How tight is your muzzle?

When applied today, the rules conceived to protect the weak from the powerful, provide shelter to multinationals like Capita, SOSi, and LionBridge who take advantage, with the blessing of some of our professional associations, of the legal ban to talk about fees and working conditions of professional interpreters and translators who are forced to negotiate with commercial, not professional, entities who take advantage of any circumstance they can use in their favor. 

But it does not need to be that way....

Read the full text of colleague Tony Rosado's post on the ATA's "revisitation" of its policies on rate discussions, et cetera, here.

Surprises from the IAPTI 2014 conference in Athens

I stopped traveling last year; the stress of dealing with ridiculous airport security and my uncertain resident status in the country of my choice (Portugal, resolved in April of this year) simply were not worth any benefits I could perceive from attending professional events or even visiting family. Thus from autumn last year until spring of this year I battened down the hatches and waited for the weather to change. In that time I declined some seven or eight speaking invitations for language service and technology events, even skipped the memoQfest in Budapest for the first time. My withdrawal from public presence in the world was also facilitated by a growing dissatisfaction with the same old suspects at conferences, saying more or less the same things - often with the same script - and the creeping transformation of these platforms into vehicles for sales and seldom-interesting corporate success stories better read in a brochure or blog post somewhere. Events which were formerly inspiring sources of useful technical and business information had become corporate echo chambers of declining value or simply boringly repetitive. This feeling was shared by others, including one friend organizing premium workshops and conferences who is determined to break the dull mold in which too many events are now set.

I had been aware of the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI) since the organization was founded in 2009, when I was asked to join the ethics committee and declined for lack of time. After that I could not help but note some of its development given how small the world of translation is, but although its ranks grew to include a number of colleagues who have earned my greatest respect for their skills and conduct, some actions like nagging letters to various governments about the shocking situation of native interpreters stranded in conflict zones in Iraq and Afghanistan and the somewhat confused battle over HAMPsTr work made me wonder whether the organization's energies were well-focused. Nonetheless, my ongoing discussions with colleagues in the group made it clear that many of the assertions in strangely biased EU publications, private forum discussions and public media statements by some persons with particular corporate interests were not entirely accurate.

So it was the spirit of investigation which led me to accept the keynote invitation soon after receiving my Portuguese residence approval which gave me a permanent base in a Paradise too often disrespected by the frigid North. It was not entirely unlike my decision to travel often to the old German Democratic Republic many years ago to be a witness to the real conditions there and not rely on the reports and opinions of the ignorant or those with particular political agendas. And the Athens meeting proved to be quite a surprise. An excellent one.

I am reminded time and again how careful we must be of third-hand "knowledge" and impressions formed through social media. As an example, I had certain impressions of a colleague whose social media contributions and mentions I had followed vaguely for four or five years on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and various blogs. I knew this person as a young attorney, recently graduated, of South American origin and bright, but.... Wrong. The colleague in question proved to be a Ph.D. engineer of European (non-Latin) origin with quite a different background and impressive depth for one so young... and who, in fact, proved to be about 15 years older than I thought. I identified a number of other, similar mistakes about colleagues and the IAPTI organization as I took a careful look in the days I was their guest in Athens. And the openness of the organization's officers with details of past events involving ethical positions resolved the last questions I had.

In the past when some friends asked my advice about joining professional organizations, I consistently advised them to focus on the large, established groups such as the ATA, ITI, IoL, SFT, BDÜ, AdÜ Nord, etc. A big part of this is my belief in the concept of "think global, act local". Considering the utter uselessness of organizations like the FIT (an umbrella organization for professional associations whose purpose is unclear even to many of its members), I was highly skeptical of a young "international" organization like IAPTI to exert much real, positive influence on the professional experiences of its members in a way that involvement in local organizations can. In my own primary market (Germany), the BDÜ has put in efforts for resolving problems involving the compensation of court-sworn translators and interpreters which I could never expect from any grouzp spread across the globe. And local meetings, training events, etc. in so many national organizations offer value to new and experienced professionals which I could not really see happening with a group officially domiciled in Argentina, no matter how wide a distribution of local members it claims.

I was, of course, overlooking some obvious parallels, including a certain commercial organization which too often serves interests contrary to the well-being of translating professionals. And when I formed my opinions of the importance of local (national) involvement versus fuzzy-headed internationalism, I had not given full consideration to the growing cross-border nature of the language professions and the need to consider its implications. Nor was I fully aware of the extent of ethical compromises in some of the major professional organizations and the stubborn insistence of some leaders in these to continue to support ethically and morally debased individuals and professional practices, including the unprofessional hampsterization of translation with inappropriate applications of MpT technology. 

What I found in Athens, upon closer examination and many hours of tiring but encouraging discussion, was an organization with clearer concepts than were apparent in much of the public banter and one with an ethical foundation which I believe to be among the soundest I have observed in associations of language service professionals. I still take issue with some thingsa, but these are minor matters, and the willingness of the IAPTI leadership to engage in honest, transparent discussions of differences is very encouraging. One executive at a major translation company commented that I had chosen to speak to "the Shiites" by agreeing to the talk in Athens, which was surely meant to say that I was putting myself in league with crazed fanatics - though if I'm not mistaken, most of the suicide bombers have Sunni ties of some sort. Not a helpful comparison in any case, as even my valued Sunni colleagues are unlikely to blow up anything more than balloons for their kids' birthday celebrations.

This blog has been fairly quiet in recent months because I've been occupied with resettlement on a lovely small farm and various personal arrangements, and I was growing tired of engaging in the same arguments with advocates of inappropriate machine pseudotranslation (MpT) according to the principle of not arguing with fools, because others might be unable to tell the difference. But - despite a rather nasty flu resulting from the stress of travel - I have returned from my time in Athens with more professional inspiration than I have felt in years, which will likely result in a number of blog posts as I examine some of the interesting matters discussed at the second international IAPTI conference in Athens last weekend.

My current understanding of IAPTI is that, despite its relative "youth" (about 5 years of existence), it is a professionally and ethically credible organization worthy of serious attention by translators and interpreters. Unlike some other organizations (such as the ATA) it does not serve multiple masters by trying to include corporate members (my own association, the BDÜ, is also admirable in this regard, allowing only individual membership by qualified translators or interpreters, although these individuals may in fact head translation companies of any size). The concerns of translation companies and related organizations are not de facto in conflict with those of individual service providers, and indeed I have always considered boutique agencies operated by qualified individuals with a good understanding of professional practice to be among the best allies of freelancers. But I think a separation allows for a better focus on the particular needs of each, and those of us with a foot in both worlds are well enough able to follow the paths of personal and organizational growth as we need in these separate organizations.

The level of professionalism and the relevance of the content presented at the IAPTI 2014 conference in Athens frankly blew me away. I cannot say how pleased I was to have delivered the second-worst talk I attended on the first day. I even heard a presentation by a young attorney describing in a carefully limited scope possible approaches to protecting the profession against unqualified and harmful intrusion in the provision of medical and legal translation services. When people start talking about "regulating" the profession of translation, I generally mutter something like "yea, yea, wordworkers of the world unite - fuck you" and excuse myself from a pointless, naive discussion. This guy carefully differentiated areas in which restrictions were both desirable and legally feasible and distanced himself from ridiculous ideas that all of translation itself could or should be restricted by some sort of silly national or international guild.

Most of the presentations were on a much more practical level and would have fit well at any professional event I have attended in the last 15 years. All were presented with a consistent competence and relevance which has been sadly missing at other events. Too much time is wasted at a great number of events, where the purpose of a presentation is clearly sales or bragging about some server integration or corporate success story of limited interest to freelance service providers. Such presentations are not worthless by any means and may indeed be exactly what a corporate department or translation agency manager needs, but often the mix of these with content more focused on individual interests results in a brew which satisfies the legitimate interests of neither group. What I saw in Athens was a conference which was uncut, mainlined nourishment for the interests of individual translators and interpreters without denigrating the interests of others with sound ethics and business practices.

So watch this space... there are many thought-provoking matters from the conference in Athens which I feel are worth discussing on this blog. And based upon my experience I would recommend the next IAPTI conference to any of my professional peers.

See also:

Anmerkungen des Übersetzers: IAPTI 2014 in Athens and the Day After

What I did before, during and after IAPTI’s Conference in Athens: Confessions of a freelance translator/mother-of-two.

IAPTI 2014 Athens tweets "storified"

A post on InGreek Translations

Another translation jobs portal? No thanks.

After I published my recent note on online proZtitution and the race to the bottom on commercial translation portals, I received a polite e-mail from someone who is working to build a better "jobs board" for translation projects. I've received quite a few messages like this in the past four years since I started this blog.

But I fail to see a compelling case for yet another intermediary site for job auctions or anything of that sort.

There is certainly good sense in professional associations with a vetted membership upgrading their directory sites and making them easier for potential clients to find and use, and for some time now I have felt that the leaders of major organizations like the ATA, ITI, IoL, SFT, BDÜ, etc. ought to link their directories and allow better international searches as a counterweight to the less than optimal listings one finds on PrAdZ and other sites.

There's even more sense in individual language service providers improving their online presence in ways that helps prospects find them and recognize a good fit.

The largest commercial portal for translation job auctions has become increasingly irrelevant to all but the low-end commodity market that is probably better off with Gargled Translate given its expectations. The predominance of Indian, Chinese and Eastern European language sausage purveyors (LSPs) on ProZ has driven many serious brokers and service providers elsewhere; a decade ago, even five years ago, a number of interesting inquiries came through that channel, but today they inevitably find me via the BDÜ directory or other channels I more or less control.

So I wish all the aspiring intermediates success with their planned sites and hope they can in fact make a difference in some useful way, but for the most part, translators should look to "home remedies" for curing what may ail their businesses.

Would you certify sewage?

Good afternoon, Mr. Lossner,
   We have received the attached document from a patent attorney. An English translation of it has already been prepared by the attorney's office, but it must be certified. Thus in this case it would be necessary to check it in order to issue the certification.
  Could you please inform us of the cost and time required to certify this translation? The customer has also informed us that there will be further translations in the future, particularly for patents. Thus we would be interested in working together long-term. Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

Best regards,

Your Expert Translation Agency

I always get a sinking feeling when the customer thinks he's able to translate a document himself and get me or some other court-sworn translator to rubber-stamp it as "true and correct". Any certification would require a very careful word-for-word review of the translation, comparing it against the source text. Anything else would be unethical. Of course there are colleagues who don't care about such niceties and send stacks of pre-stamped paper to their agency customers for use with God-only-knows-what-translations. On their heads be it. My stamp and signature put my reputation, such as it is, at stake, and I don't see the need to do that in support of work by King Louie & Co.

In twelve years of commercial translation work, I have yet to see a single patent translation submitted to me for review that could pass without heavy editing. Even the best translators can have a bad day, but it seems that the patent translators some of my clients and prospects use never have a good one. I assume that the translator who did this particular piece of work had just had his dog run over by a steam roller.

The first line gave me a bad premonition of things to come. It started out like this:

Huh? A quick look at the original text revealed the monkey's tail:

OK... well, anyone can substitute a word by accident when distracted, but... the rest of the first paragraph wasn't much better. It read a bit like Tarzan's first, painstaking steps with the English language, learning from picture books and guessing at words. The second paragraph continued the tour de farce:

I'll let you, Dear Reader, take a wild guess at that one. A quick scan at the remaining 13 pages showed the same level of expertise in every paragraph my unfortunate eyes glanced upon.

My response to the inquiry was perhaps less patient than it could have been, but the day was rather a hectic one, and if I am to embark on a long-term collaboration with a service broker, I expect this broker to be able to tell liquid manure from drinking water. I figured it was time for a lesson in colloquial American English, so I opened with

No way, José!

(in normal font color and at ordinary size for courtesy) and suggested that a retranslation of the patent might be advisable, as there was not a single sentence I saw worth recycling as text. Alas, I fear the client prefers British colloquialisms or insists on "saving" money with his fine translation skills, for I heard not a further word in response to my proposal.

I feel sorry for the inventor. The poor fellow put his trust in an attorney who surely is not cheap, and said attorney probably charged him a fortune for that dog's breakfast "translation". In this case, it's obvious that machine translation played no role; Google Translate would have offered an improvement of the mess I was given.

These days, it doesn't take a lot of effort to find a qualified translator to translate a text like this. Professional associations like the BDÜ, ITI, SFT and the ATA offer directories of translators and their special skills or qualifications, including those able to prepare sworn translations. Or there's always Google and relevant keywords. Often, the worst thing that can happen is to put your trust in an attorney or other agent who in turn passes the text elsewhere, and from there on further it goes and ends up with a cranky guy like me who is likely to have a stroke trying to patch the holes in that moldy Swiss cheese.

Those who need translations for important purposes should do themselves a favor by hiring a professional to to a professional job. It's almost always cheaper to get it right the first time.

Finding good translators

Over the past decade I've spent many hundreds of hours helping clients and colleagues find suitable translators to collaborate on their projects, mostly involving German and English, but occasionally venturing into other languages such as French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese or even Vietnamese and Sinhalese. Unfortunately, it can be said that "many are called [translators], but few... [should be] chosen." For various reasons.


In desperation, many turn to public commercial portals such as ProZ aka PrAdZ aka The Translators' Workhouse or perhaps more benign incarnations of the same concept. Some of these pretend to screen "professionals", but as in another old commercial profession, the main criterion in proZtitution is to see if a trick can be turned and a Google Ad dollar made or the like. One of the Zertified Red Pros I've seen on PrAdZ is well known to me from the twenty hours I spent preparing an expert opinion for possible legal action by his client due to gross incompetence and damage to business relations; others are of similar caliber. Yet many translation agencies continue to drink from those soiled troughs, where anyone with an Internet connection and a knowledge of the URL http://translate.google.com/ can hang out a virtual shingle as a translator; occasionally a corporate client unknowingly falls in and drowns as well.

Mind you, there are still a few very good translators to be found in such places, but they are getting fewer and fewer, verra hard tae find. The few grains of wheat are buried in a mountain of chaff and bird dung.

Many clever translation buyers (translation agencies, corporations great and small, law offices, and individuals) know the open secret to finding a better class of translator: professional association directories. Sure, you can find rotten eggs in those nests too, but on the whole, these are far more serious professionals, most of whom actually make a living as translators and perform to standards that will enable to keep them doing so as long as they like. Not the desperate unemployed, the frustrated actors or journalists who can't get enough work to pay the rent, starving studentZ or bored house hubbies.

Where do you find contact lists for these professionals to find the "right" one with the special knowledge you need? Here. I'll keep a running list of professional organizations around the world and links to their online directories. I know only a few myself, because my interests are limited to a few languages and countries; some of these have been kindly provided to me by international professional colleagues who know the organizations intimately and are in some cases involved with running some part of them. If you are looking for competent people, certified or otherwise, these are very good places to start your quest. It is more likely to have a happy end or a happy working relationship for the years ahead.

Note that while I list these organizations by country, most or all have international members and language combinations that go beyond those one might expect from that country, so even if you are in Mexico, it might pay to browse a French directory for a Russian to Italian translator :-)

I'll add listings as I receive them and perhaps a short comment by members I know if they care to share them. When these organizations mention certifications, it means something more than a little red pee.

Australia
AUSIT - home page - online directory search (badly designed form, no specialty selection possible)
NAATI - home page - online directory search (see the note in the comments)
WAITI - home page - online search directory (odd search wizard, no specialties)

Austria
Universitas - home page - online directory search (in German)

Canada
CTTIC - home page
Here there are links to the regional organizations and their directories (print or online). It's a bit fragmented; the group in British Columbia, for example, has separate directories for "certified" and associate members. Too bad they can't offer a nationwide directory in this modern age, but as they say, "seek and ye shall find", and the findings are surely better than what one would typically turn up at a commercial portal without standards.

Finland
SKTL - home page - online directory search (in English)

France
SFT - home page - online directory search (in English here)

Germany
BDÜ - home page (in English here). National scope. The site's programming is primitive (still uses HTML frames!!!), so the directory will have to be accessed from the home page. You can't miss it though: a link with a big magnifying glass at the top of the page and large, bold words that say "search online for interpreters and translators". The cream of the German crop will usually be found here.

ADÜ Nord - home page (in German). More focused on the northern region. The online search form for translators is on the home page, impossible to miss. There are great language service providers to be found here.

VÜD - home page (in German) with an integrated search form for translators and interpreters at the top

Ireland
ITIA - home page - online search form

Italy
AITI - home page - online directory search (mostly in Italian, unfortunately - appalling, incomplete localization)

Netherlands
NGTV - home page - online directory (unfortunately all in Dutch still; I really expect less parochialism from my colleagues there! Still, this is a good place to find quality)

Bureau Wbtv - home page - online register search for sworn and certified translators(in English)

New Zealand


NZSTI - home page with a search box at the top 


Spain


Asetrad - home page - online search with specialties (in English)
MET - home page - online search (this organization includes language specialists for all aspects of English) 
APTIC - home page - online search - the English pages for the association of translators working with Catalan


Sweden
SFÖ - home page with online search form by language combination & subject (in English)
Kammarkollegiet (authorized translators) - info page - online directory search (in English)


Switzerland
ASTTI - home page - online directory (the links here are to German pages, but the site is available in Italian and French as well)

United Kingdom
ITI - home page - unfortunately, these Brits are just as primitive with their HTML site structure, so the online directory must be accessed in a frame on the home page. Still, the link is at the top of the page and easy to find, and there are a lot of excellent translators to be found here.

IoL - home page - online directory

USA
ATA - home page - online directory search