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Who makes the best translator?

It’s now June and in one of those rare moments of calm between supervision meetings for my dissertation students, marking essays and going to various other meetings I started doing some reflection on that age old question of who makes the best translator: the subject matter expert or the professional translator?

Of course most people will be biased towards their own particular background but realistically, is it easier to learn how to translate and write or to learn about science and technology (for example)? I once asked this same question on Proz and opinion seemed to tip in favour of the expert-turned-translator (ETT). This surprised me a little because the ETTs almost unanimously said that the only way to gain all of the specialist information necessary in order to translated technical texts, you needed to have a degree in it. But then they would though, wouldn’t they? I don’t have a degree in science or engineering yet I’ve been translating texts in these areas for years with nothing but praise from clients so obviously I think they’re wrong as wrong can be. Not only were the ETTs a little more dogmatic, dare I say even fundamentalist, but the fact that they seemed to be heavy users of Proz makes me wonder now, in light of my previous post on rates, whether they are part of the problem when it comes to the devaluation of the translation profession.

If people haven’t gone through formal training as a translator, but instead have taken a degree in engineering, for example, have they had a chance to develop a bond with translation as a profession and for many of us as a way of life? It’s obvious that they won’t have had the chance to develop at least some of the skills needed before they start taking real projects. It also occurred to me why would someone with a degree in something like science, business or whatever would decide to throw it all in and become a translator? Do they hate the work that much? Do they see translation as an easy way of making a quick buck or two? You could also argue that subject matter expertise is, by and large, “just” declarative knowledge and the main challenge is just remembering it. Translating and writing, are skills which require procedural knowledge and as such take time to develop and perfect.

Seriously! Do I really need to be a welder to translate a text about welding?

Seriously, do I really need to be a welder to translate a text about welding?

On the other hand, can you really expect people with degrees in translation or worse still, languages, and nothing else to have the sufficient expertise in a particular area to call themselves “specialised” translators? Few, if any, translator training programmes include tuition in specialised areas such as science, technology or economics so where to these translators get the knowledge to allow them to understand and translate complex texts? In my own case, my training at DCU did involve a couple of years of science and economics and in any case, I have always had a profound interest in technology and as a child invariably had my nose stuck in an encyclopaedia.

So how come professional, career translators still manage to provide high quality translations? My own feeling is that an interest in a subject combined with the excellent research skills you develop on a reputable translator training programme are more than a match for a qualification in some engineering or scientific field. In fact, I’d probably go as far as to say that professional translator training is probably the better approach because it gives you the flexibility to move into new areas and the linguistic and research skills which will allow you to deal with the new and ever-changing challenges that present themselves each day. Ultimately, I’m not saying that a professional translator is better than an ETT but I do know that proper training in translation makes the job a whole lot easier otherwise it will take many years of trial and error and numerous mistranslations before you get it right.

Feel free to comment, challenge or just share your thoughts…

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Just what do you take me for?

I recently resurrected my Proz account out of curiosity and to check up on a new agency client who had approached me to do some work. Later, as I looked through the job listings I quickly realised that the vast majority of jobs, in my language pairs at least, pay absolute peanuts. There are two basic types of project on the likes of Proz: one where translators bid and suggest a price and another where the client specifies the price from the outset. I haven’t been monitoring these jobs for long but the rates being offered on Proz always seem to be at best half the typical industry rates… sometimes they’re a third. Obviously someone is taking these jobs and accepting these ridiculous rates but who? And more importantly why? How little do you have to think of yourself, your skills and your profession that you’ll basically prostitute yourself for a pittance? Maybe it’s the only way unskilled and unqualified translators can find work. I thought that maybe it’s just Proz that attracts bargain basement jobs so I signed up for Translators Cafe. Surprise surprise, the jobs are every bit as cheap and nasty as on Proz and on Aquarius too.

Then, the other day an email from Proz landed in my inbox with a job ad… well I say job ad but it wasn’t. Some cheeky so-and-so in Germany wanted 11 pages of gynaecology texts translated from German into English, wait for this, FOR FREE! What does she take us for? I mean seriously, what is the world coming to when someone can send an email to at least two professional translator forums (it appeared on Translators Café as well) asking someone to do a highly specialised medical translation for free without so much as the tiniest twinge of shame? The lady who posted the ad, you can see it here, kindly pointed out that “This is a great way for aspiring translators to gain more experience and practice“. A great way of taking advantage of gullible gobdaws methinks and heaven knows what she was going to use the translation for. I certainly hope it wasn’t being given to a paying customer. What really annoys me is that by the time bidding closed for this job, no less than 9 people had submitted bids! I keep trying to imagine the thought processes involved in seeing this ad and thinking “OK, I’ll do it. Who needs money anyway?” I believe the technical term is “jackass”.

Mr. Jack Ash, CEO of Havent a Clue Translation Services

Mr. Jack Ash, CEO of Haven't a Clue Translation Services

But once you get over the rage and righteous indignation, the whole incident and the lack of decent rates on forums makes you wonder whether these forums have a case to answer because it would seem that they are complicit in, or at least guilty of facilitating, the grave underpricing of translation services.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we should impose unrealistically high rates just because we can. I have just as much contempt for agencies that charge astronomical prices as I have for the cost cutters. I know of one high-profile agency who quoted over £250 for a 1000 word semi-technical document. This is well over twice the normal price and a damn sight more than the £60 the translator will see from this job. But if someone were to use these forums as their sole source of finding work, would they be actually able to earn a decent living or would they have to work 20 hours a day, seven days a week, just to make ends meet? Is it really possible for a translator to negotiate decent rates when they are involved in a bidding war with other translators? I like the forums for the sense of community they create but I’m really sickened by the exploitation that seems to go on and the sheer stupidity of some “translators” who think so little of themselves that they’ll put up with this.

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Translator, heal thyself!

I have never had a problem with editing translations produced by other translators. Nor for that matter have I had a problem, in principle, with others editing my own work. As far as I’m concerned this is just good practice; most professional activities require a second set of eyes to ensure quality and to catch those little booboos that crop up every so often. Over the years, of course, I have had to lock horns with overzealous editors who missed the point of editing and tried to impose their own stylistic preferences on my translations when they were supposed to be looking for inaccuracies, checking terminology etc.

The thought has crossed my mind on more than one occasion that sometimes the editor is secretly a little miffed that they weren’t asked to translate the text and that they are “just” the editor” but that’s a different story.

Its bad enough that any quack can call himself a translator but when they start self-revising...

Does translation quality need to be a team activity?

This idea of editing is an essential part of ensuring the quality of translations and we owe it to our clients and to ourselves to do this. Recently however, over on the Translation Journal blog I discovered that there is something of a question mark over whether translators should edit the work of others. To be honest, I finished reading that post with the feeling that the author and the person who posted a comment were just a couple of grumpy sods. You get them in every profession and you get used to the way they can see the negative in pretty much anything. One of the conceivable abuses of editing that the article mentions is an agency who is not willing to pay the translation rates of a good translator so instead pays the lower rates of a “bad” translator in the knowledge that the “good” translator can be paid for 2-3 hours to fix the mistakes and stylistic infelicities in the translation.

So basically, you’re getting a good translator’s translation, without paying for it. As cynical as this might seem, I have thought on occasion that this was being done to me – simply because the translations I was asked to edit were so bad and involved so much work to bring them up to scratch. I did raise it with the client and it turned out that the translator was actually a trainee in-house translator so my edits were serving two purposes: fix the translation, obviously and also “train” the translator because I tend to include comments and explanations for my changes (force of habit from being a lecturer).

There are various benefits for editing another translator’s work but recently I’ve been wondering about the ethics of self-revision. I have been asked on several occasions to do “translate and edit” jobs. You may be asking how this type of job differs from a typical translation job. Shouldn’t all translators check their work? Of course they should and the vast majority do carefully proof their translations before they send them back to the client. This type of  job is different because the client was an agency and their clients, large multinationals, specifically requested translation and review, which is a separate service in addition to the revision a translator does as a matter of course. The customer assumes that one person will translate and another will edit.

Miracle cure for all your translation woes

Miracle cure for all your translation woes

For whatever reason, the agency decided that it was preferable/acceptable to have the translator do both but I wonder whether this is sensible. There must be ethical, moral and possibly even legal questions to be answered. Is it the same as doctors treating themselves?

You could argue that self-editing is as questionable as self-prescribing medication. But is it? Lots of us have seen the curmudgeonly Dr House on TV throw fistfuls of painkillers down his throat while wrestling with the ever-changing facts of complex medical dilemmas. There’s even the doctor in France who “cured” his alcoholism by prescribing himself insanely massive doses of muscle relaxants so there’s obviously some mileage in this self-medication gig but as a translator can you really spot and fix the types of errors that an editor can when you’re reading you own work? Most of us know that when you’re looking at the same piece of text for a long period you go a little snow-blind and stop noticing even obvious things.

By the same token, if you make a mistake because of a lack of knowledge, for instance, you can’t really be expected to spot it afterwards can you? But ethical quandaries for the translator aside, I wonder whether this practice is not just a little bit dishonest. By paying for a second pair of eyes to look at the translation shouldn’t the client get just that, not just the same pair of eyes but with a different hat on? Instead of getting a doctor, the client might unwittingly be buying snake oil from the back of a wagon.

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Carbon-neutral translation?

When it comes to the environment, we are constantly being told that we all have a part to play, that every little change we make, no matter how small, adds up and will help us avoid a flaming, flooded, hurricane swept, ice-cap melting Armageddon at the hands of global warming. So where does this leave translators? Is there such a thing as an environmentally friendly translator? Is it even necessary for translation to go green? If you think about it, it’s hard to imagine how we could be playing a large part in the extinction of life as we know it. We don’t appear to be using up lots of resources: computer, light and heat for translators are all reasonably minimal. Those among us who are freelancers don’t have to commute so pollution from cars isn’t much of an issue either and because most of us work directly on our computers there’s not much printing being done. So if we are all supposed to play our part in helping the environment what can we do?

The eco-friendly solution to personal transportation

The eco-friendly solution to personal transportation

Well according to the New Scientist (“Is the net hurting the environment?”) the Internet has a carbon footprint roughly equal to that of the airline industry, accounting for around 2% of global CO2 output. Apparently it takes an estimated 152 billion kilowatt-hours just to run the data centres that run the Internet. According to Google the electricity needed to power one single Internet search generates 200 mg of CO2. The New Scientist article admits that this may not sound much but 1000 searches produces the same CO2 emissions as an average car traveling 1 km.

So given that, as I mentioned previously, translators have become so dependent on the Internet not only as a way of researching translations but also as a way of finding work and communicating with colleagues and customers, I imagine that it’s safe to say that we are easily at the mid to upper end of the scale of hardcore Internet users and are contributing quite a bit towards the Internet’s emissions. And you thought that searching for terminology was harmless?

Build your own house (some assembly required)

Build your own house (some assembly required)

There have been various initiatives aimed at reducing the environmental harm done by computers such as the RoHS directive and the black version of Google – imaginatively called “Blackle” (www.blackle.com) – which claims to reduce users’ energy usage because it takes less energy to display the colour black on a computer screen. Other companies like IBM have developed new hardware and software monitoring technologies to minimise the amount of energy used in data centres but is there anything translators can do? Probably not but it’s worth remembering this next time we click on that “Google Search” button. Of course we could reject our toxic, environment-killing lifestyle and addiction to “mod-cons” and go live in a hut made from recycled guano and knit our own muesli but to be honest I don’t much fancy dumping such creature comforts as light, heat, the Internet, my car, clean clothes and non-scratchy underpants.

An alternative would be for translators to sign up for some form of carbon offsetting scheme. The Carbon Trust in England describes offsetting as a scheme which “allows organisations to indirectly reduce their carbon footprint through the purchase of carbon credits associated with emissions reduction projects (such as energy efficiency and renewable power) that have occurred elsewhere”. I looked at the CO2 Balance website and discovered that to offset the 1.72 tonnes of CO2 my car produces each year I can spend £15.50 on energy-efficient wood stoves for villagers in Kenya, donate £12.92 towards an 8 Megawatt hydroelectric power station in China or fork out £20.66 to plant trees in a forest in Brittany. I’ve no idea how much I’d need to spend to offset my Google habit but it’s probably better to give something than nothing at all even though I’d prefer to see my money go towards reducing exhaust emissions from farmyard animals. I wonder if carbon neutral translation will be the next big selling point for translators much in the same way as Trados certification (supposedly).

Will scratchy, organic knitted underpants really save us all?

Can scratchy, organic, knitted underpants really save us all?

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Translator, interpreter…tom-ay-toe, tom-ah-toe

There’s nothing more likely to get my professional hackles raised than hearing some clueless news reporter saying something like “Speaking through a translator, Mr. Smith gave a press conference…”. Apart from the obvious practical considerations of how you hold a translator up to your mouth and where do you speak through, it galls me to hear people over and over again refer to translators as interpreters, and vice versa.

And it’s nearly always television and radio reporters who are the culprits. Our fellow wordsmiths in the newspapers generally get it right, thankfully. But it is surprising that people have such difficulty in grasping the difference between a translator – someone who takes stuff from one language and writes it down – and an interpreter – someone who takes stuff from another language and speaks it. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with interpreters at all and am in awe of conference interpreters (except for one nameless interpreter in Dublin who spoke about “research machines” when the French speaker was talking about “search engines”). It’s just that translating and interpreting are two very separate jobs which require different skills and qualities. It’s like the difference between pirates and ninjas, apples and pears, cornflakes and rice crispies… they’re similar but very different.

Priates vs. Ninjas (Source: Geeklogie.com)

Pirates vs. Ninjas (Source: Geeklogie.com)

Perhaps it’s merely a symptom of a wider ignorance among the general public of what it is language professionals in all of their flavours actually do. Maybe it’s a wake-up call for the translating and interpreting communities to raise awareness… then again, maybe it’s only me that’s bothered by this in which case, never mind!

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