This came in the other day on 23:30 Japan time. The company is located in New York and I would have to check the time difference:
"I have a potentially crazy question to ask you...would you be able to turn around 2 Japanese patent applications, one of 4597 words and the other of 2255 words, by 7:45AM tomorrow? More feasibly, would you be able to turn around at least the larger patent application by 7:45AM tomorrow?"
My first response:
Good morning (3 am!) from Japan
Thank you for your job offer, but ...
with all due respect - the requested due date is very unrealistic!
Having a short look showed approximately 23 + 12 pages of translation.
Together that would be 35 pages of PATENT SPECIFICATION, which is a lot more difficult than ordinary text.
In a few hours???
Maybe even asking for a discount rate?
I am not capable of working that fast (being busy with other work anyway).
I would like to meet the person who actually CAN do that.
Even if somebody says s/he CAN produce that much patent translation in such a short time ... I would not trust that person/translation.
Please ask ANYBODY working in ANY patent office about the feasibility, and more importantly the trustworthiness of the produced translation.
Sorry, but I cannot help you, even if I wanted to.
And my professional pride demands that I DO NOT accept work, when I cannot take responsibility for the results.
When the other party agreed, I added a little metaphor:
No problem and no harm done.
It is simply amazing how little the people who are asking for this kind of work actually KNOW about what is involved in translation -- or else CARE about it.
To put it in a little (distorted, sorry) perspective:
Let's say someone asks a construction firm to something like the Empire State Building - in two weeks with a budget of 8.75 USD.
I can see the exhilarated president of the construction company ...
And naturally everybody would agree that this absolutely normal ....
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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!
Showing posts with label English language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English language. Show all posts
9/15/2012
Relevant information
Today on a translator site a job posting read:
"One of our client is having requirement for technical English to German Translation.
Domain: Technical.
File Type: Word (pdf converted)
Words around 1500
Please mention your best rates for this job."
Its technical. OK.
What kind of "technical"? Subject matter?
No indication at all.
How are you then supposed to provide your "best rates" (meaning "peanuts"!) for this job.
If you ask a construction firm:
"Let's build something. Give me a price."
What kind of answer would you expect???
"One of our client is having requirement for technical English to German Translation.
Domain: Technical.
File Type: Word (pdf converted)
Words around 1500
Please mention your best rates for this job."
Its technical. OK.
What kind of "technical"? Subject matter?
No indication at all.
How are you then supposed to provide your "best rates" (meaning "peanuts"!) for this job.
If you ask a construction firm:
"Let's build something. Give me a price."
What kind of answer would you expect???
8/29/2012
Perfect ...
On one of the many translator sites at which I am registered a job offer was posted.
It said there:
"We need someone who will translate, proofread, and edit all of your work into ... or from ... into English. Everything must be perfect every time. If you can provide a favorable rate, we can try to give a high volume of work."
This came from an American company.
Don't they say in ENGLISH (!): "Nobody is perfect" ???
And, naturally, the "favorable rate" most likely means "peanuts" ...
So, who of the superhuman translator heroes out there wants to work for peanuts?
Please raise your hands.
It said there:
"We need someone who will translate, proofread, and edit all of your work into ... or from ... into English. Everything must be perfect every time. If you can provide a favorable rate, we can try to give a high volume of work."
This came from an American company.
Don't they say in ENGLISH (!): "Nobody is perfect" ???
And, naturally, the "favorable rate" most likely means "peanuts" ...
So, who of the superhuman translator heroes out there wants to work for peanuts?
Please raise your hands.
5/15/2012
google translate
I have heard about "google translate" before, but never used it before. Recently an acupuncture colleague sent me an English text, which he "put through google translate" and wanted me to have a look and if necessary iron out mistakes.
Well, what I received is frankly unintelligible! I have to translate the whole thing myself from scratch.
To check, I copied a 2-line Japanese text into the translation field and selected (a) German and (b) English as the target language.
The results are shown below.
Neither can be understood, unless you KNOW the Japanese meaning or else someone provides extensive explanations.
This proves, that "machine translation" will for some time NOT become any sort of thread to the service I provide.
Source text:
お世話になっております。
度々申し訳ないのですが、再度確認をお願い出来ますでしょうか。
Translations:
Wir verdanken.
Von Zeit zu Zeit tut mir leid, was kann ich den Scheck wieder.
We indebted.
From time to time I'm sorry, what can I have the check again.
Well, what I received is frankly unintelligible! I have to translate the whole thing myself from scratch.
To check, I copied a 2-line Japanese text into the translation field and selected (a) German and (b) English as the target language.
The results are shown below.
Neither can be understood, unless you KNOW the Japanese meaning or else someone provides extensive explanations.
This proves, that "machine translation" will for some time NOT become any sort of thread to the service I provide.
Source text:
お世話になっております。
度々申し訳ないのですが、再度確認をお願い出来ますでしょうか。
Translations:
Wir verdanken.
Von Zeit zu Zeit tut mir leid, was kann ich den Scheck wieder.
We indebted.
From time to time I'm sorry, what can I have the check again.
4/27/2012
Expertise - no expterise
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| Academic Book Stack (Photo credit: phonono) |
This company CONSTANTLY posts "job offers" on various sites, always offering hundreds of thousands of words = large volumes. Whether this is true or not is not really interesting here. (I have worked for them before. there were never any "large volume jobs". NATURALLY, after I started to work it did not take long before they started asking me to lower my rates - which I already DID set a little lower than the Japanese rates.)
The interesting thing is, the posts ALWAYS state at their top:
"Expertise: No special expertise"
but a little further down it then ALWAYS (this text is ALWAYS IDENTICAL):
Description: ... This makes the position challenging ...
Eligibility Criteria:
• Should have minimum 2 to 3 years of experience in Academic Translation
• Should hold at least a bachelor's degree in any field
• Expertise in academic subjects
• Certifications in translation and/or academic translation would be preferred
Well, to me THAT looks definitely like "special expertise"!
Or am I missing something important here? Do not understand the text maybe?
3/27/2012
Translation samples - the other side
The other day I wrote (quoted from my website) a little something about my views regarding the never ceasing requests for translation samples, often also called "trials".
These always look like tests for the translator.
BUT I have come to think of these things ALSO as tests of the companies/clients requesting these trials.
1) I have been working 27 years as a translator and do not need to test today in order to know what I can do. Samples of my work can be found on my website too.
2) During these long years of work I have often been asked to "evaluate" some translations made by somebody else. If these had been work, it is "natural" that they are several (many) pages long, but there have also been plenty of trials. These were mostly 3-4 pages long. But I usually need AT MOST half a page to get an idea of what that person can (or cannot) do. If I go through the rest of these pages, this will provide me only with some more minor details, or some specific words that may have been used wrongly.
3) When I get something to "evaluate", I am expected to produce an output within hours, or at the latest 2-3 days. However, those "trials" I have been doing are send to some mysterious "reviewer" and it takes something LITERALLY months to get the "results" back. The details of these results are - as I wrote before - are most often kept "secret". If someone (the reviewer) needs THAT much time to come to a conclusion -> I as a translator feel sufficiently authorized to question his/her competence!
4) I also dare to doubt the competence of the reviewer/company when they are ONLY able to evaluate my skills with ONE PARTICULAR text. Anybody who claims to be a professional in this field should be able to evaluate the skills from ANY translation sample.
5) Then I get sample text, which contain mistakes = in the source language.
Thinking positively I could regard these as "part of the trial", intentionally placed there to see if I pick those up.
In case THAT was not the purpose, these mistakes reveal the lack of language skill of the client/company providing the sample. If ther are not able to write in their native language, how in the world do they intend to judge the quality of a certain translation?
Precisely this last aspect provides in MY MIND a red flag for that particular client. If I work for them, they are likely to come up with all sorts of unreasonable claims etc. I have seen this before. More than once.
So, I do a trial and observe how the results come back: this give me a certain view on how much the client can be trusted.
These always look like tests for the translator.
BUT I have come to think of these things ALSO as tests of the companies/clients requesting these trials.
1) I have been working 27 years as a translator and do not need to test today in order to know what I can do. Samples of my work can be found on my website too.
2) During these long years of work I have often been asked to "evaluate" some translations made by somebody else. If these had been work, it is "natural" that they are several (many) pages long, but there have also been plenty of trials. These were mostly 3-4 pages long. But I usually need AT MOST half a page to get an idea of what that person can (or cannot) do. If I go through the rest of these pages, this will provide me only with some more minor details, or some specific words that may have been used wrongly.
3) When I get something to "evaluate", I am expected to produce an output within hours, or at the latest 2-3 days. However, those "trials" I have been doing are send to some mysterious "reviewer" and it takes something LITERALLY months to get the "results" back. The details of these results are - as I wrote before - are most often kept "secret". If someone (the reviewer) needs THAT much time to come to a conclusion -> I as a translator feel sufficiently authorized to question his/her competence!
4) I also dare to doubt the competence of the reviewer/company when they are ONLY able to evaluate my skills with ONE PARTICULAR text. Anybody who claims to be a professional in this field should be able to evaluate the skills from ANY translation sample.
5) Then I get sample text, which contain mistakes = in the source language.
Thinking positively I could regard these as "part of the trial", intentionally placed there to see if I pick those up.
In case THAT was not the purpose, these mistakes reveal the lack of language skill of the client/company providing the sample. If ther are not able to write in their native language, how in the world do they intend to judge the quality of a certain translation?
Precisely this last aspect provides in MY MIND a red flag for that particular client. If I work for them, they are likely to come up with all sorts of unreasonable claims etc. I have seen this before. More than once.
So, I do a trial and observe how the results come back: this give me a certain view on how much the client can be trusted.
3/18/2012
Translation sample(s)
Greetings
I (no - I believe EVERY freelance translator) am often asked to do a "trial translation" when I get in contact with a new company, or in some cases also for companies I have been working with for long years already, but where **new clients** ask for these trials. In the latter case at least the translation agency PAYS for the work done.
Otherwise somebody (who?) evaluates my work using some mysterious "quality criteria" that are neither defined nor disclosed and then comes to the conclusion, that I am not qualified - but, of course, cannot tell me why. I am sentenced guilty, but do not get a chance to defend myself (my work).
Typical example of a response from such a company:
"Our evaluators checked your translation strictly against the same criteria our Clients evaluate us, and we regret to inform you that your translation was not awarded a passing mark. We understand the disappointment, but in compliance with internal policies, evaluation details are kept confidential."
If they cannot tell ME about MY work, I must assume they are ashamed of THEIR work ...
In those cases in which the other party had the courage to show me (again an experience that probably ALL translators worldwide share) their "corrections" (those little red marks all over the paper), they usually turn out to be insignificant stylistic changes or even outright mistakes.
To quote someone from a (translators) mailing list:
"If you actually ask them to make a list of what is actually "wrong", most claims are usually unfounded (style issues, minor formatting, ambiguous source text, in-house company-specific abbreviations, job titles etc).
Style issues are particularly bad for English where there often myriads of alternatives but you can only pick _one_ word. Customer A wants that word, but Customer B wants one of the other ones and Customer C wants something different again.
Quite often also, the "issues" disappear completely as soon as you ask the agency to put something in writing."
In what other industry and for what possible product/service would this kind of claim be possible? For a reclamation about a defective product you have to produce evidence of the shortcoming/defect = show the defective product. If you take a written examination, usually you get back at least your grades and most likely also the examination paper WITH the correction marks.
If a translator does a trial which is then rejected, the company that considers the quality of that trial inferior, must certainly be very confident about the quality of their own work and the editors who evaluated the trial. If they are absolutely right and have so much confidence -> well then there cannot be any sensible reason for this secrecy!
For these reasons I have to decided NOT to do any trials any more. Above (refers to a page on my website: http://www.einklang.com/Translation%20samples.htm) I provided a number of actual translation samples. Check / investigate / judge them any which way you choose. If you like them: fine. If not: I am sorry.
And ... if ANY of (your) evaluators tells you, they can check/evaluate the quality of my translations ONLY using the sample that particular company has provided ... then you have a SERIOUS PROBLEM with your evaluator(s)!!!
Thomas Blasejewicz
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness,
and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
Hippocrates
3/08/2012
Four pages ... how much is that?
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| Image via Wikipedia |
"We are looking for some one to translate around 4 pages from Japanese to English. Please let us know let us know the cost and turn around time of the translation."
However - and I DO NOT think I need to mention this to ANYONE actually "working" in the field -
"translate around 4 pages from Japanese to English"
can mean a lot of things: from hand written pages with only a few characters per page to fine print patent specifications, where "4 pages" would be 15 pages of translation. Naturally, both costs and turn-around time will be different.
So, what would I supposed to offer this outsourcer?
I have seen similar job offers over the past 15 years (since working via the web has become fashionable) countless times and am really wondering, if the outsourcers placing these job offers are incapable of understanding the significance of being SPECIFIC in their offer, when they want a SPECIFIC (cost, time) answer.
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"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties
than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by
deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks
will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up
homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." Thomas Jefferson, 1802
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