Translation Journal Blog

Who Goes First?

2011-06-12T17:34:00.007-06:00

The other day I needed a gallon of milk, so I stopped by my favorite convenience store, picked up a gallon of low-fat, and headed toward the cashier. When it came to my turn, I told the cashier: "I'll pay $1.20 for this." She pretended not to hear me, but answered, in a polite but firm voice: "Two-ninety, please." I could describe the exchange that followed (the whole story is imaginary, anyway), but it should suffice to say that I ended up paying the price asked for by the cashier.

If it sounds unusual that the customer proposes a price he or she is willing to pay in a store, why is it accepted without discussion if a translation client tells the translator up front what rate is to be paid for a translation job. We see announcements even in "translation portals" looking for a translator to do a job in a certain language combination at a certain rate. And many of those rates are at or below the level that prevailed in the U.S. in the 50s or 60s.

Of course, the price of any merchandise is determined by mutual consent between vendor and buyer. In principle, it doesn't matter who "goes first" naming a price. The practice becomes questionable when the vendor attempts to give the impression that the price he is offering is immutable, non-negotiable, as if handed down by God as the eleventh Commandment.

Translators should not accept any condition imposed by their clients, and that includes the rate to be paid for their work. A client's offer should be considered a first bid in a negotiation that is ultimately to result in a rate that is acceptable and advantageous to both parties. Even if the client is offering a rate that is a fraction of our normal rate, we shouldn't be afraid to make a counteroffer: "Sorry, but my rate for this kind of work is $XX.00." If the conversation stops here, the translator has lost nothing (compared with the alternative of shutting up in disgust), and the client has received a piece of information that he could use in his offer to the next translator.

And if there is a sufficient number of translators unwilling to accept an unreasonable offer, but the client needs the translation badly enough, the scenario at the cashier's counter in the convenience store may repeat itself: The buyer may ultimately accept the vendor's price.

Translation Industry Survey

2010-10-14T11:56:00.006-06:00

The final results of this survey can be viewed at http://translationjournal.net/journal/MySurvey_Responses_final.aspx.htm. Thanks to all who responded.

Communication Is Power

2010-09-17T12:24:00.015-06:00

Few of the current generation of translators remember the times when translation was a lonely profession and the translator had the opportunity to meet other translators only in person or over the phone.

Then came FLEFO, which allowed us to communicate with our colleagues instantly and across oceans and national borders, the mailing list of Lantra-L, and the newsgroup sci.lang.translation. Today we are all linked via hundreds of websites, mailing lists, and social networking utilities. These tools allow us not only to consult fellow translators all over the world about a technical term or an idiom, but also to exchange information and experiences about specific clients. We can also ask for and receive advice from experienced colleagues on how to handle certain business situations.

In the old days we were almost powerless against a client who refused to pay for work performed. Today, in addition to the dozens of mailing lists that cater to translators working in certain languages or certain areas of expertise (patents, law, medicine), we have sites and facilities dedicated to defending our business interests regardless of our language combination or specialization. Payment practices and client rating sites such as ProZ, Ted Wozniak's Payment Practices, or the Translator Client Review List can be used both for obtaining information about potential clients before accepting a job and for denouncing a client who has reneged on his obligation to pay for a translation done.

It is difficult to overestimate the power of tens of thousands of translators in permanent contact with each other, exchanging information and acting on it by deciding on how to deal with a certain client or whether to do business with that client at all. It is perfectly conceivable that a translator in Thailand is offered a job from France but, after consulting one of the payment practices lists, refuses to accept it because a colleague living in Argentina once had a bad experience with that French client.

Today, an individual or company who fails to pay or otherwise mistreats translators cannot expect to stay in business for long. Deadbeats are no longer dealing with individual translators, but with the entire global translator community, electronically interlinked and exchanging information at the speed of light. And those translators who fail to make use of this novel opportunity put themselves at a disadvantage in a business world that ignores national borders and physical distances.

Brave New World of Translation

2010-03-29T14:45:00.015-06:00

No one disputes the fact that the translation industry is undergoing fundamental changes, which are affecting what we translate, the way do it, and the compensation we receive for our work.

The basic (interrelated) factors in these changes are

Technology,

Globalization, and

Concentration of the Industry.

Technology—computers, CAT tools, and the Internet—has dramatically increased our productivity in the past decades, and this trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. In a recent conference I attended in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Renato Beninatto, CEO of the consulting firm milengo, predicted that, while the income of translators will remain unchanged or will slightly increase in the coming years, the compensation per translated word will drop substantially. He foresees translators' productivity to rise to 30,000 - 40,000 words a day thanks to CAT tools, which will be free of charge.

Beninatto also foresees that the traditional model of translator-reviser will be replaced by machine translations edited by often monolingual experts.

Since the technologies needed for advanced machine translation can only be afforded by large multinational companies, individual translators and mom-and-pop translation companies will be increasingly marginalized and left with the crumbs of the market and with highly specialized translations such as literature and advertising, which are not susceptible to machine translation. While no one expects Shakespeare to be machine-translated into Quechua in our lifetime, most technical documents (which includes almost all non-literary texts) can already be successfully "gisted" by corpus-based machine translation. In many cases such "gisting" is adequate for the purpose; this is why quality will continue to be trumped by price for all but the most specialized translations where both accuracy and style are critical or where cultural adaptation, rather than straightforward translation, is required.

Do you agree with these predictions? How do you see our industry's future in the next few years and decades? How do you see your own role in this "brave new world of translation"?

Translators and the Recession

2009-08-17T19:59:00.007-06:00

For us translators recession means not only that fewer translations are being done, but also that clients are making an extra effort to cut costs, usually at our expense.

You can almost measure the severity of the recession by the delays with which invoices are getting paid. This means our clients are using us as a source of interest-free loans.

Clients are also becoming quite imaginative in requesting (or outright demanding) discounts for a variety of reasons or for no reason at all. Quantity discounts have been discussed in several translators' mailing lists. Although a quantity discount may sometimes be justified if a large technical translation job with repetitive terminology saves the translator research time, most translators refuse to give quantity discounts requested just because of the size of the job. The situation is similar in the case of discounts expected for total or partial matches when the translator uses a translation memory tool. We buy and learn to use TM tools to save ourselves time and money. If the client provides us with a reliable TM, which will save us research time, it's only fair that the savings be shared. But no one should ask us to give away the product of our investment in time and money.

Then there are clients who don't want to pay for numbers (they don't have to be translated, do they?). A colleague of mine replied to such a request by offering to deliver the job without the numbers, to be inserted by the client himself. I've even heard of a case where the client wanted to deduct all the occurrences, except the first one, of the word "the."

There are clients who want to save money by requesting just a "quick and dirty" translation. Of course, they don't specify whether "uncompromising quality" translated as "calidad sin compromiso" (quality without commitment) would be acceptable for the discounted price.

Another way of clients attempting to get more for their translation dollar is asking the translator to provide, for free, services that should be paid for: extra formatting, even DTP, glossary (compiled by the translator), or rush job without a rush surcharge.

What can the translator do when faced with unreasonable demands for discount or for extra unpaid work? There are basically three ways to handle such demands: 1) accept them without discussion; 2) state your own terms and refuse to make any concession; and 3) negotiate. Of course, the success of any negotiation depends on the strength of the translator's position vis-à-vis the client. If you're the only legal translator into Inuit, your chances of gettihg the job on your terms are better than if you have to compete with dozens of colleagues, some of whom are willing to work for peanuts. But even in the common language combinations, your relationship with the client will largely determine your negotiating power.

Have you found any creative and successful strategies to deal with unreasonable clients or to discourage your client from delaying payment due to you? How can translators best face the challenges posed by economic recession?

Contracts

2009-07-12T10:29:00.011-06:00

First, a disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and this blog should not be construed as legal advice, which can be given only by attorneys authorized to practice in the relevant jurisdiction. Contract law is an extensive and complex subset of the law of obligations, and it would be pretentious on my part to offer advice applicable to specific situations in a specific jurisdiction.

This said, there are certain concepts that are almost universally accepted and with which businesspeople, including translators, should be familiar. According to Wikipedia, "[a] contract is an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do, or refrain from doing, an act which is enforceable in a court of law." A contract is sometimes also referred to as the verbal expression of a "meeting of minds," but this definition suffers from the disadvantage that courts cannot expect to guess what the contracting parties were thinking at the time they entered the contract.

Contrary to what many people think, oral agreements may be valid contracts; however, they have the disadvantage of lack of evidence if it comes to enforcement in a court of law. This is why ATA's Code of Professional Conduct and Business Practices recommends that translation buyers "put [their] contractual relationship with translators and interpreters in writing." Complying with this recommendation is actually in the interest of both parties, as it helps avoid misunderstandings or relying on the parties' recollection of what was agreed on.

A contract offered by one of the parties may be accepted by the other party either explicitly by signing it or, sometimes, by simply performing the service offered by the contract. This is why, if a translator is offered a job accompanied by a contract, it is important that the translator should not simply do the translation, but also read the contract, sign it, reject it, or offer amendments to specific clauses. A suggestion of amendment does not constitute acceptance of the contract until the other party has agreed to it.

What translators should remember is that contracts are often written by lawyers who know little or nothing about translation, use templates written for use in other industries, and often include terms and conditions that are simply not applicable to the translation vendor/buyer relationship or are unfair to one of the parties (usually the translator). The translator shouldn't be afraid of rejecting clauses he or she finds unacceptable by simple crossing them out or offering an alternative and returning the contract unsigned with an explanation and a request for an amended contract.

One important aspect of contract law is that the contract is effective only between (or among) the parties that have signed it. So if a client claims that he cannot pay you because his client hasn't paid him, he's attempting to involve a third party who is not a party to the contract between the translator and his client.

A contract may also be "implied" and still enforceable if there are good reasons for assuming its terms. Thus, if you have done English to Quechua translations, and nothing else, for a client for the past ten years and you receive an English text from the same client, it's reasonable to assume that the client will want that text translated into Quechua.

An e-mail from an existing client requesting translation may be considered a contract (if accepted), provided the terms are known from previous practice. Striking the proper balance between excessive formality and sufficient protection is the challenge we all face in our business relationships.

Quality

2009-04-27T20:06:00.009-06:00

Quality seems to be the mantra of every translator. I have never met a translator who wouldn't swear that he or she produces above-average, if not perfect, quality.

So where do all those poor translations we've all seen come from?

The fact is that quality is an elusive concept and, while it's easy to label an incorrect or unidiomatic translation of poor quality, excellence is almost invisible.

And it comes at a cost.

One can argue that not every client needs a high level of quality. If there is a market for Chevies and Pintos, in addition to that for Cadillacs and Lincolns, why not a second-tier quality for translations? Because translations are not cars. While either a Chevy or a Cadillac will take you from point A to point B (with more or less comfort), a translation where "Do not look directly into the laser beam" is rendered as "Look directly into the laser beam" may have tragic consequences. An awkward style, a poor (but not incorrect) word choice, or a misspelled word here or there will not affect the usefulness of most translations for the intended purpose, but in advertising or literature (to mention only two examples), style is as important as content.

Which brings us to the main point: Quality does not exist in a vacuum; it depends on the purpose of the translation. While "quick and dirty" translations may be acceptable for some purposes as long as the correct meaning is conveyed, there are cases where only the highest quality will do. And knowledgeable translation buyers know that for that level of quality they must be prepared to pay Cadillac and Rolls-Royce prices.

To Edit or not to Edit

2008-12-21T08:23:00.007-07:00

All knowledgeable translation buyers and most translators agree that editing by someone other than the translator is essential to ensure the quality of a translation. However, most translators are reluctant, and some outright refuse, to accept editing jobs.

Should a translator agree to edit a colleague's work and, if so, under what conditions?

Some translation buyers will have a translation done by the cheapest available translator, or even by free machine translation, and then expect a competent human translator to clean up the resulting mess. If the client can find a human translator for such an editing job, it usually turns out to need a complete re-write, taking more time and effort than doing the translation from scratch. Needless to say that I, for one, refuse to accept such "editing" jobs or quote a price to reflect the aggravation and the time I expect to need, including for providing a report about the original translation if requested.

On the other extreme is a competent translation, which is given out for editing to fix a few typos, minor omissions, and, if possible, to improve the overall style of the text. I like such jobs because they give me insight into a colleague's thought process and often teach me creative solutions to difficult translation problems I wouldn't have thought of myself. Editing a competent translator's work is a pleasure and can be an educational experience.

Because of such extremes, I never accept to edit an unknown translator's work before seeing the original source-language text and its translation in order to locate it on the continuum between those extremes. When editing the work of one of the regular translators of our company, I already know what type of mistakes that particular translator tends to make (and we all make mistakes) and revise his or her work accordingly.

It's a good practice for the editor to discuss specific problems with the translator. For this reason, when our company has both translation and editing done by outside contractors, we encourage them to discuss specific problems between themselves, just as we discuss them with our translator when we do the editing in-house. Communication between translator and editor results in a better translation and in a higher level of satisfaction of translator and editor, who both feel that they have contributed to the excellence of the final product.

Prof. Camayd-Freixas and the Postville, Iowa Raid

2008-08-01T07:29:00.007-06:00

Translators and interpreters are not supposed to take sides in a conflict where they act as facilitators of communication between the parties. But what happens if the translator or interpreter witnesses an act that is patently unfair to one of the parties or if he sees a powerless group of people accused of crimes he firmly believes they did not commit?

Dr. Erik Camayd-Freixas, who teaches Spanish at Florida International University and is a federally certified court interpreter, found an answer to this question not in the law books of his university, but in his conscience. When he saw a powerful agency of the most powerful government on Earth come down like a ton of bricks on a group of 300 undocumented, mostly semi-literate Guatemalan peasant immigrants accused of serious crimes he was convinced they did not commit, he spoke up to denounce the injustice as he saw it.

He reported the irregularities he witnessed in the now infamous "Postville raid" in an essay originally intended for a small group of colleagues, but which immediately found its way to the Blogosphere, becoming the subject of intense discussions both within and outside the translator/interpreter community.

On July 24, 2008, Prof. Camayd-Freixas was called to testify before the House Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Committee. His statement to the Committee, together with his original essay, can be found at http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Camayd-Freixas080724.pdf.

As a translator, I'm proud to belong to the same community as Dr. Camayd-Freixas, and I salute him for his courage.

Specialist or Generalist?

2008-07-05T10:04:00.005-06:00

Unless they come from a field other than translation, translators usually start out as generalists, i.e., they're forced to accept assignments offered to them in any field of human endeavor, from nuclear physics to Sumo wrestling. Is that an ideal situation? No one, least of all a beginner, can be an expert in all possible subject matters, but lack of expertise will sooner or later come back to haunt the non-specialist translator in the form of misunderstood concepts and incorrect technical terms used.

On the other hand, many areas of science and technology overlap today, to the point that one cannot be an effective medical translator without being familiar with electronic instruments, and an article about the environment may require familiarity with chemistry, meteorology, geology, and physics.

Therefore, while specialization is a must in certain areas, the translator must also have a broad general culture in related, and even unrelated fields, to provide excellent work with real-life texts.

According to an old saying, the specialist knows a lot about very few things and keeps learning more and more about fewer and fewer things, until ultimately he will know everything about nothing. On the other hand, the generalist knows a little about a lot of things and keeps learning less and less about more and more until ultimately he will know nothing about everything.

Which of these extremes describes you best? Do you think narrow specialization is an adequate substitute for broad general culture? If so, under what circumstances?

Entering the Translation Market

2008-06-02T11:09:00.018-06:00

A reader of the TJ Blog has recently suggested that I should post some pointers for those who are considering translation as a career. While I'm not a marketing expert, 30 years in the translation business have taught me a few things about what to do and, especially, what not to do in order to achieve success as a translator.

First of all, do some research to find out if there is a need for your services and to what extent this need is being covered by other translators. Are most translations in your language combination(s) being outsourced to India and China? Can you rely on your local area for potential customers? While in this Internet age you may have customers anywhere in the world, nothing beats personal, eye-to-eye contact. What quality can your potential customers purchase from their current providers and at what price? Can you match either or possibly both?

It goes without saying that you shouldn't consider translation as a career unless you have mastery of one language (your target language) and excellent understanding of the language(s) from which you intend to translate (your source language(s)). Most successful translators I know also have some formal education or practical experience in a field such as engineering, medicine, or law. Remember that most translations are technical in nature, although "technical" should be understood here in a very broad sense to include any area of human endeavor from nuclear physics to basketball. And all these fields have their own jargons where guesswork immediately betrays the amateur. There are times when synonyms or almost-synonyms just won't work. You cannot use "kidney insufficiency" where the physician uses "kidney failure," or "control device" where the automotive engineer uses "control unit." By the way, the incorrect terms in the above example are literal translations of the correct Spanish and German terms, respectively.

Most beginning translators cannot afford to limit themselves to a single specialty; they must accept work in fields where their expertise is at a less than professional level. This is why a translator must have a broad range of knowledge in many fields, i.e., must be well-read and have a good general culture.

Have a colleague or a spouse review your work; proofreading your own translations is not a reliable method for finding mistakes.

So you have a promising potential market and all the prerequisites of a good translator; what next? You must equip yourself with the tools of the profession: a computer preferably with high-speed Internet connection, a good collection of general and specialized dictionaries and other reference books in your source and target languages, as well as a good translation memory tool to enhance your productivity. Software for desktop publishing and presentations has become a necessity for translators. Learn how to use your computer and your software to maximize your productivity and to present your work in a form that attests to our professionalism.

Having a website with your own domain name is a must in this day and age, even if you're an individual translator. Make sure it prominently shows your special expertise and makes a potential client want to contact you. You can find books and websites that teach you how to enhance the visibility of your site to search engines. Of course, you should also have some printed promotional material to send to potential clients, distribute at trade shows, or mail to addresses you can purchase from specialized companies. Yes, e-mail is cheaper, but most unsolicited e-mail ends up in the trash can even before it is seen by the intended prospect.

You should also decide whether you want to enter the freelance market or establish yourself as a translation company. Your chance of success as a freelancer is greater if you have solid mastery of your target language at the level of an educated native speaker, and excellent understanding of your source language(s). A translation company must handle a variety of languages and subject matters, but not necessarily all at a high professional level, since it has freelance translators to rely on. You should also consider if you wish to handle the expense and hassle of payroll, taxes, and a dedicated office that a translation company must have.

If you're a freelancer at the beginning of your career, you're well advised to market yourself to translation companies. The universe of translation companies is smaller than that of potential direct clients, and a reputable translation company will give you feedback on your work, helping you to perfect your skills as a translator. Errors that would make you lose a direct client will be corrected by the translation company, which will thus act as a buffer between you and the end user. You may look for direct clients when you're confident of your ability to provide professional-level work.

Another advantage of working with translation companies is that you can find them in the same place where you can find colleagues with whom you'll want to network: in your professional translators' association. Being a member of such an association and participating in its activities is a valuable tool for honing your skills and knowledge as a translator. You'll be surprised at the generosity of your colleagues who, while being your competitors, are often willing to share their knowledge and experience. You may also be able to establish a network of translators for mutual referrals.

Consider membership in other associations related to your specialty. These associations, as well as chambers of commerce, can provide you with opportunities to meet prospective clients and to learn or perfect the jargon of a specialized field.

Being a translator is not easy these days, since you must compete with the whole world, including translators from low-rate countries. You must have the initial prerequisites for entering the market and invest time, money, and energy to develop a client base and perfect your skills. Only if you're willing to make that investment can you expect to be successful as a translator.

Certification

2007-11-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

The American Translators Association and several other national translators' organizations test for the individual translator's ability to translate between specific languages, and they certify successful candidates accordingly. Most translation buyers test their prospective translators. One translation company has recently started certifying translators; however, most translation buyers issue no certificates and some of them don't even tell translators whether they've passed the test. The U.S. State Department prohibits translators from mentioning the fact that they have been successfully tested.

The ISO (International Standards Organization) 9000 family of standards prescribes "good quality management practices" and certifies companies or individuals complying with those standards. However, ISO certification means only that the certified entity follows certain procedures; it does not attest to the quality of the entity's product, i.e., in the case of a translation provider, to the quality of the provider's translation. ISO certification may cost tens of thousands of dollars.

At least one vendor of computer-aided translation software is certifying the software's users; however, this company may be motivated by its business interests: they expect their certification program to increase their market share in addition to earning them extra revenues.

Which certification, if any, should translation buyers require their providers to have? Which certification offers the best indication of a translator's ability to perform a specific job? Are certain programs self-serving or do they fulfill a legitimate function of screening individual and corporate translation providers for quality and good business practices?

Machine Translation

2007-08-13T19:50:00.000-06:00

Making computers translate has been the dream and goal of computer scientists since the early days of computing. The idea of machine translation was born before word processing, spreadsheets, and electronic data transfer, and long before DTP and the Internet.

We have all seen horrible examples of machine translation (por ex., at http://accurapid.com/accurapid/goodbadfr.html#MT, which has prompted some experts to declare that "machines will never replace human translators." But let's not forget that the same experts had also predicted that computers would never play chess at the level of human grand masters.

The fact is that computer hardware and software is becoming more and more powerful, which has made the use of new techniques such as corpus-based translation possible. (Several articles of the Translation Journal describe how corpus-based machine translation works.) The successes achieved with these new techniques have given rise to predictions of the opposite extreme, namely that high-quality machine translation of any imaginable text is just around the corner.

Today millions of words are being translated by computers every day, and this number is bound to increase exponentially in the near future. Don't expect the works of Shakespeare to be translated into Quechua by a robotic superpoet tomorrow, but machine translation of many types of straightforward text between the major languages already meets the quality standards for practical applications.

Where does this leave the human translator? Those of us who lack specialization or skills to perform at a superior quality level will have to change careers or content themselves with doing pre- or post-editing of machine-translated texts. Only the true aces of the profession will survive and prosper in an era where the bulk of translation work will be performed by computers.

Do you agree with these statements? Where do you see our profession and yourself five or ten years from now?

The Goalie

2007-02-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

They say that in sports like soccer (football) and hockey offensive players may make any number of mistakes, which are immediately forgotten. One goal scored, however, brings them glory and the applause of the spectators. On the other hand, goalies may brilliantly defend any number of shots; one mistake resulting in a goal against their team, however, will draw criticism from the "experts" and boos from the spectators.

Are we translators like goalies whose hits are unappreciated but whose misses are immediately criticized? Who among us doesn't have customers who never say a word of appreciation for many a brilliant solution to difficult translaton problems, obscure terms found after hours of research, and errors in the original text detected and corrected, but send you an indignant e-mail calling your attention to a single word omitted in a 30-page text?

Yes, translators are the goalies of the written word. Credit for a flawless style often goes to the orignal writer, but the translator gets the blame for a hard-to-read text. The penalties we suffer for errors are in no way commensurate with the appreciation we get for a faithful translation or even improvement on the original.

Are there any "goalies" out there who don't feel this way?

Liability Insurance for Translators

2007-01-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

What happens if you've made a mistake in a $100 job, your client claims your mistake cost him $100,000 and sues you for this amount? This is the nightmarish scenario that's being used to sell liability insurance, a.k.a. Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance, to translators. In fact, at least in the U.S., there is no record of a translator ever having been sued, let alone successfully sued, for translation errors.

Despite this lack of precedent, some translation buyers now require that translators carry liability insurance. For translation companies, this may be an attempt to shift the responsibility for translation quality from themselves to the translator. For some unscrupulous operators, it may even be a ruse to raise cash at the expense of the insurance company (and ultimately of the premium-paying translator) by filing frivolous lawsuits for E&O.

Why hasn't there been any lawsuit for E&O against translators in the U.S., the country known for often frivolous lawsuits? We may have simply been lucky, or translation buyers don't consider translators wealthy enough to be sued. This latter reason would of course disappear if E&O insurance became widespread. According to some, translation is protected under the First Amendment right to free speech, but, to the best of my knowledge, this has never been tested in a court of law.

So, is liability insurance for translators an indispensable protection, an addition to our cost of doing business without any tangible benefit, or a dangerous bait, which by its very existence could encourage lawsuits against translators?

Have you ever been sued, threatened with lawsuit, or do you know of anybody who has been sued for errors and omissions? Do translators and/or translation companies usually carry E&O insurance in your country? Is the American Translators Association right in offering such insurance to its members?

Translator Licensing

2006-10-19T11:06:00.000-06:00

It has been proposed that translators be subject to licensing, like lawyers, physicians, and accountants are, to be allowed to exercise their profession or at least to sign certain types of documents. Those who argue for licensing expect translators' incomes to rise substantially if we are subject to licensing restrictions, which would be equivalent to significantly reducing the supply side of the supply/demand balance. Those against question the practical implementation of licensing, like "Who will do the licensing?". We don't want government bureaucrats to decide whether or not we are allowed to exercise our profession. Universities are not equipped for this since, unlike medicine, law, and accounting, translation does not depend on a well-defined body of knowledge which is relatively easy to test for. Neither do we want to outsource this function to translation companies, who may have their own agendas and will be suspect as objective testers.

The American Translators Association (ATA) offers certification in 27 language combinations, but only about 1/4 of its individual members are certified.

The debate on licensing is nothing new. It was discussed within the ATA decades ago, and the current state of affairs in the U.S. reflects the outcome of that debate.

It may be time to resume the debate on this issue in this era of globalization. What do you think? Should translators be subject to licensing? Who is to administer the test and grant the licenses? According to what objective criteria? What activities would be subject to licensing? What may and what may not an unlicensed translator do?

If you don't live in the U.S., tell us if translation is subject to licensing in your country, and what is your experience with the current state of affairs there.

Gabe Bokor

Who Pays for Technology?

2006-07-31T19:25:00.000-06:00

Remember the good old days, when all you needed to translate was a piece of paper, pen or pencil (typewriters came later), and a couple of dictionaries? Those days are gone forever. In addition to machines with many times the computing power of the Apollo 11 moon rocket's controls, we have to buy and learn how to use sophisticated software worth much more than the machine it's installed on.

And then comes a client who wants you to do DTP (for which he previously used expensive typesetters) free of charge, or wants a discount for the savings you achieve with the CAT tools you paid for and spent countless hours learning how to use. It makes one wonder if all that technology you've purchased will benefit you or your client.

There can be no doubt about the savings in time and effort our hi-tech tools can bring us. I also think using these tools is more fun than typing your translation on a Selectric typewriter. The question is how to make them save us not only time and effort, but also dollars, euros, or yens.

Do you give a discount for "100% or 80% matches" when you use a CAT tool? Do you provide extra services such as DTP or glossary compilation free of charge only because your tools enable you to do so? You may decide to give your clients all these freebies if it gives you a competitive edge, but you must be aware of the fact that you're giving away something that you've paid for and that rightfully belongs to you.

Have our incomes grown at the same pace our expenses with hardware and software have? Who is ultimately benefiting from the technification of the translation industry?

Test Translations

2006-04-27T15:55:00.000-06:00

Many translation clients request free translations as a precondition for a paid assignment. Is this a reasonable request? And if so, what is a reasonable size of a test translation that will give the client an idea of the translator's capabilities, yet is unlikely to be resold, possibly supplemented by other "test" translations, to the client's client. The Code of Professional Conduct and Business Practices" of the American Translators Association stipulates: "As an employer or contractor of translators and/or interpreters, ... I will not require translators or interpreters to do unpaid work for the prospect of a paid assignment." Is this a reasonable rule for translation buyers? (Note that it does not prohibit translators from doing free test translations.) How common is the abusive practice of requesting test translations as freebies to be used by or resold to the final customer? Some translators refuse to do free translations. Others establish a limit of X words they are willing to do free of charge. Again others charge for test translations, but credit the amount paid against the price of the actual assignment. How should the translator respond when asked to do free work against the prospect of a paid assignment?

Globalization

2006-03-02T13:42:00.000-07:00

The translation industry started feeling the effects of globalization earlier and has been affected more profoundly than most other industries, because it's much easier to outsource the translation of a text than to start manufacturing operations in another country or even to import a product made abroad. Since translation buyers are constantly looking for the lowest-cost providers, globalization has benefited translators in low-cost-of-living countries, while it hurt those living in the First World. Obviously, not all language combinations are equally affected, since it's not easy to find a translator into Swedish in Sri Lanka or China.

What will be the long-term effect of globalization on the translation industry? Should translators in certain language combinations in the U.S. and Europe look for another career? Will rates level off as translators in developing countries find out they can earn more by charging higher rates? At what level will this leveling-off occur? Can higher productivity via technology compensate for lower rates?

Good Translations from Poor Originals?

2005-12-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

It is accepted by the translator community as self-evident that the translation should accurately reflect the original, possibly in both form and content. So what happens if the translator receives a poorly written original or one containing ambiguities and even outright factual errors (as opposed to typos)? Is the translator supposed to produce good English out of poor German, Russian, or Chinese? Are the ambiguities to be left in the target text (when this is possible) on the assumption that they may have been intentional? Is the translator supposed to correct the errors of the original? How far should the translator go in his or her research to ensure that the original is factually correct?

If the translator is in a position to contact the author of the original, they can discuss certain aspects of the text, but this is not always possible. The text may have reached the translator via a middleman or may have been extracted from a publication whose author is no longer available. A translator's note addressed to the client does not always solve the problem, because the client may be more clueless about the text than the translator. On the other hand, an error left in the text may come back to haunt the translator later.

How should the problem of poor ST be handled?

Simple comme “Bonjour”

2005-07-21T09:56:00.000-06:00

Alongside “s’il vous plaît” and “merci”, “bonjour” is one of the first words a person learns when studying French. One would think, then, that it would be among the easiest to translate. Think again.

The other day I had to translate a speech given by a senior manager of a company to a group of employees gathered at the start of a internal seminar. The speech started with “Bonjour !” Hands poised above the keyboard, ready to plunge in, I suddenly hesitated. “Hello” would be too casual and wouldn’t set any tone. “Good morning” would set the tone of the start of a working session, but was the speech actually given in the morning? “Good afternoon” would have a different feel to it, communicating less of a working atmosphere, or at least giving the impression that the work had already begun. “Ladies and gentlemen” would be used to address the public, not employees of the company. “Fellow employees” would be a little disingenuous and “Team members” would ring equally hollow. It would also depart more from the original “text” and move squarely into the realm of interpretation. How closely did I need to stick to the original text anyway?, I asked myself.

In the end, as silly as the question might have sounded, I asked the client at what time of day the speech was actually given. She said in the afternoon, but still wanted “Good morning”, because of the same issues I had tossed around in my head!

Does anyone else have a story about a very simple word or phrase that posed a problem in a translation?

Steven Sklar
traduction@sklarsteven.com

How to Predict Translator Performance

2005-06-02T16:27:00.000-06:00

We in the translation business know that it's virtually impossible to accurately predict the performance of a translator on a given job. Even the best translators cannot be experts in all fields, and we all have bad days from time to time. Yet translation buyers must select translators all the time, and it's not always possible to test the translator with the job at hand or a portion thereof.

Translator buyers therefore use translators' credentials to predict their performance. These credentials may include:

a college degree in translation
a college degree in the subject-matter field
a professional certification
a sample translation (not necessarily in the field in question)
client references
professional experience in a non-linguistic field

Which of these (or other) credentials are the best predictors of a translator's performance? Which ones can be faked, lied about, or dismissed as irrelevant?

Holidays and missed calls

2005-03-23T20:47:00.000-07:00

I should go away on holiday more often. It never fails. I plan a week off somewhere and the phone starts ringing. This time it was a week of skiing in the Alps, not far from our home in Lyon. My life as a free-lance translator had been relatively quiet in the weeks leading up to our trip, so I thought I wouldn’t be missing much.

On Tuesday of the week preceding our ski holiday I had a meeting with V., a prospective customer. I had been calling her company on and off for two years. She said she wanted me to translate their press releases, starting in a month, and to update a glossary in advance. A dream come true!

Just before I left, V. called and wanted me to translate an unexpected press release! For a combination of reasons, including negligence and mobile phone morbidity, I didn’t hear her message until 11pm that day, when I plugged in my cell phone into the wall outlet.

Worry set in. Had I made a bad impression? Would she ever call back? Would I get a chance to set things right? I phoned the next day from the cross-country ski trails, the following day from the downhill ski lift. Still no luck. Why doesn’t she return my messages? Does she despise me? Thus began a four-week, one-way game of telephone tag. Usually I got voice mail but occasionally I got a co-worker who said V. would call right back. She didn’t. Then suddenly, she resurfaced and sent me a draft of a contract. But still, no real contact. Then she sent me the originally-planned press release. Oh, and we had one five-minute conversation, but no opportunity to actually talk about translation issues.

By now I’d realized the missed phone message was not a problem. I was not the most disorganized person in the story. My customer had said she wanted to work with an independent like me, rather than with an agency, because the agencies never assign the same people to them, and they don’t have any direct contact with the translator. But given the way she and/or her company are organized, they can’t take advantage of the direct contact when they have it. Should I expect the worst? And just what is the worst?

Steve Sklar

Late Payments and Non-Payments

2004-10-29T07:32:00.000-06:00

The translation industry is probably the only one where thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise is custom-made and delivered often on the basis of a phone call or e-mail from an unknown client, without credit check or down payment. Individual translators, working hard to make ends meet, often finance large corporations by unwillingly extending interest-free credit for months. Is late payment or non-payment for translation work a serious problem? And what can or should translators and their organizations do about it?

On-Line Job Mediation Services: Are They Worth It?

2004-09-25T08:12:00.000-06:00

My name is Lionel Dersot. I have been doing translation—mainly from Japanese to French—for some 15 years before I left for a corporate stint of a few years in an unrelated work environment. When I stopped doing translation, agencies in Japan were still starting to timidly use email for communication and document management. I am now back in a market that is totally Internet savvy, with work opportunities seemingly expanded beyond one's own local market.

I wish to share an interesting—at least for me—experience I had with such online services. Translatorsbase.com is client-meet-translator online scheme where you register as a translator in the hope to find work assignments. The service gets a commission on transactions. I have been curious and somewhat doubtfull about the efficiency of such online marketplace for translators. Does one really get actual work assignments in such environment? While browsing the list of registered translators, I stumbled on the name of a friend I had lost contact with for many years. Each entry features a function that seemingly allows to send a message to the registered translator. While writing a message to my friend, I came to the idea of quickly setting up a simple online survey and send an invitation to a bunch of registered translators asking questions about the efficiency of the service to get them assignments. I did this in no time. After half a day, I had received not a single answer and started wondering whether my invitations mail had really got through. The answer came as a mail from Translatorsbase.com stating that messages sent to translators were checked for approprieteness before being processed. It was the first time indeed I received a clear statement of censorship practice from an online service provider stating that "we are snooping on your mails."

Translatorsbase.com provides no details on who is behind the service, and you have to register to find out that full service is available at a price. As for what this price means in terms of benefit, not a single meaningfull word. Talk about Trust!
Anyway, I am still interested to hear about experiences or opinions from translators on the value of such online marketplaces as an effective way to get work.

Lionel Dersot

The Role of Translation "Agencies"

2004-08-29T10:11:00.000-06:00

The love-hate relationship between freelance translators and translation companies (aka “agencies”) is probably as old as the translation industry itself. In contrast with the virtually infinite universe of potential translation users, translation agencies provide a finite market for translators to offer their services to buyers who largely play by the same familiar rules and provide a buffer between the translator and the client. Freelancers often resent the price they must pay for these services in the form of lower rates. Many tranlators feel that their work does not need the extra quality check most translation companies perform and even suspect that their translation may be ruined by ignorant agency editors. Stories of agencies that fail to pay or delay payment for translation work performed also abound.

Do you think translation companies perform a useful service and what advantages / disadvantages do you see in working through translation companies v. for direct clients?

(Please note that, in order to avoid confusion resulting from multiple individuals being given the same default name "Anonymous" by the system, you must now "create an account," i.e., register to be able to post. You may use an alias, although the use of real names is strongly encouraged. Registration is free, and your information is kept confidential.)

Native Language

2004-08-01T09:02:00.000-06:00

It used to be a "golden rule" of the translation profession that a translator should only translate into his or her native language.

Is this rule still valid? And what is "native language" anyway? What is the native language of the individual who was born in Germany to an American father and French mother, moved to Brazil at the age of 10, where he attended an English-language school, speaks English at home, Portuguese almost everywhere else, but has no foreign accent in French or German either?

And how about interpreters who routinely translate in both (or more) directions during the same session?

The Internet and the Translation Profession

2004-07-28T18:52:00.000-06:00

It's a commonplace to state that the Internet has profoundly changed our profession. It has erased distances and national borders, and it's providing us with research tools of which we had never dreamed before.

Depending on where you live and how comfortable you feel with the new, ever-changing technologies, you may consider the Internet a curse or a blessing. How did it change your way of doing translations and doing business, and what would be your advice to your colleagues on facing the challenges of this Brave New Cyberworld of ours?