Translation - Language - Culture

The scourge of globalization and outsourcing

Some people hopelessly overestimate their skills. Even worse, if you were to point out their shortcomings, they'd be all insulted and reject any criticism.

On a site for freelancers, GetAFreelancer.com, I came across a (cheap) job posting for "article writers", listing among the scarce requirements:

Writers must also be very good in English and its grammar.

One of the bidders, a site user ("rascj") in the Philippines, writes:

hi, i love writing and also have wrote some blogs over the net. please consider me on this project. thanks.

Yes, "rascj" is, indeed, a veritable wordsmith, isn't he?

We should celebrate the wealth that is the English language

If you are familiar with The Economist, the finest news magazine in the world (or newspaper, as the publication is wont to call itself), you'll know Bagehot, its weekly columnist for all things related to Britain.

In one of his recent columns, Bagehot used a few words that sent many (most?) readers (but not yours truly!) looking for their dictionaries: "jejune", "rebarbative" and "ineluctable". To their surprise, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary has excised these words from its vocabulary.

This "controversy" has spawned a series of letters to the magazine. One letter-writer hit the nail on the head:

I do not mean to be curt at all, but I would like to suggest for those who have difficulty comprehending Bagehot to invest in a dictionary without the word "concise" embedded in the title.

While another writes:

In response to the reader who asked for more "pellucidity" from Bagehot, I would rather ask him to get a bigger dictionary than require yet another British institution to dumb down. Bagehot's vocabulary is certainly pellucid, in that the words mean exactly what he intends, unlike the mysterious utterances of adolescents or the various impenetrable professional jargons of today.

One can't argue with that: there really is too much dumbing-down already going on everywhere.

The English language is truly the richest language in the world. We cannot therefore know every single word in existence, but we should always strive for 150, rather than settling for a mere 100, per cent. Shame must also be assigned to all those publishers of dictionaries who have decided to "bowdlerize" their latest editions so as not to challenge their users too much.

As for "rebarbative", I actually used the word myself in one of my recent web columns – take that, all you ignoramuses!

Some things never change

A reader has sent the following account of his/her experience with a well-known site for translators:

I joined proz.com a while ago, and was reading forum message boards, where I realized one needs to keep " answering" KudoZ questions in order to get themselves on the top of the list. OK, since I realized bidding on projects is more or less a para-Olympics race – even if you win, you are still a "schmuck", I decided to start answering KudoZ questions in order to raise my profile and draw clients to me, rather than me chasing them, because that's what every "successful" Kudozist/Prozist was suggesting as a sucessful tactic. Little did I know what a dictatorship regime and repression I would find in the Land of KudoZ, particularly for my language pairs.

Since I do not tolerate unprofessionalism, I decided immediately to fight it right there from the start, and never let amateurism take root, at least where it concerns me. The two moderators who moderate KudoZ questions and answers in my pairs are mere dictators! None of them is a linguist, and it is evident that they lack any substantial background in linguistic or languages. Actually, one of them comes from an engineering background, and another makes this revolutionary statement about "knowing" and "speaking" a host of different languages. I wouldn't pay attention to them at all, if they didn't buzz me every half an hour, indicating I broke this or that KudoZ rule. OK, it made me realize KudoZ rules are of utter importance to them, so I decided to take some time to carefully study them. Not only is it evident these rules are mocking basic linguistic principles and are essentially anti-linguistic, but most of them also go against the very basis of common sense. Nevertheless, I still decided to follow them and respect them, as much as it was possible, because it is hard to follow something that has very little logic and sense at its core. As I was active on KudoZ, I also noticed they are playing ping-pong with KudoZ points and are never there for linguistic reasons, whereas my crucial reason was to provide an accurate translation, because I am a professional who is aware of the importance of accuracy. They would " agree" with each other's answers, no matter what. I noticed they are " teaming" and basically leading the forum controlling the process of points awarding. I wanted to send a complaint, but today, as I tried to log in to my account, I realized I had been banned! I suspect it is because of a forum message I posted about the anti-linguistic and unprofessional basis of the KudoZ glossary.

Sadly enough, this scenario has been repeated over and over again since the days I was a member of that site.

As for KudoZ in general, I have always believed this to be "fraud" – a form of "aiding and abetting" those who are not qualified to be working as translators. Surely, you will have noticed that many of the questions posted could easily be answered if the asker had the necessary dictionaries at his or her disposal or if the asker had actually bothered to do three seconds of research. Most of those who post questions accept jobs they are not qualified for, and often for very low rates, but then expect other ProZ members to help them with their translation free of charge. I have seen KudoZ questions posted consecutively that, when combined, made up entire paragraphs or even pages taken from the asker's translation job he or she was working on at the time.

The "ping-pong" game of awarding points to one's cronies has also been a time-honoured "tradition" of KudoZ from the very first day (this is also why moderators tend to have the highest KudoZ scores).

For the most part, moderators are people who have too much free time on their hands, because no one will hire them as translators in the real world. Since they cannot be "big-shot translators" in the real world, they try to lord it over others who are within the confines of the virtual (i.e., utterly unreal) world of such "online marketplaces".

Scores of members have been banned for being a tad critical (i.e., pointing out some shortcomings of the site or its system) or for raising innocent questions.

While this may have mattered to those concerned a few years ago, it does not any longer. The lustre has come off all those "virtual marketplaces" for translators. A quick look at the types of jobs posted on those sites nowadays reveals that their popularity has plummeted, as most jobs advertised there are for "peanuts" or posted by agencies that are well-known in the industry as "non-payers" (they hire translators, pocket the money from the end client, but never pay the actual translator).

It may come as a shock to those who're still "in love" with those sites, but the world has moved on, and professional translators won't have their names sullied by creating a member profile on such websites. Real professionals advertise their services through a professional translators' association and/or their own business website.

Anyone who has ever been banned from those sites for raising issues of professionalism, therefore, should consider their banishment a "badge of honour and professionalism" and thank their lucky stars that they got out with their reputations still intact.

Bad translations cannot be salvaged

This morning I found in my inbox a message from one of my regular agency clients in Germany. They asked me to edit a translation (an annual report) of close to 35,000 words (for Monday morning!), because their client had rejected the original translation as being complete rubbish.

When a translation has been well done, it is possible to proofread 35,000 words over the weekend, but not in this case. Since most of it, if not all, would have to be completely rewritten or retranslated, there would not have been enough time to complete the assignment for Monday morning. Besides, rotten translations cannot be salvaged. Only a complete retranslation from scratch will provide the necessary remedy.

The agency has shot itself in the foot, and demonstrated mismanagement of resources and short-sightedness on its part. Mismanagement because, as I told them, they should have contacted me for the original translation since annual reports, such as this one, are among my specializations. But instead of coming to me first, they must have picked some wannabe translator who didn't know at all what he or she was doing.

Short-sightedness because the client will never return to this agency for future work. What is more, the client may spread the word and tell other companies not to use this agency's services. To add insult to injury, the client may well decide in the end not to pay for the translation at all.

I had to turn down their request, given that it was an impossible task. Although no action on my part was required, since the agency had already found another sucker, er, proofreader to handle the project by the time I accessed my e-mails at the start of business (the agency had sent me the original request at three o'clock in the morning my time, completely ignoring the eight-hour time difference and adding "a quick reply would be appreciated").

Regardless, the translation, once edited, will not to be to the client's satisfaction; lousy translations put through the wringer again never are. Besides, any professional translator would decline such a job offer, because all such a futile attempt at salvaging a bad translation will do is harm the translator's own good name and reputation. In other words, thanks, but no thanks.

When a journalist hands in an article to his editor, the latter will invariably make some changes here and there. If the article is complete rubbish, the editor will throw it back in the journalist's face and demand a "complete rewrite" (followed, perhaps, by those magical words, "Or you're fired"). Editors know that there is only so much you can change to turn an article into good copy; if the "rubbish factor" exceeds a certain percentage, it's either a full rewrite or the end of the writer's career. How come, then, that translation agencies and their project managers still cling to the fallacy that a bad translation can be "repaired" through nothing more than editing, rather than a complete "rewrite", i.e., retranslation?