Could you really write a "quality translation"?

For all my love of the translation act, I sometimes wonder if my professional translation career has diminished my sense of humour. Every once in a while I visit this source or that source of bad translation examples which fall under the headline of funny / bad translations. But I keep seeing the same ones over and over again - and whereas they used to be a time when certain ones would be enough to guarantee to make me laugh out loud, these days I hardly even break a smile when I read poor translations. And then I have to accept that I'm not necessarily certain how I would write it "properly" myself, and not just because I don't have the original to hand.

They say, "Never judge a book my its cover". But they don't say, "Never judge a man by his writing." (Or his speech, for that matter.) I possess a number of "humour books" listing things like the "world's stupidest signs". I have one that lists a number of... strange dating ads. And although I like to state that I read that sort thing solely for the sake of personal amusement even today, I will make it clear that in the book I have which lists these strange dating ads, its introduction to the strange datings ads list finishes with, "...but have a read and honestly ask youself... would you reply to them?" And I will confess that it taught me subtle a lesson or two in how to not to advertise myself, totally out of the blue! It does include one or two that seem to defy logic ("23-year-old good-looking guy already in a relationship but wanting to see if there is someone out there better."); and ones I would never have been interested in posting, even as part of a silly joke of no value, that one might well regard as spiteful (such "Hideous-looking, obese, smelly, ill-tempered, lazy, cowardly total liar seeks total opposite"); but these are some of the ones for which the notion of my being amused when reading them suddenly seemed a million miles away:

"There is a little place in the jumbled sock drawer of my heart where you match up all the pairs, throw out the ones with holes in them, and buy me some of those neat dressy ones with the weird black and red geometrical designs on them." (I mean, what sort of mentality?...)

I am [...]. I was born in the Eastern part of Nigeria on 19th June 1978. I am 5'10" tall. I am a student. Although I have not gotten money now I know I will have very soon. Please show me picture of my white future wife. I want a woman who is earning about $25,000 or above; I would like her also to help me come over so that we can get married." (Actually get married, before you really know her? If I worked in a dating agency, I would actually reject this ad altogether.)

"I'm looking for someone who is pumped when I am pumped, psyched when I am psyched, and stoked when I am stoked. Unfortunately, my last boyfriend was always psyched when I was pumped, stoked when I was psyched, and pumped when I was stoked. Are you ready to give 150% in your next relationship? If so, BRING IT ON!" (From the first two sentences, it's obvious that someone is seriously far from down-to-earth.)

It is my understanding that people are more likely to call on professional translation services in connection with business and public interests than in connection with private interests or hobbies; which would explain why "quality" is so often invoked yet generally so poorly defined in the domain of professional translation. Translation agencies tell those who work for them not to let machine translators do their work for reasons that we are all familiar with... but running something through a machine translator before proceeding to "tidy it up" by rendering it in language more coherent and reader-friendly, is hardly good enough either.

More and more people are beginning to realise that the best translations are the ones that don't look like translations at all! But what of "quality"? Pat Condell's videos on Youtube always feature speeches of "quality": there's no rambling; he knows how to get the point and give the key points emphasis without sounding biased; he is able to explain the existing views and attitudes that some people have in connection with religion, better than they can! And when he sometimes manages to be funny during his speeches, you end up convinced that he could he could attract people to listen to him intently even if they never got to hear the introduction to whatever speech he was in the process of delivering. Although technically Condell's speeches are not translation product specimens, they are based on carefully considered writing - I think it makes sense to claim that there are relatively few who could rewrite one of his speeches before advertising them as their own in a manner that is enough to convince people that that speech is indeed their own and not Pat's or anyone else's.

But having said that in tandem with my claim that people are more likely to call on professional translation services in connection with business and public interests than in connection with private interests or hobbies, I have to make it clear that a truly "quality" translation is not just about "saying what you mean" (the slogan of translation agency http://www.vialanguage.com). Although they don't tell you this at school, translations really do speak for their clients, their interests, their brands, and their opinions; and that, in a nutshell; is why I insisted on writing a blog called, "Could you really write a 'quality translation'?"

Thank you very much for reading.