You know what kind of translations I hate the most?

“No,” you say. “We couldn’t care less.” (Unless, of course, you’re American, in which case you say “We could care less,” which, I’m sorry, doesn’t make any sense.)

Well, regardless of whether you could or couldn’t care less, I’m going to tell you anyway. Ready?

Spreadsheets.

This morning this ridiculous mess arrived in my inbox with a request to translate it by 5:00pm:

Yes, a single A3-size sheet of paper, stuffed full with all sorts of charts, graphs, boxes and lists, all requiring translation into English. Never mind that an English sentence requires something like a minimum of three times as much space as its Japanese counterpart; splitting the document up isn’t an option. And thus, in an effort to preserve the formatting, text is shrunk, columns are widened and even more hair is lost from my rapidly balding head.

The worst part is that deep down, I know that no one is actually going to read it. Sure, it might be skimmed, glanced at, looked over, but certainly no careful perusal is going to be taking place. Thus is the triviality of the translation of spreadsheets. A letter has its recipient, a presentation has its audience, but a spreadsheet exists for no one.