Can you turn a silk ear into a sow's purse?

Yes, I have changed the order of the phrase to illustrate the dilemma translators often face when confronted with sentences which seem a bit bizarre and might benefit from some recasting or editing.

The question of whether to modify your translation to improve the source's legibility in the target text is a thorny one.

In the silk ear illustration above, the author presumably knew the English language expression and was merely reversing it for effect. Whether it would be best translated literally is another matter, best left to the translator into the target language.

In other cases, where the source text is unclear or incomprehensible, the translator should act, and ask for clarification from the owner of the material, and offer to render it clearer in the target. You can and should try to make the silk purse from the sow's ear you were given. Your client will thank you for it.

This is customer service, common sense, or courtesy, whatever you wish.

In general terms any opportunity to engage with your customer should be seized upon and used to promote and demonstrate the depth and quality of the service you have to offer. The customer will thank you for it, and become or remain a returning customer.

With a bit of luck they will talk to others about how well you worked with them and added value to their translation. This good feedback may help you to gain more customers.

Here is an example from work we did recently: the customer was a company offering an online service which they named in their source (native) language.

It sounded OK in the source language. In fact it was great. The customer was very proud of it and would gladly have used it everywhere.

In English it most certainly was not, and might have led to much hilarity on the part of the English speaking reader, had it been left as it was.

We suggested that it would be much better to translate the name of the service, but not literally. Instead, after a quick brainstorming session, we came up with a catchy name for the service, which also encapsulated it in the same way as in the source.

After explaining what we did and why the customer was delighted. We are now getting all their business.