The Translation Job

The first thing you have to do when you get a job, be it by fax, overnight mail, or email, is confirm that it was you expected it to be. I’ve actually received jobs which were supposed to be in Japanese but in fact were in Russian, and I’ve been sent the wrong material more times than I can remember at this point. Make sure you’ve got what they said you should have.

Once you are certain of the material, you should make sure that you can translate it. This means not only that you have the requisite knowledge and resources to deal with the material, but also that you can complete it within the allotted time. There is nothing agencies hate more than not getting work when they are supposed to get it (except perhaps losing their clients). Never deliver a translation late! I know I have said this before, but it is the number one complaint of clients, so I say it yet again: Never ever, ever submit anything late. If after looking at the assignment, you think you won’t be able to do it within the time frame, call the agency and tell them. They may revise the schedule, or ask you to do only part of the job. But part of a job done properly and on time is infinitely better than all of it done late or incorrectly.

Often the agency won’t be able to tell you how long the material is. Remember that just because they send you a job in Chinese doesn’t mean that anyone there actually reads the language. If they can’t give you an estimate, tell them that you need to see all of the material before you will agree to a time frame. If they don't yet have all of the material, and this can happen when they are awaiting arrival of the rest of a document from their client, then inform them firmly but politely that any estimate you give now will be subject to revision, possibly considerable revision. Agencies realize this, or will accept it once you tell them, and so will be happy to await an accurate estimate from you. Also, do not accept a page count: we all know that desktop publishing obviates the utility of a page count.

Once you have confirmed that you can do the job on time, all you have to do is do the job and then deliver it. We’ll get to delivery in a moment, but before that, let’s look at some of the more common disasters and crises which can and do occur while translating.

For starters, since we all work on computers, a hard disk crash, CPU failure, printer failure, disk drive failure, virus attack, and even having the computer stolen are facts of life. I know many translators, myself included, who have struggled through disasters such as these. So first and foremost, back up everything you do every day. If worse comes to worse, send them the disk and let them deal with it. The best reason to back up is that your work is your income; you wouldn’t keep money in an unsafe place, practice the same level of paranoia with your data.

Even if your computer is stolen or simply picks the day before the assignment is due to croak, you can always rent one on the spot either by going to a place like Kinko’s and using theirs or getting one from a local computer store. You can bum one off a friend—I’ve lent out my laptop many times to desperate friends—or you can go to a school where they know you and use theirs. And you can buy computers through the Web and get them delivered the next day, so there’s little excuse for being without a machine for more than about 48 hours.

The other major problems that afflict translators involve the original text. Such difficulties include terminology, the printed quality of the original, idioms and dialect, neologisms, and the quality of the writing in the original.

In theory, terminological problems are to be resolved by looking in a dictionary. But if you work in a very technical field, or if you work with new material, you’ll find that you’re encountering words and phrases which have not yet been created in your target language. Discussing how to handle this with your client is your best approach. They may give you carte blanche to create your own words and then let their editors repair any linguistic damage you’ve wrought. Or they may give you a glossary to work from. Regardless of the resolution, dealing with terminology is your responsibility as a translator, and don’t shirk it. Proper terminology is very important, often more so to the end-client than good style or punctuation is.

The printed quality of the original is mostly an issue when the source text is in a language such as Chinese or Japanese, but this is always haunting translators because of that boon and bane of their existence: the fax machine. When you receive a hand-written text which was faxed from a photocopy of the fax which the end-client sent the agency, you may start to understand how hieroglyphics experts feel when they work.

Translators are well within their rights to demand (nicely) a clean, crisp, clear, coherent copy of the source text. But even so, clean copy does not guarantee that the handwriting is legible. Then what? Well, do what I do: struggle along as best you can, show it to friends and see if they can help, and try to talk to the person who wrote it. If all of this fails, the agency is usually quite understanding about any illegible portions of the text. Just be sure to tell them about it and ask them how they want you to annotate any illegible areas in your translation.

Idioms and dialect are one of the joys of language but one of the challenges of translation. I find that relying on native speakers is the only way to get at the heart of an idiom or dialect. I give non-native English speakers explanations about American idioms and dialect (yes, we have dialects, or why would we have D.A.R.E., the Dictionary of American Regional English?), and they in turn help me with idioms and phrases in my B languages, their native languages. Neologisms are also best handled in this manner.

I strongly suggest you keep some sort of glossary of terminology, official translations for proper names of business and government entities, and good translations of idioms, dialect, and neologisms. Whether you do this in a simple word-processing file, a more sophisticated database environment, or a dedicated terminology-management package is up to you, but do something with all that valuable information you collect. If your information is truly precise and organized, consider sharing it with other translators.

Last, the quality of writing in the original. There is an unwritten truism in translation which everyone had best remember now: the translation will never be much better than the original (or in tech-talk: GIGO - garbage in, garbage out). If the original is an incoherent, illogical piece of drivel, so shall the translation be. If the source text is a brilliant piece of scholarship with great literary merit, then the translation should be the same. The point is translators cannot go much above the quality of the original, and people who employ translators should not necessarily blame a bad translation on the translator.

Now, what to do when you are translating and the original is so bad that even the person who wrote it is not sure what it means? Well, my solution is generally to create an equally vague or poor statement in the translation. This may seem unfair or irresponsible, but consider what translators are paid for and what their job is. Translators render information from one language to another. They do not rewrite the original, they do not improve its style or content, they do not insert their own clever ideas or original phrases. They translate!

Of course, if a text is truly beyond comprehension, the only responsible course of action is to contact the client and leave the decision regarding whether or not to translate the material to them. You may lose a job this way, but you will likely win the confidence of a client. The latter is ultimately worth far more than the former, needless to say.

Finally, in terms of translating a text, most agencies do not expect their translators to be literary and linguistic geniuses. Such geniuses would be writing brilliant literary novels or pontificating on the brilliant literary work of other novelists. Agencies do expect (and deserve!) quality work free of errors and omissions and delivered on time. Unfortunately, from what I’ve heard, some translators are either unwilling or unable to provide such work by the agreed deadline. If you distinguish yourself as a translator who can provide quality work on time, you will get more work.

So I state here in the most emphatic language possible: If you are going to translate something, do it right. Make sure that there are no errors, omissions, spelling or punctuation mistakes, and that you deliver your work on time in the form that the agency requested. If you do this, you will get more work. If you don’t, retire now and save yourself and others a lot of grief. That said, the most important thing to remember about contacting agencies for the first time is that everything counts. You have to convince them that you are a competent, responsible, capable professional who will honor agreements and produce quality work.