Weird translation job

I've been asked to do some weird translation jobs at various points in my career but this one may take the cake.
Yesterday, an international company sent me an image that they wanted translated and when I opened it, I found that it was none other than... The Ten Commandments.
The client obviously does not read Hebrew so I told them what it was and that they could find any number of English translations for free on the Web. However, they said that they wanted me to go ahead. So I did. Took me five minutes!

Rush Job for a Discerning Client

One afternoon last week, on the way to picking my son up from preschool, my cell phone rang. It was a client offering me an important rush job - more than 7,000 words due in 56 hours.
After taking a deep breath and clarifying that they would pay me a rush-job surcharge, I accepted the assignment.
I took my kids home and played with them for an hour or so, before someone came to look after them. Then I sat down to begin work...
I received an email with detailed instructions from the client, including the following:

It is important to us (in this case and always) that you not only translate but also edit the translation. In other words, after translating a sentence, we would like you to review the translated text, independent of the Hebrew original, and turn it into an articulate sentence in English. The goal is that it does not appear to be translated but rather is a fluent and well-written sentence in English. That will often require changing the sentence structure (or even turning it into 2 sentences if necessary), as Hebrew and English sentence structure differ. Where necessary, I encourage you to change sentence structure or the way something is expressed, in order to obtain fluency and good English writing. Our hope is that the report will read like a good report in English, as though it had been written in English.

Either this client has been reading my monologues about translation quality on this blog or they have been burned in the past. (I suspect the latter.)
It's nice to have a discerning client who really appreciates quality. Heck, most my clients hardly speak a word of English and are in no position to appreciate a handsome turn of phrase that I came to me in the middle of the night. But it also adds pressure...
Two and a half days later I submitted the translation.
The next day, I received a nice thank you from the client, plus a short list of points where my grammar was imprecise.
Today they booked me for another large job. I guess that means they're satisfied!

Welcome to Translation Fundamentals

Check out my first slidecast!

It's called "Determining and Upgrading your Language Pair," and it may turn out to be the beginning of a series. To view, click below. (It would be best to view it in full screen.)

Your feedback is most welcome.

Translation Fundamentals: Your Language Pair

View more OpenOffice presentations from translationteacher.

Maimonides on Translation

The 12th Century Jewish Scholar, Physician and Leader Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, to his friends) had this to say about a translator's mission:

The translator should try to comprehend the subject, explaining the theme according to his understanding in the other language. At times this involves changing the order of the words, using many to translate one, or one to translate many. The translator will need to add or delete so that the concept becomes clearly expressed.

Why is it, then, that 900 years later, so many translators still haven't figured this out?
Don't become a statistic - take Maimonides' wise advice today!

With thanks to Rafaella Levine for this quote. Rafaella, a former student and a wonderful Hebrew-English translator, hosted a translation group meeting for my former students in her home this week.

Genuine Translation Humor

Please click here to see the funniest translation humor I've seen yet. Please don't neglect to click on the links.
Whoever wrote this is so committed being funny, that they bought a domain name and hosting space to achieve their objective.
Whoever you are... I salute you for your efforts!

Meetings of Minds Only

Recently I encountered a most unusual situation.

I was sitting in the park watching my son on the swing and enjoying a late afternoon breeze, when my cellphone rang. It was a woman from a non-profit organization in need of a translation of an important report to an international body. She received my number from another client and I had come recommended.

All was going smoothly until she asked if I could come into their offices for a meeting.

That question really threw me off guard...

"A meeting..." I stuttered. "I don't know..."

I can honestly say that the last time I had a meeting with a translation client was August 2004. And that was only a formality to get me some sort of security clearance at a government office.

My usually smooth professional manner deserted me as, while watching my son swinging higher and higher, I grasped at mental straws in the attempt to formulate a response to this strange question.

Eventually, I stuttered out a yes. Yes, I could come in for a meeting.

"What does that mean - would you stay for an eight-hour meeting? Would you come for more than one meeting?"

"No. Just one meeting, maximum two hours," I said, mentally calculating my dwindling profit margin as I took into account the commute. "You know what, before we have a meeting, why don't you send me a short translation to do? I think you'll find that we may not even need a meeting."

This put her off a bit and the conversation soon ended. I did not get the job.

Afterward, when I had time to reflect, I came to the conclusion that I was, in fact, not willing to go in for a meeting, unless they were going to pay me by the hour for my time spent with them.

Face-to-face meetings are not a normal part of a translator's role. I would probably go to a meeting to prepare for a large job that was already guaranteed to me, but only if I had determined that it was really essential.

Since translators are paid by the word, and not by the hour, time spent commuting and meeting is basically volunteer work. And I'm still not convinced that meetings are useful to either the translator or the client.

If the client needs reassurance of the translator's competence, let them ask for a sample and have it evaluated. If the translator needs more information in order to complete the job properly, let them go through the research process and ask the client specific questions by phone or email. A meeting will solve none of these problems.

But enough of my diatribe on the futility of meetings. I want to qualify all this by saying that we have to understand our client's perspective before we get all worked up at their unreasonable requests.

Besides knowing nothing about translation industry protocol and not understanding that we just don't do meetings, this client came from the non-profit world where nothing is planned, decided, or implemented without half a dozen meetings every step of the way. She probably could not conceive of anything so rash as my getting the job done without a meeting or two (perhaps even an eight-hour one???)

Having done a lot of work for non-profit organizations, I know this mind-set well. Business clients might also imagine at first that a meeting is in order, but when you explain that you can save them time and money and do the job just as well without one, they are quick to forgo. Not every non-profit is so focused on efficiency.

But don't lecture them about it. Simply tell them that it is not standard in the industry, as it does not help in the translation process. If they still want to see your face and you really want that job, you can offer to meet with them as a courtesy for a limited time-slot. (Just make sure that they actually plan to give you the job before you set out.) If it is not worth your while, then you should politely ask them to pay for your time and travel expenses.

Otherwise, you may unwittingly find yourself running a non-profit organization.

Translation is Writing Without the Writer's Block

The title of this posting is a line that I often tell people who are interested in studying translation. It always gets a warm response because people who are drawn to translation usually love writing.

Translation and writing have much in common, but in translation you don't have to expend all that creative energy developing your idea and helping it find its shape in print. Instead you leave that part to someone else, and you just do the writing.

If you are going to be a translator you have to love writing and you have to be able to do it well.

Translation is writing.

Translation is writing without the writer's block (TM Naomi Elbinger 2009!)

How a Rush Job Becomes a Breeze

What is a rush job in translation?
This is an important question, since it is standard in the industry to add a surcharge to your regular rate for a "rush job." It is accepted that the average pro translator translates about 2,000 words a day. We've all done more than this for important jobs but I personally don't think it's realistic to do much more on a daily basis. Quality may begin to suffer and, more importantly, we should not forget that translators are human beings who are subject to eye strain, RSI, backaches and burn-out.
Translation is a job that demands intense concentration on a single task for extended periods. The human brain is simply not capable of putting in 10-hour workdays in the long run.
Most pro translators are very comfortable with a daily output of 2,000 fully polished words and many would call this a breeze. (This is true even if they are not using CATs.)
Rookie translators, on the other hand, almost faint for when they hear this. They may be averaging just 200 words per hour, and they find each word an intellectual strain, so they cannot translate for many hours in a row.
How do you do it? they ask, in a state of fear and awe.
I have tried to explain to students many times how this works, but I never managed to describe it so well as the following passage which I read recently in Becoming a Translator by Douglas Robinson.

At first glance the desires to translate faster and translate reliably might seem to be at odds with one another. One commonsensical assumption says that the faster you do something, the more likely you are to make mistakes; the more slowly you work, the more likely that work is to be reliable. The reliable translator shouldn't make (major) mistakes, so s/he shouldn't try to translate fast.

But increased speed, at least up to a point, really only damages reliability when you are doing something new or unfamiliar, something that requires concentration, which always takes time. "Old" and "familiar" actions, especially habitual actions, can be performed both quickly and reliably because habit takes over. You're late in the morning, so you brush your teeth, tie your shoes, throw on your coat, grab your keys and wallet or purse and run for the door, start the car and get on the road, all in about two minutes - and you don't forget anything, you don't mistie your shoes, grab a fork and spoon instead of your keys, because you've done all these things so many times before that your body knows what to do, and does it.

And there are important parallels between this "bodily memory" and translation. Experienced translators are fast because they have translated so much that it often seems as if their "brain" isn't doing the translating - their fingers are. They recognize a familiar source-language structure and barely pause before their fingers are racing across the keyboard, rendering it into a well-worn target-language structural equivalent, fitted with lexical items that seem to come to them automatically without any conscious thought or logical analysis.

Thank you, Prof. Robinson, I really enjoyed this description of how I, and many translators who been doing this for years, experience the process.
If you are not at this point yet and find that every job feels like a "rush job," take heart. Just keep translating and one day you too will find that 2,000 words is a breeze.

Eating the Void

Today I went to visit a neighbor across the street who has a big shesek tree in her front yard, which is currently laden with ripe fruit. While biting into a juicy, sweet shesek, I had a true translator moment. I realized that I was eating a cultural void!

I know that shesek can be accurately translated into English as loquat. But lexical precision does not fill the cultural void, because in the part of the world I live in, shesek are ubiquitous and unremarkable, while in most parts of the Western world, they are exotic, if not unknown. The word "shesek" means something very specific to those who use it, while the word "loquat" is meaningless to most readers of US English.

Let's say I was translating a Hebrew story that casually mentions a man who ate a shesek. If I translate it to say that the man ate a loquat, readers may begin imagining him eating kumquats or loganberries or pawpaws, or whatever irrelevant tropical fruit association comes to mind. In addition, the mention of this mysterious fruit may add a hint of exoticism to the story which the author did not intend. The author did not mean the episode of the loquat to be at all evocative or remarkable.

In such a case, I, as the translator, may decide to avoid the void.

I may well take the license to write that the man ate an apple or pear.

I call that eating the void...

And this particular void tastes really good.

Avoid the Void!

One of the common hurdles translators encounter in the textual steeplechase we call "work" is voids.

What is a void? In a nutshell, voids are terms that cannot be translated because no cultural or lexical reference to them exists in the target language.

To give a funny example, when speaking to a fellow Australian recently, he told me that many years ago he had attended a certain person's "barmy." Since I am familiar with that dialect, I knew he was referring to a bar mitzvah celebration. But let's say a client hired me to translate this interview into general US English. This term, as a both a lexical and cultural void, would present a translation problem, as detailed below:

1. I could translate it as "bar mitzvah," but thereby lose his slangy, colloquial tone, since there is no equivalent slang term for barmy in US English - this is the lexical void.
   
2. I could leave in "barmy," and then put the following in a footnote or parenthesis: "Australian Jewish slang for bar mitzvah" - yet these options are clunky, distracting and inappropriate for many contexts, such as magazine articles or web content.
   
3. And what if this text is intended for a very general audience, including readers in Timbuktu who don't understand the concept of a bar mitzvah? Due to this cultural void, I might have to forgo the tone altogether and just focus on making the concept understood to some limited degree ("Jewish coming of age ritual marked at age 13" - how's that for a literary clunker? On the brighter side, at least I get paid by the world.)

As you can see, there is no truly satisfactory solution to the above translation problem. This is often the case with voids.

Often the best way to deal with translation voids is to avoid the problem all together. For example, a former student wrote to me about such a problem recently. She was translating a poster for an organization that helps the elderly to live independently. The poster was advertising their service of selling adult diapers and other hygiene products at their "mercaz tetzuga." This term would translate literally as "display center" or maybe, at a stretch, as "showroom."

I hope you are immediately sensing the lexical void that is lurking behind this translation problem. In Hebrew, such a service may be known euphemistically as "mercaz tetzuga" but in English, "adult diaper display center" or "showroom" sounds like the beginning of a lowbrow comedy skit.

After some discussion, we agreed that there was no getting around this void. Instead, we avoided the problem with a creative new title: "Special Sale for Seniors."

That's a completely non-literal translation but we felt it works.

What do you think?

Great Tranzlation Bloopers... and How to Avoid Them

(Hi, I'm back after the Pesach/Passover break - it's nice to be with you again - Naomi)

The favorite, and perhaps official sport, of translators is spotting the hilarious translations bloopers that often appear when texts are produced by translators who either don't know one of the languages in the pair or who think that translation involves rendering the text literally word-by-word.

If this sport had rules, I think that Chinese product descriptions and all machine translations would be out of bounds - they are just too easy to spot. Perhaps, the challenge should be rather to find one of these that was actually any good.

OK, we all need a laugh, so here are just a few choice bloopers:

In a Paris hotel elevator: Please leave your values at the front desk.
In the reception of a Romanian hotel: The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
In an African newspaper: A new swimming pool is rapidly taking shape since the contractors have thrown in the bulk of their workers.
In a Belgrade hotel elevator: To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.
In a hotel in Athens: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 daily.

Or my favorite in the hotel collection:
In an Acapulco hotel: The manager has personally passed all the water served here.

OK, so we've laughed. That should put us in a good frame of mind for addressing a serious question - what can we self-respecting professionals do to avoid ending up on a blooper list? Based on the fact that we are all native speakers of our target languages, I'm assuming that none of us come could up with anything so very ridiculous as the examples above. But we are only human and we can not totally avoid errors, and these can sometimes be costly, embarrassing and detrimental to our careers.

Firstly, I do want to emphasize that even the world's greatest translators make mistakes - be they in grammar, comprehension, cultural reference or understanding of the concepts behind the material. Clients who expect a flawless finished product are out of line.

My philosophy is that we should aim for an unusually low rate of errors, and this over time will contribute to a good reputation, even if one or two clients along the way will be unsatisfied.

Here are a few practices that will reduce the incidence of errors:

• Set the text aside for overnight before the final proofread (if the deadline permits)
  
• Run a spell-check immediately before sending (many translators don't do this because they rely on those green and red lines in MS Word - but I promise you, you'll find things you didn't see with spell-check)
• If the text is going to be printed or put on a website, tell the client that you want to see the laid-out version before it is printed or goes live. Errors you did not see before will become apparent in a new format, besides the fact that new errors frequently creep in in the formatting process.
  
• Make sure that the client understands the importance of proofreading by another "pair of eyes".
  

However, I have learned that even if we allow ourselves a small margin of error, we should extremely careful that the mistakes do not turn up in prominent places, such as book jackets, magazine covers, title pages, headlines, captions, headings, and, last but not least, the client's name or vital stats. Mistakes buried in the text will frequently not be noticed, but in any of the above locations... heads may roll.

These should all be checked and rechecked before sending the document.

Survey Results Analyzed

I've noticed that every obscure experience or piece of information you've ever encountered in your life is likely to become relevant at some point in your translation career.

Well, running the first online translators' survey was like that for me. It took me back to childhood holidays spent in the town of Dubbo, in the Australian Outback. There, my parents, Dr. Leon and Judith Simons, respectively a professor of medicine and a statistician, were laying the groundwork for their landmark long-term health research project, the Dubbo Study. After rapidly exhausting Dubbo's few entertainments, we children soon retreated to the project's air-conditioned headquarters on the town's main street where we found unexpected satisfaction in sorting hundreds of survey forms and helping our parents collate the data. Though I had no idea who the respondents were, I found the disembodied snippets of personal information fascinating.

My own attempts to design this survey and analyze the results are certainly that of an amateur and I don't present them as conclusive, but they certainly are interesting and I think that each person can draw conclusions that are relevant for themselves.

To view the final results, click here.

First, I want to state that I think that respondents were generally accurate in their answers with the exception of the question about monthly income. People are naturally hesitant to reveal such information. In fact, out of 138 respondents, 33 skipped the question altogether.

One of the most important questions for me was the one which asked if work volume/earnings had changed in the past nine months. While it is clear that the world is experiencing an economic crisis, no one is sure how deep the impact has been in Israel or whether it is affecting the local translation industry. The survey results seem to indicate that while the majority of translators reported that their income had stayed the same or increased, 42% have been negatively affected by the downturn to some degree. I assume that this means that the industry as a whole has only slightly declined, probably primarily in certain specializations and therefore not effecting all translators. On the other hand, a slight drop during a major recession is probably an indication of general robustness in the industry. Translation is generally a great field to be in!

More amateur analysis to come from me soon. In the meantime, everyone is encouraged to view the results and draw their own conclusions. You can filter the results, as well as view individual response sheets, so that you can focus your interest on particular language pairs, specializations, etc. Feel free to post comments on this blog!

Congratulations to all our Graduates!

The pilot session of the WritePoint Translation Course concluded this week and by all accounts the program was a fantastic success. The group was smart, motivated and talented and was a pleasure to teach. Now they are moving out of the "hothouse" and into the world of professional translation. About half of the class has already begun paid translation work and all are busy using all the tools and resources they gained in the course to build their new careers.

Right now, I'm busy editing and evaluating their final projects. In order to graduate from the course, each student must complete two real translation projects for real clients. Students have the option of choosing projects recruited by my company or finding clients for themselves (we discuss ways of finding clients extensively during the course).

Projects that the recent graduates completed included websites, academic papers, press releases, news and feature articles, book excerpts and PowerPoint presentations. The majority have produced translations of a very high standard, and their clients are very satisfied.

One student, who chose a project for a client she found herself, received the following response in an email:

"We received all the translations. You did a truly amazing job - perfect in all aspects. We appreciate your effort, professionalism, and efficiency very much... We will definitely be happy to work with you again and refer you to other people."

This does not surprise me that much. Last week I received an email from Adv. Michael Prawer, who taught the legal translations module, who had been reviewing some student assignments: "I must say that for non-lawyers (and even for lawyers) those whose work I have corrected did excellent jobs."

Congratulations to all the graduates. You all worked very hard and we had a great time.

Translators' Survey - Follow the Results

The first online survey of translators in Israel is off to a great start, with more than 100 respondents so far.

You can follow the results as they develop by viewing this link.

The survey is still open so these results are not final and it would be good to encourage more translators to participate. There is obviously a heavier emphasis on Hebrew-English right now, since the lists that I sent it to are apparently haunted primarily by native English speakers. Feel free to forward the link below to Hebrew lists.

There is a way to cross-tabulate the results to show trends, for example there is a clear indication that academic translation is the best-paying specialty by far. However, this will take some work for me so I’ll do it after the survey is closed.

FYI the surveymonkey site is secured by Verisign to protect the privacy of people who participate in the surveys. You do not have to provide any identifying details or an email address to take part.

I hope that you find these results useful and interesting.

If you haven’t yet participated, click the link below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6xgHp8nNEdIsKGwCe54oCw_3d_3d

First Online Survey of Translators in Israel!

I invite all working translators to participate in the First Online Survey of Translators in Israel.

This survey is designed to benefit translators and the translation industry by providing accurate answers to important questions about our profession that have not previously been addressed.

The 10-question, multiple-choice survey will assess the relationship between education levels, translator training, professional experience, specializations and the current economic downturn, and translators' rates and earnings.

We urge you to participate and to forward the link to all your colleagues. The more translators who participate, the more accurate and revealing will be the results. The main focus is on Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew translators, but other language pairs are also surveyed here.

The results will be made free to the public.

To participate, click here.

It's Not a Job, It's a Business

When searching for a career path, literate-writer types have quite a few options to consider - journalism, marketing writing, technical writing, grant and fund-raising writing, editing, proofreading, and, if you have the language skills, translating.

These jobs can be performed in an "in-house," salaried framework or on a freelance basis - except that translating is only very rarely in-house. This has a lot of implications for us as professional translators. I was recently discussing this with a person interested in my course, who was also considering studying technical writing.

"A translator leads a fundamentally different lifestyle than a technical writer," I told her, pointing to such factors a regular work hours, having a boss, working as part of a team and commuting to an office. When I point these factors out to potential students it's always interesting to see how one person views some or all of the above factors as major pros, while another sees them as major cons.

"It's Not a Job, It's a Business," I told her.

As soon as those words left my mouth, I was struck by the truth in them.

If you're looking for a major dose of translators' common sense, I recommend Corrine McKay's book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator.

"Most translators enter the field because they love languages and writing, not because they love marketing and bookkeeping, but many translators' businesses fail because they lack basic business skills," writes McKay, a US-based French-English translator.

McKay's book is full of tips and resources for the business side of the translation game, most of which she learned the hard way. We have this in common, as well as a belief that if trainee translators are given guidance in this area at the beginning, they will avoid many common pitfalls and will be more likely to succeed.

Translators have to stop thinking of themselves as "working from home," and starting recognizing themselves for what they truly are - small business owners.

We are businessmen and businesswomen, no less than those corporate jet setters steering their compact luggage units straight to the business-class counter at the airport. We are business people, constantly networking and searching for new opportunities and markets. We have to sell, negotiate, and close that deal. We seek to increase efficiency and cut costs, and, of course, see our profits rising annually.

But what about translating... didn't we get into this game in order to translate. Well, yes, it's very important to translate and do it very well. But if you recall my post about The Big Three, that is only one factor in your success.

Like any business, translation is a game with an element of risk. If that excites you, welcome to the club. If that scares you silly... well I know better than to write anyone off... just keep reading.

Pro-Bono Translation - Everybody wins...

You know that funny feeling you get when the phone rings and even before you see that the caller ID reads "Anonymous," you're already sensing that it's a telemarketer from some worthy non-profit organization. Should you pick up???

Don't get me wrong, I want to feed hungry children with cancer as much as anyone. Yet there is just something about the medium of telemarketing that makes me so uncomfortable.

Having worked extensively writing and translating for non-profits I have much to say on the matter, but this is not the forum for that discussion. We're here for some Translation R&R, and I want to propose that the best way that you can help your favorite worthy cause is to perform translations for them on a volunteer basis. It can be very beneficial for your career too...

We all know not all the money we donate to NPOs actually reaches the people they are trying to help (and with telemarketers its a fraction of that fraction). So if you want to help an organization in a direct and meaningful fashion, save your pennies to pay your bills and donate in kind. By producing well-written, readable fundraising and informational materials for them in your target language, you could well be helping to stimulate donations worth tens of thousands of dollars.

You will also be saving them from the dread clutches of the HCCTs ("Have Computer, Can't Tranzlate" - our new in-house term for "them"). These folks will charge them low rates to produce agonizing, embarrassing translations that make prospective donors either squirm or guffaw, potentially costing the worthy NPO tens of thousands dollars.

Volunteering for NPOs can be good for your career, as well as your soul. Certainly for a beginner, it will generate valuable experience and genuine content for their portfolio.

In addition, volunteer work frequently leads to paid work, though not always in the way you might expect. The cash-strapped NPO you're volunteering for may never be able to hire you, but the director may well recommend you to his friends or just the fact that your name is out there as a translator can lead to opportunities.

Volunteer translation, or should I say pro-bono translations (we're professional, right?), are a good investment for all translators, not just rookies looking to make their name. As I said, it's a donation that probably worth much more than you can afford monetarily. It establishes you as a professional whose interest in translation is not purely mercenary.

Everybody wins.

Except the telemarketers...

Having it both ways? Bi-Directional Translation

Another frequent student question... Since I can translate from Language A to B, can I also translate from B to A?

My answer: Usually not. This is because because the standard in the translation industry is that we translate only into our mother tongue. You may be a very talented linguist who can translate from half a dozen source languages, but generally translators only translate into one target language - their mother tongue.

Why is this so? Because the nuances of cultural reference and idiom are extremely difficult to capture for a non-native speaker and this is picked up by the native reader, who senses something "off" in the writing, even if it is technically correct.

But I do qualify this by saying that there are rare exceptions of translators (though I'd never met one) who are able to write more than one language at mother tongue-level and therefore can translate both ways.

Having clarified this point countless times, I realized that the time had come to seek out one of these rare birds who can translate both ways. I was not interested in interviewing one of those comical characters whose frequent list postings, liberally peppered with grammatical bloopers, advertise that they translate both ways, as though this were a normal and accepted thing. Get this clear - IT IS NOT! I will re-emphasize that the industry standard is only to translate into your mother tongue.

A professional translator of standing who can and does translate both ways... this is the rare bird that interests me. My investigations led me to a few candidates:

• Michael Prawer, a veteran translator and a qualified lawyer, said that he translated "the other way" only for legal documents, since he knows that the client is not seeking idiomatic perfection but rather precision and technical knowledge. He said he would not translate any other kind of document "the other way."
• Sharon Blass, a seasoned Hebrew-English translator, said that after 36 years of immersion in Hebrew-speaking society, she feels that her Hebrew is mother-toungue level, and she is now tentatively getting up the "chutzpah" (her term) to translate "the other way."
• Another translator, who did not wished to be named, said she has many years of experience translating both ways. Yet she admits that she still feels more confident translating into her mother tongue and tries to ask a native speaker to look over her work when she translates "the other way."

I'm glad to say that I did find one translator who says she really does translate both ways with confidence. Shoshana London Sappir was born in the US and came to Israel at age 8. This is certainly no guarantee of having both languages - in fact people in this situation often end up having no mother tongue. Indeed, Shoshana admits that her English never fully developed until she got a job in English-language journalism as an adult. As a result of working hard to fix up her English in order to write professionally, Shoshana says that she now has two mother tounges and that she writes professionally in both.

Two mother tongues... that's what it takes to go both ways. Perhaps so long as we have a concept of "the other way," bi-directional translation will remain on the other side. I'll bet a human being who genuinely has two mother tongues is as rare as two mother hens' teeth. I'm assuming that all my subjects are incredibly talented linguists - make no mistake. Most translators never dream of going "the other way."

I think I might revise my answer to the question of "can I do it both ways?" I'm upgrading from "usually not" to "almost unheard-of."

Time, Money and How to have Both

Time is money...

Whether or not you credit the rather skewed existential outlook at the basis of this saying, it seems to be referring in particular to the lot of the freelance translator. This is because in our industry we usually get paid by the word. This means that our earning capacity is directly linked to how fast we can translate, or, more precisely, how fast can we translate well. (Quality should not be a casualty in this equation as this will certainly reduce your earnings in the long run.)

Therefore, it makes sense that every translator from the fresh-hatched fledgling to the seasoned pro should be constantly looking to increase their speed. This is the best ways to increase your earnings, other than searching for better clients. Yet the former is an immediate sure bet. (There are many factors that make a client "good" and their rate of pay is only one of them, so don't be too quick to neglect reliable, steady clients in favor of the promise of fabulous riches if you can just turnaround that 10,000-word doc by tomorrow 9am!)

There a many ways that you can start working faster right now. I've already mentioned a few basic translation aids in previous posts, such as online dictionaries and CATs. Another way to increase your speed will be to improve your Internet research skills. On an even more basic level, simply by improving your general computer skills, e.g. typing speed, keyboard shortcuts, you will soon start to work considerably faster.

Here's one small feature that has saved me quite a lot of time in recent weeks: Desktop Search. This allows you to do lightening-speed searches of every nook and cranny of your memory. If you wrote on a document or email years ago and need to find it, you could do some sorting in your sentbox or use the search feature in Windows Explorer. This will certainly take you 3-4 minutes, maybe more. With Desktop Search, this will take miliseconds. In fact it will probably find your old file before you've even finished typing in your keyword!

Yesterday it took me the blink of an eye to find an attachment whose name I didn't know sent to me by someone 4.5 years ago - that's two dead computers ago.

To see a demonstration of Desktop Search, click here.

Can you make a living as a translator?

As a teacher of translation, the most frequently asked question I encounter from potential students is: "Can you really make a decent living as a translator?"

As a teacher of translation, I feel very strongly that this question should be answered with caution.

My answer: "You're asking me if I can make a decent living from translation? Well, thank God, I can and do. But what about you?"

I don't know if you can make a decent living from translating or not, because that depends on you. Success as a professional translator depends your ability to perform on three essential points, as well as a host of other primary skills and qualities that will also come into play at various points in your career.

But here are the "BIG 3":

1. You produce professional quality translations
2. You can produce the above under pressure and never* miss a deadline
3. You market your services effectively

Please note that I have not written this list in order of priority. I'm not sure which is the most important because they are all critical.

Are you ready for the BIG 3? If so, an exciting new world awaits you. Please keep reading...

*Never say never, but you get the idea.

Are you a translator?

I assume that if your reading this you are. This blog is getting quite a few hits and though I have no idea who the readers are, I assume that you are translators.

"Who me?" you may ask. "I have not completed an MA in Linguistics. I have hardly any experience, except that I once translated my neighbor's favorite haiku in exchange for him mowing my lawn. But that doesn't entitle me a to call myself a translator. I don't want to mislead anyone. I'm not a real translator, just... a wannabee, an amateur, a hack, a rookie..."

If that sounds like you, I applaud your honestly. However, I have news for you... you are indeed entitled to call yourself a translator. There is no rule that states that a person may not present himself as a translator, unlike a doctor, or accountant, or lawyer, for example. If you decide that you are a translator, then you are.

The question is: what sort of translator are you?

There are plenty of awful translators out there, but I am sure that you will not be counted among them. I am fairly certain that they don't read blogs or any other materials about the art and science of translation. They generally figure that if they know two languages and how to type, they are fully qualified to inflict themselves on clients and readers everywhere.

There are many excellent professional translators. Thanks for reading! You know that, no matter how experienced and successful you are, there is always a whole world of learning still waiting to be discovered, which will benefit your professional satisfaction and standard.

Then there are plenty of inexperienced and unpolished translators out there. Are you one of those? If so, that may well be fixable. Perhaps you should go get that MA or join some sort of translation training program.

I must admit I never completed one (though I did start one). I do have a BA in Communications (with majors in languages and journalism). That strikes just the right chord on my resume. I'm not obligated to mention that the language I majored in was Thai (don't ask) even though I translate from Hebrew to English.

I built my translation career through a lot of passion, research and hard work. I cannot actually tell you how hard I sweated over my computer in the early years of my career.

I created my Translators' Training Program to give people a jump-start in the industry in three months without having to go through what I did over a period of about two years.

This week I read with interest on the Israel Translators' Association mailing list that there is an attempt to create an international standard for quality for professional translators. It will be based on BS EN 15038:2006, an EU standard. Apparently, that standard requires that translators have either:
1) formal higher education in translation (recognized degree);
2) equivalent qualification in any other subject plus a minimum of two years
of documented experience in translating;
3) over five years of documented professional experience in translating.

This standard sounds very sensible. In fact, I tell my students (who almost all have at least one academic qualification) that it will take them about two years of translation work to reach a first-rate professional standard. (I was also relieved to find out that if any of my clients find out that my major was in Thai, that I can tell them that I still qualify for the EU standard on two other counts!)

You don't need training to be a translator, but it certainly helps.

What kind of translator are you?

Apologies to OmegaT

This blog is only one week old but it's already taught me a valuable life lesson: never put others down in print, because you will look silly when you are proved wrong! (Of course, I could just doctor my last post and delete his comment, but I think I'd rather learn a life lesson.)

After my last post, where I expressed disdain of OmegaT paragraph segmentation, none other than software's developer himself posted a comment that my info was shamefully out of date.

I must publicly confess that I've never used OmegaT. When I was looking for a CAT, several reviewers warned against it for the reasons I described. However, if OmegaT has indeed changed their segmentation feature, I'll be installing it this very night to give it a try.

Stay tuned to find out what happens...

Wordfast in Action

There are several options for free CATS available online, and I'll mention two here right now: OmegaT and Wordfast. OmegaT is a true FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), meaning that it can be used free-of-charge in all its versions. The problem with it is that it segments the text by paragraphs which means that it almost impossible to get any matches with your translation memory (TM). Perhaps if you are translating financial reports or form contacts... but that's about it.

Why they designed OmegaT this way is a mystery to me. I don't want to say "you get what you pay for" since some other FOSS is excellent. (I'll be given some prime examples soon.)

The other free option is Wordfast - which happens to be the one I use. Wordfast is not FOSS, but rather it has a very generous, unlimited-time free version which is designed to entice you to buy the full version (only 300 Euro!). Wordfast segments your text by sentence or phrase.

To understand what I mean by segmentation and to view some other good features of Wordfast, click here.

I must point out that Wordfast seems to have a few bugs but in spite of that I definitely find it worthwhile for use on longer docs with a technical element.

What is a CAT?

My previous post caused a bit of confusion about just what is meant by a CAT. CATs are computer programs used by translators which memorize their translations of phrases and insert them when that phrase is encountered again.

CATs are different from Machine Translation tools, such as translate.google.com, Babel Fish, Babylon*, and many others. These programs actually do the translating for you. Fantastic! The only problem is that they produce appalling results. Some people think they are being smart by using these free programs rather than spending money on a human translator. But the result is they end up looking anything but smart.

If you want to see a great example of how Machine Translations can make you look sooooooooo stupid, you simply must visit the Prague Olympic bid site. We all need a good laugh, so feel free to forward the link to all your friends.

More on CATs soon.

*Not that I mean to degrade Babylon. Like so many other translators and all my students, I'm addicted to using it as a dictionary. However, its machine translation feature is no better (and no worse) than any other.

The Trados Trade-Off

Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) - Sounds great! But only a little bit of research and the pitfalls become clear. They are really expensive (Trados is 695 Euro) and their usefulness is somewhat limited since they only remember sentences that they've seen before. That means that if you are translating a text that is just a dash more creative than the phone book, it is unlikely that you'll have any matches at all. On the other hand, if you're translating standard, repetitive legal or technical texts, whole sentences, if not paragraphs, are given to you as freebies. Very nice, since we get paid by the word.

But I have to admit, I've never felt motivated enough to shell out to buy it. The fact that there a experts known as "Trados trainers" deters me. If you need a specially trained professional to teach a translator (generally a computer savvy breed) how to use software, you know it's complicated. That doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, but it does mean that its not the kind of purchase you rush in to. Rather, you wait for the right moment, and for a busy translator, that moment may never arrive.

I still believe I'll buy it one day, if not for my own sake then at least so I'll be able to tell my students if it's worthwhile. But up to this point, I've only used the free CAT options, and there are a few. I'll discuss what I've learned from this experience in my next post.

(PS. In case you are dying to hear more about Trados from a translator who actually uses it, check out this link to the AboutTranslation blog. Note that he prays fervently for it's demise, but doesn't stop using it. Sounds like the love-hate relationship many of us have with certain other software.)

Welcome to Translation R&R!

Just ask any hard-working pro translator what they need most - the answer will be "some R&R." Not just Rest & Relaxation (though that alone would be most welcome), but also some really great Resources & References. R&R is one of the the keys to producing truly first-rate translations (this blog will offer translators the other kind of R&R too).

It will also be jam-packed with tips and info related to the translation profession, including finding good translation jobs and dealing with clients, the usefulness of various software and online tools, translating The Untranslatable, lots of humorous stories and examples of the joys and pitfalls of the translation game, and much more.

I want to start by saying that I love translating. It is for me a passion and a calling. As well as working as a Hebrew-English translator, I run a translator's training program with WritePoint in Jerusalem. Thank God I found teaching, because it allows me to channel my overflowing enthusiasm for my job towards helping others get started, rather than stupefying acquaintances I meet at bar mitzvahs by regaling them with my latest death-defying translation adventures.

I look forward to sharing my knowledge, experience and love of translation with a wider audience through this blog!

Enjoy and feel free to leave friendly and constuctive comments!