Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
In a world of profit driven organizations, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a difficult dream to achieve. CSR generally means integrating social values and mission statements of organizations within business decision-making in order to achieve positive and sustainable outcomes towards business, environment and the community at large. Easier said than done as we all know that money makes the world go round, especially during these trying global recession periods. So it is remarkable whenever certain organizations go the extra mile and make the extra effort to make this dream a reality.
Elitebilingual Pte Ltd's Managing Director, Ms Hong Yinyin has such a compassionate heart that is evident in some of the little known acts of charity which were carried out. Of most notable mention of all the translations that were carried out were for the organizations as follows; the Singapore Children's Society, United Nations World Food Programme, Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS) and Fei Yue Community Services (FCYS).
The Singapore Children's Society is a non-profit organisation that helps protect and nurture children as well as youths of all races and religion, especially those who were abused, neglected and/or from dysfunctional families. So when Elite was approached by them to translate an article about *Maria (*Maria is a pseudonym used to protect the identity of the child) we felt dearly for the children and that we should give back to society and decided to do this project for free.
An example of the translation is as follows below.
This is Maria.
这是玛丽亚的故事
She is struggling with her studies, while nursing her paralysed mother.
Her elder sister, aged 17, works part-time to provide for the family.
Her father has abandoned the family.
You can help Maria…
她除了要应付繁重的功课，还得照顾瘫痪的母亲。
她的姐姐今年17岁，需要在外兼职才能养家糊口。
她的父亲抛弃了家庭，从此不见踪影。
玛丽亚需要您的帮助 …
Thus began a series of more translations that we felt that were for a viable cause and would be able to contribute to society.
The Miele Guide Restaurant Month was a charity initiative, carried out by Ate Media, that would specifically benefit the United Nations World Food Programme. Elite carried out the Japanese, Korean and Chinese translations continuously for a whole month pro bono. A link with both our organisations' websites was also placed free of charge to provide additional awareness on the programme. As the United Nations World Food Programme focuses on fighting hunger, reaching over 102 million people worldwide alone in 2008 with beneficiaries in 78 countries, we felt that it's definitely more than just; a cause worth fighting for.
Next is the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports Singapore (MCYS). Their mission is to build a cohesive and resilient society by fostering socially responsible individuals, inspired and committed youths, strong and stable families, a caring, active community and a sporting people. We carried out a 4,000 word English to Mandarin translation service for them, focusing on stopping family violence, again free of charge. As Elite firmly believes in a balanced lifestyle and strong family values, these goals are aligned with our business goals and vision. Sometimes, it not just about profit, but about living as socially responsible individuals.
Last but not least, the latest project was for Fei Yue Community Services Singapore (FCYS), whose agenda was in effecting life transformation in people to lead them to a truly fulfilling life within an integrated community network. Over 16,000 words were edited by Elite for this project on "52 Steps to a Happy Marriage".
‘….To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish 'till death do us part. And hereto I pledge you my faithfulness.’
Hopefully all these translations would be put to good use for the public and ultimately contribute to society in one way or another. The effects may be minimal and may not be immediately felt. However, the seeds of these had been sown and the way paved for future corporate social responsible actions to be tied in with organizational goals for Elite.
By Vincent Guee
Operations Manager, Elite
"We cannot tell what may happen to us in life. But we can decide what happens within us— how we can take it, what we do with it— and that is what really counts in the end. ~Joseph Fort Newton"
Showing posts with label translators ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label translators ethics. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
译者—戴着镣铐的舞者
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
翻译真的是一门独特的艺术，是的，这里我把翻译称为一种艺术。艺术就需要创作，但是翻译这种创作又不是不受限制、信马由缰。所谓的镣铐就是原文，如果挣脱了这幅枷锁去自由发挥，那就不能称其为翻译了。所以，把翻译比喻成戴着镣铐跳舞是再合适不过了。这种情况下，翻译者自然就是戴着镣铐的舞者。戴着镣铐就是指在翻译过程中要受到原文的种种束缚。
还是把翻译比为舞蹈。舞蹈是通过音乐、形体、运动、表情及姿态来表达感情的一门艺术。优秀的舞者，一定具备两个层面的素质：一是舞蹈功底。没有技巧，内心再丰富的情感也会因缺少表达途径而无人理解。因此，这个难度和技巧就要靠平时的勤学苦练和点滴积累。技巧是展现的手段和工具。第二个层次，就是两个字：“精神”。有了过硬的基本功和高难度的技巧。该如何把这些和舞蹈的内在精神结合在一起。音乐响起时，肢体语言要感动的不只是自己，还有观众。感染力不是技巧的堆砌，是发自内心的对生活对生命的感悟，就像有人说过，高手是跳情而不是跳舞。
那翻译究竟是什么？美国著名的翻译理论家 Eugene A.Nida 给翻译下的定义是：Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning, and second in terms of style. 首先是 meaning （意思），第二就是 style（风格）。这两个方面正是我要用来类比舞蹈的两个层次：翻译既是语言活动，又是思维活动。语言活动是指使用完全不同于原文形式的译文来传达原文信息，所以“准确无误”是最基本的要求，这要求翻译者有深厚的语言功底，对源语言和目标语言都有正确的理解和纯熟的运用能力。同时，翻译也是再创作，原文和译文的等值，也只能是相对的等值，是信息等值或语境等值，而不是字词等值。中国贯通中西的著名文学家钱钟书说过一句话，“译者驱使本国文字，其功夫或非作者驱使原文所能及．故译笔正无妨出原著头地”。这句话可以理解成：翻译是两种文字的一种竞赛。从创作的角度去理解，译者和原作者都属于作者，两个作者表达的是相同的或者是相近的思想，同处在创作这个层面上，译者除了“求真（准确翻译）”还要“求美（用符合目标语言的审美观及价值观表现出译者和译文的风格及特点”。因此，从某种意义上说，翻译就是解释，是带有主观色彩的剖析和理解。翻译中求真和求美的矛盾随着创作和翻译之间界限的消失也得到了调和。
诚然，对于翻译究竟是一门科学还是一门艺术，长期以来诸子百家各执一词。也许是因为我无法改变自己内心对浪漫主义的向往，所以仍坚守：翻译就是艺术。就像英文有artist和artisian一样，华文里也有艺术家和工匠这两个貌似相近，实则内涵迥异的词。即使戴着镣铐跳舞，译者也应该跳得精彩、跳得漂亮！希望我可以做一个富于创作的艺术家，而不仅仅是一个工匠。不妨用文学翻译大家郭沫若的一句话做为本文的结语吧，“翻译家不是鹦鹉，应该在翻译过程中涌起创作的冲动”。
By
翻译真的是一门独特的艺术，是的，这里我把翻译称为一种艺术。艺术就需要创作，但是翻译这种创作又不是不受限制、信马由缰。所谓的镣铐就是原文，如果挣脱了这幅枷锁去自由发挥，那就不能称其为翻译了。所以，把翻译比喻成戴着镣铐跳舞是再合适不过了。这种情况下，翻译者自然就是戴着镣铐的舞者。戴着镣铐就是指在翻译过程中要受到原文的种种束缚。
还是把翻译比为舞蹈。舞蹈是通过音乐、形体、运动、表情及姿态来表达感情的一门艺术。优秀的舞者，一定具备两个层面的素质：一是舞蹈功底。没有技巧，内心再丰富的情感也会因缺少表达途径而无人理解。因此，这个难度和技巧就要靠平时的勤学苦练和点滴积累。技巧是展现的手段和工具。第二个层次，就是两个字：“精神”。有了过硬的基本功和高难度的技巧。该如何把这些和舞蹈的内在精神结合在一起。音乐响起时，肢体语言要感动的不只是自己，还有观众。感染力不是技巧的堆砌，是发自内心的对生活对生命的感悟，就像有人说过，高手是跳情而不是跳舞。
那翻译究竟是什么？美国著名的翻译理论家 Eugene A.Nida 给翻译下的定义是：Translating consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning, and second in terms of style. 首先是 meaning （意思），第二就是 style（风格）。这两个方面正是我要用来类比舞蹈的两个层次：翻译既是语言活动，又是思维活动。语言活动是指使用完全不同于原文形式的译文来传达原文信息，所以“准确无误”是最基本的要求，这要求翻译者有深厚的语言功底，对源语言和目标语言都有正确的理解和纯熟的运用能力。同时，翻译也是再创作，原文和译文的等值，也只能是相对的等值，是信息等值或语境等值，而不是字词等值。中国贯通中西的著名文学家钱钟书说过一句话，“译者驱使本国文字，其功夫或非作者驱使原文所能及．故译笔正无妨出原著头地”。这句话可以理解成：翻译是两种文字的一种竞赛。从创作的角度去理解，译者和原作者都属于作者，两个作者表达的是相同的或者是相近的思想，同处在创作这个层面上，译者除了“求真（准确翻译）”还要“求美（用符合目标语言的审美观及价值观表现出译者和译文的风格及特点”。因此，从某种意义上说，翻译就是解释，是带有主观色彩的剖析和理解。翻译中求真和求美的矛盾随着创作和翻译之间界限的消失也得到了调和。
诚然，对于翻译究竟是一门科学还是一门艺术，长期以来诸子百家各执一词。也许是因为我无法改变自己内心对浪漫主义的向往，所以仍坚守：翻译就是艺术。就像英文有artist和artisian一样，华文里也有艺术家和工匠这两个貌似相近，实则内涵迥异的词。即使戴着镣铐跳舞，译者也应该跳得精彩、跳得漂亮！希望我可以做一个富于创作的艺术家，而不仅仅是一个工匠。不妨用文学翻译大家郭沫若的一句话做为本文的结语吧，“翻译家不是鹦鹉，应该在翻译过程中涌起创作的冲动”。
By
Jean Zhang | 张小锦
Chinese Translator / Editor | 中文翻译与编辑
Elite Bilingual Services Pte. Ltd.
Chinese Translator / Editor | 中文翻译与编辑
Monday, June 15, 2009
To Be a Good Translator
By Leila Razmjou
BA in English Translation
MA in Applied Linguistics (TEFL )
Iran
leilarazmjou@yahoo.com
Source: Translation Directory
Paper presented at the Second International Conference on "Critical Discourse Analysis: the Message of the Medium" in Yemen, Hodeidah University, October, 2003
In addition to being a member of our country, we are members of the world community, and this gives us a global identity. Therefore, it is quite natural for us to think about world affairs and cooperate in solving the world's problems. To do so, the first and most important tool is "language," which is socially determined. Our beliefs and ideologies are always reflected in our way of talking, although the connections are hidden and only "critical language study" reveals these hidden connections in discourse.
Furthermore, we know that a nation's culture flourishes by interacting with other cultures. Cultural variety opens our eyes to human rights, but cultural variety can only be recognized through discussions, which leads us back to the major tool for discussion: "language."
The role of language in the developing world is materialized through "translating," and since critical language study is concerned with the processes of producing and interpreting texts and with the way these cognitive processes are socially shaped, it can be considered as an alternative approach to translation studies.
The world is becoming smaller and smaller as the systems of communication and information are developing and becoming more and more sophisticated. In the process of such a rapid exchange of information and for the purpose of improving cultural contacts, one thing is inevitable, and that is "translating." This is why there is a need for competent translators and interpreters.
As mentioned earlier, the whole world is undergoing complex changes in different areas such as technology and education. These changes necessarily have an important bearing on systems of higher education, including translator training programs.
According to Shahvali (1997), theoretical knowledge and practical skills alone are not adequate to prepare students to face the developments in the field. There is a need for ability to adapt; therefore, it is necessary to focus on students' self-updating and to develop their relevant mental, communicative, and planning skills.
Training translators is an important task which should be given a high priority. The service that translators render to enhance cultures and nurture languages has been significant throughout history. Translators are the agents for transferring messages from one language to another, while preserving the underlying cultural and discoursal ideas and values (Azabdaftary, 1996).
The translator's task is to create conditions under which the source language author and the target language reader can interact with one another (Lotfipour, 1997). The translator uses the core meaning present in the source text to create a new whole, namely, the target text (Farahzad, 1998).
Bearing these facts in mind, the question is: what skills are needed to promote translating ability? And how can one become a good translator?
The first step is extensive reading of different translations of different kinds of texts, since translating requires active knowledge, while analyzing and evaluating different translations requires passive knowledge. Therefore, receptive skills should be developed before the productive ones; i.e. by reinforcing their passive knowledge, students will eventually improve their active knowledge. Receptive skills improve the students' language intuition and make them ready for actual translating.
A good translator is someone who has a comprehensive knowledge of both source and target languages. Students should read different genres in both source and target languages including modern literature, contemporary prose, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, announcements, instructions, etc. Being familiar with all these genres is important, since they implicitly transfer culture-specific aspects of a language. Specialized readings are also suggested: reading recently published articles and journals on theoretical and practical aspects of translation. The articles will not only improve the students' reading skill in general, but also give them insights which will subconsciously be applied when actually translating.
"Writing" skills, i.e. the ability to write smoothly and correctly in both source and target languages, are also important. Writing is in fact the main job of a translator. Students should become familiar with different styles of writing and techniques and principles of editing and punctuation in both source and target languages. Editing and punctuation improve the quality and readability of the translation (Razmjou, 2002).
Moreover, translation trainees should have a good ear for both source and target languages; i.e. they should be alert to pick up various expressions, idioms, and specific vocabulary and their uses, and store them in their minds to be used later. This is in fact what we call improving one's "intuition." Intuition is not something to be developed in a vacuum; rather, it needs practice and a solid background. It needs both the support of theory and the experience of practice. Language intuition is a must for a competent translator.
One of the most important points to consider in the act of translating is understanding the value of the source text within the framework of the source-language discourse. To develop this understanding, the translator must be aware of the cultural differences and the various discoursal strategies in the source and target languages. Therefore, the hidden structure of the source text should be discovered through the use of various discoursal strategies by the translator.
A good translator should be familiar with the culture, customs, and social settings of the source and target language speakers. She should also be familiar with different registers, styles of speaking, and social stratification of both languages. This socio-cultural awareness, can improve the quality of the students' translations to a great extent. According to Hatim and Mason (1990), the social context in translating a text is probably a more important variable than its genre. The act of translating takes place in the socio-cultural context. Consequently, it is important to judge translating activity only within a social context.
After developing a good competence in both source and target languages, actual translating may begin. But there is a middle stage between the competence-developing stage and actual translating: becoming aware of various information-providing sources and learning how to use them. These sources include: different monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the Internet.
Using dictionaries is a technical skill in itself. Not all students know how to use dictionaries appropriately. Words have different meanings in different contexts, and usually monolingual dictionaries are of utmost value in this regard. Students need a great deal of practice to find the intended meaning of words in a particular context, using monolingual dictionaries.
Translation trainees also need to be familiar with the syntax of indirect speech and various figures of speech in the source language such as hyperbole, irony, meiosis, and implicatures. Awareness of these figures of speech will reinforce students' creativity and change their passive knowledge into active skill.
While there is a strong emphasis on developing source and target language competencies, the ways in which students can develop them should not be neglected. Group work and cooperation with peers can always lead the translating process to better results. Students who practice translation with their peers will be able to solve problems more easily and will also more rapidly develop self-confidence and decision-making techniques (Razmjou, 2002). Although there is a possibility of making mistakes during group work, the experience of making, detecting, and correcting mistakes will make the students' minds open and alert.
Another important point is that successful translators usually choose one specific kind of texts for translating and continue to work only in that area; for example a translator might translate only literary works, scientific books, or journalistic texts. Even while translating literary works, some translators might choose only to translate poetry, short stories, or novels. Even more specific than that, some translators choose a particular author and translate only her or his works. The reason is that the more they translate the works of a particular author, the more they will become familiar with her or his mind, way of thinking, and style of writing. And the more familiar is the translator with the style of a writer, the better the translation will be.
Translation needs to be practiced in an academic environment in which trainees work on both practical tasks under the supervision of their teachers and theoretical aspects to enhance their knowledge. In an academic environment, recently published articles, journals and books on translation are available to the trainees, who thus become familiar with good translators and their work by reading them and then comparing them with the original texts. In this way, trainees will develop their power of observation, insight, and decision-making, which in turn will lead them to enhance their motivation and improve their translating skills.
Therefore, translation studies has now been recognized as an important discipline and has become an independent major, separate from foreign-language studies, in universities. This reflects the recognition of the fact that not everybody who knows a foreign language can be a translator, as it is commonly and mistakenly believed. Translation is the key to international understanding. So in this vast world of communication and information overload, we need competent translators who have both the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to do their jobs well. The importance of theoretical knowledge lies in the fact that it helps translators acquire an understanding of how linguistic choices in texts reflect other relationships between senders and receivers, such as power relationships, and how texts are sometimes used to maintain or create social inequalities (Fairclough, 1989).
Finally, it is important to know that it takes much more than a dictionary to be a good translator, and translators are not made overnight. To be a good translator requires a sizeable investment in both source and target languages. It is one of the most challenging tasks to switch safely and faithfully between two universes of discourse. Only a sophisticated and systematic treatment of translation education can lead to the development of successful translators. And the most arduous part of the journey starts when translation trainees leave their universities.
Works cited
Azabdaftari, B. 1997. Psychological Analysis of Translation Process. Motarjem Journal, Mashhad, Iran. 21 & 22: 7-12 (Translation).
Fariclough,N. 1989. Language and Power. London, Longman.
Farahzad, F. 1998. A Gestalt Approach to Manipulation in Translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 6 (2): 153-233.
Hatim, B. & I. Mason. 1990. Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman.
Lotfipour, S.K. 1985. Lexical Cohesion and Translation Equivalence. Meta, XLII, 1, 185-92.
Razmjou, L. 2002. Developing Guidelines for a New Curriculum for the English Translation BA Program in Iranian Universities. Online Translation Journal, V. 6, No.2 http://accurapid.com/journal/20edu1.htm
Shahvali, M. 1997. Adaptation Knowledge, the Passage of Success and Creativity (Translation).
This article was originally published at Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
BA in English Translation
MA in Applied Linguistics (TEFL )
Iran
leilarazmjou@yahoo.com
Source: Translation Directory
Paper presented at the Second International Conference on "Critical Discourse Analysis: the Message of the Medium" in Yemen, Hodeidah University, October, 2003
In addition to being a member of our country, we are members of the world community, and this gives us a global identity. Therefore, it is quite natural for us to think about world affairs and cooperate in solving the world's problems. To do so, the first and most important tool is "language," which is socially determined. Our beliefs and ideologies are always reflected in our way of talking, although the connections are hidden and only "critical language study" reveals these hidden connections in discourse.
Furthermore, we know that a nation's culture flourishes by interacting with other cultures. Cultural variety opens our eyes to human rights, but cultural variety can only be recognized through discussions, which leads us back to the major tool for discussion: "language."
The role of language in the developing world is materialized through "translating," and since critical language study is concerned with the processes of producing and interpreting texts and with the way these cognitive processes are socially shaped, it can be considered as an alternative approach to translation studies.
The world is becoming smaller and smaller as the systems of communication and information are developing and becoming more and more sophisticated. In the process of such a rapid exchange of information and for the purpose of improving cultural contacts, one thing is inevitable, and that is "translating." This is why there is a need for competent translators and interpreters.
As mentioned earlier, the whole world is undergoing complex changes in different areas such as technology and education. These changes necessarily have an important bearing on systems of higher education, including translator training programs.
According to Shahvali (1997), theoretical knowledge and practical skills alone are not adequate to prepare students to face the developments in the field. There is a need for ability to adapt; therefore, it is necessary to focus on students' self-updating and to develop their relevant mental, communicative, and planning skills.
Training translators is an important task which should be given a high priority. The service that translators render to enhance cultures and nurture languages has been significant throughout history. Translators are the agents for transferring messages from one language to another, while preserving the underlying cultural and discoursal ideas and values (Azabdaftary, 1996).
The translator's task is to create conditions under which the source language author and the target language reader can interact with one another (Lotfipour, 1997). The translator uses the core meaning present in the source text to create a new whole, namely, the target text (Farahzad, 1998).
Bearing these facts in mind, the question is: what skills are needed to promote translating ability? And how can one become a good translator?
The first step is extensive reading of different translations of different kinds of texts, since translating requires active knowledge, while analyzing and evaluating different translations requires passive knowledge. Therefore, receptive skills should be developed before the productive ones; i.e. by reinforcing their passive knowledge, students will eventually improve their active knowledge. Receptive skills improve the students' language intuition and make them ready for actual translating.
A good translator is someone who has a comprehensive knowledge of both source and target languages. Students should read different genres in both source and target languages including modern literature, contemporary prose, newspapers, magazines, advertisements, announcements, instructions, etc. Being familiar with all these genres is important, since they implicitly transfer culture-specific aspects of a language. Specialized readings are also suggested: reading recently published articles and journals on theoretical and practical aspects of translation. The articles will not only improve the students' reading skill in general, but also give them insights which will subconsciously be applied when actually translating.
"Writing" skills, i.e. the ability to write smoothly and correctly in both source and target languages, are also important. Writing is in fact the main job of a translator. Students should become familiar with different styles of writing and techniques and principles of editing and punctuation in both source and target languages. Editing and punctuation improve the quality and readability of the translation (Razmjou, 2002).
Moreover, translation trainees should have a good ear for both source and target languages; i.e. they should be alert to pick up various expressions, idioms, and specific vocabulary and their uses, and store them in their minds to be used later. This is in fact what we call improving one's "intuition." Intuition is not something to be developed in a vacuum; rather, it needs practice and a solid background. It needs both the support of theory and the experience of practice. Language intuition is a must for a competent translator.
One of the most important points to consider in the act of translating is understanding the value of the source text within the framework of the source-language discourse. To develop this understanding, the translator must be aware of the cultural differences and the various discoursal strategies in the source and target languages. Therefore, the hidden structure of the source text should be discovered through the use of various discoursal strategies by the translator.
A good translator should be familiar with the culture, customs, and social settings of the source and target language speakers. She should also be familiar with different registers, styles of speaking, and social stratification of both languages. This socio-cultural awareness, can improve the quality of the students' translations to a great extent. According to Hatim and Mason (1990), the social context in translating a text is probably a more important variable than its genre. The act of translating takes place in the socio-cultural context. Consequently, it is important to judge translating activity only within a social context.
After developing a good competence in both source and target languages, actual translating may begin. But there is a middle stage between the competence-developing stage and actual translating: becoming aware of various information-providing sources and learning how to use them. These sources include: different monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the Internet.
Using dictionaries is a technical skill in itself. Not all students know how to use dictionaries appropriately. Words have different meanings in different contexts, and usually monolingual dictionaries are of utmost value in this regard. Students need a great deal of practice to find the intended meaning of words in a particular context, using monolingual dictionaries.
Translation trainees also need to be familiar with the syntax of indirect speech and various figures of speech in the source language such as hyperbole, irony, meiosis, and implicatures. Awareness of these figures of speech will reinforce students' creativity and change their passive knowledge into active skill.
While there is a strong emphasis on developing source and target language competencies, the ways in which students can develop them should not be neglected. Group work and cooperation with peers can always lead the translating process to better results. Students who practice translation with their peers will be able to solve problems more easily and will also more rapidly develop self-confidence and decision-making techniques (Razmjou, 2002). Although there is a possibility of making mistakes during group work, the experience of making, detecting, and correcting mistakes will make the students' minds open and alert.
Another important point is that successful translators usually choose one specific kind of texts for translating and continue to work only in that area; for example a translator might translate only literary works, scientific books, or journalistic texts. Even while translating literary works, some translators might choose only to translate poetry, short stories, or novels. Even more specific than that, some translators choose a particular author and translate only her or his works. The reason is that the more they translate the works of a particular author, the more they will become familiar with her or his mind, way of thinking, and style of writing. And the more familiar is the translator with the style of a writer, the better the translation will be.
Translation needs to be practiced in an academic environment in which trainees work on both practical tasks under the supervision of their teachers and theoretical aspects to enhance their knowledge. In an academic environment, recently published articles, journals and books on translation are available to the trainees, who thus become familiar with good translators and their work by reading them and then comparing them with the original texts. In this way, trainees will develop their power of observation, insight, and decision-making, which in turn will lead them to enhance their motivation and improve their translating skills.
Therefore, translation studies has now been recognized as an important discipline and has become an independent major, separate from foreign-language studies, in universities. This reflects the recognition of the fact that not everybody who knows a foreign language can be a translator, as it is commonly and mistakenly believed. Translation is the key to international understanding. So in this vast world of communication and information overload, we need competent translators who have both the theoretical knowledge and practical skills to do their jobs well. The importance of theoretical knowledge lies in the fact that it helps translators acquire an understanding of how linguistic choices in texts reflect other relationships between senders and receivers, such as power relationships, and how texts are sometimes used to maintain or create social inequalities (Fairclough, 1989).
Finally, it is important to know that it takes much more than a dictionary to be a good translator, and translators are not made overnight. To be a good translator requires a sizeable investment in both source and target languages. It is one of the most challenging tasks to switch safely and faithfully between two universes of discourse. Only a sophisticated and systematic treatment of translation education can lead to the development of successful translators. And the most arduous part of the journey starts when translation trainees leave their universities.
Works cited
Azabdaftari, B. 1997. Psychological Analysis of Translation Process. Motarjem Journal, Mashhad, Iran. 21 & 22: 7-12 (Translation).
Fariclough,N. 1989. Language and Power. London, Longman.
Farahzad, F. 1998. A Gestalt Approach to Manipulation in Translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, 6 (2): 153-233.
Hatim, B. & I. Mason. 1990. Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman.
Lotfipour, S.K. 1985. Lexical Cohesion and Translation Equivalence. Meta, XLII, 1, 185-92.
Razmjou, L. 2002. Developing Guidelines for a New Curriculum for the English Translation BA Program in Iranian Universities. Online Translation Journal, V. 6, No.2 http://accurapid.com/journal/20edu1.htm
Shahvali, M. 1997. Adaptation Knowledge, the Passage of Success and Creativity (Translation).
This article was originally published at Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Major mistakes when responding to job offers
By Natasha Cloutier
Chez Natasha
www.cheznatasha.nl
Wondering why you never got an answer to your e-mail? Sometimes potential clients do not have the time or simply do not need your services. Other times, it could very well be that your message is the real reason. Have a look at the following mistakes to see if any of them sound familiar and find out how to avoid these mistakes in the future.
Always check your spelling
Mistakes are unacceptable when selling language services.
Solution: Use a spellchecker and proofread your message.
Reason: It looks unprofessional and does not instil confidence.
Actually… It makes selecting potential candidates much easier.
Answer the client’s questions
Potential clients should never have to search for answers.
Solution: Make sure you actually answer their questions.
Reason: It looks like you haven’t read their job offer.
Actually… Who wants to work with someone who can’t communicate?
Resist applying for a freelance job following an in-house job offer
A potential client knows what they need better than you do.
Solution: Read the posting carefully.
Reason: It looks like you don’t care what your client needs.
Actually… It can look desperate.
Avoid using ‘Dear Sirs’
Reason: Using ‘Dear Sirs’ means you are making assumptions that could offend.
Solution: Use ‘Dear Sir or Madam’.
Actually… Women throw these ones out and men find them impersonal.
When answering per e-mail:
Do not send your résumé as an attachment unless asked
Solution: Paste your résumé into the body of your e-mail.
Reason: People will regard your e-mail as a virus and throw it out.
Actually… It’s quite irritating.
Do not automatically hit the reply button of your e-mail programme
Solution: Put the right e-mail address in your reply before writing.
Reason: You may need to send it to a different person.
Actually… You come off inexperienced and sloppy.
Sending e-mail to several people with their addresses showing
Reason: People respond better to anything addressed to them personally.
Solution: Test your e-mail by sending a message to yourself.
Actually… It shows a lack of confidentiality.
Other things to avoid
Writing in capital letters.
Actually… It looks and feels like screaming.
Sending an e-mail message with nothing but “see attachment”.
Actually… It looks like spam, it’s impersonal, and will be thrown out.
Applying for a job offer that does not match your qualifications.
Actually… It can look desperate and it is a waste of time.
Using a tone that is either too humble or too overbearing.
Actually… It sets a bad tone for any future dealings.
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Chez Natasha
www.cheznatasha.nl
Wondering why you never got an answer to your e-mail? Sometimes potential clients do not have the time or simply do not need your services. Other times, it could very well be that your message is the real reason. Have a look at the following mistakes to see if any of them sound familiar and find out how to avoid these mistakes in the future.
Always check your spelling
Mistakes are unacceptable when selling language services.
Solution: Use a spellchecker and proofread your message.
Reason: It looks unprofessional and does not instil confidence.
Actually… It makes selecting potential candidates much easier.
Answer the client’s questions
Potential clients should never have to search for answers.
Solution: Make sure you actually answer their questions.
Reason: It looks like you haven’t read their job offer.
Actually… Who wants to work with someone who can’t communicate?
Resist applying for a freelance job following an in-house job offer
A potential client knows what they need better than you do.
Solution: Read the posting carefully.
Reason: It looks like you don’t care what your client needs.
Actually… It can look desperate.
Avoid using ‘Dear Sirs’
Reason: Using ‘Dear Sirs’ means you are making assumptions that could offend.
Solution: Use ‘Dear Sir or Madam’.
Actually… Women throw these ones out and men find them impersonal.
When answering per e-mail:
Do not send your résumé as an attachment unless asked
Solution: Paste your résumé into the body of your e-mail.
Reason: People will regard your e-mail as a virus and throw it out.
Actually… It’s quite irritating.
Do not automatically hit the reply button of your e-mail programme
Solution: Put the right e-mail address in your reply before writing.
Reason: You may need to send it to a different person.
Actually… You come off inexperienced and sloppy.
Sending e-mail to several people with their addresses showing
Reason: People respond better to anything addressed to them personally.
Solution: Test your e-mail by sending a message to yourself.
Actually… It shows a lack of confidentiality.
Other things to avoid
Writing in capital letters.
Actually… It looks and feels like screaming.
Sending an e-mail message with nothing but “see attachment”.
Actually… It looks like spam, it’s impersonal, and will be thrown out.
Applying for a job offer that does not match your qualifications.
Actually… It can look desperate and it is a waste of time.
Using a tone that is either too humble or too overbearing.
Actually… It sets a bad tone for any future dealings.
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Friday, June 12, 2009
FIST - First International Strike of Translators
Only A Fantasy?
By Alex Gross
http://language.home.sprynet.com/
alexilen@sprynet.com
This article is at least partly a fantasy. I know all the reasons why the events I am about to describe are unlikely to take place in the near future. I will even examine these reasons in some detail towards the end. But for now let us simply entertain the idea embodied in my title and see where it leads us. Let us imagine that all the professional translators in the world, working in their separate countries in business, science, diplomacy, or even espionage and the military, have in fact come together as a single group and have launched a strike under a single banner, First International Strike of Translators or "FIST," bearing a device something like the one shown here. Let's just assume this has happened or is about to happen. I then have three questions. Who precisely are we, the ones about to go out on strike? Assuming we can answer this and have decided we have something in common, what is it that we would want, what would be our actual demands? A strike—or the threat of one—is of course the classic weapon to resolve grievances, but we must first define what these grievances are and how they might be resolved. And finally, what effects could such a strike possibly have, both for ourselves and for the world beyond us?
Let us begin by talking about who we are, even though we may suppose we know this well enough. First of all, we are people who through birth, study and/or accident have come to be familiar with two or more languages. In all but a few countries this already marks us as unusual. And even in those countries where bilingualism is more accepted, we still stand out because we habitually deal in the detailed process of crossing between our languages and in helping others to do so. In some countries this ability is held in awe, in others it is dismissed as a rote skill and/or a plentiful commodity, and in yet others it is the object of considerable suspicion. In none of these lands, even where translation is more commonplace, is the ability to translate regarded as altogether normal. After all, we translators can actually handle two or more languages, are able to live to some degree in two or more cultures, and may in fact have two or more loyalties. And in a world of single loyalties, single nationalities and single cultural choices, this marks us as different and also as potentially dangerous. We all know this of course, and we do the best we can to prove our loyalty to the countries and companies which employ us.
But if we are looking for something to unite us in our undertaking, this is certainly a factor worth considering. Whatever our nations, origins or loyalties, it is likely to be something we have in common. We are able to look at two or more different cultural contexts and explain the first in terms of the second and often the second in terms of the first as well. In a world of single loyalties this is a useful skill but also an odd accomplishment, something that marks us both as dull, devoted drones and as potentially divided outsiders.
Such an accomplishment is all the more remarkable in a world where at least some ideological and national distinctions are slowly beginning to blur, blend, perhaps relax a bit. Let's just suppose that some of the internationalist rhetoric we are beginning to hear is actually true, let's imagine that we really are moving into a broader, more multi-cultural world environment. What do we then become? Do we not first and foremost among all human beings bear the banner of such a change? Could it just possibly turn out that we are pioneers and heroes? If the world's definition of freedom were expanded to embrace being free to know more than one culture, might we not rank rather highly in such a hierarchy of freedom? Is all this also a fantasy, or is it something worth considering? Such is my partial answer to the question "Who are we?"
And now the second question: what is it that we want? Assuming we could get every translator in the world to go out on strike with us, what would we ask as conditions for returning to work? Would we merely insist on the time-honored demand of improvements in pay and working conditions? Would we perhaps add a few clerical caveats on the maximum numbers of words to be translated per hour? Would we express Luddite dismay at the appearance of computers in our midst? Or would we launch some truly powerful salvos on the philosophical and educational level at a world that still fails to understand the true interactive relationship between language and reality? I am appending a tentative list of such demands—as I see them right now—and invite dialogue with readers to expand and refine them.
PROVISIONAL DEMANDS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
STRIKE OF TRANSLATORS
1. Specific demands concerning pay, working hours, and work conditions, to be formulated cooperatively by an international committee, with possible differences according to specific conditions in various countries and societies.
2. Explicit recognition by all the world's governments of the primacy of the translation process in international communication and a commitment from these governments to ensure, in cooperation with our standing committees, the highest possible standards of translation in all such communication media.
3. A further commitment from the world's governments and universities that they regard language/translation as the major fountainhead of culture and human understanding, and that they realize that knowledge and science are more likely to be seen in the future as a branch of language than language as a branch of knowledge or science.
4. The granting by all countries (or by an international organization) of special passports for translators, similar to those issued to diplomats, facilitating travel for them in all foreign countries they may wish to visit.
5. Granting translators the option to refuse to translate texts they find morally unacceptable, for example declarations of war, terrorist demands, death threats, statements that one nation or people is intrinsically superior to another, assertions about religious or political systems that are injurious to those holding different views. In such cases, translators would at least have the option of returning these statements to their authors for further thought and redrafting. While this demand may appear radical at first, it in fact reflects a process already at work in some international organizations, where the fine print and fine tuning of international agreements sometimes reaches its final shaping in the hands of translators or results from a cooperative process involving them.
6. Gaining widespread recognition and publicity through national and international bodies for what is at present a barely perceived reality, namely that the quality of a translation is to a great extent dependent on the quality and clarity of the original text. Just as it is rarely possible to make a clear xerox from a fuzzy original unless it is first enhanced, so a poorly conceived and indifferently written original text can be just barely rendered into a foreign language with considerable help from the translator. In practical terms, Adjudicative Committees comprised of translators should be formed to deal with problems arising in this area. In major cases where complaints of an "unfaithful translation" may be lodged, the role of such a committee would be to determine if such complaints are justified or if any truly faithful translation would have been possible in the first place. Where complaints are found to be unjustified, the committee shall be empowered to fine those lodging them for willful abuse of the translator and to require them to bear the expense of such proceedings. Decisions of such a committee shall be binding.
7. The right of translators to function as final advisors on the feasibility and usefulness of all computer-based translation aids and to determine standards on how these will be used in their work. This by no means indicates hostility to such devices among translators, many of whom are actually curious or even excited to learn how such devices can help them in their work. This demand merely confirms two recognized circumstances, that the use of computers in translation is still a relatively new and untried process, and that there is a great deal of misleading information in this field. A computer system may work brilliantly in the hands of its inventors and yet create intractable problems when integrated into normal work routines. Some systems which work well in one setting are less successful in others. Other systems, touted only recently as useful translation aids, have disappeared along with their manufacturers. Furthermore, as with interpreters, whose work is often so demanding that they can only work for brief one- or two-hour shifts, there may also be special human needs connected with using computers in the demanding field of translation. This could prove especially true in those cases where advocates of complex and expensive systems promise vastly increased outputs without considering the work or health needs of human translators.(1)
And now our most crucial question: would we actually be able to realize these demands by launching—or threatening to launch—such a strike? This question strikes at the heart of our fantasy and also forces us to consider the reasons why, according to many, such a strike could never in fact occur. Or, if it did, could never succeed. I will consider these arguments in a candid manner and without totally denying that such criticisms have some merit. But it also is worth considering that what seems totally impossible today may not be at all impossible a few years or a few decades from now.
The first thing we should clearly realize is that we are under no obligation to begin such a strike right away. In fact all practical experience in this field dictates that we should not begin it until we are truly ready. The key to all successful strikes is capable, prolonged, and thorough organization, and this would clearly involve endless work. In the meantime the mere announcement that translators might be planning such a strike or are even discussing its possibility can, in a media-driven world, begin to give us some of the publicity we need to start mobilizing our own resources. It is just possible that we already possess some of the necessary power—we simply need to make this power manifest and begin to shape it in the public awareness and in our own. No doubt some early reports would ridicule our efforts and suggest that they are doomed to failure, as the world at large does not tend to view translators as very important in the scheme of things and supposes that we are all easily replaceable, whether by other translators or by machines.
But it is precisely here where our organization and research efforts should concentrate, in order to prepare a credible response to such charges. Thus, I visualize the initial effort to realize these demands as being one of prolonged discussion, organization, international coordination and "consciousness raising" among ourselves, along with a parallel publicity campaign to keep the press and general public apprised of our intentions and progress. One major goal of these discussions and organizing activities will be to provide others and ourselves with accurate answers to our last question: what would happen if the strike actually took place? And to prepare practical answers to this question beforehand.
At this point I am prepared to claim on the theoretical plane—leaving some of the hardest questions for last—that if we were successful during the discussion and organization phase, and if we really were able to persuade all translators and interpreters in all fields in all nations to go on strike with us, the results could be nothing less than astounding. Business, communications, international relations, science, the military, espionage, patent registry, and applications for international jobs and divorces would all come to a grinding halt. The entire world—ourselves not least of all—would be astonished by the truly enormous power that flows through our hands.
But how would the world react to such a strike, you must by now be asking, would not all governments everywhere simply rush out and hire others to take our places, leaving us all out on our ears without a job? The answer to this question would depend on how effective we had been during the earlier phase of publicizing our demands. If we did a good enough job here, we might never actually have to go on strike. It might be possible to convince the world's governments and businesses of our enhanced value without ever having to fire a shot.
Here we would need to stress the specialist nature of our work and persuade the public that it would be far harder to find replacements for us than they think. We do more than move words and phrases around, we regularly fashion and transfer entire realities between nations. But even if we failed in this effort—and even if we failed in our strike—we would still have the satisfaction of knowing, as we stood on the unemployment lines, that it was only a question of time before our replacements came to feel the same way about their work as we do and began to voice the same desires and grievances. We are after all a very special group of people, and any others who try to play our role must necessarily be or become much the same people as ourselves.
It's time to consider the really hard questions, which I have postponed until now. I am of course well aware that as of now not all translators will share my views or even grant the need for such a strike. I also know that many translators have worked so long as intermediaries and are so accustomed to professional self-abnegation that for them any such appeal to activism must seem profoundly inappropriate. Other translators work directly for the government or the military and are certain their employers would never countenance anything like what I have described . Yet other translators work in countries where the legitimacy of any strike by the citizenry, much less by government workers, has never been granted. Thus, as innocent and well-meaning as we may see ourselves and our cause, some of us could actually end up being jailed—perhaps even executed (this is after all a fantasy)—for our efforts. Yet I believe that solutions might become possible in all these cases, provided we are not in too great a hurry.
On the positive side, translators and interpreters are already international by the very nature of their work. We share an international network of contacts, professional groups, and publications. It is by no means impossible that we can spread the word of our plans far and wide. We are after all also a relatively small group of people, and this has advantages as well as disadvantages. Some may also argue that business and government would simply ransack the schools and universities for linguists to take our places. We can provide against this by expanding our group in the first place to embrace all language professionals, including teachers, perhaps restyling ourselves as FISTITALP or "First International Strike of Translators, Interpreters, Terminologists, and Allied Language Professionals." Or we can just let the government go ahead and draft language professors—it might be amusing to see if they are really able to translate.
At this point, my fantasy—to the extent that it is a fantasy— is running low. It really does seem to me that there ought to be some means by which translators can come to enjoy more recognition than they now receive. They are in a very real sense life's true aristocrats, connoisseurs, and Kenner, its enjoyers of multi-realities, as anyone knows who has ever heard them converse or joined them at table. In an increasingly sophisticated and multicultural world they—unlike wealthy idlers, businessmen or scientists—are the true distinguishers of the world's many realities and the touchstone of the differences between them. It is hard to believe, strike or no, that they will not soon be recognized for their unique pioneering qualities.
But of course some will simply smile my fantasy away. Such a scenario surely belongs only to the future. Or perhaps someone will come along, do everything I have described and more, and describe me as an old fuddy-duddy for even calling it a fantasy.
(1) For further information about these aspects, see Jean Datta's excellent treatment Machine Translation in Large Organizations: Revolution in the Workplace, pp. 167-173, Technology as Translation Strategy, American Translators Association Scholars Monograph Series, Vol. II, 1988, edited by Muriel Vasconcellos, University of New York at Binghampton (SUNY).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
By Alex Gross
http://language.home.sprynet.com/
alexilen@sprynet.com
This article is at least partly a fantasy. I know all the reasons why the events I am about to describe are unlikely to take place in the near future. I will even examine these reasons in some detail towards the end. But for now let us simply entertain the idea embodied in my title and see where it leads us. Let us imagine that all the professional translators in the world, working in their separate countries in business, science, diplomacy, or even espionage and the military, have in fact come together as a single group and have launched a strike under a single banner, First International Strike of Translators or "FIST," bearing a device something like the one shown here. Let's just assume this has happened or is about to happen. I then have three questions. Who precisely are we, the ones about to go out on strike? Assuming we can answer this and have decided we have something in common, what is it that we would want, what would be our actual demands? A strike—or the threat of one—is of course the classic weapon to resolve grievances, but we must first define what these grievances are and how they might be resolved. And finally, what effects could such a strike possibly have, both for ourselves and for the world beyond us?
Let us begin by talking about who we are, even though we may suppose we know this well enough. First of all, we are people who through birth, study and/or accident have come to be familiar with two or more languages. In all but a few countries this already marks us as unusual. And even in those countries where bilingualism is more accepted, we still stand out because we habitually deal in the detailed process of crossing between our languages and in helping others to do so. In some countries this ability is held in awe, in others it is dismissed as a rote skill and/or a plentiful commodity, and in yet others it is the object of considerable suspicion. In none of these lands, even where translation is more commonplace, is the ability to translate regarded as altogether normal. After all, we translators can actually handle two or more languages, are able to live to some degree in two or more cultures, and may in fact have two or more loyalties. And in a world of single loyalties, single nationalities and single cultural choices, this marks us as different and also as potentially dangerous. We all know this of course, and we do the best we can to prove our loyalty to the countries and companies which employ us.
But if we are looking for something to unite us in our undertaking, this is certainly a factor worth considering. Whatever our nations, origins or loyalties, it is likely to be something we have in common. We are able to look at two or more different cultural contexts and explain the first in terms of the second and often the second in terms of the first as well. In a world of single loyalties this is a useful skill but also an odd accomplishment, something that marks us both as dull, devoted drones and as potentially divided outsiders.
Such an accomplishment is all the more remarkable in a world where at least some ideological and national distinctions are slowly beginning to blur, blend, perhaps relax a bit. Let's just suppose that some of the internationalist rhetoric we are beginning to hear is actually true, let's imagine that we really are moving into a broader, more multi-cultural world environment. What do we then become? Do we not first and foremost among all human beings bear the banner of such a change? Could it just possibly turn out that we are pioneers and heroes? If the world's definition of freedom were expanded to embrace being free to know more than one culture, might we not rank rather highly in such a hierarchy of freedom? Is all this also a fantasy, or is it something worth considering? Such is my partial answer to the question "Who are we?"
And now the second question: what is it that we want? Assuming we could get every translator in the world to go out on strike with us, what would we ask as conditions for returning to work? Would we merely insist on the time-honored demand of improvements in pay and working conditions? Would we perhaps add a few clerical caveats on the maximum numbers of words to be translated per hour? Would we express Luddite dismay at the appearance of computers in our midst? Or would we launch some truly powerful salvos on the philosophical and educational level at a world that still fails to understand the true interactive relationship between language and reality? I am appending a tentative list of such demands—as I see them right now—and invite dialogue with readers to expand and refine them.
PROVISIONAL DEMANDS OF THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
STRIKE OF TRANSLATORS
1. Specific demands concerning pay, working hours, and work conditions, to be formulated cooperatively by an international committee, with possible differences according to specific conditions in various countries and societies.
2. Explicit recognition by all the world's governments of the primacy of the translation process in international communication and a commitment from these governments to ensure, in cooperation with our standing committees, the highest possible standards of translation in all such communication media.
3. A further commitment from the world's governments and universities that they regard language/translation as the major fountainhead of culture and human understanding, and that they realize that knowledge and science are more likely to be seen in the future as a branch of language than language as a branch of knowledge or science.
4. The granting by all countries (or by an international organization) of special passports for translators, similar to those issued to diplomats, facilitating travel for them in all foreign countries they may wish to visit.
5. Granting translators the option to refuse to translate texts they find morally unacceptable, for example declarations of war, terrorist demands, death threats, statements that one nation or people is intrinsically superior to another, assertions about religious or political systems that are injurious to those holding different views. In such cases, translators would at least have the option of returning these statements to their authors for further thought and redrafting. While this demand may appear radical at first, it in fact reflects a process already at work in some international organizations, where the fine print and fine tuning of international agreements sometimes reaches its final shaping in the hands of translators or results from a cooperative process involving them.
6. Gaining widespread recognition and publicity through national and international bodies for what is at present a barely perceived reality, namely that the quality of a translation is to a great extent dependent on the quality and clarity of the original text. Just as it is rarely possible to make a clear xerox from a fuzzy original unless it is first enhanced, so a poorly conceived and indifferently written original text can be just barely rendered into a foreign language with considerable help from the translator. In practical terms, Adjudicative Committees comprised of translators should be formed to deal with problems arising in this area. In major cases where complaints of an "unfaithful translation" may be lodged, the role of such a committee would be to determine if such complaints are justified or if any truly faithful translation would have been possible in the first place. Where complaints are found to be unjustified, the committee shall be empowered to fine those lodging them for willful abuse of the translator and to require them to bear the expense of such proceedings. Decisions of such a committee shall be binding.
7. The right of translators to function as final advisors on the feasibility and usefulness of all computer-based translation aids and to determine standards on how these will be used in their work. This by no means indicates hostility to such devices among translators, many of whom are actually curious or even excited to learn how such devices can help them in their work. This demand merely confirms two recognized circumstances, that the use of computers in translation is still a relatively new and untried process, and that there is a great deal of misleading information in this field. A computer system may work brilliantly in the hands of its inventors and yet create intractable problems when integrated into normal work routines. Some systems which work well in one setting are less successful in others. Other systems, touted only recently as useful translation aids, have disappeared along with their manufacturers. Furthermore, as with interpreters, whose work is often so demanding that they can only work for brief one- or two-hour shifts, there may also be special human needs connected with using computers in the demanding field of translation. This could prove especially true in those cases where advocates of complex and expensive systems promise vastly increased outputs without considering the work or health needs of human translators.(1)
And now our most crucial question: would we actually be able to realize these demands by launching—or threatening to launch—such a strike? This question strikes at the heart of our fantasy and also forces us to consider the reasons why, according to many, such a strike could never in fact occur. Or, if it did, could never succeed. I will consider these arguments in a candid manner and without totally denying that such criticisms have some merit. But it also is worth considering that what seems totally impossible today may not be at all impossible a few years or a few decades from now.
The first thing we should clearly realize is that we are under no obligation to begin such a strike right away. In fact all practical experience in this field dictates that we should not begin it until we are truly ready. The key to all successful strikes is capable, prolonged, and thorough organization, and this would clearly involve endless work. In the meantime the mere announcement that translators might be planning such a strike or are even discussing its possibility can, in a media-driven world, begin to give us some of the publicity we need to start mobilizing our own resources. It is just possible that we already possess some of the necessary power—we simply need to make this power manifest and begin to shape it in the public awareness and in our own. No doubt some early reports would ridicule our efforts and suggest that they are doomed to failure, as the world at large does not tend to view translators as very important in the scheme of things and supposes that we are all easily replaceable, whether by other translators or by machines.
But it is precisely here where our organization and research efforts should concentrate, in order to prepare a credible response to such charges. Thus, I visualize the initial effort to realize these demands as being one of prolonged discussion, organization, international coordination and "consciousness raising" among ourselves, along with a parallel publicity campaign to keep the press and general public apprised of our intentions and progress. One major goal of these discussions and organizing activities will be to provide others and ourselves with accurate answers to our last question: what would happen if the strike actually took place? And to prepare practical answers to this question beforehand.
At this point I am prepared to claim on the theoretical plane—leaving some of the hardest questions for last—that if we were successful during the discussion and organization phase, and if we really were able to persuade all translators and interpreters in all fields in all nations to go on strike with us, the results could be nothing less than astounding. Business, communications, international relations, science, the military, espionage, patent registry, and applications for international jobs and divorces would all come to a grinding halt. The entire world—ourselves not least of all—would be astonished by the truly enormous power that flows through our hands.
But how would the world react to such a strike, you must by now be asking, would not all governments everywhere simply rush out and hire others to take our places, leaving us all out on our ears without a job? The answer to this question would depend on how effective we had been during the earlier phase of publicizing our demands. If we did a good enough job here, we might never actually have to go on strike. It might be possible to convince the world's governments and businesses of our enhanced value without ever having to fire a shot.
Here we would need to stress the specialist nature of our work and persuade the public that it would be far harder to find replacements for us than they think. We do more than move words and phrases around, we regularly fashion and transfer entire realities between nations. But even if we failed in this effort—and even if we failed in our strike—we would still have the satisfaction of knowing, as we stood on the unemployment lines, that it was only a question of time before our replacements came to feel the same way about their work as we do and began to voice the same desires and grievances. We are after all a very special group of people, and any others who try to play our role must necessarily be or become much the same people as ourselves.
It's time to consider the really hard questions, which I have postponed until now. I am of course well aware that as of now not all translators will share my views or even grant the need for such a strike. I also know that many translators have worked so long as intermediaries and are so accustomed to professional self-abnegation that for them any such appeal to activism must seem profoundly inappropriate. Other translators work directly for the government or the military and are certain their employers would never countenance anything like what I have described . Yet other translators work in countries where the legitimacy of any strike by the citizenry, much less by government workers, has never been granted. Thus, as innocent and well-meaning as we may see ourselves and our cause, some of us could actually end up being jailed—perhaps even executed (this is after all a fantasy)—for our efforts. Yet I believe that solutions might become possible in all these cases, provided we are not in too great a hurry.
On the positive side, translators and interpreters are already international by the very nature of their work. We share an international network of contacts, professional groups, and publications. It is by no means impossible that we can spread the word of our plans far and wide. We are after all also a relatively small group of people, and this has advantages as well as disadvantages. Some may also argue that business and government would simply ransack the schools and universities for linguists to take our places. We can provide against this by expanding our group in the first place to embrace all language professionals, including teachers, perhaps restyling ourselves as FISTITALP or "First International Strike of Translators, Interpreters, Terminologists, and Allied Language Professionals." Or we can just let the government go ahead and draft language professors—it might be amusing to see if they are really able to translate.
At this point, my fantasy—to the extent that it is a fantasy— is running low. It really does seem to me that there ought to be some means by which translators can come to enjoy more recognition than they now receive. They are in a very real sense life's true aristocrats, connoisseurs, and Kenner, its enjoyers of multi-realities, as anyone knows who has ever heard them converse or joined them at table. In an increasingly sophisticated and multicultural world they—unlike wealthy idlers, businessmen or scientists—are the true distinguishers of the world's many realities and the touchstone of the differences between them. It is hard to believe, strike or no, that they will not soon be recognized for their unique pioneering qualities.
But of course some will simply smile my fantasy away. Such a scenario surely belongs only to the future. Or perhaps someone will come along, do everything I have described and more, and describe me as an old fuddy-duddy for even calling it a fantasy.
(1) For further information about these aspects, see Jean Datta's excellent treatment Machine Translation in Large Organizations: Revolution in the Workplace, pp. 167-173, Technology as Translation Strategy, American Translators Association Scholars Monograph Series, Vol. II, 1988, edited by Muriel Vasconcellos, University of New York at Binghampton (SUNY).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Monday, June 8, 2009
The state of the language within the state of the industry
By Bernie Bierman,
the author of "A Translator-Warrior Speaks: A Personal History of the American Translators Association",
Pawling, NY and Marco Island, FL
supremo [at] bbtranslations . com
To commemorate and celebrate its 50th birthday this year, the American Translators Association (ATA) has commissioned a history of the organization, and by extension – if you will – a contemporary history of translation in the United States.
Now then, without having seen a single word of the draft of that history, and indeed not having been privy to any of the behind-the-scenes workings, I can say with all of the definitiveness that I can muster, that not a single word will be written about or a single reference made to the language, linguistic, communications and writing abilities of those who labored in the translation industry some 30 or 40 or 50 or even 75 years ago. And clearly, there will not be a single word written about or a single reference made to the language, linguistic, communications and writing abilities of the early or even middle-period leaders of the ATA and the American translation industry.
If the name Alexander Gode (the co-founder of the ATA) is mentioned, it will not be in conjunction with the man’s awesome knowledge of language and linguistics, his unparalleled eloquence, his remarkable ability to paint landscapes with words.
If the name Lewis Bertrand (one of the leading translator-merchants of his day, if not the leading one) is mentioned, there will be no references to his writing abilities or to his credo that translation is communication and translation is all about communication, language and writing.
If the name Henry Fischbach (the other co-founder of the ATA) is mentioned, not a single word will appear about this man’s writing skills and talent, about his painstaking and meticulous attention to every single word, every single sentence, every single phrase in a translated text that passed before his eyes.
Indeed, there will be no mention of the volumes of carefully-constructed, word-sensitive and eloquent letters, memoranda, reports, essays and other assorted writings of all of those translators who passed before us, all those who made the term “wordsmith” synonymous with translator.
To paraphrase the words of the American writer, Ben Hecht, “Look for these men and women only in the history books, for they are a civilization gone with the wind”. And clearly they are gone with the wind, or better yet, “They are translators of another time”, as was said by one Jost Zoetsche, one of the industry’s new breed of technological translators and the writer of a monthly column on the various technologies (sexy and otherwise) that today’s translator must master. Indeed, when Mr. Zoetsche said those words to me, there was not a hint, not a note, not an overtone of nostalgia. He said the words as if he was talking about … dinosaurs.
* * * * *
The American translation industry, not unlike other industries has seen and undergone some very discernible, if not radical changes in the past 50 years. It almost goes without saying that technological advances have wrought some of those discernible and radical changes.
But this piece is not about technology or the technological advances that have changed the American translation industry. Rather, it is about the changes that have come to its very core elements: language and communication. It is about the subordination – perhaps the word “belittlement” would be more appropriate – of those core elements to the exigencies of commerce and marketing and all that is commonly associated with those endeavors.
The piece of writing that is transcribed in full below is in my most considered opinion a highly representative piece of evidence that clearly demonstrates how language and communication have been shamelessly subordinated – even trivialized - in an industry whose raison d’être is language and communication.
100 years ago, 75 years ago, 50 years ago and even to a limited extent 25 years ago, when Mr. Zoetsche’s “dinosaurs” ruled the American translation countryside, the business side of translation (namely the translation bureaus or translation service companies) was in the hands of so-called “merchant-translators”, namely men and women who combined language skills with a modicum of business acumen. Most of these merchant-translators had academic backgrounds in language or the humanities or the natural sciences; a few combined language skills with backgrounds in diverse fields of engineering.
Not a single one of these merchant-translators, these “dinosaurs”, could claim an academic background in business. Yet, despite being bereft of a business model, a business plan or some other piece of commercial architecture of like purport and tenor, many of these merchant-translators went on to have highly successful business careers and were able to garner many of the attendant pecuniary benefits for themselves and their families.
And if during their careers these translator-merchants sharpened their business wits, never ever did they permit their language wits to become dulled. These merchant-translators, the dinosauric relatives and ancestors of today’s high priests and priestesses of business and technology, never lost sight of the core elements of their business: language and communication.
* * * * *
The early 1990’s saw the beginnings of change in the U.S. translation industry, at least so far as concerned the business side of translation. Naturally, at first these changes were barely discernible. The dinosaurs, i.e., the merchant-translators still appeared to be the dominant species in the commercial countryside. But these dinosaurs failed to lay eggs, and if they did lay eggs, those eggs were sterile.
Rather, the eggs were being laid and hatched at the graduate business schools of American universities. And that quaint, bucolic, somewhat backward translation industry, with its vast international potential, was viewed as virgin territory by America’s new darlings of commerce: the holder of the MBA.
It was obvious, particularly in short retrospect, that the new businessman or businesswoman of the translation industry didn’t care a whit about the industry’s core elements of language and communication. Those were aspects to be left to others…others whose tastes leaned towards the esoteric and ethereal. The tenets, the dogma, the doctrine learned in graduate business school would be applied to an industry whose dinosaurs were too dumb and/or shortsighted to exploit its vast richness. The translation industry would become the testing ground for the lessons learned in business school: business models, business plans, marketing, advertising with heavy doses of buzz words, trendy terms and technological gobbledygook.
And it worked. And it worked beautifully. The dinosaurs soon died off and became extinct, as they had in Walt Disney’s animated depiction of Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”.
* * * * *
“Now you never have to translate the same phrase again”, pitches one of the numerous purveyors of the latest technological darling (and/or god or goddess) of the translation industry: the CAT tool. And the technological gurus and gurettes of the industry never cease to remind us that never having to translate the same phrase again is not only the key to survival, but also the key to entering the great castle of prosperity. After all, as Noam Chomsky, the greatest of language technology gurus said way back in 1962, all language can be automated and mechanized.
Indeed, why bother to write when chips can write for you? And that doctrine has certainly not been lost on the 21st century’s translation merchant. In fact, it is not just doctrine, but equally dogma and catechism.
Let us now for the sake of the exercise look at a communication recently published in various translation media by TransPerfect Translations. I make one caveat and one caveat only: Do not focus on the content. The content is not at issue and it is not the issue. Rather focus solely on the language, the thought process (or absence thereof), the logic of the language (or the absence thereof). Look carefully at the grammar, the syntax, the communicative fiber. When you finish reading the communication, you might want to ask yourself the question, “What does this writing say of the product that the company – the industry - purports to offer?”.
In-house position French
Quality Manager - Canadian French
TransPerfect Translations was founded in 1992 with the following mission: to provide the highest quality language services to leading businesses worldwide. With no external financing, the TransPerfect family of companies grew from its humble beginnings as a two-person company operating in an NYU business school dorm room into the world's third largest translation and software localization firm and one of the fastest growing, privately-held companies in the United States. With a network of over 5,000 language specialists and over 800 full-time employees in over 52 locations throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, we're continuously ready to meet our clients' needs, around the clock and around the world. We attribute our growth to the skill, aptitude, and commitment of our high caliber employees. Put simply, we hire the most talented candidates and give them the guidance, resources, and opportunities they need to grow their career in an expanding environment.
Department: Production
Description:
Ensure translated documents mirror the original source document
Efficiently maintains formal disciplined operations procedures across a variety of client projects
Track project-specific non-conformances and resolutions
Personally perform project QA steps
Assist with making new department processes while improving on existing ones (improve productivity, profitability)
Build and maintain strong relationships with contract translators, editors, and proofreaders
Juggle overlapping projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment
Required Skills:
Minimum Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
Must have excellent communication (written and verbal) skills in Canadian French (native level) and English
Ability to support multiple projects by keeping accurate and up-to-date project specs
Excellent problem solving skills
Ensure customer sign-off of end product
Experience coordinating assignment of resources
Ability to maintain professionalism in all situations, especially under tight deadlines
Prior translation and proofreading experience preferred in Life Sciences, Marketing, and Finance.
Experience with Trados or SDLX preferred
TransPerfect is an equal opportunity employer.
TransPerfect offers a comprehensive benefits package for our Canadian employees.
If you think you have what it takes to succeed in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, apply at https://home.eease.com/recruit/?id=31740.
Your World. Your Future. Go Global!
For the benefit of those who are fairly new to our august industry and who share the belief that language and communication are not core elements of translation, but mere sundry, I will endeavor to address some of the more delectable morsels of the TransPerfect employment piece.
" We attribute our growth to the skill, aptitude, and commitment of our high caliber employees. Put simply, we hire the most talented candidates and give them the guidance, resources, and opportunities they need to grow their career in an expanding environment.."
I suppose that the issues of prepositional use and that little annoying thing called person, number and gender are in the paraphrased words of the late Captain Butler of Charleston, SC, "minor points, my dears".
Shortly after we are provided with the first example of the language skills and acumen [sic] of a translation services entity, we come upon a listing of the duties that will be performed by the manager in whose hands shall be placed the responsibility of upholding the great tradition of quality in writing, language and communication that has been the hallmark of what is clearly this correspondent’s most favorite translation agency since those halcyon days when its principal owner and grand gurette (Lizzie) was scurrying around the dormitories of NYU's august business school. And here are some of them there duties of the TransPerfect Quality Manager::
"Ensure translated documents mirror the original source document".
OK, good way to start off, even if a little, minor "that" is missing. After all, "that" is such an insignificant word. Really, it is just a botheration, an annoyance, a linguistic mosquito. Swat it away.
"Efficiently maintains formal disciplined operations procedures across a variety of client projects"
Ooooooo, a slight change in voice to the indicative, "Minor points, my dears, minor points". "Indicative", "Schmindicative". That's nothing but intellectual drivel. Has absolutely nothing to do with quality in writing, language and communication. Nothing.
"Track project-specific non-conformances and resolutions"
At this point I shall ask a real stoopid question: How does one track a resolution? I know how one could track incidences of non-conformance. But how does one track a resolution? Maybe we should ask dear Lizzie. After all, wasn't Tracking Resolutions 101 a prerequisite course at NYU Graduate Business School (along with attendant dormitory seminars)?
"Efficiently maintains formal disciplined operations procedures across a variety of client projects"
Ah, a return to the indicative. And of course the phrase “formal disciplined operations procedures” should be crystal-clear to everyone and anyone, except stoopid dinosaurs.
“Assist with making new department processes while improving on existing ones (improve productivity, profitability)”
I suppose “making” processes is sound English idiom. Of course, what would I, a stoopid dinosaur know. Using the word “formulating” would apply only to “translators of another time”.
And now we come to what is arguably the best part of this employment advertisement: the list of required skills. Here we have and see a living example of skills learned in graduate business school on how to organize one’s thoughts in a coherent, cohesive and communicative manner. Here are a few of my favorites as enunciated by TransPerfect, the provider of quality language services:
“Minimum Bachelor's degree or its equivalent “
Now I have heard of a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Bachelor of Sciences degree and a Bachelor in Business Administration degree, but I ain’t never heard of a Minimum Bachelor’s degree. Is that like a college equivalency diploma? Well, I guess that too is a “minor point”. But since I am fixated on minor points, maybe someone out there could clarify to me how a Bacehlor’s degree is a skill.
‘Ensure customer sign-off of end product”
Pray tell, is “ensuring customer sign-off of end product” a skill or is it one of the duties that would be performed by the person hired by TransPerfect? Ah, poor Lizzie must have fallen asleep in Thought Organizing 101.
“Ability to support multiple projects by keeping accurate and up-to-date project specs”
I have singled out this one solely because the word “specs”, which is really trendy, sexy and technologically alluring, is far better than that musty, dusty, old-maid-like, dinosauric word “records”. You see, it really doesn’t make a difference what word one uses – specs, records, papers, parchments, scrolls, etc., because in translation it really doesn’t make a difference. If the source language clearly stated, “…by keeping accurate and up-to-date project records”, and the translator wrote, “…by keeping accurate and up-to-date project specs”, who would know the difference? Who would really care? Truly, is there any difference between records and specifications? The most important thing is that you make it clear to the client that he, she or it is receiving a quality product or service and that he, she or it really and actually believes it.
* * * * *
I can tell you this: If in 1992, when Lizzie of TransPerfect was absorbing the fundamentals of marketing in graduate business school, I had read the above-transcribed piece aloud to an audience gathered at an ATA conference (née convention), there would have been roars of laughter and/or gasps of horror. After all, in 1992, translators and translation managers were still relatively cognizant of the core elements of their profession.
If I read the same piece today to an audience gathered at any translator function, I would probably be looking out at a sea of faces with the clear expression of “What are you talking about?”
And that is the way the cookie crumbles.
Published - April 2009
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
the author of "A Translator-Warrior Speaks: A Personal History of the American Translators Association",
Pawling, NY and Marco Island, FL
supremo [at] bbtranslations . com
To commemorate and celebrate its 50th birthday this year, the American Translators Association (ATA) has commissioned a history of the organization, and by extension – if you will – a contemporary history of translation in the United States.
Now then, without having seen a single word of the draft of that history, and indeed not having been privy to any of the behind-the-scenes workings, I can say with all of the definitiveness that I can muster, that not a single word will be written about or a single reference made to the language, linguistic, communications and writing abilities of those who labored in the translation industry some 30 or 40 or 50 or even 75 years ago. And clearly, there will not be a single word written about or a single reference made to the language, linguistic, communications and writing abilities of the early or even middle-period leaders of the ATA and the American translation industry.
If the name Alexander Gode (the co-founder of the ATA) is mentioned, it will not be in conjunction with the man’s awesome knowledge of language and linguistics, his unparalleled eloquence, his remarkable ability to paint landscapes with words.
If the name Lewis Bertrand (one of the leading translator-merchants of his day, if not the leading one) is mentioned, there will be no references to his writing abilities or to his credo that translation is communication and translation is all about communication, language and writing.
If the name Henry Fischbach (the other co-founder of the ATA) is mentioned, not a single word will appear about this man’s writing skills and talent, about his painstaking and meticulous attention to every single word, every single sentence, every single phrase in a translated text that passed before his eyes.
Indeed, there will be no mention of the volumes of carefully-constructed, word-sensitive and eloquent letters, memoranda, reports, essays and other assorted writings of all of those translators who passed before us, all those who made the term “wordsmith” synonymous with translator.
To paraphrase the words of the American writer, Ben Hecht, “Look for these men and women only in the history books, for they are a civilization gone with the wind”. And clearly they are gone with the wind, or better yet, “They are translators of another time”, as was said by one Jost Zoetsche, one of the industry’s new breed of technological translators and the writer of a monthly column on the various technologies (sexy and otherwise) that today’s translator must master. Indeed, when Mr. Zoetsche said those words to me, there was not a hint, not a note, not an overtone of nostalgia. He said the words as if he was talking about … dinosaurs.
* * * * *
The American translation industry, not unlike other industries has seen and undergone some very discernible, if not radical changes in the past 50 years. It almost goes without saying that technological advances have wrought some of those discernible and radical changes.
But this piece is not about technology or the technological advances that have changed the American translation industry. Rather, it is about the changes that have come to its very core elements: language and communication. It is about the subordination – perhaps the word “belittlement” would be more appropriate – of those core elements to the exigencies of commerce and marketing and all that is commonly associated with those endeavors.
The piece of writing that is transcribed in full below is in my most considered opinion a highly representative piece of evidence that clearly demonstrates how language and communication have been shamelessly subordinated – even trivialized - in an industry whose raison d’être is language and communication.
100 years ago, 75 years ago, 50 years ago and even to a limited extent 25 years ago, when Mr. Zoetsche’s “dinosaurs” ruled the American translation countryside, the business side of translation (namely the translation bureaus or translation service companies) was in the hands of so-called “merchant-translators”, namely men and women who combined language skills with a modicum of business acumen. Most of these merchant-translators had academic backgrounds in language or the humanities or the natural sciences; a few combined language skills with backgrounds in diverse fields of engineering.
Not a single one of these merchant-translators, these “dinosaurs”, could claim an academic background in business. Yet, despite being bereft of a business model, a business plan or some other piece of commercial architecture of like purport and tenor, many of these merchant-translators went on to have highly successful business careers and were able to garner many of the attendant pecuniary benefits for themselves and their families.
And if during their careers these translator-merchants sharpened their business wits, never ever did they permit their language wits to become dulled. These merchant-translators, the dinosauric relatives and ancestors of today’s high priests and priestesses of business and technology, never lost sight of the core elements of their business: language and communication.
* * * * *
The early 1990’s saw the beginnings of change in the U.S. translation industry, at least so far as concerned the business side of translation. Naturally, at first these changes were barely discernible. The dinosaurs, i.e., the merchant-translators still appeared to be the dominant species in the commercial countryside. But these dinosaurs failed to lay eggs, and if they did lay eggs, those eggs were sterile.
Rather, the eggs were being laid and hatched at the graduate business schools of American universities. And that quaint, bucolic, somewhat backward translation industry, with its vast international potential, was viewed as virgin territory by America’s new darlings of commerce: the holder of the MBA.
It was obvious, particularly in short retrospect, that the new businessman or businesswoman of the translation industry didn’t care a whit about the industry’s core elements of language and communication. Those were aspects to be left to others…others whose tastes leaned towards the esoteric and ethereal. The tenets, the dogma, the doctrine learned in graduate business school would be applied to an industry whose dinosaurs were too dumb and/or shortsighted to exploit its vast richness. The translation industry would become the testing ground for the lessons learned in business school: business models, business plans, marketing, advertising with heavy doses of buzz words, trendy terms and technological gobbledygook.
And it worked. And it worked beautifully. The dinosaurs soon died off and became extinct, as they had in Walt Disney’s animated depiction of Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps”.
* * * * *
“Now you never have to translate the same phrase again”, pitches one of the numerous purveyors of the latest technological darling (and/or god or goddess) of the translation industry: the CAT tool. And the technological gurus and gurettes of the industry never cease to remind us that never having to translate the same phrase again is not only the key to survival, but also the key to entering the great castle of prosperity. After all, as Noam Chomsky, the greatest of language technology gurus said way back in 1962, all language can be automated and mechanized.
Indeed, why bother to write when chips can write for you? And that doctrine has certainly not been lost on the 21st century’s translation merchant. In fact, it is not just doctrine, but equally dogma and catechism.
Let us now for the sake of the exercise look at a communication recently published in various translation media by TransPerfect Translations. I make one caveat and one caveat only: Do not focus on the content. The content is not at issue and it is not the issue. Rather focus solely on the language, the thought process (or absence thereof), the logic of the language (or the absence thereof). Look carefully at the grammar, the syntax, the communicative fiber. When you finish reading the communication, you might want to ask yourself the question, “What does this writing say of the product that the company – the industry - purports to offer?”.
In-house position French
Quality Manager - Canadian French
TransPerfect Translations was founded in 1992 with the following mission: to provide the highest quality language services to leading businesses worldwide. With no external financing, the TransPerfect family of companies grew from its humble beginnings as a two-person company operating in an NYU business school dorm room into the world's third largest translation and software localization firm and one of the fastest growing, privately-held companies in the United States. With a network of over 5,000 language specialists and over 800 full-time employees in over 52 locations throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, we're continuously ready to meet our clients' needs, around the clock and around the world. We attribute our growth to the skill, aptitude, and commitment of our high caliber employees. Put simply, we hire the most talented candidates and give them the guidance, resources, and opportunities they need to grow their career in an expanding environment.
Department: Production
Description:
Ensure translated documents mirror the original source document
Efficiently maintains formal disciplined operations procedures across a variety of client projects
Track project-specific non-conformances and resolutions
Personally perform project QA steps
Assist with making new department processes while improving on existing ones (improve productivity, profitability)
Build and maintain strong relationships with contract translators, editors, and proofreaders
Juggle overlapping projects and priorities in a fast-paced environment
Required Skills:
Minimum Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
Must have excellent communication (written and verbal) skills in Canadian French (native level) and English
Ability to support multiple projects by keeping accurate and up-to-date project specs
Excellent problem solving skills
Ensure customer sign-off of end product
Experience coordinating assignment of resources
Ability to maintain professionalism in all situations, especially under tight deadlines
Prior translation and proofreading experience preferred in Life Sciences, Marketing, and Finance.
Experience with Trados or SDLX preferred
TransPerfect is an equal opportunity employer.
TransPerfect offers a comprehensive benefits package for our Canadian employees.
If you think you have what it takes to succeed in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, apply at https://home.eease.com/recruit/?id=31740.
Your World. Your Future. Go Global!
For the benefit of those who are fairly new to our august industry and who share the belief that language and communication are not core elements of translation, but mere sundry, I will endeavor to address some of the more delectable morsels of the TransPerfect employment piece.
" We attribute our growth to the skill, aptitude, and commitment of our high caliber employees. Put simply, we hire the most talented candidates and give them the guidance, resources, and opportunities they need to grow their career in an expanding environment.."
I suppose that the issues of prepositional use and that little annoying thing called person, number and gender are in the paraphrased words of the late Captain Butler of Charleston, SC, "minor points, my dears".
Shortly after we are provided with the first example of the language skills and acumen [sic] of a translation services entity, we come upon a listing of the duties that will be performed by the manager in whose hands shall be placed the responsibility of upholding the great tradition of quality in writing, language and communication that has been the hallmark of what is clearly this correspondent’s most favorite translation agency since those halcyon days when its principal owner and grand gurette (Lizzie) was scurrying around the dormitories of NYU's august business school. And here are some of them there duties of the TransPerfect Quality Manager::
"Ensure translated documents mirror the original source document".
OK, good way to start off, even if a little, minor "that" is missing. After all, "that" is such an insignificant word. Really, it is just a botheration, an annoyance, a linguistic mosquito. Swat it away.
"Efficiently maintains formal disciplined operations procedures across a variety of client projects"
Ooooooo, a slight change in voice to the indicative, "Minor points, my dears, minor points". "Indicative", "Schmindicative". That's nothing but intellectual drivel. Has absolutely nothing to do with quality in writing, language and communication. Nothing.
"Track project-specific non-conformances and resolutions"
At this point I shall ask a real stoopid question: How does one track a resolution? I know how one could track incidences of non-conformance. But how does one track a resolution? Maybe we should ask dear Lizzie. After all, wasn't Tracking Resolutions 101 a prerequisite course at NYU Graduate Business School (along with attendant dormitory seminars)?
"Efficiently maintains formal disciplined operations procedures across a variety of client projects"
Ah, a return to the indicative. And of course the phrase “formal disciplined operations procedures” should be crystal-clear to everyone and anyone, except stoopid dinosaurs.
“Assist with making new department processes while improving on existing ones (improve productivity, profitability)”
I suppose “making” processes is sound English idiom. Of course, what would I, a stoopid dinosaur know. Using the word “formulating” would apply only to “translators of another time”.
And now we come to what is arguably the best part of this employment advertisement: the list of required skills. Here we have and see a living example of skills learned in graduate business school on how to organize one’s thoughts in a coherent, cohesive and communicative manner. Here are a few of my favorites as enunciated by TransPerfect, the provider of quality language services:
“Minimum Bachelor's degree or its equivalent “
Now I have heard of a Bachelor of Arts degree, a Bachelor of Sciences degree and a Bachelor in Business Administration degree, but I ain’t never heard of a Minimum Bachelor’s degree. Is that like a college equivalency diploma? Well, I guess that too is a “minor point”. But since I am fixated on minor points, maybe someone out there could clarify to me how a Bacehlor’s degree is a skill.
‘Ensure customer sign-off of end product”
Pray tell, is “ensuring customer sign-off of end product” a skill or is it one of the duties that would be performed by the person hired by TransPerfect? Ah, poor Lizzie must have fallen asleep in Thought Organizing 101.
“Ability to support multiple projects by keeping accurate and up-to-date project specs”
I have singled out this one solely because the word “specs”, which is really trendy, sexy and technologically alluring, is far better than that musty, dusty, old-maid-like, dinosauric word “records”. You see, it really doesn’t make a difference what word one uses – specs, records, papers, parchments, scrolls, etc., because in translation it really doesn’t make a difference. If the source language clearly stated, “…by keeping accurate and up-to-date project records”, and the translator wrote, “…by keeping accurate and up-to-date project specs”, who would know the difference? Who would really care? Truly, is there any difference between records and specifications? The most important thing is that you make it clear to the client that he, she or it is receiving a quality product or service and that he, she or it really and actually believes it.
* * * * *
I can tell you this: If in 1992, when Lizzie of TransPerfect was absorbing the fundamentals of marketing in graduate business school, I had read the above-transcribed piece aloud to an audience gathered at an ATA conference (née convention), there would have been roars of laughter and/or gasps of horror. After all, in 1992, translators and translation managers were still relatively cognizant of the core elements of their profession.
If I read the same piece today to an audience gathered at any translator function, I would probably be looking out at a sea of faces with the clear expression of “What are you talking about?”
And that is the way the cookie crumbles.
Published - April 2009
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Stopping the Word Count Insanity
By Andrzej Zydron,
xml-Intl Ltd.
In the localization industry, there is a total lack of consistency among word or character counts, not only between rival products, but even among different versions of the same product. The same can be said for word processing software: word and character counts differ among vendors and versions. An additional problem is that none of this software provides any proper verifiable specification as to how the actual metrics are determined. You have to accept them as they are.
This is effectively the same situation that existed for weights and measures before the French Revolution established a sane and uniform system that everyone could agree upon, one that we still use today (with minor exceptions).
Trying to establish a measure for the size of a given localization task poses a real problem for the professional who is trying to calculate a price. The differences in word and character counts among different translation or word processing tools can be as much as 20 percent. And such a gap can mean the difference between profitability and loss.
Realizing that this problem needed to be addressed by an independent industry body, LISA OSCAR undertook the task, in 2004, of establishing a standard that everyone can agree on and that can be independently verified.
Nearly three years later, we finally have a far-reaching and considerably reviewed approach to this problem. The core of the new standard comes under the umbrella concept of Global Information Management Metrics Exchange or GMX for short.
We all know that word and character counts are not the only measure of a given localization task. Thus, GMX comprises three standards:
# GMX-V (for volume)
# GMX-Q (for quality
# GMX-C (for complexity)
GMX-V is the first of the three standards to be completed. Work will commence in 2007 on GMX-Q and GMXC. Quality (GMX-Q) will deal with the level of quality required for a task. For example, the quality required for the translation of a legal document is much higher than that for technical documentation that will have a relatively small audience. Complexity (GMX-Q) will take into consideration the source and format of the original document and its subject matter. For example, a highly complex document dealing with a specific tight domain is far more complex to translate than user instructions for a simple consumer device.
All of the GMX family of standards relies on an XML vocabulary for the exchange of metric data. Using the three standards together, it will be possible to have a uniform measure for defining the specific aspects of a localization task, to a point where one can completely automate all the pricing aspects of the task and exchange this data electronically.
GMX-V
GMX-V is designed to fulfill two primary roles:
* Establish a verifiable way of calculating the primary word and character counts for a given electronic document.
* Establish a specific XML vocabulary that enables the automatic exchange of metric data
As with all good standards, GMX-V is itself based on other well established standards:
* Unicode 5.0 normalized form
* Unicode Technical Report 29 – Text Boundaries
* OASIS XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) 1.2
* LISA OSCAR Segmentation Rules Exchange (SRX) 2.0
WORDS AND CHARACTERS
GMX-V mandates both word and character counts. Character counts convey the most precise definition of a localization task, whereas word counts are the most commonly used metric in the industry.
OTHER METRICS
The XML exchange notation of GMX-V allows for the exchange of all metrics relating to a given localization task, such as page counts, file counts, screen shot counts, etc.
CANONICAL FORM
One of the main problems with calculating word and character counts is the sheer range of differing proprietary file formats. Trying to establish a standard that addresses all formats is impossible. GMX-V required a canonical form that effectively levels the playing field. Such a common format is available through the OASIS XLIFF standard, which is now supported by all of the localization tool providers.
Within XLIFF, inline codes are interpreted as inline XML elements. The inline elements are not included in the word and character counts, but form a separate inline element count of their own. The frequency of inline elements can have an impact on the translation workload, so a separate count is useful when sizing a job. Punctuation and white space characters are also featured as additional categories.
GMX-V addresses all issues related to counting words and characters in the XLIFF canonical format. Since the sentence is the commonly accepted atomic unit for translation, it proposes sentence-level granularity for counting purposes within XLIFF.
GMX-V does not preclude producing metrics directly from non-XLIFF files, as long as the format for counting is based on the XLIFF canonical form for each text unit being counted. This can be done dynamically on the fly, and it requires an audit file for verification purposes.
WORDS
GMX-V uses “Unicode Technical Report 29 (TR29-9) – Text Boundaries” to define words and characters. This provides a clear and unambiguous definition of word or “grapheme” boundaries.
LOGOGRAPHIC SCRIPTS
Word counts have little relevance for Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK) and Thai source text. For these languages, GMX-V recommends using only character counts.
There is a proposal before ISO TC 37, submitted by Professor Sun Maosong, relating to the automatic identification of word boundaries for CJK languages. Should this recommendation become a standard, GMX-V should reference it for the provision of CJK word counts.
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE MEASUREMENTS
GMX-V counts fall into two categories: how many and what type. The primary count is unqualified. For example, how many characters and words are in the file? This is the minimal conformance level proposed for GMX-V.
A typical translatable document will contain a variety of text elements. Some of these elements will contain non-translatable text, some will have been matched from translation memory, and some will have been fuzzy matched by the customer. Therefore, it is important to be able to categorize the word and character counts according to type, in order to provide a figure in words and characters for a given localization task. GMX-V also provides an extension mechanism that enables user defined categories.
COUNT CATEGORIES
Apart from the total-word-count and total-charactercount values, GMX-V also includes these count categories:
* In-context exact matches – An accumulation of the word and character count for text units that have been matched unambiguously with a prior translation and that require no translator input.
* Leveraged matches – An accumulation of the word and character count for text units that have been matched against a leveraged translation memory database.
* Repetition matches – An accumulation of the word count for repeating text units that have not been matched in any other form. Repetition matching is deemed to take precedence over fuzzy matching.
* Fuzzy matches – An accumulation of the word and character count for text units that have been fuzzy matched against a leveraged translation memory database.
* Alphanumeric-only text units – An accumulation of the word and character counts for text units that have been identified as containing only alphanumeric words.
* Numeric-only text units – An accumulation of the word and character counts for text units that have been identified as containing only numeric words.
* Punctuation characters – An accumulation of the punctuation characters.
* White Spaces – An accumulation of white space characters.
* Measurement-only – An accumulation of the word and character count from measurement-only text units.
* Other Non-translatable words – An accumulation of other non-translatable word and character counts.
* Automatically treatable text – A count of automatically treatable inline elements, such as date, time, measurements, or simple and complex numeric values.
VERIFIABILITY
Any measurement standard must have a reference implementation, as well as an authoritative body that tests and validates the measuring instruments. In the US, this is provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In order to be successful, GMX-V must provide for a certification authority that will (1) maintain reference documents with known metrics and (2) provide an online facility to test given XLIFF documents. In this way, both customers and suppliers can be confident that GMX-V provides an unambiguous and reliable way of quantifying a localization or global-information-management task.
NON-VERIFIABLE METRICS AND EXCHANGE NOTATION
There are many instances where it is not possible to verify electronically the metrics data, such as screen shots, number of pages, etc. GMX-V allows for the annotation and exchange of all relevant metrics for a given localization task.
SUMMARY
GMX-V has been widely peer reviewed and published for open public comment for eighteen months. Much valuable feedback has been submitted and incorporated into the standard. All major localization tool providers have been consulted, to insure no obstacles to implementing it. GMX-V also provides a specification that can be used by word processing tool vendors and localization tool suppliers. It provides a consistent and unambiguous common standard for word and character counts.
Further details of GMX-V are available at the following URL: www.lisa.org/standards/gmx
ClientSide News Magazine - http://www.clientsidenews.com/
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
xml-Intl Ltd.
In the localization industry, there is a total lack of consistency among word or character counts, not only between rival products, but even among different versions of the same product. The same can be said for word processing software: word and character counts differ among vendors and versions. An additional problem is that none of this software provides any proper verifiable specification as to how the actual metrics are determined. You have to accept them as they are.
This is effectively the same situation that existed for weights and measures before the French Revolution established a sane and uniform system that everyone could agree upon, one that we still use today (with minor exceptions).
Trying to establish a measure for the size of a given localization task poses a real problem for the professional who is trying to calculate a price. The differences in word and character counts among different translation or word processing tools can be as much as 20 percent. And such a gap can mean the difference between profitability and loss.
Realizing that this problem needed to be addressed by an independent industry body, LISA OSCAR undertook the task, in 2004, of establishing a standard that everyone can agree on and that can be independently verified.
Nearly three years later, we finally have a far-reaching and considerably reviewed approach to this problem. The core of the new standard comes under the umbrella concept of Global Information Management Metrics Exchange or GMX for short.
We all know that word and character counts are not the only measure of a given localization task. Thus, GMX comprises three standards:
# GMX-V (for volume)
# GMX-Q (for quality
# GMX-C (for complexity)
GMX-V is the first of the three standards to be completed. Work will commence in 2007 on GMX-Q and GMXC. Quality (GMX-Q) will deal with the level of quality required for a task. For example, the quality required for the translation of a legal document is much higher than that for technical documentation that will have a relatively small audience. Complexity (GMX-Q) will take into consideration the source and format of the original document and its subject matter. For example, a highly complex document dealing with a specific tight domain is far more complex to translate than user instructions for a simple consumer device.
All of the GMX family of standards relies on an XML vocabulary for the exchange of metric data. Using the three standards together, it will be possible to have a uniform measure for defining the specific aspects of a localization task, to a point where one can completely automate all the pricing aspects of the task and exchange this data electronically.
GMX-V
GMX-V is designed to fulfill two primary roles:
* Establish a verifiable way of calculating the primary word and character counts for a given electronic document.
* Establish a specific XML vocabulary that enables the automatic exchange of metric data
As with all good standards, GMX-V is itself based on other well established standards:
* Unicode 5.0 normalized form
* Unicode Technical Report 29 – Text Boundaries
* OASIS XML Localization Interchange File Format (XLIFF) 1.2
* LISA OSCAR Segmentation Rules Exchange (SRX) 2.0
WORDS AND CHARACTERS
GMX-V mandates both word and character counts. Character counts convey the most precise definition of a localization task, whereas word counts are the most commonly used metric in the industry.
OTHER METRICS
The XML exchange notation of GMX-V allows for the exchange of all metrics relating to a given localization task, such as page counts, file counts, screen shot counts, etc.
CANONICAL FORM
One of the main problems with calculating word and character counts is the sheer range of differing proprietary file formats. Trying to establish a standard that addresses all formats is impossible. GMX-V required a canonical form that effectively levels the playing field. Such a common format is available through the OASIS XLIFF standard, which is now supported by all of the localization tool providers.
Within XLIFF, inline codes are interpreted as inline XML elements. The inline elements are not included in the word and character counts, but form a separate inline element count of their own. The frequency of inline elements can have an impact on the translation workload, so a separate count is useful when sizing a job. Punctuation and white space characters are also featured as additional categories.
GMX-V addresses all issues related to counting words and characters in the XLIFF canonical format. Since the sentence is the commonly accepted atomic unit for translation, it proposes sentence-level granularity for counting purposes within XLIFF.
GMX-V does not preclude producing metrics directly from non-XLIFF files, as long as the format for counting is based on the XLIFF canonical form for each text unit being counted. This can be done dynamically on the fly, and it requires an audit file for verification purposes.
WORDS
GMX-V uses “Unicode Technical Report 29 (TR29-9) – Text Boundaries” to define words and characters. This provides a clear and unambiguous definition of word or “grapheme” boundaries.
LOGOGRAPHIC SCRIPTS
Word counts have little relevance for Chinese, Japanese, Korean (CJK) and Thai source text. For these languages, GMX-V recommends using only character counts.
There is a proposal before ISO TC 37, submitted by Professor Sun Maosong, relating to the automatic identification of word boundaries for CJK languages. Should this recommendation become a standard, GMX-V should reference it for the provision of CJK word counts.
QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE MEASUREMENTS
GMX-V counts fall into two categories: how many and what type. The primary count is unqualified. For example, how many characters and words are in the file? This is the minimal conformance level proposed for GMX-V.
A typical translatable document will contain a variety of text elements. Some of these elements will contain non-translatable text, some will have been matched from translation memory, and some will have been fuzzy matched by the customer. Therefore, it is important to be able to categorize the word and character counts according to type, in order to provide a figure in words and characters for a given localization task. GMX-V also provides an extension mechanism that enables user defined categories.
COUNT CATEGORIES
Apart from the total-word-count and total-charactercount values, GMX-V also includes these count categories:
* In-context exact matches – An accumulation of the word and character count for text units that have been matched unambiguously with a prior translation and that require no translator input.
* Leveraged matches – An accumulation of the word and character count for text units that have been matched against a leveraged translation memory database.
* Repetition matches – An accumulation of the word count for repeating text units that have not been matched in any other form. Repetition matching is deemed to take precedence over fuzzy matching.
* Fuzzy matches – An accumulation of the word and character count for text units that have been fuzzy matched against a leveraged translation memory database.
* Alphanumeric-only text units – An accumulation of the word and character counts for text units that have been identified as containing only alphanumeric words.
* Numeric-only text units – An accumulation of the word and character counts for text units that have been identified as containing only numeric words.
* Punctuation characters – An accumulation of the punctuation characters.
* White Spaces – An accumulation of white space characters.
* Measurement-only – An accumulation of the word and character count from measurement-only text units.
* Other Non-translatable words – An accumulation of other non-translatable word and character counts.
* Automatically treatable text – A count of automatically treatable inline elements, such as date, time, measurements, or simple and complex numeric values.
VERIFIABILITY
Any measurement standard must have a reference implementation, as well as an authoritative body that tests and validates the measuring instruments. In the US, this is provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In order to be successful, GMX-V must provide for a certification authority that will (1) maintain reference documents with known metrics and (2) provide an online facility to test given XLIFF documents. In this way, both customers and suppliers can be confident that GMX-V provides an unambiguous and reliable way of quantifying a localization or global-information-management task.
NON-VERIFIABLE METRICS AND EXCHANGE NOTATION
There are many instances where it is not possible to verify electronically the metrics data, such as screen shots, number of pages, etc. GMX-V allows for the annotation and exchange of all relevant metrics for a given localization task.
SUMMARY
GMX-V has been widely peer reviewed and published for open public comment for eighteen months. Much valuable feedback has been submitted and incorporated into the standard. All major localization tool providers have been consulted, to insure no obstacles to implementing it. GMX-V also provides a specification that can be used by word processing tool vendors and localization tool suppliers. It provides a consistent and unambiguous common standard for word and character counts.
Further details of GMX-V are available at the following URL: www.lisa.org/standards/gmx
ClientSide News Magazine - http://www.clientsidenews.com/
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Thursday, May 28, 2009
At Arm’s Length or Close to the Vest? The Optimal Relationship between Clients and Vendors
By Anil Singh-Molares,
EchoMundi, LLC,
Bellevue, WA, U.S.A.
Anil[at]Echomundi.com
http://www.echomundi.com/
The relationships between vendors and clients go through their ebbs and flows (more insourcing, followed by more outsourcing, followed by…). As predictable as the swings of a pendulum, all of us - clients and vendors - go through our normal gyrations back and forth. And it is all in an attempt to find that elusive, but allegedly perfect, middle ground - but where is it? And beyond the question of where to place work (inside or outside), the question is more about the right tenor of vendor-client relationships--at arm’s length or close to the vest? The answer, I will argue, is both, in the right proportion.
While running vendor relations at Microsoft in the mid-1990s I developed that company’s "strategic localization partner" program. Through this program, many of the constituent companies of what would later become BGS, the Mendez group, and Lionbridge were developed with significant input from Microsoft: Opera, Translingua, Meta, Gecap etc… With only one notable exception, all of these companies were very successful in the nineties. The hallmarks of the "strategic partner" program that we established were designed to lower the barriers between vendor and clients by emphasizing common teams and objectives, and an approach of "if they succeed, we win" rather than "if we make the vendors fail, we win (as our jobs will be more secure)." We emphasized very tight communication links, virtual teams, frequent trips and training to each other’s sites, as well as bonuses and other incentives, such as guaranteed profitability in some cases. The proverbial "us and them" did not exist - rather we all belonged to the same team.
Did it work? Yes and No. Some Microsoft divisions embraced the concept, some rejected it. But the concept of vendors as extensions of client teams (rather than simple providers to them) did begin to take hold. And this approach yielded many notable achievements, particularly in the consumer space, for instance with the creation of Microsoft’s encyclopedia, where we had dedicated vendor teams worldwide for a period of 7 years. In this context, it is noteworthy that in those instances where we pushed the "close to the vest" concept, both clients and vendors achieved their common objectives: good quality at reasonable cost for the client, and increased profitability for the vendors. Similarly, instances where the "at arm’s length" concept was used invariably resulted in higher costs and lower quality for the client and significantly reduced profitability for the vendors. In addition, the "arm’s length" approach also produced considerable churn in the vendor base of those groups using this approach, as vendors left in frustration or were ousted in favour of the "next best thing."
Where are we today?
Before joining Microsoft in 1991 I ran a translation company in the Boston area. Now at the helm of Echomundi LLC, an International Services company, I find the contrast between my experience as both a vendor and a client instructive and informative in answering the question of how close vendors and clients have or should become:
What has changed:
* The industry is far more mature and professional. Localization as a discipline, rising wages and respect for language specialists, growing sophistication in tools and approach are all readily apparent. The process has been streamlined and codified to a large extent. Various CMS, TM and Project Management tools have also helped reduce costs and increased consistency.
* As a rule, there also appears to be more frequent contact between clients and vendors, more training sessions, conferences, meetings, trips etc.
* However, many types of interactions between clients and vendors now seem principally driven more by increasing efforts to "measure and quantify" quality, productivity etc. In this context, the notion of "Service" is now largely defined as success in meeting the client’s metrics on a job to job basis (as indeed we are all measured one job at a time), and not as much on creative problem solving, flexibility, adaptability, transparency and innovation.
What remains the same:
There are certain limitations inherent in the client-vendor relationship that cannot be overcome. That is, when one party pays the bills it has the right to set expectations of service as it deems fit. Conversely, once they have accepted the terms and conditions of a particular client, service companies have an obligation to respond to their client’s requirements to the best of their ability. This fundamental axiom is unchangeable.
And now to return to our basic question: At Arm’s Length or Close to the Vest?
The "Arm’s Length" approach in its ideal application has obvious benefits: each party treats the other as a professional entity, there are clear expectations and deliverables, an optimized use of technology, and tightly controlled costs and profit margins. The downside, however, is glaring: if you as the client don’t develop strong and lasting relationships with your vendors, they won’t be your vendors for long (either because you will tire of them or they will tire of you). By maintaining too much distance from your vendors, they are never motivated to really integrate with your approach. In short, they can become clinical and dispassionate (if not unmotivated and indifferent). One additional drawback of this approach is that it also easily lends itself to bureaucracy run amok, where it can become more important to "follow the rules" than to "get the job done" - surely self-defeating.
The "Close to the Vest" approach in its ideal form seeks to eliminate the barriers between clients and vendors. Through frequent interaction, joint training, and team building the vendor becomes an extension of the client’s team. Both parties share the pains and rewards of individual projects. Both put themselves on the line to a greater degree in innovative problem solving and troubleshooting. And by building relationships for the long haul, the investments that each party makes in the other are more resilient. The downside to this approach, however, can be possible "subjectivity" in measuring work and an unwillingness of one party to honestly hold the other party accountable when mistakes occur.
The Ideal
Really what we all (clients and vendors) want is a combination of both the "Arm’s Length" and "Close to the Vest" approaches - that is, deliverables and costs that can easily, objectively and professionally be measured on the one hand, combined with cordial personal relationships, which are essential for effective problem-solving, on the other. This "middle ground" will vary according to the individual requirements of clients and the capacity of the vendors that they select to meet those requirements, but it is clearly a combination of the benefits of both approaches.
Clients and Vendors that hew to this joint approach will find increasing satisfaction in their relationships on all levels: quality, cost, profitability and service. In this context all of us should strive to be "understanding professionals" rather than exclusively one thing or the other.
Born in Holland and raised in Europe and the United States, Anil Singh-Molares is a global citizen, a global entrepreneur and businessperson. From 1991-2003, Anil worked as a Senior Director at Microsoft Corporation, where he implemented Microsoft’s "strategic localization partner" program. Since leaving the software giant, he founded and serves as CEO of EchoMundi LLC, a rapidly growing international services firm that helps corporations do business abroad. He can be reached at Anil@echomundi.com.
Copyright © 2006 Anil Singh-Molares. All rights reserved.
This article was originally published in GALAxy newsletter:
www.gala-global.org/GALAxy-newsletter.html
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
EchoMundi, LLC,
Bellevue, WA, U.S.A.
Anil[at]Echomundi.com
http://www.echomundi.com/
The relationships between vendors and clients go through their ebbs and flows (more insourcing, followed by more outsourcing, followed by…). As predictable as the swings of a pendulum, all of us - clients and vendors - go through our normal gyrations back and forth. And it is all in an attempt to find that elusive, but allegedly perfect, middle ground - but where is it? And beyond the question of where to place work (inside or outside), the question is more about the right tenor of vendor-client relationships--at arm’s length or close to the vest? The answer, I will argue, is both, in the right proportion.
While running vendor relations at Microsoft in the mid-1990s I developed that company’s "strategic localization partner" program. Through this program, many of the constituent companies of what would later become BGS, the Mendez group, and Lionbridge were developed with significant input from Microsoft: Opera, Translingua, Meta, Gecap etc… With only one notable exception, all of these companies were very successful in the nineties. The hallmarks of the "strategic partner" program that we established were designed to lower the barriers between vendor and clients by emphasizing common teams and objectives, and an approach of "if they succeed, we win" rather than "if we make the vendors fail, we win (as our jobs will be more secure)." We emphasized very tight communication links, virtual teams, frequent trips and training to each other’s sites, as well as bonuses and other incentives, such as guaranteed profitability in some cases. The proverbial "us and them" did not exist - rather we all belonged to the same team.
Did it work? Yes and No. Some Microsoft divisions embraced the concept, some rejected it. But the concept of vendors as extensions of client teams (rather than simple providers to them) did begin to take hold. And this approach yielded many notable achievements, particularly in the consumer space, for instance with the creation of Microsoft’s encyclopedia, where we had dedicated vendor teams worldwide for a period of 7 years. In this context, it is noteworthy that in those instances where we pushed the "close to the vest" concept, both clients and vendors achieved their common objectives: good quality at reasonable cost for the client, and increased profitability for the vendors. Similarly, instances where the "at arm’s length" concept was used invariably resulted in higher costs and lower quality for the client and significantly reduced profitability for the vendors. In addition, the "arm’s length" approach also produced considerable churn in the vendor base of those groups using this approach, as vendors left in frustration or were ousted in favour of the "next best thing."
Where are we today?
Before joining Microsoft in 1991 I ran a translation company in the Boston area. Now at the helm of Echomundi LLC, an International Services company, I find the contrast between my experience as both a vendor and a client instructive and informative in answering the question of how close vendors and clients have or should become:
What has changed:
* The industry is far more mature and professional. Localization as a discipline, rising wages and respect for language specialists, growing sophistication in tools and approach are all readily apparent. The process has been streamlined and codified to a large extent. Various CMS, TM and Project Management tools have also helped reduce costs and increased consistency.
* As a rule, there also appears to be more frequent contact between clients and vendors, more training sessions, conferences, meetings, trips etc.
* However, many types of interactions between clients and vendors now seem principally driven more by increasing efforts to "measure and quantify" quality, productivity etc. In this context, the notion of "Service" is now largely defined as success in meeting the client’s metrics on a job to job basis (as indeed we are all measured one job at a time), and not as much on creative problem solving, flexibility, adaptability, transparency and innovation.
What remains the same:
There are certain limitations inherent in the client-vendor relationship that cannot be overcome. That is, when one party pays the bills it has the right to set expectations of service as it deems fit. Conversely, once they have accepted the terms and conditions of a particular client, service companies have an obligation to respond to their client’s requirements to the best of their ability. This fundamental axiom is unchangeable.
And now to return to our basic question: At Arm’s Length or Close to the Vest?
The "Arm’s Length" approach in its ideal application has obvious benefits: each party treats the other as a professional entity, there are clear expectations and deliverables, an optimized use of technology, and tightly controlled costs and profit margins. The downside, however, is glaring: if you as the client don’t develop strong and lasting relationships with your vendors, they won’t be your vendors for long (either because you will tire of them or they will tire of you). By maintaining too much distance from your vendors, they are never motivated to really integrate with your approach. In short, they can become clinical and dispassionate (if not unmotivated and indifferent). One additional drawback of this approach is that it also easily lends itself to bureaucracy run amok, where it can become more important to "follow the rules" than to "get the job done" - surely self-defeating.
The "Close to the Vest" approach in its ideal form seeks to eliminate the barriers between clients and vendors. Through frequent interaction, joint training, and team building the vendor becomes an extension of the client’s team. Both parties share the pains and rewards of individual projects. Both put themselves on the line to a greater degree in innovative problem solving and troubleshooting. And by building relationships for the long haul, the investments that each party makes in the other are more resilient. The downside to this approach, however, can be possible "subjectivity" in measuring work and an unwillingness of one party to honestly hold the other party accountable when mistakes occur.
The Ideal
Really what we all (clients and vendors) want is a combination of both the "Arm’s Length" and "Close to the Vest" approaches - that is, deliverables and costs that can easily, objectively and professionally be measured on the one hand, combined with cordial personal relationships, which are essential for effective problem-solving, on the other. This "middle ground" will vary according to the individual requirements of clients and the capacity of the vendors that they select to meet those requirements, but it is clearly a combination of the benefits of both approaches.
Clients and Vendors that hew to this joint approach will find increasing satisfaction in their relationships on all levels: quality, cost, profitability and service. In this context all of us should strive to be "understanding professionals" rather than exclusively one thing or the other.
Born in Holland and raised in Europe and the United States, Anil Singh-Molares is a global citizen, a global entrepreneur and businessperson. From 1991-2003, Anil worked as a Senior Director at Microsoft Corporation, where he implemented Microsoft’s "strategic localization partner" program. Since leaving the software giant, he founded and serves as CEO of EchoMundi LLC, a rapidly growing international services firm that helps corporations do business abroad. He can be reached at Anil@echomundi.com.
Copyright © 2006 Anil Singh-Molares. All rights reserved.
This article was originally published in GALAxy newsletter:
www.gala-global.org/GALAxy-newsletter.html
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Buzzword or Bonanza?
A Translator Reflects on Best Practice
By Ann C. Sherwin,
Translator and Editor,
Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
translate@asherwin.com
www.asherwin.com
There's no doubt that "best practice" is a hot topic today. The exact phrase brings nearly 40 million hits with Google, including 16 sponsored links related to sales and marketing, education, research, manufacturing, information science, health care, and more. Amazon.com lists over 2300 books with "best practice" as a keyword. To me it was pretty much just a buzzword. It sounded good, and I assumed it was an apt description of the way I ran my business.
According to the Wikipedia, the term "best practice" was popularized in professional and business management books starting in the late 1980s and generally refers to the best possible way of doing something. While the term is relatively new, the concept is as old as the human race. Enterprising people have always looked for better ways to perform tasks and reach goals. If vast numbers of people in similar circumstances have the same goal and can agree on the best way to achieve it, the procedure could be labeled a "best practice."
With the advent of the Internet, it became easier than ever to share experience and learn what practices others considered best. Translators, who once worked in relative isolation, quickly embraced this medium, and now we can pick the brains of colleagues worldwide through online forums, newsgroups, mailing lists, blogs, and virtual communities. If we aren't careful, these can distract us from our daily work, but they are a handy and seemingly inexhaustible source of fact, opinion, and advice about best practice.
My husband worked for a company that was taken over by Dow Chemical just before he retired. Suddenly his work routines were subject to new dictates from above. Dow had a prescribed procedure for every piece of equipment and every step of every corporate activity, it seemed, which its experts had determined to be "best practice." I mention this only to illustrate the complexity of the concept and its application in industry and commerce.
By whose standards is "best practice" determined in the language service industry? Surely most of us would agree that what's best for the buyer is best for the provider in the long run. Organizations like the Better Business Bureau are founded on this principle, and discussions in various ATA forums and elsewhere testify that we, too, know on which side our bread is buttered, at least in theory.
When I invited input for this article from the ATA Business Practices e-group, ATA President Marian Greenfield put hers in a nutshell: "Don't accept any job you can't do in an excellent fashion and on time." Jutta Diel-Dominique put it even more succinctly: "Dare to say No." Viewed as best practice, rather than as the only permissible practice, this is good advice. My qualifier merely acknowledges what all of us have faced or can at least envision: those desperate situations where we are the only help available and less-than-excellent is quite acceptable.
The Dow model would have us define the concrete steps by which we determine whether a job we are considering meets Greenfield's criteria. What does "on time" mean? (Don't laugh! Any project manager will tell you that many translators don't know. Or they count on a grace period.) Just how good is "excellent," and in whose eyes? How do I calculate the time it will take to achieve excellence, with the entire source text, the client's specifications, and my calendar of other commitments before me? Surely it is "best practice" to have a plan, so that when the phone rings or the request for a bid lands in your inbox you're ready.
A widely accepted "best practice" in our industry is for translators and interpreters to work only into their native or dominant language. Unsavvy clients often assume that if you can translate from a language, you can also translate into it. Bolstered by unwarranted client confidence, some translators make the same assumption without ever putting it to the test. But most of us know that we are more efficient and produce higher quality when working into our A-language; and that if we must work into our B- or C-language, the best practice is to have a qualified native speaker edit our work.
In the ATA brochure "Translation: Getting it Right,"1 author Chris Durban makes this point to translation buyers as well. "OK, there are exceptions," she adds. "But not many." After advising buyers how to recognize the exceptions, Chris puts their doubts to rest with this observation: "Do translators living outside their home country lose touch with their native tongue? At the bottom end of the market, perhaps. But expert linguists make a point of keeping their language skills up to par wherever they are."
The Translation Journal blog (http://translationjournal.blogspot.com/) contains an interesting discussion of this surprisingly controversial issue under the heading "Native Language." There an anonymous translator who goes by "Yamishogun" says, "Sadly, many Japanese feel that a foreigner can't fully grasp their language." He cites an agency in Japan that refuses to hire native speakers of English because they make too many errors and another agency in which two-thirds of the translators are Japanese who translate into English. But he adds that most of their translations are edited by native speakers of English.
Russian linguist Carol Flath, speaking on her experience interpreting for the US Department of State at the arms-reduction talks in Geneva in the early 1990s, said that interpreters in these settings normally worked from their A-language into their B-language because of the sensitive nature of negotiation. The assumption was that the original speech could be better understood and conveyed in all its nuances by a native speaker of the source language. Do deviations from the usual view of best practice invalidate the latter?
Editing
A second pair of eyes can invariably find ways to improve even the most brilliantly written prose, whether original or translated. Freelancers working for an intermediary or direct client with its own editors may feel they are covered, but even these buyers prefer translators who self-edit and proofread carefully. When asked to provide the end product for a direct client, do you routinely factor the cost of an editor into your quote? I rarely do unless the client requests it. Far be it from me to claim that this is best practice. I'm comfortable with it only because of the nature of my clientele and market niche. But even self-editors need a set procedure or checklist. Tomorrow I will write my self-editing checklist in a sticky note on my computer desktop. There! I'm the first person to be inspired by my article :-).
What is your self-editing routine? Surely it includes a spell-check. But when do you run it—as the first, last, or dare I say only step? Do you edit and proofread on screen or print out drafts? How many passes do you make through your work? Do you look for all types of errors at once or concentrate on one at a time, such as omissions, numbers, consistency?
Deadlines
It seems odd to call honoring deadlines "best practice," as if any other practice in this regard were also acceptable to a degree. Jutta wrote of a client who had recently expressed gratitude that she always met deadlines. "I was surprised that this could even be an issue," she said. "In my opinion, any deadline should be written in stone for the translator until the client gives the green light to hold the file." Of course it is best to get all terms of an agreement in writing, but oral contracts are also binding, including any deadline agreed upon. And do clarify the expected hour of delivery, not just the day. If a client asks for something by noon, you cannot assume that end of the business day is soon enough. You have no idea what a domino effect in the production process a late delivery might trigger. Best practice is to negotiate an ample lead time, but when a deadline is tight there is usually a reason. When the unexpected occurs, next-best practices may come into play, but they must always be linked with one best practice: communication with the client. Ignoring or unilaterally extending a deadline is not an option.
Virginia Pérez Santalla brings up another area of best practice:
In my opinion, keeping up to date in current events and current slang, in our field and beyond, is something we must do. Often, we find new expressions in the texts we translate that have just crept into the language from everyday occurrences and, if we don't pay attention to what's happening around us, they catch us by surprise. Whether it's 'bling' or something else, new terms have a way of showing up where we least expect them.
How do you keep up with your fields of specialization and with the language in general? This becomes more difficult, but all the more critical, if you live outside the country where your target language is spoken. How many unbillable hours a week do you spend keeping current that you would not have spent, were it not for your business? Do you take them into account when setting rates for your billable time? As Diel-Dominique reminds us: "Do not sell yourself cheaply. Stick to your guns regarding rates and payment expectations. If you don't, you are hurting yourself, your colleagues and our profession as a whole."
Dorothee Racette reminds us that running an effective business is part of 'best practice' for translators. "This includes keeping track of orders, maintaining an accounting system and assessing clients before entering into a business relationship," she says. "Good business habits can't be established overnight but are frequently overlooked, even by very accomplished translators."
The systems we use depend to some extent on the size and nature of our business. Do you maintain a client database? How do you track quotes and pending jobs? Do you put expiration dates on your offers? I have quoted on jobs and had the client accept it up to six months later, but some never reply. How long should quotes be kept on file? If you bill by the word or line, how do you define "word" or "line" and do you base it on the source or target language? What types of work do you bill by the hour? When do you quote a flat fee? Do you know what your normal hourly or daily output is for a given document type? How do you organize receipts? My biggest headache is keeping track of acquisitions and removals of office equipment, reference books, etc., for business property tax purposes. If anyone has a simple system for that or knows how to do it with Quicken, I'd like to hear from you.
You probably began reading this article expecting to find answers, but instead I kept piling on questions. That's because I discovered, in fulfilling this assignment, that I have much to learn about best practice even in the autumn of my career. But I can at least say that "best practice" is no longer just a buzzword to me. I'd now venture to say that it could even become what Webster defines as a "source of great wealth or profits"—a bonanza.2 But then you probably knew that all along.
1 "Translation: Getting it Right," a guide to buying translations, originally developed for the Institute of Translating and Interpreting (UK) and now published by the American Translators Association in slightly modified form for use in the US.
2 as defined in Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed.
This article first appeared in the CATI Quarterly, newsletter of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters; the present version was originally published in the Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
By Ann C. Sherwin,
Translator and Editor,
Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
translate@asherwin.com
www.asherwin.com
There's no doubt that "best practice" is a hot topic today. The exact phrase brings nearly 40 million hits with Google, including 16 sponsored links related to sales and marketing, education, research, manufacturing, information science, health care, and more. Amazon.com lists over 2300 books with "best practice" as a keyword. To me it was pretty much just a buzzword. It sounded good, and I assumed it was an apt description of the way I ran my business.
According to the Wikipedia, the term "best practice" was popularized in professional and business management books starting in the late 1980s and generally refers to the best possible way of doing something. While the term is relatively new, the concept is as old as the human race. Enterprising people have always looked for better ways to perform tasks and reach goals. If vast numbers of people in similar circumstances have the same goal and can agree on the best way to achieve it, the procedure could be labeled a "best practice."
With the advent of the Internet, it became easier than ever to share experience and learn what practices others considered best. Translators, who once worked in relative isolation, quickly embraced this medium, and now we can pick the brains of colleagues worldwide through online forums, newsgroups, mailing lists, blogs, and virtual communities. If we aren't careful, these can distract us from our daily work, but they are a handy and seemingly inexhaustible source of fact, opinion, and advice about best practice.
My husband worked for a company that was taken over by Dow Chemical just before he retired. Suddenly his work routines were subject to new dictates from above. Dow had a prescribed procedure for every piece of equipment and every step of every corporate activity, it seemed, which its experts had determined to be "best practice." I mention this only to illustrate the complexity of the concept and its application in industry and commerce.
By whose standards is "best practice" determined in the language service industry? Surely most of us would agree that what's best for the buyer is best for the provider in the long run. Organizations like the Better Business Bureau are founded on this principle, and discussions in various ATA forums and elsewhere testify that we, too, know on which side our bread is buttered, at least in theory.
When I invited input for this article from the ATA Business Practices e-group, ATA President Marian Greenfield put hers in a nutshell: "Don't accept any job you can't do in an excellent fashion and on time." Jutta Diel-Dominique put it even more succinctly: "Dare to say No." Viewed as best practice, rather than as the only permissible practice, this is good advice. My qualifier merely acknowledges what all of us have faced or can at least envision: those desperate situations where we are the only help available and less-than-excellent is quite acceptable.
The Dow model would have us define the concrete steps by which we determine whether a job we are considering meets Greenfield's criteria. What does "on time" mean? (Don't laugh! Any project manager will tell you that many translators don't know. Or they count on a grace period.) Just how good is "excellent," and in whose eyes? How do I calculate the time it will take to achieve excellence, with the entire source text, the client's specifications, and my calendar of other commitments before me? Surely it is "best practice" to have a plan, so that when the phone rings or the request for a bid lands in your inbox you're ready.
A widely accepted "best practice" in our industry is for translators and interpreters to work only into their native or dominant language. Unsavvy clients often assume that if you can translate from a language, you can also translate into it. Bolstered by unwarranted client confidence, some translators make the same assumption without ever putting it to the test. But most of us know that we are more efficient and produce higher quality when working into our A-language; and that if we must work into our B- or C-language, the best practice is to have a qualified native speaker edit our work.
In the ATA brochure "Translation: Getting it Right,"1 author Chris Durban makes this point to translation buyers as well. "OK, there are exceptions," she adds. "But not many." After advising buyers how to recognize the exceptions, Chris puts their doubts to rest with this observation: "Do translators living outside their home country lose touch with their native tongue? At the bottom end of the market, perhaps. But expert linguists make a point of keeping their language skills up to par wherever they are."
The Translation Journal blog (http://translationjournal.blogspot.com/) contains an interesting discussion of this surprisingly controversial issue under the heading "Native Language." There an anonymous translator who goes by "Yamishogun" says, "Sadly, many Japanese feel that a foreigner can't fully grasp their language." He cites an agency in Japan that refuses to hire native speakers of English because they make too many errors and another agency in which two-thirds of the translators are Japanese who translate into English. But he adds that most of their translations are edited by native speakers of English.
Russian linguist Carol Flath, speaking on her experience interpreting for the US Department of State at the arms-reduction talks in Geneva in the early 1990s, said that interpreters in these settings normally worked from their A-language into their B-language because of the sensitive nature of negotiation. The assumption was that the original speech could be better understood and conveyed in all its nuances by a native speaker of the source language. Do deviations from the usual view of best practice invalidate the latter?
Editing
A second pair of eyes can invariably find ways to improve even the most brilliantly written prose, whether original or translated. Freelancers working for an intermediary or direct client with its own editors may feel they are covered, but even these buyers prefer translators who self-edit and proofread carefully. When asked to provide the end product for a direct client, do you routinely factor the cost of an editor into your quote? I rarely do unless the client requests it. Far be it from me to claim that this is best practice. I'm comfortable with it only because of the nature of my clientele and market niche. But even self-editors need a set procedure or checklist. Tomorrow I will write my self-editing checklist in a sticky note on my computer desktop. There! I'm the first person to be inspired by my article :-).
What is your self-editing routine? Surely it includes a spell-check. But when do you run it—as the first, last, or dare I say only step? Do you edit and proofread on screen or print out drafts? How many passes do you make through your work? Do you look for all types of errors at once or concentrate on one at a time, such as omissions, numbers, consistency?
Deadlines
It seems odd to call honoring deadlines "best practice," as if any other practice in this regard were also acceptable to a degree. Jutta wrote of a client who had recently expressed gratitude that she always met deadlines. "I was surprised that this could even be an issue," she said. "In my opinion, any deadline should be written in stone for the translator until the client gives the green light to hold the file." Of course it is best to get all terms of an agreement in writing, but oral contracts are also binding, including any deadline agreed upon. And do clarify the expected hour of delivery, not just the day. If a client asks for something by noon, you cannot assume that end of the business day is soon enough. You have no idea what a domino effect in the production process a late delivery might trigger. Best practice is to negotiate an ample lead time, but when a deadline is tight there is usually a reason. When the unexpected occurs, next-best practices may come into play, but they must always be linked with one best practice: communication with the client. Ignoring or unilaterally extending a deadline is not an option.
Virginia Pérez Santalla brings up another area of best practice:
In my opinion, keeping up to date in current events and current slang, in our field and beyond, is something we must do. Often, we find new expressions in the texts we translate that have just crept into the language from everyday occurrences and, if we don't pay attention to what's happening around us, they catch us by surprise. Whether it's 'bling' or something else, new terms have a way of showing up where we least expect them.
How do you keep up with your fields of specialization and with the language in general? This becomes more difficult, but all the more critical, if you live outside the country where your target language is spoken. How many unbillable hours a week do you spend keeping current that you would not have spent, were it not for your business? Do you take them into account when setting rates for your billable time? As Diel-Dominique reminds us: "Do not sell yourself cheaply. Stick to your guns regarding rates and payment expectations. If you don't, you are hurting yourself, your colleagues and our profession as a whole."
Dorothee Racette reminds us that running an effective business is part of 'best practice' for translators. "This includes keeping track of orders, maintaining an accounting system and assessing clients before entering into a business relationship," she says. "Good business habits can't be established overnight but are frequently overlooked, even by very accomplished translators."
The systems we use depend to some extent on the size and nature of our business. Do you maintain a client database? How do you track quotes and pending jobs? Do you put expiration dates on your offers? I have quoted on jobs and had the client accept it up to six months later, but some never reply. How long should quotes be kept on file? If you bill by the word or line, how do you define "word" or "line" and do you base it on the source or target language? What types of work do you bill by the hour? When do you quote a flat fee? Do you know what your normal hourly or daily output is for a given document type? How do you organize receipts? My biggest headache is keeping track of acquisitions and removals of office equipment, reference books, etc., for business property tax purposes. If anyone has a simple system for that or knows how to do it with Quicken, I'd like to hear from you.
You probably began reading this article expecting to find answers, but instead I kept piling on questions. That's because I discovered, in fulfilling this assignment, that I have much to learn about best practice even in the autumn of my career. But I can at least say that "best practice" is no longer just a buzzword to me. I'd now venture to say that it could even become what Webster defines as a "source of great wealth or profits"—a bonanza.2 But then you probably knew that all along.
1 "Translation: Getting it Right," a guide to buying translations, originally developed for the Institute of Translating and Interpreting (UK) and now published by the American Translators Association in slightly modified form for use in the US.
2 as defined in Webster's New World College Dictionary, 4th Ed.
This article first appeared in the CATI Quarterly, newsletter of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters; the present version was originally published in the Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Monday, May 4, 2009
Ethical Implications of Translation Technologies
By Érika Nogueira de Andrade Stupiello,
São Paulo State University, Brazil
www.traducao-interpretacao.com.br
Introduction
Technology has been reshaping the concept and practice of translation in many aspects. Until some time ago, translators were expected to be able to work solely on definite source texts with the exclusive aid of dictionaries. Specialists were called upon where research references failed or left holes, but, even in such cases, translators had the chance to develop familiarity with their source texts, becoming, in many cases, experts themselves in some fields. Textual material to be translated was basically conceptualized as having a beginning and an end, thus making contextualization of meaning easier.
The process of globalization and the technological revolution that came along with it have dramatically changed the way information is conceived and produced. According to Craciunescu et al. (2004), advances in communication have brought about a "screen culture" that increasingly tends to replace the use of printed materials, since digital information can be easily accessed and relayed through computers and allows greater flexibility for processing.
In addition to the growing tendency to adopt the digital format for textual production, a large part of the material translators deal with in their daily routines consists of large translation projects, whether web-based or not. Such work is usually carried out with the use of computerized tools, such as automatic translation systems and translation memory databases. These applications require the development of a new range of technical competences, from learning how to manipulate different software programs to being able to manage the translated content, whether to achieve terminological consistence (machine translation databases) or to reuse solutions to translation problems in subsequent projects (translation memory databases). As Biau Gil and Pym (2006:6) explain, in today's world,
Our translations might thus be expected to move away from the ideal of equivalence between fixed texts, becoming more like one set of revisions among many. In the fields of electronic technologies, translators are less commonly employed to translate whole texts, as one did for the books with concordances. Translation, like general text production, becomes more like work with databases, glossaries, and a set of electronic tools, rather than on complete definitive source texts.
Translation memory tools are being employed also by translators working with definitive texts, that is, materials that might be translated just once, mainly as a way to increase their database. There are many translators who work basically with web-based materials, so most part of their work might involve updating and adaptation of previously translated texts to other contexts (a common practice in localization). Whatever the situation technology might be employed, there is no denial that translators have been able to reap great benefits by achieving greater work speed and efficiency.
Nonetheless, the same tools designed to assist translators are also affecting many aspects of how their work is regarded. This is mainly due to the fact that the design of these applications seems to be based on some of the traditionally-held concepts of translation as a transfer operation of pre-established contents stored in the source text and of the translator as the one in charge of retrieving the contents the machine has failed to recover.
While seeking to investigate the basis of machine translation and translation memory programs, this work aims to analyze both the contributions and transformations arising from the contemporary concept of the translation profession through the use of those tools. The ideas presented are divided into two sections. In section one I shall examine the concept of the original text and the translation in the domain of machine translation. My attention will then turn towards the extension of the translator's responsibility in producing the final text, by examining the translator's role in the translation post-editing process. Section two looks into the application of translation memories, with focus on the extension of the translator's responsibility in creating translation databases and re-using identical or similar segments from previous translations stored in memory programs. Ultimately, I shall conclude by attempting to draw attention to the scenario posed by these technologies which, in my view, seems to raise urgent ethical questions regarding the translator's image as re-creator or editor of the final translated material.
Machine translation: the illusion of access to the source
The pace of the contemporary world calls for translators to deliver their work in shorter and shorter turnaround cycles. This fact, coupled with the search for cost reduction, seems to be one of the strongest reasons supporting the use of machines in translation. Through the perspective of the current demand for readily-done translations, the applications of machine translation programs are not seen as a break with the tradition, but as an inevitable further step in the development of the practice.
However, the growing demand for application of machine translation programs as a means to speed up translation and reduce its costs is changing the way texts are read and conceived. As Cronin (2003:22) aptly observes, "if the pressure in an informational and global economy is to get information as rapidly as possible, then the 'gisting' function becomes paramount in translation, a tendency which can be encouraged by the 'weightlessness' of the words on the screen with their evanescent existence." The generally low threshold of translation acceptability shown by many users is often justified by the argument that getting access to the informational content of a text is all that matters and that some translation, however poor, is better than no translation at all.
The prevailing idea among users is that meaning may be transported from one language to another and that machine translation programs never fail to convey a general and stable content, even though such operation may result in a roughly intelligible text. The current urgency to communicate seems endorse the notion that the content of a textual material is solidified in the source and that machine translation may provide access to the origin. As Hutchins (1999:4) claims, machine translation represents an "ideal solution" for the translation of texts for assimilation of information, that is, direct and quick access to the source, since
human translators are not prepared (and resent being asked) to produce 'rough' translations of scientific and technical documents that may be read by only one person who wants to merely find out the general content and information and is unconcerned whether everything is intelligible or not, and who is certainly not deterred by stylistic awkwardness or grammatical errors (Hutchins, 1999, p. 4).
According to this view, if the machine is in charge of recovering the content, although "awkward" and imperfect, the translator's role would be restricted to editing and stylistically adapting the translated material. As often quoted by machine translation scholars, automation should not be seen as a replacement for human translators, but as way to magnify human productivity (Kay, 1997), to supplement human translation (Melby, 1997) or even create more work for human translators (Biau Gil & Pym, 2006).
The issues regarding machine translation seem always to revolve around the descriptive views of its possible uses and the constant reminder that its applications can never supersede the abilities of human translators. However, nothing seems to be said about the extent of the translator's function in the construction of the final text that was initially translated by machine. Since original meaning recovery by the machine is often taken for granted by users, the translator's work is limited to filling out some gaps left out by the machine and stylistically adapting the translated text to the target language.
Even if the message seems to be incoherent in the "draft version" automatically prepared, there is a strong belief that the source has been recovered and adjustments are all that are left for the human translator to do.
The source-target correspondence has been a debatable issue for many years and the realization that it is at the very basis of machine translation concept brings into question the role the translator is supposed to play. If we accept the notion that the source is thus recoverable by the machine, we might have to be willing to accept that, in the post-editing job usually entrusted to human translators, the task to be carried out will be less of interpreting and reconstructing meaning in the target language, and more of allowing the automatically recovered meaning to be comprehensible through revision and adaptation.
Through this view, there is always the risk that the translator's work may remain concealed behind that of the machine, at least in most clients' eyes. Through the postmodern perspective, as the work of Brazilian Translation Studies scholar Arrojo (1997) has emphatically pointed out, "no reading can ever aspire to repeat or protect someone else's text"; therefore,
The visible translator who is conscious of his or her role and who makes the motivations, allegiances, and compromises of his or her interpretation as explicit as possible is also the translator who must take responsibility for the text he or she produces, as it is impossible to hide behind the anonymity of the ideal 'invisibility' which has allegedly been given up. (Arrojo, 1997:18)
Embracing visibility, as well as the sense of responsibility for the construction of the translated text, may be one of the most powerful ways for translators to value their work. As translators avail themselves of machine translation capabilities, whether by choice or by their client's imposition, they should likewise consider whether the speed and terminological consistence provided by the machine are worth the price of having their work downgraded as being merely of a copy editor and not as the one responsible for bringing meaning forth.
Translation memory programs: transferring translators' past solutions to present contexts
Just as machine translation, translation memories have also been imposing changes in the way translators work, many of which with further ethical implications than they might appear to have at first sight.
The basis of translation memory programs lies in accumulating and storing translation solutions that are recycled as needed through the automated use of this terminology. In addition to the investment required in the acquisition of these programs and the training needed to use them properly, time is also another factor that directly influences their performance. Far from being immediate time-savers, translation memory programs are built up as they are used; therefore, the more frequently the translator employs them, the larger the database and, consequently the more useful it will be.
Although the literature on translation memories, which basically comprises descriptive and comparative analysis of the efficiency of the programs available in the market, highlights the remarkable gains in productivity translators have been able to achieve, especially in the realm of localization (e.g. Microsoft Windows-based software localization project), little consideration has been given to the controversial ethical issues arising once a terminological database is created (Zetzsche, 2000).
Once a translator has compiled terminological options into a database as a result of previous work commissioned directly by clients or through translation agencies, it is usually expected that such database be provided along with the final translation, a usual procedure as these programs become widespread. When that database is incorporated into a larger one held by clients or translation agencies, this data will often be used as input to be provided to the same translator or other professionals working in future projects. As Biau Gil and Pym (2006) explain, whenever a translator is provided with a memory database, clients expect compliance with the terminology and phraseology of the segment pairs included in that database. Moreover, always concerned with reducing costs, companies encourage translators to seek as many matches as possible and feel disappointed when the level of text re-use reported by translators is much lower than expected (Murphy, 2000).
Just as in translation machine applications, the way translation memory programs are being designed by the industry, in a effort to achieve cost and time reductions to produce a translation, calls into mind the concept of translation as "a word-replacement activity" as Biau Gil and Pym argue, since most of the time, translators "are invited to forget about the other elements configuring the text" and concentrate on segments that might be recovered from translation databases or added to the latter. (2006:12).
The translator's interpretation of the source material and personal choices made in the formulation of the translated text might interfere with content management and consistency, even though the translator's option may at times be more appropriate for some specific context than the pre-selected options offered by the database. By reusing stored translation segments, translators might be giving the first step to relinquish the outcome of their research work as well, since clients may also require that the memory generated through a translation be provided along with the translated material.
The second step towards giving up the authorship of translation takes place whenever translators accept being paid only for what clients deem as translation per se, that is, segments that have not been translated yet. This is the result of the idea that 100% matches will keep the same meaning they had in previous texts and, for that, revision and adaptation of these words or segments are not worth being remunerated for. This situation has been met with criticism by some translators who defend that consistency does not guarantee comprehension since a text may have perfect terminological coherence, but it altogether may not make any sense to the target audience.
On the other hand, clients may not readily accept the idea that 100% matches cannot be used in a new context or even that segments that may be used inevitably gain new meaning and may still require careful revision and adjustments into the new context. For that reason, it is uncommon to remunerate the translator for corrections or adjustments in the terminological database, since it would mean accepting that previous translation work was faulty, and so unduly charged.
From that commonly adopted practice in the work with translation memories, we find an approach rather similar to that applied to machine translation. Just as there seems to be a consensus that a text translated by machine will require not much more than review and post-editing by a human translator, in the work with translation memories, reviewing also frequently includes maintaining previously translated segments. Despite the fact that segments stored in the memory may have inadequacies, they may just as well lull the translator into a false sense of belief that meaning is fixed and will not change or lead to new associations in the new contexts they have become part of.
As I hope the discussion on commonly used approaches to machine translation and translation memories have led us to consider, for the translator's role to become more, rather than less, important in the informational age, it is paramount that these professionals do not be regarded as mere content transporters or text reviewers, but as communicators fully responsible for the meanings they confer to translated texts.
Final considerations: Co-existence but on what terms?
If there is no denial translation practice has to evolve and conform to new modes of communication and work (Cronin, 2003), translators should ponder how they wish to be regarded by those who hire their services.
By conferring priority to discussions about time and cost reductions through the application of technological tools in the practice of translation, translators might be oblivious to what such tools really represent to the public in general and what consequences such representations might have in the way the profession is conceived.
The general idea, as I have argued, is that, when applying technological tools such as machine translation programs, all that is left for the translator to do is give the text the final touches to make it coherent in the translated language. The impression is that the machine is the one that does the translation work and the translator is in charge of editing the final text. As for translation memories, the widespread reuse of already translated segments, in a way, also contributes to the idea that the translator is not solely responsible for the translated text.
The illusion that the machine is able to translate may affect the way translators will be seen in the future, an impression that should be given careful consideration, mainly when we remind ourselves of the multiplicity of texts, languages and cultures that are inevitably intertwined in translation.
References
ARROJO, Rosemary. Asymmetrical relations of power and the ethics of translation. TextconText, v. 11, p. 5-24, 1997.
BIAU GIL, José Ramón; PYM, Anthony. Technology and Translation: a pedagogical overview. In: PYM, A., PEREKRESTENKO, A., STARINK, B. (Org.) (2006). Translation technology and its teaching. Tarragona, Spain. Available at. Access on June 22, 2006.
CRACIUNESCU, Olivia; GERDING-SALAS, Constanza; STRINGER-O'KEEFFE, Susan. Machine translation and computer-assisted translation: a new way of translating? Translation Journal. v. 8, n. 3, jul. 2004. Available at:. Access on: May 15, 2006.
CRONIN, Michael. Translation and globalization. London: Routledge, 2003.
HUTCHINS, John. Translation Technology and the Translator. Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, London, May. 1997. Available at:. Access on May 10, 2006.
______. The development and use of machine translation systems and computer-based translation tools. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computer Language Information Processing. Xangai, June, 1999. Available at:. Access on May 10, 2006.
KAY, Martin. The proper place of men and machines in language translation. In: Machine Translation. n. 12, p. 3-23, 1997.
MELBY, Alan. Some notes on 'The Proper Place of Men and Machines in Language Translation'. In: Machine Translation. n. 12, p. 3-23, 1997.
MURPHY, Dawn. Keeping Translation Technology under Control. Machine Translation Review, n. 11, Dec. 2000, p. 7-10. Available at http://www.bcs-mt.org.uk/mtreview/11/mtr-11-7.htm. Access on Jan. 11, 2007.
ZETZSCHE, Jost. Translation memories: the discovery of assets. Multilingual Computing and Technology. v. 16 (4), n. 72, p. 43-45, 2005.
This article was originally published at Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
São Paulo State University, Brazil
www.traducao-interpretacao.com.br
Introduction
Technology has been reshaping the concept and practice of translation in many aspects. Until some time ago, translators were expected to be able to work solely on definite source texts with the exclusive aid of dictionaries. Specialists were called upon where research references failed or left holes, but, even in such cases, translators had the chance to develop familiarity with their source texts, becoming, in many cases, experts themselves in some fields. Textual material to be translated was basically conceptualized as having a beginning and an end, thus making contextualization of meaning easier.
The process of globalization and the technological revolution that came along with it have dramatically changed the way information is conceived and produced. According to Craciunescu et al. (2004), advances in communication have brought about a "screen culture" that increasingly tends to replace the use of printed materials, since digital information can be easily accessed and relayed through computers and allows greater flexibility for processing.
In addition to the growing tendency to adopt the digital format for textual production, a large part of the material translators deal with in their daily routines consists of large translation projects, whether web-based or not. Such work is usually carried out with the use of computerized tools, such as automatic translation systems and translation memory databases. These applications require the development of a new range of technical competences, from learning how to manipulate different software programs to being able to manage the translated content, whether to achieve terminological consistence (machine translation databases) or to reuse solutions to translation problems in subsequent projects (translation memory databases). As Biau Gil and Pym (2006:6) explain, in today's world,
Our translations might thus be expected to move away from the ideal of equivalence between fixed texts, becoming more like one set of revisions among many. In the fields of electronic technologies, translators are less commonly employed to translate whole texts, as one did for the books with concordances. Translation, like general text production, becomes more like work with databases, glossaries, and a set of electronic tools, rather than on complete definitive source texts.
Translation memory tools are being employed also by translators working with definitive texts, that is, materials that might be translated just once, mainly as a way to increase their database. There are many translators who work basically with web-based materials, so most part of their work might involve updating and adaptation of previously translated texts to other contexts (a common practice in localization). Whatever the situation technology might be employed, there is no denial that translators have been able to reap great benefits by achieving greater work speed and efficiency.
Nonetheless, the same tools designed to assist translators are also affecting many aspects of how their work is regarded. This is mainly due to the fact that the design of these applications seems to be based on some of the traditionally-held concepts of translation as a transfer operation of pre-established contents stored in the source text and of the translator as the one in charge of retrieving the contents the machine has failed to recover.
While seeking to investigate the basis of machine translation and translation memory programs, this work aims to analyze both the contributions and transformations arising from the contemporary concept of the translation profession through the use of those tools. The ideas presented are divided into two sections. In section one I shall examine the concept of the original text and the translation in the domain of machine translation. My attention will then turn towards the extension of the translator's responsibility in producing the final text, by examining the translator's role in the translation post-editing process. Section two looks into the application of translation memories, with focus on the extension of the translator's responsibility in creating translation databases and re-using identical or similar segments from previous translations stored in memory programs. Ultimately, I shall conclude by attempting to draw attention to the scenario posed by these technologies which, in my view, seems to raise urgent ethical questions regarding the translator's image as re-creator or editor of the final translated material.
Machine translation: the illusion of access to the source
The pace of the contemporary world calls for translators to deliver their work in shorter and shorter turnaround cycles. This fact, coupled with the search for cost reduction, seems to be one of the strongest reasons supporting the use of machines in translation. Through the perspective of the current demand for readily-done translations, the applications of machine translation programs are not seen as a break with the tradition, but as an inevitable further step in the development of the practice.
However, the growing demand for application of machine translation programs as a means to speed up translation and reduce its costs is changing the way texts are read and conceived. As Cronin (2003:22) aptly observes, "if the pressure in an informational and global economy is to get information as rapidly as possible, then the 'gisting' function becomes paramount in translation, a tendency which can be encouraged by the 'weightlessness' of the words on the screen with their evanescent existence." The generally low threshold of translation acceptability shown by many users is often justified by the argument that getting access to the informational content of a text is all that matters and that some translation, however poor, is better than no translation at all.
The prevailing idea among users is that meaning may be transported from one language to another and that machine translation programs never fail to convey a general and stable content, even though such operation may result in a roughly intelligible text. The current urgency to communicate seems endorse the notion that the content of a textual material is solidified in the source and that machine translation may provide access to the origin. As Hutchins (1999:4) claims, machine translation represents an "ideal solution" for the translation of texts for assimilation of information, that is, direct and quick access to the source, since
human translators are not prepared (and resent being asked) to produce 'rough' translations of scientific and technical documents that may be read by only one person who wants to merely find out the general content and information and is unconcerned whether everything is intelligible or not, and who is certainly not deterred by stylistic awkwardness or grammatical errors (Hutchins, 1999, p. 4).
According to this view, if the machine is in charge of recovering the content, although "awkward" and imperfect, the translator's role would be restricted to editing and stylistically adapting the translated material. As often quoted by machine translation scholars, automation should not be seen as a replacement for human translators, but as way to magnify human productivity (Kay, 1997), to supplement human translation (Melby, 1997) or even create more work for human translators (Biau Gil & Pym, 2006).
The issues regarding machine translation seem always to revolve around the descriptive views of its possible uses and the constant reminder that its applications can never supersede the abilities of human translators. However, nothing seems to be said about the extent of the translator's function in the construction of the final text that was initially translated by machine. Since original meaning recovery by the machine is often taken for granted by users, the translator's work is limited to filling out some gaps left out by the machine and stylistically adapting the translated text to the target language.
Even if the message seems to be incoherent in the "draft version" automatically prepared, there is a strong belief that the source has been recovered and adjustments are all that are left for the human translator to do.
The source-target correspondence has been a debatable issue for many years and the realization that it is at the very basis of machine translation concept brings into question the role the translator is supposed to play. If we accept the notion that the source is thus recoverable by the machine, we might have to be willing to accept that, in the post-editing job usually entrusted to human translators, the task to be carried out will be less of interpreting and reconstructing meaning in the target language, and more of allowing the automatically recovered meaning to be comprehensible through revision and adaptation.
Through this view, there is always the risk that the translator's work may remain concealed behind that of the machine, at least in most clients' eyes. Through the postmodern perspective, as the work of Brazilian Translation Studies scholar Arrojo (1997) has emphatically pointed out, "no reading can ever aspire to repeat or protect someone else's text"; therefore,
The visible translator who is conscious of his or her role and who makes the motivations, allegiances, and compromises of his or her interpretation as explicit as possible is also the translator who must take responsibility for the text he or she produces, as it is impossible to hide behind the anonymity of the ideal 'invisibility' which has allegedly been given up. (Arrojo, 1997:18)
Embracing visibility, as well as the sense of responsibility for the construction of the translated text, may be one of the most powerful ways for translators to value their work. As translators avail themselves of machine translation capabilities, whether by choice or by their client's imposition, they should likewise consider whether the speed and terminological consistence provided by the machine are worth the price of having their work downgraded as being merely of a copy editor and not as the one responsible for bringing meaning forth.
Translation memory programs: transferring translators' past solutions to present contexts
Just as machine translation, translation memories have also been imposing changes in the way translators work, many of which with further ethical implications than they might appear to have at first sight.
The basis of translation memory programs lies in accumulating and storing translation solutions that are recycled as needed through the automated use of this terminology. In addition to the investment required in the acquisition of these programs and the training needed to use them properly, time is also another factor that directly influences their performance. Far from being immediate time-savers, translation memory programs are built up as they are used; therefore, the more frequently the translator employs them, the larger the database and, consequently the more useful it will be.
Although the literature on translation memories, which basically comprises descriptive and comparative analysis of the efficiency of the programs available in the market, highlights the remarkable gains in productivity translators have been able to achieve, especially in the realm of localization (e.g. Microsoft Windows-based software localization project), little consideration has been given to the controversial ethical issues arising once a terminological database is created (Zetzsche, 2000).
Once a translator has compiled terminological options into a database as a result of previous work commissioned directly by clients or through translation agencies, it is usually expected that such database be provided along with the final translation, a usual procedure as these programs become widespread. When that database is incorporated into a larger one held by clients or translation agencies, this data will often be used as input to be provided to the same translator or other professionals working in future projects. As Biau Gil and Pym (2006) explain, whenever a translator is provided with a memory database, clients expect compliance with the terminology and phraseology of the segment pairs included in that database. Moreover, always concerned with reducing costs, companies encourage translators to seek as many matches as possible and feel disappointed when the level of text re-use reported by translators is much lower than expected (Murphy, 2000).
Just as in translation machine applications, the way translation memory programs are being designed by the industry, in a effort to achieve cost and time reductions to produce a translation, calls into mind the concept of translation as "a word-replacement activity" as Biau Gil and Pym argue, since most of the time, translators "are invited to forget about the other elements configuring the text" and concentrate on segments that might be recovered from translation databases or added to the latter. (2006:12).
The translator's interpretation of the source material and personal choices made in the formulation of the translated text might interfere with content management and consistency, even though the translator's option may at times be more appropriate for some specific context than the pre-selected options offered by the database. By reusing stored translation segments, translators might be giving the first step to relinquish the outcome of their research work as well, since clients may also require that the memory generated through a translation be provided along with the translated material.
The second step towards giving up the authorship of translation takes place whenever translators accept being paid only for what clients deem as translation per se, that is, segments that have not been translated yet. This is the result of the idea that 100% matches will keep the same meaning they had in previous texts and, for that, revision and adaptation of these words or segments are not worth being remunerated for. This situation has been met with criticism by some translators who defend that consistency does not guarantee comprehension since a text may have perfect terminological coherence, but it altogether may not make any sense to the target audience.
On the other hand, clients may not readily accept the idea that 100% matches cannot be used in a new context or even that segments that may be used inevitably gain new meaning and may still require careful revision and adjustments into the new context. For that reason, it is uncommon to remunerate the translator for corrections or adjustments in the terminological database, since it would mean accepting that previous translation work was faulty, and so unduly charged.
From that commonly adopted practice in the work with translation memories, we find an approach rather similar to that applied to machine translation. Just as there seems to be a consensus that a text translated by machine will require not much more than review and post-editing by a human translator, in the work with translation memories, reviewing also frequently includes maintaining previously translated segments. Despite the fact that segments stored in the memory may have inadequacies, they may just as well lull the translator into a false sense of belief that meaning is fixed and will not change or lead to new associations in the new contexts they have become part of.
As I hope the discussion on commonly used approaches to machine translation and translation memories have led us to consider, for the translator's role to become more, rather than less, important in the informational age, it is paramount that these professionals do not be regarded as mere content transporters or text reviewers, but as communicators fully responsible for the meanings they confer to translated texts.
Final considerations: Co-existence but on what terms?
If there is no denial translation practice has to evolve and conform to new modes of communication and work (Cronin, 2003), translators should ponder how they wish to be regarded by those who hire their services.
By conferring priority to discussions about time and cost reductions through the application of technological tools in the practice of translation, translators might be oblivious to what such tools really represent to the public in general and what consequences such representations might have in the way the profession is conceived.
The general idea, as I have argued, is that, when applying technological tools such as machine translation programs, all that is left for the translator to do is give the text the final touches to make it coherent in the translated language. The impression is that the machine is the one that does the translation work and the translator is in charge of editing the final text. As for translation memories, the widespread reuse of already translated segments, in a way, also contributes to the idea that the translator is not solely responsible for the translated text.
The illusion that the machine is able to translate may affect the way translators will be seen in the future, an impression that should be given careful consideration, mainly when we remind ourselves of the multiplicity of texts, languages and cultures that are inevitably intertwined in translation.
References
ARROJO, Rosemary. Asymmetrical relations of power and the ethics of translation. TextconText, v. 11, p. 5-24, 1997.
BIAU GIL, José Ramón; PYM, Anthony. Technology and Translation: a pedagogical overview. In: PYM, A., PEREKRESTENKO, A., STARINK, B. (Org.) (2006). Translation technology and its teaching. Tarragona, Spain. Available at
CRACIUNESCU, Olivia; GERDING-SALAS, Constanza; STRINGER-O'KEEFFE, Susan. Machine translation and computer-assisted translation: a new way of translating? Translation Journal. v. 8, n. 3, jul. 2004. Available at:
CRONIN, Michael. Translation and globalization. London: Routledge, 2003.
HUTCHINS, John. Translation Technology and the Translator. Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, London, May. 1997. Available at:
______. The development and use of machine translation systems and computer-based translation tools. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computer Language Information Processing. Xangai, June, 1999. Available at:
KAY, Martin. The proper place of men and machines in language translation. In: Machine Translation. n. 12, p. 3-23, 1997.
MELBY, Alan. Some notes on 'The Proper Place of Men and Machines in Language Translation'. In: Machine Translation. n. 12, p. 3-23, 1997.
MURPHY, Dawn. Keeping Translation Technology under Control. Machine Translation Review, n. 11, Dec. 2000, p. 7-10. Available at http://www.bcs-mt.org.uk/mtreview/11/mtr-11-7.htm. Access on Jan. 11, 2007.
ZETZSCHE, Jost. Translation memories: the discovery of assets. Multilingual Computing and Technology. v. 16 (4), n. 72, p. 43-45, 2005.
This article was originally published at Translation Journal (http://accurapid.com/journal).
Corporate Blog of Elite - Professional Translation Services serving ASEAN & East Asia
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
