An online discussion forum I frequent recently had some people mentioning how difficult it is for Japanese academics, for example, to get their work into publishable English. In response, I suggested such people find and cherish good translators. In response, one person said that translators are no solution because the original Japanese is often flawed—is not “grammatically, syntactically and semantically correct.”
But it seems to me a good translator will have sufficient specialist background knowledge to understand the text even when it is not perfect in all respects. And by the same token, the good translator will be able to spot inconsistencies, internal contradictions, and the like and to query the original author for clarification. (Despite what purists may think, books do get published, even by big-name publishers, with not just inconsistencies and typos but with flat-out mistakes.)
So in addition to reading between the lines and filling in the blanks, the good translator will spot and correct these mistakes. Yet that is not the only value the good translator can add. Japanese authors who bother with footnotes will often cite works they read in translation. Here it is not enough to just back-translate the Japanese title; the job is to find out what the original title was and to include that information in the footnote for people who might be able to read the original. Likewise if a Japanese work cited has been translated, the good translator will include that information in the footnote as well.
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I am working on a book that quotes/cites a number of entries from a Japanese diary. Of course, these can be translated. But it turns out the diary itself has been translated, which suggests people who read the book I am working on might want to look at the already-published English translation of the diary as well. Which in turn means they might notice if the entry in my translation and the entry in the already-published translation are different—which means the translator should get the published translation and use its translations so they are the same. This is going well beyond pure translation, but it serves the client’s best interests and is hence part of the job.
We are not just doing word replacement. We are translating the text. We are making the translation as readable and as informative in the target language at the source text is in the source language. If that involves field-specific knowledge and a little editorial tweaking, so be it. We’re translators, not machines.