Don’t you just love it when the agency says in the very last email of the exchange about a job, when the conditions are supposedly already done and dusted: “Oh, by the way, the client says this translation is extremely important so please make sure you pay special attention to doing it well.” Even when they sweeten this a little by adding “We know you always do”, it still exasperates me no end.
Agencies come in all shapes, sizes and guises, from huge international companies that can pay their directors overlarge bonuses to boutique organisations run out of a bedroom, and everything in-between. I’ve translated for a fair few in my time, most of them relatively small with PMs who tend to stick around for a number of years. This type of set-up is perfect for building good working relationships for mutual benefit, which can then trundle along quite happily without any major hiccups.
Whilst the ones I work for on a regular basis tick enough of the boxes to make the translation journey with them worthwhile, others leave much to be desired. I can think of many qualities a good agency should have, but I have limited the list in this post to the 20 that matter the most to me so that it doesn’t get overly long. Please let me know in the comments if you think I’ve left anything important out.
La semana pasada acabé escribiendo una entrada motivada por una desagradable experiencia relacionada con la traducción automática (o, más bien, pseudotraducción automática) que quería compartir con todos vosotros. Esta semana me toca hablar de una nueva afrenta a nuestra profesión que por desgracia parece haberse vuelto bastante común a juzgar por las ofertas que recibo por correo electrónico y las entradas que leo en los foros.
Hablo de las herramientas TAO (traducción asistida por ordenador), los descuentos que se espera que ofrezcamos por usarlas y los ridículos plazos impuestos desde el convencimiento de que mejorarán nuestro rendimiento por arte de magia elevándolo a niveles que rozan lo sobrehumano.
Last week, I found myself suddenly rolling out a blog post because of an unpleasant experience involving machine translation (or should I say machine pseudo-translation), which I wanted to share with you all. This week I’m shaking my head at yet another affront to our profession, which sadly seems to have become rather commonplace judging by email job requests I receive and forum posts I read.
I’m talking about CAT tools, the discounts we’re expected to give as a result of using them, and the silly deadlines imposed in the belief they will magically improve our performance to near super-human levels.
Suelo revisar textos para publicación que han sido escritos directamente en inglés por hablantes no nativos (principalmente españoles, porque por lo general soy capaz de descifrar lo que intentan decir). Esta actividad me agrada bastante porque la temática es interesante, la redacción no está del todo mal y el trabajo no supone teclear demasiado, lo que mi brazo agradece ya que estoy empezando a sufrir de una lesión por tensión repetitiva.
Esta semana he tenido dos encargos de este tipo, y no podrían haber sido más distintos. El primer texto (y el más largo) era relativamente sencillo, pero el segundo contenía párrafos enteros en los que no logré entender absolutamente nada. Tras sudar tinta y dedicarle horas y horas, se lo envié a la agencia con comentarios pidiéndoles que me aclararan ciertos puntos y resaltando una buena cantidad de oraciones no solo gramaticalmente incorrectas, sino prácticamente imposibles de desentrañar.
I often edit texts for publication which have been written directly in English by non-native speakers (mainly Spaniards, because I can usually decipher what they are trying to say). This is an activity I mostly enjoy because the subject matters are interesting, the quality of the writing is normally not too bad, and the work doesn’t involve a great deal of typing (which gives my arm a rest as I’ve started to suffer from a repetitive strain injury).
This week I had two such jobs, and they couldn’t have been more varied. The first and longer text was relatively straight-forward, but the second contained large chunks that I just couldn’t get my head around at all. Having struggled to the end, I sent it back to the agency with comments, asking for clarification of certain points, and a fair number of highlighted sentences which were not only grammatically incorrect, but virtually incomprehensible to boot.
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