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.