 Fire Ant  Worker Bee | |
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The Bottom Lineby Fire Ant & Worker Bee |
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Q: I admit I feel bad because I think that I'm not such a bad translator—it is just a matter of style. Maybe they give my translations to someone to review and this person makes comments which are probably not very positive. What do you think? Frustrated in Costa Rica
But we sympathize with your efforts to find out precisely where the mismatch lay—that's essential to develop your own strategy for the future. A thought: maybe your feedback survey, while a good idea in theory, looked too time-consuming for your contact at the company. What you need in any case is a close look at changes made to your input. If none of the texts you worked on for this particular agency are available on the web or elsewhere in the public domain, get back to your company contact again. No bitterness, no weeping: simply explain that you are considering further training and want some concrete examples of what you need to focus on before signing up for a course. To increase your chances of a response, make the translation company's job as easy as possible. Look through your own records and identify a few assignments where you feel you performed particularly well. Ask for their revisions of these, specifying file names, subject matter and date. ` With future clients, ask to see revisions as a matter of course and spend some serious time analyzing TC input (you might ask a trusted colleague for an opinion, too). Finally, you note that the company's dissatisfaction may be "just a matter of style". That's not an argument to make to a premium client, where accuracy is the absolute minimum and style just about everything else. (Whether your ex-client enters that category is another matter—but do note that price is not their main objection here). Keep in mind that translation is a writing skill, and that working on your writing style is one of the best investments you can make. An excellent book for translators working into English is William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" (First HarperResource Quill, ISBN 0-06-000664-1); we would welcome suggestions from Spanish-speaking readers for translators working into that language. FA & WB
Q: I'm a freelance translator, now a generalist (English>German), but keen to specialize in financial translation. OK, my degree is in literature (I understand that is one strike against me), but I am numerate, I've been reading about economics all summer, and I'm prepared to roll up my sleeves and work. That said, right now I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of areas that I'll have to master to get anywhere. I feel I should start focusing, but I haven't even got the big picture straight yet. Is there any short course you can recommend? Lost in London
A: Dear Lost, If English is one of your languages and finance your goal, you're certainly in the right place. One of the best general courses we know of is an introduction to financial markets offered by the Financial Times—not cheap, but it will give you a good overview. And you'll be studying alongside businesspeople who are potential clients for your services. Contact Richard Rouse, FT Knowledge, Business Development on +44 207 382 8985 (Richard.Rouse@ftknowledge.com). FA & WB Q: I currently work with Hispanic youth for my church. For this, I have to constantly speak in Spanish and produce documents and letters in Spanish. I translate into Spanish every week at the church services and I also teach at my denomination's Bible Institute in Spanish. I am an architect by profession. I would like to start using the skills I already have, and begin translating part-time, voice or written. Where should I start? Jumping In
Dear Jumping, Rest assured that many professional translators and interpreters have followed the path you describe, applying language proficiency acquired through studies, travel and life experience to volunteer projects, then honing their skills and moving up into language services as a professional. We see no better recipe for job satisfaction than finding something you love to do, then figuring out a way to get paid to do it. Best of luck as you enter this fascinating profession. FA & WB
Q: My company recently commissioned the translation of a set of job descriptions from a group of UK translators that had been recommended to us. Our choice was based partly on the supplier's ability to work with translation memory tools, as we needed to remain consistent with an existing set of job titles and certain sections were quite repetitive. The results were disappointing. The entire text needed to be revised in-house: some of the French had been misunderstood, and the English structure sometimes matched the French so closely that clarity suffered. Here is an example: The purchaser then takes the lead as a summarizer, combining the contributions of his/her corporate internal and external partners in order to identify the optimum product-market combination, while helping the internal interested parties to identify and understand the risks associated with implementation of such suitability. When challenged about the shortcomings, the translators responded: "We must stress that we have been commissioned to translate the text, not produce an English text which expresses what we might consider to have been the author's intended meaning." Is this a widespread attitude in the translation community? I thought expressing the author's intended meaning was exactly what translation was about. The choice of translation memory tools for our project may have been misguided. We gained in consistency and terminology management, but we were confronted with human translators who, in their quest for greater productivity, lost sight of the need to communicate clearly with human readers. How can I avoid this happening again, but still benefit from the greater speed and consistency these tools offer? Hobgoblin in Hoboken
A: Start by striking these guys from your supplier list. Translation memory systems are not a substitute for human thought and language sensitivity, and their comments reflect either total cluelessness or far too many late nights—neither of which you need. They have effectively disqualified themselves as serious contenders outside the gisting market (a pity for them, given the price differential). We assume you gave the UK suppliers detailed project specifications, but did you ask to see samples of their work in advance? In translation there is never an absolute guarantee of quality, but a supplier with a portfolio of successful work is a better bet than an unknown quantity, even with a recommendation. For future projects, you might also ask to review the project together earlier on, i.e., not wait until final delivery to discover how much revision would be necessary. In answer to your first question, the attitude you decry is—sadly—all too common, although few people articulate it as baldly as your hapless suppliers. In fact, one of our contacts claims this is the number one problem facing the industry today, citing translations that give you the impression the translator thought his role was to "describe" the document rather than make it understandable. Slavishly following the punctuation of the original is one flashing red light (e.g., French to English translators who mechanically put three dots instead of "etc."); syntax structured along that of the source text another. Like raw machine translation, translation memory software is only as good as the people who use it. As the man said, translation is not about words, it is about the ideas behind the words. Exit machine, enter expert human translator (and beef up that budget while you're at it). FA & WB
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