Western Practitioner: My Experiences about Doing Polishing Work

First of all, I would like to thank all my fellow practitioners who write for the Falun Dafa websites. Each of their words helps me in my cultivation. Some testimonies make me nauseous when I read about the terrible deeds of the evil. Some testimonies help me think, helping me progress as a Falun Dafa practitioner and 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 for this sharing which is like a gift to my cultivation. My job is to make the link between the practitioner who wrote these words thousands of miles away, the translator (who may also be very far away) and our readers.

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

As a polisher, I must be careful to respect the translator's work. Of course I try to correct all the spelling and grammar mistakes. 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. On the other hand, I think the translation of an article should also respect the understandings and style of the practitioner who initially wrote the article. Some practitioners are obviously highly educated people; and some aren't. At first, I didn't really know how to balance this properly. But gradually, I came to see what was the most important thing about all these articles: they all talk about Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance 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 of the French readers.

I also think that, in general, as long as someone has decided to write an article for a Falun Dafa website 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 polishing and translating. Our translations won't bring any results if they are not published. Translating is not an ordinary exercise. It is not something we are doing 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 translation/polishing work is to expose each and every aspect of the evil, to expose the persecution, reveal the truth and save people. This task is very solemn and is our responsibility. I think we will all agree to say that such translation work helps us in our cultivation. 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.