The New England Translators Association stands tall against attacks

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
                                                                           — Martin Niemöller

The New England Translators Association (NETA) has published an open letter of support for Aurora Humaran, president of IAPTI, who is faced with lawsuits against her and her organization in brute violation of her personal freedom of opinion and expression and against IAPTI members as a whole, whose freedom of association has been threatened. Here is the text:

To Aurora Humarán, president of the International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI), from Diana Rhudick, president of the New England Translators Association (NETA), on behalf of the Board of Directors and members of NETA

January 26, 2015

Dear Ms. Humarán:
It has recently come to the attention of NETA’s members that you, as IAPTI’s president, are facing lawsuits for allegedly authoring an anonymous blog post that was critical of a translation agency’s practices and for using social media to circulate it. We have further learned of threats made by this agency to publicize the names of IAPTI members who refuse to disavow support for you as its president and to denounce them personally to other clients for whom they work.
As a fellow association of professional translators and interpreters, NETA is deeply concerned about the dangers that these lawsuits and threats pose to the freedom of expression guaranteed to you, as an individual and as president of IAPTI, and to the freedom of association guaranteed to all of IAPTI’s members. We believe that, more broadly, these dangers represent an affront to the rights of all translators and interpreters to express their opinions, to share information through social media or any other channel, and to associate with their colleagues without fear of retaliation. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines the freedom of opinion and expression, including the circulation of ideas through any media and across any frontier, as well as the freedom of association. NETA condemns all efforts to suppress such freedoms taken by any person, translation agency, or other entity against any translator, interpreter, or the organizations that represent them.
As president of NETA, I therefore wish to affirm our unequivocal support for IAPTI and for you as its president to exercise your legitimate freedoms of association, opinion, and expression without interference, without threats, and without restrictions placed on the venue or medium through which opinions are expressed or circulated. We strongly hope that the lawsuits against you will be promptly dismissed and the threats against IAPTI members will be fully retracted.
Since this is an open letter, we are publicizing it through NETA channels and we invite IAPTI to publicize it through its own channels as it sees fit.

Diana RhudickPresident, New England Translators Association, on behalf of the Board of Directors and NETA Members

The recent deranged attack by a bulk market bogster is part of a long-standing pattern of attacks by self-interested parties from the low-end translation bog and other exploiters and charlatans seeking to sell their sleazy interests to trusting professionals and turn these against their own. I am long familiar with such things myself, for example with the recent threats received, in public and in private from the I Am That I Am of translation, His Hendzelness, for discussing questions about Translators Without Borders and its sometimes dubious practices (more on that to come), questions which may have influenced the resignation of that organization's head as the evidence mounted, but Mr. Chiosso's illegal and unethical campaign aggainst IAPTI's president and its members raises the ante to a new level.

And the silence so far from certain pundits and some other professional associations is deafening.

IAPTI Member Paula Arturo, a translating attorney, has written an post titled "Defamation or Freedomof Expression? Can Translators Share Bad Practices Info Online?". It is worth reading.

I applaud the sound ethical instincts of the New England association, the first to show backbone in standing up beside another organization and its president to prevent cancers like this from spreading. Like the recent action from the ITI in the UK, begun under its former chairman, my esteemed colleague Nick Rosenthal, and which finally resulted in the conviction of a deceiving translation agency operator who defrauded his suppliers - translators - of large sums, this is the sort of thing where we all need to stand against the criminals. Not support and promote such practiceZ as some do.

I took the picture above in a Swiss courtroom a few years ago, where another infamous bogster and defaulter on payments owed to translators sued me for daring to discuss his unethical practices on this blog. The costs awarded to me in that action remain unpaid to this day. But let's hope that the same graphic could be used soon to report the fate of Mr. Chiosso, who most definitely belongs in the dock. And on that day, we shall see who stands for free, honest expression and the rule of law in our societies and who remains... silent.

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.

Lies, damned lies and CSA data baiting

The Common Sense Advisory (CSA) has announced another rates survey for translation providers - would anyone like to hazard a prediction of the results that will be reported?

As a child, I was subjected to the annual school ritual of standardized testing, as most of those who pass through the US school system are. Around the third or fourth grade I noticed something rather odd about the tests. Aside from a puzzling tendency to repeat the same question material from year to year,the answers were often obvious even for questions I didn't understand. My scores on these standardized tests were more a reflection of my memory and ability to perceive bias than they were of any understanding of the subjects tested. The makers of the test had no particular stake in my choice of any given answer; it's just devilishly hard to avoid pushing someone toward what you perceive as the "right answer". Any good teacher knows how hard this is. That's also why we have double-blind testing and other methods in our often unsuccessful attempts to avoid experimental bias.

If honest people have a hard time constructing a valid test or survey, how much harder is it for those who have a particular agenda to do so? Do they even really try? The CSA bills itself as an independent Massachusetts-based market research company ... [which helps] companies profitably grow their international businesses and gain access to new markets and new customers ... [with a] focus ... on assisting ... clients to operationalize, benchmark, optimize, and innovate industry best practices in translation, localization, interpreting, globalization, and internationalization. Wow. Quite an orgy of jargon to describe what many perceive as a predetermined agenda of special interest propaganda. Like the sellers of another Watchtower, in recent years, the CSA appears to offer salvation.

As I'm sure they do. But for whom? I see the CSA quoted most often by industry shills for machine translation, those who follow the old formula of repeating lies often enough that they are eventually taken as gospel. Rates are dropping, rates are dropping say some of the self-selecting four percent who have responded to past CSA surveys. The fact that my own observations confirm at least the German part of the CSA statement that language pairs involving French and German were the only ones to escape substantial price drops is not prima facie evidence that anything else happens to be true or even that my own observation is generally correct for all market subsegments. In fact, some I know would argue that German translation prices have indeed been depressed in recent years. Statistics drawn from a tiny opt-in minority in a survey are simply incapable of offering any real insight into the truth of either undifferentiated statement, and one would have to be foolish or dishonest to maintain otherwise.

Now the CSA has sent out the call for the four percent and perhaps a few more suckers to share their financials, with the support of agency associations such as the Dutch VViN (formerly ATA, the bunch that try to convince translation agencies that they must get on the MT boat or drown with propaganda fests like the conference in Ede in the Netherlands) and others. The current survey is an "honor system" attempt (i.e. unverified, unaudited) to draw out the details of price policies from participants (freelancers and translation agencies are among those targeted - the CSA rejects the definition of an LSP in the EN 15038 standard and applies it only to companies with a certain number of employees). But there is no mechanism to prevent some monkeywrencher from filling the survey out any which way and skewing the results to paint a picture bearing no resemblance to reality. And even if there were, the tiny participants sample is hardly representative of industry trends as a whole. If I were to look for more reliable sources of data, I might start with some of the mandatory reporting data in certain national jurisdictions, such as that gathered in Germany by the Statistisches Bundesamt. Or try something approximating a recognized method of random sampling or introduce some kind of data auditing. If I felt that these data had any more value than to promote a set, self-interested charlatan agenda of machine translation, I might make an effort to gather credible data.

Rate surveys without a particular ideological or commercial agenda from the ITI and IoL in the United Kingdom and the German BDÜ have larger samples of service providers in many languages, and they mostly tell a story of stable or slightly increasing rates for language service providers.

But if I were paid to get results for my co-conspirators....

Just the facts: real rates and earnings of real translators

For several years now, I have published excerpts on quantity and hourly rates from the rate surveys conducted by the German translators and interpreters association BDÜ. These data are quite extensive and available for purchase at a nominal fee. I have found them quite helpful in understanding the relationship of my rates to the qualified market in the German-speaking region of Europe.

Colleagues and clients in other parts of the world have some problems with these data. First of all, they are published in German only, and other than my small translated excerpts I do not believe that they are easily accessible to those without competence in that language. This is too bad, because the publication also contains data for the translation of some languages beside German to and from English, since German clients sometimes use English as the "gateway" language for large, multilingual projects. But another problem that is claimed with regard to the German data is that they are alleged not reflect the market in other western countries. Anecdotal evidence from qualified translators I know who live elsewhere often does not support this assertion, but it is heard often enough from members of the poverty cult and erstwhile bottomfeeding resellers of language services or those without the competence or confidence to package their services at sustainable rates.

Thus I welcomed the news that the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIoL) and Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) in the UK had published a new survey of rates and salaries for translators and interpreters. This 56 page document offers an excellent overview of the current demographics and economics of the markets in which members of those organizations are active. It also includes valuable information on business practices regarding job cancellation, rush work and more.

Altogether 1750 translators and interpreters responded to the survey conducted in 2011, providing an excellent statistical basis for the report. Over 80% of all respondents (male and female) were freelancers, with an average age of 46 years. The age distribution is normal, so the median age (not reported) is around the average. Fifty-four percent reported English as their native tongue or language of habitual use (I like that term!). Seventy-three percent of respondents were UK residents with the rest distributed in Continental Europe and the rest of the world. The median years of experience for freelance and salaried full-time translators was the same (13 years), with slight differences for interpreters (10 and 7 years respectively). One percent of respondents listed "no qualifications", the rest having some sort of relevant degree or certificate/exams.

The median gross income for translation and interpreting, a shockingly low GBP 22,000, was distributed fairly evenly over the range from less than GBP 5,000 per year (pin money for part-timing spouses) to GBP 75,000, with a sharp drop above that and only about 1% reporting a six-figure income. The names of these individuals are a closely guarded secret, and there is probably no truth to rumors that members of the Occupy movement will be setting up camp in their front gardens shortly. A strong majority (80%) reported incomes to be the same as last year or higher, contradicting general mutterings of "plunging rates". Apparently there is indeed a demand for quality despite the reluctance of some talking heads in the MT subsector to admit that such a concept applies to language services.

Over 80% of respondents work for translation brokers, with just under 50% setting their own rates and about 70% arriving at rates by negotiation. So much for the "powerlessness" that is so often cited by the poverty cult when discussing compensation for services.

The report contains a further wealth of data on business practices, CAT tool usage and discounts, voice recognition technology, output and specialties as well as a wealth of information on salaried positions, which might be very valuable for assessing one's own status or reasonable terms for working with others.

The section with translation data for the various language pairs is not as granular as the BDÜ report, which has five client categories. Here the data are simply divided into "direct" and "agency" clients. Comparing the data to those with which I am familiar from the BDÜ survey I note that at the present rates of exchange between the euro and the British pound, the figures are lower than I can usually accept, but they are not nearly as grim as many claim. If the pound rises again, some of these rates could look quite reasonable to those living elsewhere. In interpreting the data for planning in other markets, I might use a different theoretical rate for GBP as I now do for the Australian dollar, which has risen sharply in recent times.

In each category. the highest, lowest and most frequent rates are reported along with the number of respondents, the maximum and the median.

Members of the ITI and CIoL received confidential copies of this report a few weeks ago, and private translators forums have been abuzz with the discussion of its implications. There is indeed much to think about, and the modest price asked by the organizations for a copy is well worth the investment. Non-members can purchase the report for GBP 20.00 by telephoning the ITI office at +44 1908 325250 - payment can be made by debit or credit card over the phone. (Please note that credit cards and non-UK debit cards are subject to a 5% processing fee.)

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

A time for travel

A local friend of mine spends an awful lot of time not being local. That's understandable if you know the clammy cold and icy roads of German winters in Berlin/Brandenburg. I love snow, mind you. It makes it easy to see the boars at midnight even without a full moon, and my dog is very fond of doing snow angels or frosting his beard. But I do get tired of walking like I'm twice my age because I've forgotten the slip-over grippers for my shoes to keep from breaking my legs on the ice and, although I'm not terribly fond of my native region of Southern California, my skin occasionally craves a bit of sun. Probably a Vitamin D thing. In any case, now that I'm getting settled in the Schloss, I've been giving some thought to all the other great places I might be in the coming months. There are some tempting options.

For me, of course, one of the most attractive is a return to Budapest in April. Kilgray is hosting the third memoQfest from April 13 to 15. Rumor has it this year's speakers will include competitors. I hope to see a number of Kilgray competitors at the event; while they are spying out the lead they should follow, I hope they also engage in useful discussions that will lead to better interoperability and results for everyone. How about some open server interfaces to connect with 3rd party clients, huh? Do an SDL server project with a memoQ client, and a memoQ server project with an installation of SDL Trados Studio 20xx. &c. Aside from the mememoQfest simply being a good time, a chance to mingle with interesting colleagues and enjoy wonderful food, Budapest is one of my favorite European cities, and I'll probably pad my trip with a few days on either side of the conference to explore the city and relax.

Despite my skepticism regarding ProZ and its ever-dumber pandering to the clueless masses, the company's conferences and site user organized pow-wows usually afford a good opportunity to meet colleagues and some agency clients, and see interesting cities. I might never have seen Edinburgh otherwise, and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. In May there's a conference planned in Rome, but in what appears to be a spectacular feat of dysfunctional planning, the day after the Rome conference ends, there is another ProZ conference in Cairo. What's with that? It's obvious that someone either thinks there will be little or no overlap in the groups of persons interested, or someone just wasn't thinking. And the big P seems to be somewhat challenged when it comes to the numbering of its events. There seems to be an obsession with everything somehow being the "first". With more than some multiple of ten conferences having been held around the world so far that just seems silly. I'll probably make it to Rome, if only to ditch the conference and go check out the restored ceiling in the Sistine Chapel, which I've been intending to do for so long now that it's probably time for another restoration. But Cairo is just so tempting, especially because I could skip the conference and take some sort of transportation to Luxor and other places that have been on my mind for a good three decades.

The British Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) also has an interesting conference program - er... programme - at the beginning of May in Birmingham. Although somehow the phrase "dark, satanic mills" comes to mind when I hear that city's name, the ITI is quite a respectable organization, better organized (or organised at least) than my own BDÜ and populated by interesting, competent professionals. If I attend that conference, I probably would be tempted to stay and participate and wait until afterward for trout fishing and pub crawls.

And I suppose there are other events in the translating world that may be of interest, which I may stumble upon in due course. One of the wonderful things about this business these days is that one tends to collect clients around the country and abroad, so there are many good reasons and excuses for a road or rail trip.