Recently I did a bit of work on an Italian-to-English technical translation. It was a contract piece, and the translation agency involved needed the work done quickly to meet a deadline. It was a big project, so they chopped it up and gave it to several freelancers. I was able to see a bit of the translation done by another freelancer and was surprised at how different her work was from mine. Where I had settled on "chamber", she put "vault". Where I had used the British "earthing" (because the text came from Europe, and the target audience hadn't been specified), she had used the American "ground." There were numerous other variances. It made one thing very clear; a multi-translator project requires a review step in order to synthesize the various "voices" or styles of the several translators. And the cost of this step needs to be included in the estimate for the work.
This involved a technical translation. Just imagine how different a literary piece would sound coming from several translators. Now think how awful the result would be if the several pieces were simply added end to end, like rail cars, to complete a translation, without a review step to make them sound as if they had come from a single translator. Frankenstein translation!
For fun, can anyone lead me to a sight that considers how a famous text might sound if translated by differing types of translators?
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