Translation - easy or hard?

You'd think that translation isn't that hard, right? I mean, you just read a sentence and translate it – it can't be that difficult. Well, I was wrong.

It's tough.

First of all, to translate, you must, of course, read and understand the text you're translating. It's not enough to simply translate word by word because that way it's easy to lose the original meaning and that's a big no-no for a good translation. I mean, it pretty much takes away the whole point of translation, doesn't it?

Second of all, it's very time consuming. You have to read and to understand, and only then can you begin to process of translation. But turns out that finding the right words and correct terms, avoiding repetition and keeping the text coherent, is extremely hard and tiring. I don't doubt that this applies to any text, but especially an academic book, where you have to use professional language, it takes a lot more than just using Google Translator and calling it a day.

So, if it wasn't clear already, I've been attempting to translate this book about human geography – specifically about the effect of urbanization on a small rural village. It's called "Kylä kaupungistuvassa yhteiskunnassa" (A village in an urbanizing society) and it was written by Marja Holmila and published in 2001. My translation of the book is, of course, unofficial and I'm merely doing it for practice.

The book is something I'm reading on my free time and it's not part of my other courses. It's also not too long, just 154 pages, so I thought it could something nice and light to do on the side. But, as I've begun the translation process, I quickly realized that there's no way I'm translating the whole book. Just the introduction, which is nine pages long, took me up to three hours to translate.

I wouldn't call this a negative experience, however. I still find it useful and, surprisingly, fun. But I'll continue one chapter a time and see how far I manage to go. This way, there's not too much pressure.

Oh, and to all the translators out there, thank you.