Rachid Titouah is no ordinary man. Managing director of International Translation Agency (ITA), an agency specialised in translation and interpretation services based in the thick of Sliema, Titouah provides translation and interpretation services in no fewer than nine languages: the six UN languages – English, French, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese and Russian – plus German, Italian and Maltese.
“I was born in Algeria where I received my secondary education then moved to France and read linguistics at Paris III University, graduating in 1990 with an M.A. in Applied Linguistics,” he tells me at his office in Tigne Street.
“While still completing my second degree, in 1989, I started working as a part-time translator for a Paris-based translation agency. It was then that I developed a keen interest in the profession. I came to Malta in 1990 to teach French literature and civilization at the Alliance française,” he recalls.
Titouah confides that since those distant times, Malta has become his second home.
“I fell in love with the island and the warmth of its people, learned to laugh at the quirks and embraced the culture. I’d like to think that Malta has adopted me as one of its own as I have chosen it to be my second home,” Titouah says with a gentle smile.
ITA, which was set up 17 years ago with a French friend and business partner, offers translation and interpretation services both locally and overseas.
Titouah explains that the two main services which ITA provides are translation of documents and conference interpretation. ITA offers scientific, technical and legal translation as well as sworn translation of birth and marriage certificates and other official documents.
ITA also offers a service known as “conference translation”. This means that while a conference is taking place, documents that are being drafted or amended for approval during the proceedings need to be translated in real-time.
“If, for instance, delegates come up with a draft resolution today which will be submitted for adoption the next day, someone has to translate that resolution during the night so that delegates can find a version of it in their own languages on their tables the next day,” Titouah explains.
ITA employs 14 in-house members of staff, and has a world-wide network of 70 translators and interpreters, all of whom have graduated from some of the best Universities and interpreters schools in Europe.
“Many of us are also members of prestigious professional translators and interpreters organisations. I personally am a member of the Association internationale des traducteurs de conférences (AITC) Geneva, which is the foremost organisation worldwide for this profession,” Titouah says proudly.
The quality of ITA’s translations is ensured in a variety of ways. “Like I said earlier on, the translators employed with us have to be qualified with a minimum of 10 years’ experience. Moreover, all translations are revised by senior translators, revisers and proofreaders.
“Basically, the best translation is the one that does not allow the reader to guess that the text in hand is not the original. As the saying goes, ‘a translation that reads like a translation is not a good translation’.
“If you read a text and you get the impression that it might have been translated, then the translation is not as good as it could be. This standard of quality can only be attained after many years of experience, there are no short cut,” Titouah warns.
Wise words indeed…