12/16/2014

Fudschijama

English: Mount Fuji, Japan
English: Mount Fuji, Japan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It is always amazing how superficial knowledge and wrong information prove to be so much stronger than the "real" thing.
This picture shows an entry in a German-Japanese dictionary, published 1972, calling the highest mountain in Japan "Fudschijama".
I have seen this on English sites too, even official sites of the American government!!!

However, no Japanese ever calles the mountain by this name.
It is "Fuji-san", where "san" is the character for MOUNTAIN - and NOT the honorific "Mister".

In Germany there are probably MANY more people who know the "Fudschijama" than those who know its real name.
This kind of artificially created 'misunderstanding' is NOT helping to improve communication between different cultures ...

12/04/2014

Free ebooks

Good evening
Last year in February my first book (printed) was published.
After that, I wrote and published 3 more e-books. Those are commercially available (Amazon, via Smashwords.com practically all worldwide distributers of such materials), but it turned out, that they "do not sell" - at all!
A Japanese colleague bought ONE copy of the book about Japanese acupuncture and a Lady I knew from my days in junior high school bought ONE copy of my "life story".
That's it.

Therefore I decided to make those via my website available for free*:
(* I WOULD be glad, if people could bring themselves to offer a little "donation" (about 2-300 Yen) AFTER reading those. I mean, if they enjoyed the material.)

http://www.einklang.com/Books.htm

None of the those books are any sort of academic/scientific work or literary masterpieces.
Only the things a 3rd-class craftsman/phsical laborer has to say - as long as there is theoretically some "freedom of speech".
In particular I would like people to have a look at the little work about Japanese and Chinese acupuncture.
That is just my personal opinion after 30 years of practice.
I believe, the Japanese form of acupuncture is much better suited for most of the world's population = non-Chinese people, that the so-called "authentic Chinese acupuncture".

10/27/2014

奴隷制度

最近 "crowd sourcing" と言う「手法」が流行っているようだ。それをやっている会社は恐らく物凄いいいお金を儲けるでしょう。
しかし、そう言う会社/システムのために働く翻訳者はいかにも「奴隷」として使われる。
例を挙げましょう:
https://www.trans-pro.net
一端いいなあと思って私も登録したが、実際仕事の連絡を見るととても賛同できない。
翻訳言語            日本語 ⇒ ドイツ語 翻訳
翻訳分野            論文・学術・研究開発
文字数              663文字
金額                 5,744円(税込)→ つまり 8.6円
翻訳者支払金額    1,861円(税込)→ つまり 2.8円

元々8.6円は安物(!)
だが、そのオンライン会社は3/2を取って、翻訳者=実際仕事をしている人に1/3にしか支払わないのは少なくとも私個人の感覚では妥当ではない!
定期的あの会社から仕事の「案内」が来るが、一度も受けたことない。

しかし、どうやら喜んでそのような「破格的」な料金で仕事する人がいるようです。
翻訳者という生物は絶滅するしかないようだ。

10/16/2014

悪質業者


先日長取引ある翻訳会社から特許の日独訳が依頼された。お客さんは最初から「時間がない」と「日本語を点や改行まで忠実再現して欲しい」と言ういかにも翻訳の事が分かっていないような特別注文が付けられた。
過去30年フリーランス翻訳者として特許も多数こなしたので、後弁理士の世界になるまでちゃんと出来たと思う。
しかし、納品してから間もない内そのお客さん = 神戸市にある: 「天野特許事務所」からクレイムが来た:
翻訳は何時も(「何時も」ってどういうことかが不明)のものと違うからお金を払わないといいだした。
しかし、何処で何が気に入らないか一切示さない。三歳の餓鬼みたいで、ただ「嫌だ嫌だ」と騒いでいるのみ。
特許事務所は言って見れば「法律の専門家」だ。
特許に関して「異議申し立て」を申請するならば、***必ず***何処で何が可笑しいかはっきりと示す必要があるのは当たり前。

間に入った翻訳会社は一所懸命和解を求めましたが、天野特許事務所は何時までも理不尽の事を言い続けたため、裁判の手続くをとることにした。
裁判になると色々と面倒から、今度天野特許事務所から「お金で解決しよう」との案がでた。翻訳会社も矢も得なく承諾した。

最終的未だ私の翻訳は何処で不備があったか何一つ聞いていないのに、こちら本来貰う報酬の1/3(訳7万円)を損した形になる。

「お前の小品が悪いから金払わない」と言って、欠点も示さず、返品もしない(恐らく私の訳文を変更もせずそのまま使って大儲けしているだろう)身勝手なお客さんのため、こちらがあれだけ損しなければならないのは筋が通らないと思う。
翻訳者は奴隷じゃないよ。

天野特許事務所は悪質業者だと判断するしかない。

9/24/2014

Looking for an interpreter ...

English: Active nuclear power plants in Japan....
English: Active nuclear power plants in Japan. Deutsch: In Betrieb befindliche Atomkraftwerke in Japan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The other day, a German gentleman asked on a certain mailing list, whether somebody here in Japan might be interested and/or willing/capable to work for ONE MONTH as an interpreter (Japanese-German) for an on site engineering supervisor WITHIN a nuclear power plant. Meaning within an area, where the workers are exposed to a certain degree of radiation, even thogh that is considered "safe".
Naturally, nuclear power plants are located AWAY from human settlements .. for "safety reasons".

Given these conditions, there cannot be that many people capable/willing to work there.
The very polite German person who initially asked, made the JAPANESE person in charge contact me.
From that person I heard totally different, very surprising conditions regarding timing and location.
That person offered payment for 8 hours/day; NO payment for Saturdays/Sundays; a marginal (10%) increase for overtime etc.
Possibly THOSE are the usual conditions for professions like welders, electricians etc., but NOT for interpreters!
In the business world of interpretation that offer is/was preposterous.

For my own reasons, I wrote back, I BASICALLY accept the conditions, but still have a few questions.

That was on a Friday evening.
The person in charge replied after the weekend:
"Since you did not answer my question (whether I accept the conditions) with YES or NO, I will look for someone else."

That Japanese person is supposed to be ASKING EXTERNAL EXPERTS FOR HELP, not ordering his personal slaves.
As such, I personally believe this is a VERY rude and arrogant attitude.
(This refers to the Japanese person. The German manager was very polite and business like.)
Not only in Japan, but also in Germany or any other part of the world.

Maybe giant corporations like this one (the request came directly from them):
KSB Service GmbH, (Germany; KSB Aktiengesellschaft) have so much money, they believe they can BUY people and treat them like dirt.
Or maybe this particular Japanese person sees himself as one of those medieaval feudal lords ...



Trials and their "evaluation"


I have been writing about this before.
Some company contacts me regarding a possible "cooperation" (meaning, they want me to work for them), BUT ask me to do a little "trial" first.
This happens all the time, but there was one particularly interesting one the other day.

The company, "A.C.T. Fachübersetzungen GmbH" contacts me and asks, whether I would like to work for them.
The person in charge, a German lady, then sends me the "trial material" for Japanese to German translation with the words, "this a not too technical general text (instructions for a headlight)". Naturally, the lady cannot read the original material.

Having a look shows that this is supposed to be a part of an easily comprehensible user manual.
HOWEVER, the Japanese original is VERY strange in several places. So strange, that educated Japanese could not make sense of some portions.
Ok. I do the translation. After more than a month(!), the company tells me, that my translation is "not good enough".
BEFORE I got that verdict, I accidentally noticed, that someone (= the reviewer!) had to ask SEVERAL TIMES(!) the Proz.com community for help to understand the original.If educated Japanese cannot understand the text and the reviewer (also a lady) needs to ask several times for help ... this can hardly be "a not too technical general text". (I did not have to ask for help ...)

When I asked the company, whether they can show me the corrected text ...............
No answer at all.

Maybe I am prejudiced, but if that company and its reviewer have so much confidence in their absolute superiority (and MY inferiority), they should be confident enough to show where I was wrong.

If they cannot do that ... I can only assume, that they are afraid, their judgement might be proven wrong.

Somehow I pity the customers of that company.

9/12/2014

Connectivity

The other day (do not remember how far back that was) I apparently applied to a job ad on Proz.com.
After quite some while, I received a "generic" from a company called "Text United GmbH" reply telling me the following:

"Dear fellow translator,
Please follow the instructions below carefully in order to be available to us and, hopefully, establish a collaboration with us. You will be eligible to receive projects from Text United as soon as you complete a short registration process.
You can do this in 3 simple steps:
1.       Register on the Text United website (www.textunited.com, please use the “Professional translator? Join” link in the upper right corner)
2.       Download and install our free App
3.       Fill in the basic information, relevant rates and language combinations (in the App)
NOTE: We need all of your information (language combinations, rates, phone number(s) etc.) entered into our App in order to be available to allocate you to jobs. Otherwise we will have only your name and surname and cannot work with that."


To which I then replied:
"Well, I have been working as a freelance translator over a period of 30 years for a few hundred agencies.
NO company has EVER required the installation of a company specific tool just to offer me work.
This shows clearly, that there IS NO need for such a tool. All other companies do just fine without it. (not even the Chinese!)
As a professional the person in charge should know that I have signed NDAs with all the companies/agencies I work for.
These NDAs usually include stipulations that forbid the presence of any sort of file sharing software on the service provider's computer. These NDAs are legally binding.
Since I have absolutely no idea what exactly your "free app" will do and only your word that it is safe ...
I cannot and will not risk everything I build in 30 years."

Or is it me? Am I just plain stupid and missing the point entirely?
Would every other (freelance) translator just jump to this opportunity?

Probaly I a paranoid, but to me this seems to be both suspicous and dangerous.


8/11/2014

I want THAT job

from a newsletter with job offers:
"Experienced Technical Rewriter*
¥300,000 ~ ¥360,000 / Hour"

I am sure that is a typographic error, but otherwise ... I want that job!!!
As a salary of about$3,000 per hour ->
8-hour day = 24,000 USD
5-day week = 120,000 USD
monthly = 480,000 USD

At that rate working just one per per week would be just perfect.

7/25/2014

typo

For all those, who read German ...

During a translation (about a lubrication pump) I am currently working on, I mistyped a word

"suction filter" -> Absauffilter

THAT would be the day ...
(proper word: Absaugfilter)

7/12/2014

Stinker ...


"I love this program (Scribus) and have been using it ... for books, music, stinkers and lots of different things ..."

I take the liberty of assuming that the intended meaning was "stickers", but then again, you never know ...

7/10/2014

Payment???


Today I receive a "private message" via a translator site. The poster IS posting, however, "job offers on about all translator sites I know.
In the private message it said, the "payment is fixed". When I asked what that means, I got the following answer:
"Per thousand characters translated from English to Japanese You will get paid $1;
For every 400 characters translated from Japanese to English, you will receive a payment of $1.
Your income depends on the amount of work you do. Its scope of work and time, you can determine for yourselve."
(this is about translator from Japanese into German)

This is about 0.007 USD per English word, or about 0.0025 USD per Japanese character = 1/40 of what I usually get.
How come, I am not jumping with joy and just dying to work for those peopel ????????????????????????????


The person posting these ads is:

Kristina Vayner

Interpretanto
Netherlands (it says HERE, but her posts on all the major translator sites come from all sorts of "addresses" and "IP addresses". THAT cannot be good!

6/22/2014

Net search ...

The other day I was asked by a translation agency to "evaluate" / examine an online questionnaire, supposed to be done among foreigners (in Japan) trying to find certain restaurants. My job was to find out, how "easy" to use several different search sites are.
Tasks (in an Excel file) were formulated for example like:
★Use the restaurant search website "XXX" to search for a single restaurant offering food you would like to eat.
★Once you find a restaurant offering food you would like to eat, please complete the following survey.

So far, so fine.
BUT ...

People were supposed for certain (specific) restaurants and then asked:
"Based on your experience using all the sites, which provided an easy-to-understand display of restaurant information?"

Well ...
Let's say, you were looking for a Chinese restaurant in Osaka, that has the name:
"中国料理北京 ホテルグランヴィア大阪店"
Assume for a minute, that those foreigners (supposed to be tourists) do NOT speak/read Japanese.
In that case it is unlikely that they ENTER the above term in the search field.
But MAYBE they would enter the name of the restaurant, which is displayed in roman letters like:
"CYUUGOKURYOURIPEKIN HOTERUGURANVIAOOSAKATEN"                                   

All foreigners here, who either CAN read the above, or would even ENTER that mumble jumble to search for the given restaurant ... please raise your hands.
Nobody???
Strange .................

Is it not absolutely clear to EVERYBODY, that:
*    "CYUUGOKU" stands for China, pronounced in Japanese "chuugoku"
*    the terms "ryori" (cuisine) and "Peking" are TWO (not one)
*    everybody who is NOT Japanese would expect "Hotel" instead of "HOTERU"
*    again: GURANVIAOOSAKATEN is at least THREE different words, that should appear as such when written in roman letters!
*    this last thing glues "guru navi" (search site), Hotel, Osaka and Branch together to give the hillarious: HOTERUGURANVIAOOSAKATEN

PLEASE ... Japanese people!
If you want to communicate with the world / or have the world communicate with you ....
you have to do better than that!!!


WHO Standard Terminology

The WHO has edited and published what it calls a "Standard Terminology" (sort of a dictionary) pertaining to oriental medicine:

"WHO International Standard Terminologies On Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region"

That is just fine. AND all the listed editors are without question highly decorated academics. THEY are surely better educated and much more knowledgeable than I will ever be.
Nevertheless .. I cannot help but feel somewhat disappointed by this work - at least regarding some terms.

Example.
"1.6.84 瘀血    = STATIC blood      = a pathological product of blood stagnation, including extravasated blood and the blood circulating sluggishly or blood congested in a viscus, all of which may turn into  pathogenic  factor,  the  same  as  blood  stasis  or stagnant blood."

The rendering of what the Japanese pronounce "oketsu" as "static blood" is to my taste highly inappropriate. EVERY persons working in the medical field and MANY laymen know perfectly well what happens, when the blood STOPS (completely) to move = becomes "static" (static means NOT moving).
The tissues deprived of their blood supply will quickly develop functional disorders and not much later DIE!!! Typical example: myocardial infarct.

But ... THAT is NOT what is meant when people talk in oriental medicine about "oketsu"!
I myself are not an academic and definitely not qualified to argue with these editors and propose a more suitable term.
Yet, I think, these people SHOULD come up with something more appropriate and as it is, all those academic decorations have produced unsatisfatory results.
In particular when one considers what is being attempted here: facilitation of communication between completely different cultures and concepts.

I expect, I will make myself many new enemies with this statement ...




Suspicious

I have been critisized in the past for assuming that a certain job offer might well be fraud, because its details were almost textbook style scam.
Well, today I received another of those things, that look at least TO ME very suspicious.

"Hello ... have a project extended of 2 Lakh words where we need german & swedish native speakers with good experience for long term.
Project Details
Language : German & Swedish
Words : 2 Lakh
Domain : Business

People who can do Sample to be done of 900 words apply here."

A "sample" of 900 (???) words?
Nobody who anything about translation (the people who are supposed to "evaluate" those samples ...) needs almost 5 pages of text to assess the capabilities of a potential translator. I can tell from experience!

So, if these people insist on their 900-word sample, place their job offer worldwide, get maybe 100 people to do such "sample", the company in questions already gets 450 pages of translation done for free!

Am I really the only one, to whom this sounds strange?

5/31/2014

Do it!

A message receive the other dayä
"Dear Translator
 Please translate the sentence below  into Japanese
 What do you approx. spend on bras in a year (in Yen)?
 Regards"

Is it only me?
I get this message from an Indian company (EZEE NURSING SOLUTION PVT. LTD.) asking me (probably a lot of other people too) to translate something, but DOES NOT indicate, that it is willing to pay for this. If so, how much etc.
Just this "demand": translate the following ...
Since I consider translation a "business", this strikes ME as odd ...
Or am I just crazy?

5/01/2014

The Indian miracle .. again

A job offer on an internet site says:
"1. Japanese to English 10 Lacks words, deadline is 7th May, 2014
We will pay for this job 0.11 EUR per word"

Note:
A lakh or lac (/ˈlæk/ or /ˈlɑːk/; abbreviated L) is a unit in the South Asian numbering system equal to one hundred thousand (100,000; Scientific notation: 105). In the Indian numbering system, it is written as 1,00,000. It is widely used both in official and other contexts in Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It is often used in Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan English.

Well then, May 1 is already over and the people have 1 million words. If 200 words are considered one page = 5,000 pages
-> in 6 days (naturally; God too worked only on six days and rested on the seventh ...)
That will be only 830 pages a day.

"Piece of cake" comes to mind.

BUT ... if you can make it, you will earn 110,000 Euro = 152,739.29 USD in just one week.
So, jump to it!

3/28/2014

"Big job frenzy" -> Update

The "Big job frenzy" continues! On and on and on and ...
By now everybody is not only in a frenzy, but also desperate.

Every day I am getting messages from all over the world, ALL translator
sites list an unending stream of "job offers" pertaining to this thing,
AND ... everybody is offering peanuts as payment.
Since most of those people are NOT going to meet the deadline, by now everybody is getting desperate and I get phone calls almost everyday also from all over the world.
Again offering peanuts at first, but when I say no, the offer switches to "we pay you whatever you want".
Now, THAT is very fishy!

One of the first messages came from the giant slave market "Transperfect". During one of the many phone calls I received from TP, the person on the other end said: "TransPerfect is the ONLY allowed/authorized to work on this project".
If that is/were true, how come I am getting millions of messages from all sort of companies? Only one of those company mentioned, that is is a "member of the TransPerfect family" (sounds like "mafia").

Most of the companies located in India, China, Arab countries, South America etc. started by offering 0.03 USD/word. Now that they find themselves in trouble meeting the deadline(s), the offer suddenly jumps by 100% to 0.06 USD/word, which is still only 50% of a half-way decent offer for orthodox language combinations like English/German, French/English etc.
The "whatever you want" thing happened through a conversation over the phone. A call from a company in Egypt. They first offered 0.07 USD. I said no. Next offer was 0.08 USD. But when I still said no, the person offered: "we pay you whatever you want".

Maybe I not getting this right, but somebody (everybody?) seems to be not telling the truth. If they are not explicitly "lying, they still apparently are trying to coax translators in doing their work for peanuts and withholding "what is right" as a last resort measure.

I don't know about everybody else, but I have the greatest problems recognizing this as "honest work". To me it looks much more like an attempt at deceiving / cheating the translators ...

frenzy,MILLION,job,rate,RUSH,slave,peanuts,deceiving,cheating,deadline,desperate

3/23/2014

Japanese-English glossary

Three years ago I posted the below text on an acupuncture forum (http://acmac.net/forum/), where it has been viewed about 300 times ... although nobody is responding ...

Maybe it can be seen from my profile, that I am apart from being a (German) acupuncturist practicing for 30 years in Japan also a translator.

During my translation work, I occasionally also get work related to oriental medicine. Here comes the problem then.
To the best of my knowledge (I did a rather extensive search), there is only one VERY little Japanese-English Dictionary of oriental medicine.

So, during translation work I do rely on several "standard" Chinese-English dictionaries and other source. If I find something that suits the context, as well as my interpretation of the matter, I note that term in a spread sheet. Including items like:
-> Chinese characters / Japanese reading in Kana / romanized Japanese reading / English translation / alternative translation / romanized Chinese reading / links (if any) / pictures (if any) / comments / discussion.
(I am thinking of adding German translations too)

My question / request:
Are there any people on this list that speak/write Japanese, who might be willing to help me by contributing a few possible terms?


Wordwide everybody tends to believe that Chinese acupuncture (or oriental medicine in a wider sense) is the one and only "authentic" branch in this field of knowledge. However, it is common knowledge and need not to be detailed here, that in China EVERY piece of information is censored. There is absolutely no reason to assume, that oriental medicine is an exception.
If the world then has access to only one (permissible) interpretation, it very much restricts its horizon.
Here in Japan nobody (I mean of people in power and with influence) really gives a "r**ts a**" about oriental medicine. That precisely provides for real freedom of speech. And given the fact, that there is a 1500-year history of oriental medicine here, the Japanese have quit a bit to say, that differs from the Chinese points of view.
Even with basic concepts like yin and yang, I am always under the impression, that interpretations vary. Therefore the use of Chinese-English dictionaries does not provide satisfactory results when translating Japanese material.

* Material: the Japanese have a funny way of collecting all sorts of "material". To the best of my knowledge (again), the largest collection of Buddhist sripts is found in Japan, the largest character dictionary of the world has been edited by a Japanese and is standard issue in every library. I would have to check, how these superlatives read in correlation to classic oriental medical scripts, but I would not be surprised, if they have here a larger collection .....
And if they do, you could be rather sure, that those not replicas modified to suit communist party guidelines.

I would like to help make some of these materials available to the world. The Japanese themselves are apparently not very keen to do so.
And if anybody could help me out with hints at possible translation (I can provide the file I made so far), this could be a first step.
I also have a lot of fancy ideas (dreams) about other = further aspects, but maybe I should not get ahead of myself.

Thank you.
Thomas Blasejewicz


東洋医学用語集の作成に関して


「世にしたがへば身くるし。またしたがはねば狂へるに似たり。」(方丈記)


少なくとも過去10年以上翻訳作業中に出会って、調べた用語を試行錯誤しながら複数の形で「メモ書き」のつもりでテキストファイル、ワープロファイルや表計算ソフトで記録した。

今何年も表計算ソフトで作業を進めている。今初めて知人、学会、出版社等に声を掛けてご協力を求めた。 声を掛けている人はほぼ例外なく首傾げて「これは難しい」と答えている。決して簡単だと思っていないが、難しいから最初から挑戦しない事私は余り腑に落ちない。

説明のために専用のページを造った:
http://www.einklang.com/glossary.htm
そして提案や意見などのために専用のメールアドレス:
words@einklang.com
是非とも見てください。

3/20/2014

マイクロソフト マフィア

添付のスキャンは世界最大の犯罪組織かもしれない。

現在使っているソフトは古くるなったためサポートが終了される。それは仕方ないでしょう。
だが・・・
次のソフト(OS)はどうするかと言う問題に関して「次は***何***にしましょうか」=製品のメーカーがお客さんが自由に選ぶ、と言う選択枝は最初からない。唯一の「チョイス」は***何時***次のマイクロソフト製品を買うか。買わないと・・・と言う脅迫はそこに濃厚に漂っている。
そう言う類の行為は通常マフィア、やくざなどに属するだろう。

問題は「代用品」は "ない" のだ。Macも同じスタイルで年中「更新/アップグレード」に伴って大金を要求する。Linux はフリー(自由)だが、どうもコンピューター科学の専門家でないとなかなか使えない・・・(私はもう何年間試しているが。。難しい)

人類の救世主はいつ、どこで出てくるのでしょうか。
是非頼みたい!

English ...

I don't know about you, but to me the following seems a little strange. Am I alone with this feeling?

"Hello friends i have japanese to eng projectof 3 lakh wrds the project is for 15 days so i need multiple translators who can translated atleast 3[HIDDEN] wrds per day..this is a big project so lowest proposal will be given prefrence ..please send me ur cv with per eng word on"

First of all, I had to look up "lakh" in the dictionary:
Definition of LAKH
1:  one hundred thousand <50 lakhs of rupees
2:  a great number
— lakh adjective
Origin of LAKH: Hindi & Urdu lākh / First Known Use: 1599

The all those irregular spellings ... could it be, that the author (a project manager at a big translation company) does not know? Do the translations done by that agency maybe look similar?

"wrds" - What exactly is gained by omitting a single character?
"i" - indicates the author is "humble" ??
"ur" - this change from "your" must also be of some strategic value I just fail to see ...


Maybe these people have been studying with Linus ...

Enhanced by Zemanta

Excellent ...

Time and again these excellent messages alight in my mailbox:
On 3/18 a message is posted on translator websites, saying:
"Deadline- 20th Mar / Please let us know only if you are available. I want to assign the file to one who have excellent knowledge of the domain."

I do ask: ".. do you also offer excellent rates?"

The answer is: "Surely everyone wants to work on excellent rates. I cannot force anyone to work for us until unless I am offering him expected rates."

When I state the rate Japanese companies pay me:
"
The best we can offer is USD 0.04/word of translation and USD 6/hour for review. I know it is way below to your rate but hope you can understand the existing market rates."

Natually, on 3/20 (the deadline!) the same post appears again.
Funny, could it possibly be, that some people do not want to work for peanuts? Unimaginable!

messages,Deadline,excellent,market,peanuts

3/16/2014

"Big job" frenzy

Probably EVERYBODY got this:
"...translating approximately 30 MILLION words of Japanese into ENGLISH for an important business matter." (since this is Jap-Eng, the proper expression would be CHARACTERS and not words!)

I got the same message from a whole series of translation agencies, some of which mention a deadline, others don't. Those that do, say something like "until the end of the month = 2-3 weeks.

Well, 30 million Japanese characters correspond to approximately 75,000 (Japanese standard pages, or 5000 pages a day. That definitely IS a big job. No wonder that one single agency cannot handle this volume and everybody, with reference to the expression "feeding frenzy", is joining into this "big job frenzy".

Naturally (??!??), everybody is asking for the so-called "best rates", which are specified by some of those frenzied companies as 0.02-0.03 USD/target word. The other companies apparenty wait for translators to voluntarily OFFER to work for peanuts. Forget for a moment, that I live in Japan, even in Europe for a common language pair like German-English, a "normal/acceptable" rate is somewhere around 0.10 USD. For a more exotic language combination like Japanese-English, rates SHOULD be higher. In particular for RUSH jobs.

One of the agencies was careless enough to mention that the material is "financial documentation" from Nomura Securities International, Inc.
Isn't that nice.
THAT corporate giant loves to steal (naturally they call it differently!) billions of dollars each year from its clients.
Another company mentioned merge between other very big (=rich) companies (I forgot the names now).
Other people mentioned the "merger of two big corporations" (also very rich companies, but I forgot the names)
Do they really NEED to be so greedy as to employ thousands of slaves that are paid in peanuts? Probably the majority of the translators working on this "job" are neither native speakers (the client officially accepts this!) nor really experts.
I think it is rather obvious, in what kind of documentation this will result ...

Some of the translator sites, where these offers are posted, also show the number of bid the poster received. If THAT is any indication of the real situation ... then they will never make it!

I would really like to have this thing past. The FLOOD of offers/questions/requests of emails swamping my mailbox is really annoying (to put it mildly).

*************************
One of my grandfather's favorite sayings was“Use the right tool for the job”
―common-sense advice that applies to a wide range of situations.
Unfortunately, as Mark Twain observed, common sense isn't very common!
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2/27/2014

Unreasonable

This happens on a more or less regular basis:
I applied to a job posted on various different translator sites. Partial job description:
"We’re now looking for Japanese to English translators to work in a project about factory automation. The volume is about 250K chars. .. To know more about the subject, please refer to the sample text below."
Requirements from the poster included to work ONLY during the daytime, approximately 6 hours. I wrote, I can do that and gave them my usual rate.

Two days later, I get the following message (partial):
"This project contains 3 parts—Factory Automation, Factory Supplies and Electronics—and has 3,000,000 chars. The first part, Factory Automation, has technical terms stored in TM. You can also refer to the English websites we provide. So it should be quite simple to translate this part. For Factory Supplies and Electronics, there are Japanese websites for you to check the context. We need to deliver 60K chars to our client everyday. Therefore, you’re free to take as many chars as you like (max. 60K) daily.
In view of this, could you possibly lower your rate to at least USD$ 0.04 per Japanese char? The other candidates have a more competitive rate as USD$0.03 per char."

Well, just for the fun of it, I replied as follows:
Good evening from Japan
And thank you for your message, but I was already wondering when this would happen.
This = "lower your rate".
On 2/24 you wrote in your mail: "However, we will pay you according to your rate, if the translation is approved." (HAS it been "approved"?)
which came as a pleasant surprise to me. Now, things turn out the "usual" way.
Believe me, I have seen / experienced this kind of work before and therefore speak from (30 years of) experience!

Usual = unreasonable requests for unreasonably low rates.
I take the liberty of assuming, that this is what the (Japanese?) client requires, so that you are not guilty of anything.
Maybe people can survive in China or Taiwan working for 0.03 USD/char., but that is NOT realistic here in Japan.
"So it should be quite simple to translate this part. ... there are Japanese websites for you to check the context."
THAT is precisely what makes this work VERY labor intensive.
* no context to refer to
* highly technical terms (I VERY much doubt that terms like "高周波焼入れ / 浸炭焼き" are FA related!) that needs to be checked
* "websites to check ..." means, you have to search through many pages of online material = requires time! (unless they have well organized glossaries -> unlikely)
 Let's take for example "高周波焼入" -> if you KNOW the translation already -> just the time for entering it into the software;
if you need to look up something / everything or even check "reference" material -> let's assume quick, smooth work to do all that in TWO minutes.
Then it would take 24 seconds per character (this number may of course vary widely).
Then: 24 x 60,000=1,440,000 seconds= 400 hours of work daily.
no eating, sleeping, telephone calls, toilet breaks ... nothing.
Since you require translators who work ONLY during the daytime, let's say 8 hours without once removing their fingers from the keyboard = 50 translators.
(the sample you gave me as a trial contained practically 0 repetitions -> the use of CAT tools is unlikely to help!)
To make it happen in reality, you would need more.
Getting THAT many translators, who all work for peanuts can happen only in China or India.

Naturally, the quality (for reasons I outlined before) cannot be quaranteed or even maintained among that many translators.
The client could put the whole thing through Google translate and get the same result: incomprehensible mumble jumble.
So, if the client INSISTS on a cheap product, cheap Chinese quality is what it will get.

I may not be the best in the field, BUT as a professional translator I prefer to TAKE PRIDE in my work.
As such, I can not live with the idea that it is completely irrelevant, whether my translation is correct or not,
as long as I put ANYTHING into the empty cells of the Excel sheet.

If your "other candidates" have no problem with working for 0.03 USD and no doubts about the nature of this work ... fine.
Please rely on those gentlepersons.
Under the given conditions I prefer not volunteer for more material than I could do comfortably during an afteroon tea break.

Thank you.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness,
and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
Hippocrates
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2/26/2014

Slantwise

There was a job offer on Proz.com and in the post there was a little sample text (partially):
"Be sure to use the projector properly in the specified position. The projector can project images upwards, downwards or slantwise in the direction vertical to a horizontal surface. When slantwise installing the projector downwards, make sure its bottom upturned."

Please correct me, if I am saying something stupid, but as far as I am capable to understand, an installation "vertical to a horizontal surface" can by definition not be "slantwise".
And, I tried hard, but cannot picture how the position of the machine is supposed to look like in: slantwise installing the projector downwards, make sure its bottom upturned."

Probably I simply lack imagination ...

2/20/2014

Classic fraud

Today I got following message:
"AS A TEST FOR QUALIFYING CANDIDATE, PLEASE TRANSLATE THE ATTACHED FILE AND SEND IT BACK TO ME.
REGARDS
ARIJEET"

from mail address: transactmaster@gmail.com
(free mail ... naturally ...)

and I sent that person the following answer:
The classic scheme of fraud!!!
YOU do not identify yourself, don't give any contact details, do not specify anything regarding the "potential" work, ...
BUT
want to have translation work done for free.

I am sure you do not mind, when I warn my fellow translators.
Thomas Blasejewicz

And that is precisely what I am doing here.
Unless that person provides some credible identification, PLEASE be careful!
The chances of an attempt at fraud are 180%

Response from friendly Mr. Arijeet:
Hello Thomas,

I am sure, you do not receive any job from your clients. If you speak to a client so rude in first time conversations, how can one think of getting a job done by you. And stop using defamatory languages towards your clients. And samples are needed to examine the quality of the translation by the translator and not for your cheap and f..king comments.

If you had any guts there in your a.s , then you should had done a passage from the sample file rather than translating the whole file. Then also I might have examined your quality.

Also try to speak to your clients softly for the first time rather than accusing them rudely.

Your well wisher
Arijeet

to which I took the liberty of answering (since I had the time today ...):
Thank you for your wise words.
Aparently you still are not inclined to identify yourself.
A net search I made just for the fun of it, shows no such company as "transactmaster"  (derived from your email address).
And you send me your stuff from a free mail address. How trustworthy!

Since you are not a client of mine and I am not an employee of yours ... there is nothing to worry.
You may rest assured that my correspondence with PROPER BUSINESS entities is polite and professional.
And so is the correspondence from such PROPER BUSINESS entities.

Samples? Since you found my name and other contact information somewhere (you sent your mail to my website account!), you DO HAVE access to over 20 pages worth of "samples" I made publicly available right there.
Having a look was too troublesome?

I am sure, you will find better qualified personnel that does not complain without any trouble at all.

Thomas Blasejewicz
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2/09/2014

明日止めた


日本人にとってごく普通の表現でしょうが、もしその言葉を***翻訳***使用と思えば、それは無理だと直ぐ分かる。無論日本人はいわゆる以心伝心を精神を応用して、聞いている人は言われて(書かれて)いない要素を黙って頭の中に足してしまう。しかし、日本人以外の人々にはそのまま通じはずは先ずないだろう。
明日=未来+止めた=過去形。まだ起きていない未来で既に何かを終了した。あり得ない。又は、「明日」と言う出来事を起こる前に中止した。それもなかなか考えられない。
英語で試して見よう:
* tomorrow stopped
* interrupted tomorrow
等。何れも "English speaker" には通じない。

【日本では)言うまでもないだろうが、「明日に予定していた事を明日で実行することを今日で実行するのを止めたと決めた」などの長蛇文がその二つの単語に秘めた。私は然程賢い人ではないが、そのようなことが日頃普通に行われているのは日本語のみではないでしょうか。

2/06/2014

東急グループ - 可愛そうな金持ち

翻訳会社を経由して東急グループと言うお客さんから翻訳の依頼が来た。分量は少々多いという話だが、過去からそのお客さんで安い料金で取引しているそうだ。
東急グループはどうみてもお金に困っている用に見えない。大企業でもある。

なのに日本の一般相場より低い、私の通常レートの40%ほどで仕事して頂戴との事。
当然、最高の品質を要求している。

さて、東急グループさんよ、貴社は高品質の品物を購入する際、中国の格安偽物より高い値段が付くのは「常識」として分かっているのではないでしょうか。
東急グループ不動産ぶもんなら、土地が坪単価100万円の土地をお金が有り余っている金持ちのお客さんに坪単価40万円で普通売るだろうか。
(少なくとも貧乏の一般庶民=私がそのような要望すれば「頭が可笑しいだろう」と言われるの間違いない!)