Ryan Ginstrom has a really interesting post (that links to yet another post) on translation quality. Besides learning the helpful term “chokuyaku” (apparently Japanese for “literal translation”), you can find out about one translator’s novel take on the “you get what you pay for” issue; this translator spends as much time on the project as the client has paid for. If it’s a low-paying client, he works as fast as he can and accepts that the quality is not great. I agree with Ryan that personally I could never do this, but it’s an interesting thought.
"We just translate"…or do we?
Early in my freelance career, I failed two translation tests in a row for two different agencies. Both of these tests were marketing/PR-type pieces, and the agencies’ comments went something like this:
Agency 1: “Your translation was too faithful to the original. The French text was not very well written, and part of the translator’s job is to improve on that.”
Agency 2: “Your translation sounded great in English, but it strayed too far from the original. We want a translation that is faithful to the original, even if the original is not well written.”
Since then, I’ve learned many lessons about translation technique and about asking clients for feedback on the type of translation they want. Recently, I translated some marketing materials for a cultural festival; the document contained some factual inaccuracies and was also written in a rambling, run-on style that I thought wouldn’t work well for a U.S. audience. Although I suggested a lot of possible edits to the document, the person coordinating the project immediately let me off the stylistic hook by saying “The original is really badly written; but hey, we just translate, right? Don’t drive yourself crazy over this; you didn’t write it!”
I think that this issue of whether “we just translate” is a big one in our profession. When we receive a poorly written source document, do we “just translate it,” or do we edit it for correctness and clarity? In theory, it’s nice to think that clients would be willing to pay extra for having their document “re-crafted” into the target language, but in practice this seems tough to implement. In addition, there’s the messy matter of conflict between languages. For example, most French documents make copious use of the passive voice: mistakes were made, profits were achieved, crimes were committed, fun was had. Changing these to the type of phrasing that’s more pleasing to the English-speaking ear involves not just a stylistic tweak, but a substantive one. If we eliminate the passive voice, someone has to make the mistake or commit the crime.
In part, I think that this dilemma has to do with our own pride in our work. We don’t want to return a translation that sounds terrible, but yet we don’t want to criticize the original, especially if our client wrote it. On the other hand, editing/rewriting a poorly-written original takes time, and most often we’re getting paid by the word. Feel free to submit your thoughts; do you “just translate”?
Constructive things to do if you're afraid of a work slowdown
So far, the language services industry seems to be holding up well in the ailing economy. Although I haven’t had as many inquiries from clients in the past three months, the size of my projects lately has been larger than usual; I finished 26,000 words this week and will start another large project next week. Posts such as Jill Sommer’s ‘Tis the season…to be overworked suggest that other freelancers have work stacking up as well.
Still, I have this ongoing sense that I should be doing more to prepare for a big event, such as a major client going bankrupt or a large invoice being unpaid. My favorite personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly, ran a great guest post on this topic. Although it’s aimed largely at in-house employees, 10 essential steps to take BEFORE you’re laid off applies to freelancers as well. Note especially tip number three, “Start a blog that contains at least 50% professional material.”
Treadmill desk makeover
After a number of months of using a treadmill desk, I’ve decided it’s a keeper. There are definitely some things (namely proofreading) that I can’t do while on it, and I generally alternate between walking for an hour and sitting for an hour during the day. Still, I find the treadmill desk to be ergonomically fantastic, it really eliminates a lot of the joint and muscle issues that come with sitting at a desk all day.
My original treadmill desk setup had some problems. These can probably be solved by spending $500-$3,000 for a purpose-built treadmill desk, but here in Colorado we like to take things into our own hands and reuse wherever possible. I started out by positioning my monitors on a board placed across two computer towers in front of the treadmill, but this proved to be too far away (and I have good eyes; definitely don’t try this if you wear glasses!). For the keyboard and mouse, I used another board across the treadmill arms, but this was a little unstable and didn’t leave much room for my phone, date book, etc.
I enlisted the help of my super-DIY’er husband, who came up with the idea of making a larger desk surface that would extend out farther than the treadmill arms in order to accommodate the monitors and the keyboard on the same surface. In order for this to work, you have to have a treadmill with a pretty long belt, so check the length before you make a large desk surface. My husband cut a piece of plywood to size, attached it to the treadmill arms with some metal strapping and screws (you can see this in the photo below) and used two shelving boards to make a “riser” for the monitors. This works really well; the plus/minus is that it’s hard to reach the treadmill control panel while you’re on the belt (since the monitors are in front of it). The minus is that I have to step off the treadmill to turn it off and on, but the plus is that because it’s harder to shut the treadmill off, I tend to just keep walking for a longer time.
A great blog about OpenOffice.org
If you use OpenOffice.org, click on over to Solveig Haugland’s blog OpenOffice.org Training, Tips and Ideas. She’s the author of the OpenOffice.org 2.0 guidebook and her blog is full of tutorials on OO.o’s features. I use OO.o almost exclusively and really enjoy it, but some features that I used to find pretty intuitive in MS Word (for example making labels, a feature that Solveig’s blog recently covered) are less so in OO.o. Definitely worth a look!