During Speaking of Translation’s recent interview with Chris Durban (recording online for free, at that link), Chris mentioned an excellent quality metric for specialized translators: the 10-minute Turing test. A Turing test involves a human attempting to determine if he/she is having a discussion with a computer or with another human. For example, many of you probably remember the ELIZA program, which simulated a psychiatric consultation and was often considered as having passed the Turing test. And as a complete aside, if you’re interested in Alan Turing and his era, you really have to read Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, often described as “the ultimate geek novel.”
But back to Chris’ advice. In order to pass the translation client Turing test, she advises that we translators should be able to pass as professionals in our field(s) of specialization for at least ten minutes. For example if you’re a medical translator, you should be able to attend a medical conference and at the end of a ten-minute technical conversation with other attendees, you reveal that you’re actually a translator and the attendees say “I can’t believe you’re not a doctor/nurse/medical instrument engineer/etc.” For example, Chris does financial translation for some of France’s leading corporations. During the webinar, she pointed out that this Turing test goal motivates her to stay on top of the world financial news (i.e. the Greek debt crisis), not just the specific topics about which she translates. This gives her greater credibility with her clients, differentiates her from kinda-sorta-specialized financial translators and greases the wheels of conversation when she meets her clients in person.
Fabulous advice: now let’s look at how this works in practice. About six months ago, I decided that I wanted to deepen my own knowledge of international development, one of my primary areas of specialization. I’m not sure I’m at the “I thought you worked for the World Bank!” point yet, but I do feel like I’m improving. Here’s an outline of what I did, and of course feel free to add your own experiences as well.
- Took some baby steps. I joined the Society for International Development which gets me a subscription to their excellent professional journal, information about their events, and the all-important membership card (wait, maybe I am already an expert!). I also signed up for e-mail newsletters from entities such as Devex, which got me somewhat tuned in to the international development buzz: who’s hiring, who’s working where, who’s in the news all the time, that kind of thing.
- Plugged in to social media. I started following a bunch of international development entities on Twitter, and I also started reading some blogs that I pegged as the more widely-read international development blogs. These included Owen Abroad, NextBillion, Partners in Health, USAID Impact and Global Development: Views from the Center. As Chris commented, I found that these blogs were not exclusively, or even primarily, related to the work that I do. Some of these blogs don’t relate at all to French-speaking countries that receive international development aid. But all of them relate to the sector as a whole, and that’s really helped broaden my knowledge. I also feel much more informed about some of the “hot” issues in international development, such as pay-for-performance development funding, in which countries get aid based on the results that they achieve, not on the programs that they plan to implement.
- Got a teeny tiny bit involved. Over time, I mustered the courage to comment on some of these blogs. I’m not sure that anything earthshaking came of it, but I felt like for once, I had done some actual contributing and networking outside the translation industry.
- Forced myself to do extra research. I’ve been translating French international development documents long enough that I know the terminology pretty well. But on my recent projects, I’ve forced myself to go beyond terminology and do some real research. There’s a big difference between knowing that chaîne du froid means “cold chain” and being able to explain what a cold chain is, why it’s so hard to maintain one in a developing country, what happens when it malfunctions and how new technology like solar power is changing the appliances that can be used in the cold chain. I found this research both very time-consuming and very satisfying.
There’s still room for improvement. I really need to attend some in-person events, and I just couldn’t work my schedule around last week’s Society for International Development World Congress. I also really need to have some one-on-one meetings with people who work in international development to find out how their translation procurement works (most of my current ID clients have come as referrals, or they found me rather than the other way around). But overall, I feel like this effort has really boosted my confidence and competence. Thanks to Chris for this great advice!
Sort of a no-brainer if you used to work in or with the areas you translate 🙂 But it’s an excellent concept to apply in areas of interest where the professional background is lacking.
10 minutes is not much of a test.
Some people can pretend that they are what they are not for years.
For example, Obama had 100 million people thinking that he was a liberal Democrat so that they would vote for him when, obviously, he is nothing of the sort.
Now, that’s really impressive.
I learnt a lot about development co-operation by chatting to secretaries and administrative staff when I visited the offices of the NGOs concerned either to collect source texts or deliver my translations, whilst waiting to see the project manager concerned. After my brief “meeting” with the manager, I would always put my head round the corner of the accounts office to say hello and to make sure my invoices were on the top of the pile. This was in Zimbabwe, my former home, in the days before widespread e-mail and Internet use when hard copy was the norm. These face to face interactions proved useful in assessing the ethics and general approaches of these NGOs which sometimes influenced translation choices in project reports. They also proved very useful when the one NGO decided to translate its entire Administration Handbook, which turned out to be a pretty hefty volume, because by that stage I was already very familar with their office systems on an informal basis. Pretty much a grassroots approach, I guess – but then, that is one of the cornerstones of development co-operation after all. 🙂
I think I will try to develop this concept too. Or better, I am already trying. In the last two months I have been focusing my attention especially on medical translation because I would like to deepen my knowledge in this sector as much as I can. I am studying hard, reading as much as I can, adding new terms to my glossary and trying to understand the branches I am more interested in. I am carefully training myself for this 10 minutes test but there’s still so much to learn.
Thanks for sharing your experience Corinne.
Nice work Corinne, though I think many readers will have thought, “Where do you find the time?”… Being a professional translator and trying to have a life is difficult enough without attending conferences and surfing the internet in your spare time, isn’t it. But it’s those who go the extra mile who also reap the rewards usually, so hats off!
It’s important to pass as one of them, but in a few cases the window between showing some interest and knowledge about a field and being perceived as a know-all turns out to be a narrow one 😉
Thankfully, not very often. But the occasional client will react allergically to the same level of effort that others appreciate.
A great blog entry, Corinne! I followed the same steps when I decided to specialize in wind energy. Although it has been a very rewarding experience so far, I still have a lot to learn. In my own opinion, being an expert in a certain field can really add value to our work and can be a differentiator when trying to escape from the general-field translator classification. 😉
Have a nice weekend!
As somebody who would no doubt pass Chris’s Turing-style test (albeit in financial accounting and reporting, rather than international development!), I should point out that in my experience, rather a lot of subject area experts would themselves struggle to pass this test. You start talking to them about, say, the problems that leasing firms will face with the new exit price-based fair value model in IFRS 13, and they go all slack-jawed and start trying to change the subject, fast.
What really seems to mark you as an insider is if you’re well versed in the professional politics: who’s throwing dirt around to knock out their competitors for one of the top association jobs (and exactly what that dirt is), who’s the crown prince (or princess) at a Big 4 firm, who’s got the right political connections to kill off a radical proposal. Even who’s sleeping with whom – after all, even subject area experts are human, and a lot of the talk at conferences outside the presentations and breakout sessions is actually professional gossip (just like the ATA conference, right?).
I like this blog, Corinne. There’s absolutely no doubt we translators should be more than someone who can speak multiple languages. We are ultimately writers, and writers must keep on studying what they write about. I am quite challanged, by the way, by your suggestion that I have to creep up to a place where I’m indistinguishable from the professionals of my specialty. 🙂
Great stuff; agreed! I usually get mistaken for the attorney because I am wearing a black suit, when in reality I am the court interpreter. Now, jokes aside, I feel pretty proficient in my translation fields, and go to plenty of events that revolve around the legal profession. I read a lot, and I am always learning. Gaming is also one of our specializations, and I am pretty much in-the-know on what is happening because I have a lot of contacts — sure, time-consuming, but essential. To answer GB Translation’s question about finding the time: in my case, I find the time because I charge adequate rates for my work and I build research and development time into my rates. 🙂 I am also very conscious that no one knows their field/company quite as well as the people who actually work in it/for it 40 hours a week, so I try to maintain the healthy outsider status while pointing out what I know (which is quite a bit). That said; there’s always a lot to learn.
I find it interesting that nobody asks this silly question: Is it really a good thing if we are able to fool people into thinking that we are something that we are not?
If that is the measure of who we are, or trying to be, then who are we, really?
Imposters?
Or could it be that maybe we are just a little bit ashamed of who we really are?
Wouldn’t it be better if we were actually proud of who we are and what it is that we do?
We’ve always been known as jacks of all trades but masters of none, hehe. Much as I like this blog, too often it describes an “ideal world” for translators, forgetting that most of your time is actually spent in your office staring at a computer monitor. That level of integration into your specialized field (attending conferences etc.) does surely not apply to the real-world situation of most translators.
Thanks for your comment! Yes, if I can borrow a term from Gloria Steinem, I’m an admitted “hope-a-holic,” and I know that that can be grating sometimes! But seriously, the real answer to the “most of your time is actually spent in your office…” issue is that you build the out-of-office time into your rate, because it ultimately benefits your clients. Of course I agree that most translators *do not* have that level of integration into their specialization; but, if I can be critical for a second, that’s also why many translators complain that they work too much for too little money and for clients who don’t appreciate them. In my experience, premium-market clients want/need/require translators who are pretty immersed in their subject areas, and personally I’d rather type less, charge more, and get more satisfaction out of my job. But yes, you’re definitely right that that’s the “ideal” situation, and most translators aren’t going to do what it takes to get there.
I agree with what you said about preferring to spend less time typing and earning more due to your degree of specialization and obvious quality of your translations. More than ever, the translation business is beginning to resemble other markets. You can walk into a shop and buy a cheap TV, or a quality TV; the latter is going to be more expensive but bring you more satisfaction. Today we are working in a market where there are translators for any budget, with varying qualities, but people know this and find the right person for their financial situation and quality demands.
Dear Corinne,
This is a great article and I have already read it quite a few times. I would really appreciate it though if you could write about your experience in acquiring clients in the international development area, as many of them seem to rely only on volunteer translations. It would be of great help to many translators who like me wish to specialize and have clients in this specialisation field.
Diana, thanks for your comment. I’ve found that if you target larger, well-managed NGOs or entities that manage contracts for USAID and similar organizations, there is a large market for international development translations. I agree that many smaller NGOs need volunteers because their budgets are very small. But if you look for potential clients that are a little bigger and have a professional staff of at least a few people, they are not only willing but eager to hire professional translators who have experience in the subject areas that they need.