by Patricia
Many of you know Mox’s Blog and his acerbic take on the translation profession (if you don’t, stop whatever you are doing and head on over there). Mox is always looking for subject matter on which to base his hilarious cartoons. This is my contribution to the sometimes-absurd exchanges professional translators have with (monolingual) clients.
Some time last year, a client – we’ll name him Monsieur M. to protect his good name – asked me to translate a press release from French into US English. This communiqué announced a major event for his young company and was written in a very ‘markety’, trendy and catchy style.
As is often the case, a close-to-the-source-text translation would fall flat. Also, and readers, you know this: a press release for the US market is structured quite differently from a French communiqué.
So I revamped the document to make it fit-for-purpose. Adapted the style and mode of communication (French is a high context language and culture, American a low context one). Rreplaced French popular culture references with American ones. Polished up the text and sent it off to Monsieur M.
An hour later, the phone rings.
Monsieur M.: Patricia, you’ve sent me the wrong file. This is not the translation I asked for.
Me: Pardon? [panic attack sets in] Hang on; let me look into this …. [Double-check sent email and attached file]. Si, si! It’s the right file [provide file name], are you sure you opened the right document?
Monsieur M.: I am sure you sent me the wrong file. My communiqué had 4 paragraphs and 24 lines. This file has 5 paragraphs, but only 17 lines. And everyone knows a good translation respects the source file’s layout and appearance. This thing does not look anything like my communiqué.
Posted 2 days, 14 hours ago at 12:04 pm. 2 comments
by Patricia
When starting to practice yoga, breathing properly is hard to learn. You have to be aware of each inspiration, each expiration and whether you are practicing diaphragmic, clavicular or complete yogic breathing.
As you master increasingly difficult positions, proper breathing becomes automatic: you are no longer consciously engaged in leading your body’s inspiration-expiration dance.
Writing workshop
Ros Schwartz and Chris Durban’s writing workshop for translators, Style Matters I, held in Paris February 5th, was an immersion in writing translations for publication.
It offered valuable advice and techniques for those wishing to hone their craft and invited a return to consciousness for those used to leveraging their writing skills to serve their clients’ interests.
Writers and translators rely on proficiency of language to craft high impact texts. They also use their senses and their instinct, just as painters and musicians do to give life to colors and notes. With experience, techniques learned and practiced merge with creative intuition, words flowing together in an artful dance as if graced with a life of their own.
Conscious choreography
Working in a group spurs conscious engagement.
Why did we choose a word rather than another? What awkwardness in this turn of phrase tickled your pen to change it? What effect do you think this change has on the balance of the text or on the message it is to carry? What solutions did colleagues find to transform gibberish into music?
Chris asked me whether I’d found the course useful.
The answer is a resounding yes, for several reasons. It spurred a return to the consciousness of doing, and the satisfaction and enrichment this brings. Watching how colleagues approach a text and hearing the solutions proposed can boost your own creativity. And developing relationships with others who work in similar areas broadens opportunities, as a team, to take on complex projects for demanding clients.
And I learned that, in UK English, an m-dash is an n-dash and it takes a space before and after it.
So, when is Style II coming to town?
Posted 1 month ago at 11:35 am. 3 comments
by Patricia
The next time you come across a translated volume of uneven quality and discordant voices, the source of the problem way well be the end client, not the various players who worked on the publication.
The client is not always right. Sometimes the end client commits translation roadkill by:
1. Starting work on a bilingual publication without putting its translation team in place.
2. Contacting its translation team with a stated volume and deadline, but with only half the texts written and no clear date when the rest of the files will be available.
3. Shortening the deadline by half once the translation is already under way (and the rest of the source texts still unavailable).
4. Scurrying about to find extra translators to handle the volume in the reduced amount of time.
5. Allowing no time for review and harmonization of all the texts translated by a slew of last-minute recruits.
This is just what happened to a wonderful corporate book on which a respected colleague had asked me to work with him. We are finishing the sections we had started and calling it quits.
We work hard and long for projects we can be proud of. We won’t even consider whipping through an entire book in under a week. “We don’t do MT”.
Disappointing? Of course. But the big looser is the end client. They’ve tossed a nice chunk of change right out the window and won’t have much to show for it.
Savvy clients invest. They do the exact opposite of each point above because they want their corporate books to shine in all languages.
Posted 3 months ago at 10:49 pm. Add a comment
by Patricia
Nearly a year ago, on LinkedIn, Michael Seidle of Problog Service asked “Why is it so hard to find good writers?” All answers, including mine, looked at the question from the writer’s angle. You can learn how to write properly, but the ability to write compellingly is a gift that still takes work to perfect.
As I work my way through 30 Days to Better Business Writing, Matthew Stibbe’s recently published e-book for wordsmiths, several chapters swirl in my head, calling for a client-oriented version.
Maybe even client-oriented versions in other languages. Take Day 7, “Analyse bad writing”, and Day 16, “Manage your writing”, for example. Continue Reading…
Posted 3 months, 3 weeks ago at 2:16 pm. 2 comments
by Patricia
Since I suffered my first (and, knock wood) only total data loss back in the last century, I’ve become a back-up junkie.
Where others collect coins, stamps, or eggcups, I collect storage hardware: 3 1/2 inch diskettes, SuperDisks, Zip disks, CD-Roms, external hard drives, flash drives, smart cards, USB keys, and the computers whose data they preserved.
A bit excessive? Probably. The memory of a serious scolding when I was a child remains. Told to go clean up my room, I did just that, and pitched a bunch of family letters my eight year-old’s logic considered useless to keep. The rule of thumb for data has become “better safe than sorry.”
I’ve tried to convey that fear to my husband. Largely unsuccessfully. Where I keep multiple copies of all my data, only recently did he heed the call to back-up his computer on an external hard drive. He didn’t see the point of repeating this time-consuming process twice.
Last week, his computer was infected with a virus. While he was doing a clean reinstall, the external HDD fell. It’s toast. He lost a magnificent slide collection representing decades of work in the northern Alps. We hope data recovery experts will be able to salvage it.
My multiple copies and daily back-up routines don’t seem as loony now. If one gizmo breaks down, I don’t waste time running to the data hospital and I know my clients’ documents are safe. Last year, a client phoned, panicked: the company’s IT system had been infected and my client had lost a year’s worth of documents we had worked on together. Within an hour, I sent my client a zip file with all the source documents, translations, and the in-house glossary we had developed to provide that organization with reliable terminology standards.
Andrew Bell over at the Watercooler has chosen Sustainability in Translation as the theme for his October book contest. Preserving data integrity is one of the keys to providing value and service to clients (even years after a job is done), working both efficiently and effectively, building on your knowledge and skills.
If you are a back-up junkie? Tell us how that has served your business and your clients’ needs!
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago at 9:56 am. Add a comment
by Patricia
A log of stumbled-upon bloopers and flops | Un journal de bord de bourdes et bides découverts par hasard
30.11.09
Une bourde de 530 000 € !
Le numéro 995 de Courrier International évoque le coûteux raté de la campagne de pub’ visant à promouvoir la Lettonie auprès de touristes anglo-saxons.
“Riga city: easy to go, hard to live”
Pas franchement un slogan capable de séduire ! Vous l’aurez compris, l’affiche devait dire hard to leave.
Coût de la campagne ratée? 530 000 €, hors dégâts collatéraux.
Encore un exemple, sûrement, d’un donneur d’ordre souhaitant faire des économies de bouts de chandelle sur son budget traduction et révision !
16.09.09
Deux photos prises sur le vif Avenue Berthelot, à Lyon.
Pauvre Jaurès, s'il avait su...
Spécialité lyonnaise?
10.09.09
Transpositions can curtail your appetite
The Group Bertrand is one of leading independent restaurant groups in France, with a turnover of €112 M in 2008.
It’s branding signature in French is “Innover dans la restauration”. Trendy architecture, concept restaurants, and creative associations of herbs and spices come to mind.
Translated Transposed into English, the tag becomes insipid gobbledygook: “Innovate in the restauration”.
Does that whet your taste buds?
02.09.09
http://www.nice.aeroport.fr/?l=2
“New Exposure at the Airport Pittoresque”
That should be a revealing exhibit! You have until the end of October to catch it.
29.08.09
www.corporate.airfrance.com
Bellevue*, anyone?
*psychiatric hospital in New York City.
Posted 5 months, 3 weeks ago at 5:46 pm. Add a comment
by Patricia
Comme tout traducteur spécialisé, je choisis mes projets en fonction de la valeur ajoutée que je peux apporter au client. Typiquement, mon plan de charge est composé de bons projets, c’est-à-dire intellectuellement enrichissants, bien écrits, et qui ont une réelle valeur pour l’entreprise, et de projets plus utilitaires, documents que le client a besoin de faire traduire dans
le cadre de son activité.
De temps à autre, un projet permet de conjuguer expertise professionnelle (RSE, développement durable, communication d’entreprise) et engagements personnels (protection animale et protection de l’environnement).
Là, c’est le bonheur assuré.
C’est le cas de TAAC, The Animal Affinity Club, une association à vocation internationale dont je suis le développement depuis l’idée initiale il y a bon nombre d’années déjà et qui a enfin vu le jour en 2008.
TAAC propose aux entreprises et entrepreneurs de renforcer et valoriser leur engagement sociétal grâce à des partenariats solidaires innovants et à une thématique d’avenir : le lien Homme-Animal.
Autrement dit, TAAC aide à orienter le mécénat d’entreprise vers le soutien d’associations de terrain qui œuvrent pour le respect de la nature et la promotion du lien homme-animal sans lesquels la survie de l’espèce humaine, à terme, est à risque.
Pour répondre à son positionnement résolument haut de gamme orienté grands comptes et CSP+ et promouvoir son internationalisation, TAAC a entrepris la refonte de son site Internet dont la première partie vient d’être mise en ligne. Continue Reading…
Posted 6 months ago at 7:54 pm. Add a comment
by Patricia
Jargon. The sound of that word makes me reach for a Tums. Jargon, as in “meaningless-gibberish-that-sounds-like-a-money-wrote-it.”
No, I am not referring to precise terminology used by a specific group of people and only occasionally understood by those outside the group. If, for example, you are writing or translating a medical text for an audience of specialists, you should be writing perorbital hæmatoma and not the plain English ‘black eye’ or the French layman’s ‘œil au beurre noir’.
I am talking about my pet peeve (or one of them, rather), the use of jargon that has become as prevalent as driver incivility.
Continue Reading…
Posted 6 months ago at 11:46 pm. Add a comment
by Patricia
Direct clients rarely know all the steps involved between their sending you a document and your returning it translated.
This can make it difficult for them to appreciate the level of service you are providing or to understand why a 24 hour turnaround time for 3,000 words for publication is a dangerous thought. Many clients or prospects appreciate it when a translator takes the time to explain the care that goes into meeting (exceeding?) their expectations.
This post outlines most of the steps involved in this sample 3,000 words for publication assignment where style is paramount and the time allotted to each.
Continue Reading…
Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:36 am. Add a comment
by Patricia
Most often, discussions about translators’ business models center around the type of clients – direct or agency – and inevitably about rates.
When translators gripe about lousy or falling per word rates, the first advice others give is look for direct clients. That is not the right reason to prefer them and there is no guarantee net income is higher as a result.
Please note that I am referring to professional rates: if a zero follows the comma or period (depending on your country), it is not a professional rate. Also, I am addressing that part of the translation markets (sic) centered on translation as adaptive copywriting (or transcreation, as it is sometimes called), my bailiwick.
A couple of my colleagues posit there should be no difference in the rates charged to direct or agency clients as long as the expertise and service provided are the same. To an extent, I agree with them: why should there be a difference based on who writes your check? But the service is rarely the same: for example, at minima, professional translators pay a proofreader to do a final check before returning work to direct clients while agencies take on that task (do they always?).
Focusing on unit rates for translating instead of the hourly income earned with all aspects of running a business included can distort reality. I’ve not found any statistics on this: based on my experience, I estimate the net income earned by an experienced translator working for agency clients is similar to that earned by a translator working only for direct clients. If anyone has statistics, let me know.
Why, then, would one prefer working for direct clients rather than agencies, given the time it takes to find them, land them, keep them and secure a credible marketing backlog?
It depends on how one is wired up. In companies, some staff prefer to carry out and some prefer to spearhead. The same is true with translators: some draw satisfaction from the security of cruise control — work comes in, you translate it, you send it back, sometimes you receive feedback, you invoice and get paid (ok, I’m simplifying slightly). Even those who prefer that matrix will complain sometimes about “the black hole”: the frustration of not knowing what the end-client thought of their translation or where it ended up.
Others need the buzz that comes from seeking opportunities that allow moving beyond *production* (for lack of a better word) to partner as consultants in a client’s project.
Continue Reading…
Posted 6 months, 4 weeks ago at 6:37 pm. 1 comment
