By contrast, there were also some outstanding examples of translations across the corpus, and this seems to indicate that the translators (who remain anonymous) of the target texts do have high quality translating skills. For instance, fatal damage was correctly translated with another formulaic expression: daño irreparable. Here, the translator could have fallen into the trap of the false friend fatal which in Spanish means “terrible”, rather than “deadly” and would not collocate comfortably with daño in any case. However, the translator identified the expression as formulaic, whether subconsciously or not, and the result is a perfectly natural sounding collocate in Spanish, accurately rendering the meaning into the TT: daño irreparable.
Along similar lines was the translation of peace and quiet for con toda tranquilidad. In this case, the transparency of peace and quiet might lead a translator to translate it word for word into the TT. However, the translator correctly identified it as a formulaic expression, and rendered the correct meaning with another correct formulaic expression in Spanish.
Correct translations into the TT are not always formulaic in the corpus of target texts. For example, for future reference is another transparent formulaic expression that could be easily missed by a translator and translating it word for word into Spanish would border on meaningless. For future reference was paraphrased in a non-formulaic way with para consultas en el futuro, which not only conveys the meaning more clearly than a literal translation would, but also sounds much more natural and native-like in the TT. The question arises here as to why there were so many errors in such a small corpus when the translators do not lack translating skills. We can speculate about the reasons for it but unfortunately the question remains unanswered.
5. Results and conclusions
First and foremost, the quality of the translation of formulaic expressions in instruction manuals should be improved. This could almost be considered a universal fact: ‘We have all seen badly translated text – from restaurant menus to instruction manuals. They might make us laugh – but do you want your customers to laugh at what you say?’ (Logo of LX Centre).
Overall, the frequency of formulaic expressions in technical texts appears to be underestimated. The small corpus used for this study produced an average of 6.3