By a French-speaking Falun Dafa practitioner

(Clearwisdom.net) First of all, I would like to thank all my fellow practitioners who write for Minghui. Each of their words helps me in my xiulian. Some testimonies make me nauseous when I read about the terrible deeds of the evil. Some testimonies help me think, help me progress as a Dafa disciple. Some articles are just written for me and stay in my mind for days. As a polisher, I feel we are all so close. Someone thousands of miles away understands something or experiences something and shares it with us, the translating team, shares it with me, the polisher. I am so grateful about that, about this sharing, it is like a gift. And my job is to make the link between the practitioner who wrote these words thousands of miles away, the translator (who might also be very far away) and our readers.

Even though there are no Dafa disciples where I live, I never feel alone.

As a polisher, I must be careful to respect the translator's work. I try to correct all the spelling and grammar mistakes of course. And I also make sure there are no englishisms and no misunderstanding of the text. Sometimes, I clearly know I wouldn't have translated such and such word or sentence like the translator has. But, as long as the translation into French is correct and as long as the meaning is still there, I leave it the way it is.

Sometimes, I would like an article to sound better or I think such or such sentence is not well balanced. But there are so many articles which need to be proofread that I haven't got a lot of time to spend on each article. And on the other hand, I think the translation of an article should also respect the understandings and style of the disciple who wrote the article initially. Some disciples are obviously educated people; some others are not so educated. And it shows in their style. At first, I didn't really know how to balance all that properly. But gradually, I came to see what was the most important thing about all these articles: they all talk about Zhen Shan Ren and that's why they are all so moving and so important, no matter the awkwardness of the style.

What I try to make sure though, is that the reading of the translated texts stays quite fluid. A bad, or at least, not so good translation can be a serious barrier to some French ordinary people.

I also think that, in general, as long as someone has decided to write an article for Minghui and as long as it was chosen for translation, we should make sure it gets to the reader. This may sound obvious but the reason why I say that is that we've realised some articles got "lost" and never got published. This is a lack of respect to the practitioner who wrote the initial article, to the translator's work and to the reader who won't get a chance to read it. When an article gets lost, what we have done becomes meaningless. Master said for the Prague Fa Conference: "...do well the three things Dafa disciples are supposed to do well, and ensure that our Fa conference is a success and brings results." ("To the Prague Fa Conference")

To me, these words also apply to our work for Minghui. Our translations won't bring any results if they are not published. Translating is not an ordinary exercise. We are not doing it to improve our ordinary capacities or to show how good we are at translating. We are not doing it for ourselves. The way I understand it is that one of our main aims with our Minghui work is to expose each and every aspect of the evil, to clarify the truth and to save people. This task is a very solemn one. It is our responsibility. I think we will all agree to say that working for Minghui helps us in our xiulian. But we mustn't forget why we are doing it for and I think we should make sure every article translated is published and can be read.

This is my understanding. Please, tell me if there is anything inappropriate.

Posting date: 12/24/2005
Original article date: 12/24/2005
Category: Cultivation in Persecution
Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2005/12/8/116002.html

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