become extremely angry as well as becoming very confused, with your memories being jumbled with those of someone else.
Writing a technical document describing it and its effects, how to “contain” it, its backstory, and an interview with a victim of its effects was surprisingly enjoyable! Alongside that, I had to learn how to operate under Wikidot’s page formatting system, which I suppose acts as good practice for other projects I will do in the future that have media in various formats. Translating this article saw me leverage OmegaT and its machine memories/glossaries to the maximum degree, and I have to agree with the sentiment of it being an absolute necessity for the modern translator.
Thoughts Moving Forward
This article was particularly enjoyable to translate. Combining translating formal technical documents with an enraged victim’s ramblings was a fascinating dichotomy, something which I found even DeepL’s translation couldn’t emulate properly. I look forward to translating more articles in the future for this writing collaboration.