Taking the trash out of trashlation in translation

Let’s be real, people. We need to start using the word trashlation to describe what too often passes for professional activity in the language services sector these days.

I’m looking at all of you DeepL fans among others.   And especially the LSPs who try to sell that garbage or other post-edited spew as translation. Such nonsense is seldom fit for purpose, and when I am not bent over the Porcelain God in “prayer”, I am always reminded of Mark Twain’s comment that the difference between something “close” to the right word and the right word itself is akin to the difference between a lightning bug and lightning. I would suggest that in some cases the consequential difference could be compared to being strapped to the electric chair for execution as opposed to watching the Natural magnificence of a lightning storm.

Recently, a German publisher sent me a very interesting file containing a table with the original German text in the first column, a post-edited DeepL result by a German who has lived abroad for some decades in the second column, in a third the post-edited result from an American living in Germany, and in the fourth column the results of some beta program called DeepL Write, yet another iteration of all of this AI trash the fanboys and -girls all declare will replace human writing efforts. Although I prefer to be left out of any discussions whatsoever involving the linguistic quality of MT output, the submitter seemed pleased by what he saw and insisted on having my opinion. So I gave it to him. Unfiltered.   I suggested leaving me alone with that nonsense, and said I considered all of it to be hopeless trash. Actually, I might have been harsher than that, as I don't consider that sort of “writing“ acceptable or in any way fit for purpose, any purpose with which I'll be associated. It is physically painful for me to look at verbal garbage like that. I would rather stick my nose in a garbage can full of rotting meat and inhale deeply. The original German text was not bad, and it deserved real translation like someone I recommended could provide for that subject matter.

In a long consulting gig in the second half of 2022, which ended only in April of this year, I had a very close look at how badly the commercial models of translation service offered by most agencies are broken, badly, badly broken. Years of social engineering propaganda by unscrupulous promotors of machine translation and artificial "intelligence" have skewed expectations badly so that if the buyer is lucky the "best" service might be "good enough", though barely.

Project managers at agencies tell me of their soul-crushing duty to force ever lower rates on those external providers of translation services who typically do the real work sold as the agency's deceptive product. All the while, charts and graphs and other "quality metrics" tell the fairy story of superior delivery.

It's time for individuals providing independent services to take a different approach. Let the linguistic sausage providers (aka LSPs) eat their own product. Take the trash out of trashlation.

Of course there has been a lot of talk for years about the need to find more direct clients. Most conferences for translators have at least one presentation on this topic. But many of the recommended practices are dated or have become less effective as LSPs providing trashlation have increasingly gamed the search algorithms to make their pages appear to be those of independent individual providers, and then once there the buyer is treated to lies and distortions suggesting that they may be better off with the superior "full service" of the agency. Very few of the claims on such pages reflect actual practice, something I know very well as an insider providing technical assistance to companies for a very long time.

I have also read suggestions recently that search engine optimization (SEO) strategies may soon be a dead letter. Why? Companies developing search engines are rushing to implement large language model (LLM) functionality, such as that found in ChatGPT, any many expect that to blow the algorithm gaming strategy to Hell, negating much of the investments companies and individuals have made to increase the visibility of their web sites and the services offered there.

I don't know, really, what disintermediation strategies might be most effective these days, but at the very least individual traders should examine alternative representation strategies. I saw an interesting one recently on Fiverr, a platform I remembered only for the idiotic idea that every service should cost $5. Well, that has apparently changed.

Although their presentations were often far from a perfect, translators offering services on those platforms are able to structure the "gigs" in such a way that buyers can easily specify relevant conditions, such as project scope, urgency, etc. And service providers can avoid overbooking by applying various kinds of throttles based on order volume. Extra services, such as multiple revisions, project glossaries and many other extras I have marketing over the years are a snap to set up.

In fact, I was so impressed by what I saw that I am considering to create special services for some of the routine technical services I provide for translation workflow training videos, custom import filters, regex tools to translation and text QA, etc. Frequently, more of my time is spent gathering information on a client's requirements than I actually spend providing the implementable result. The flexible FAQ functions, intake questionnaire, portfolio and communication tools look like they can be a huge time-saver.

Compared to what I saw on Fiverr and a few similar, huge volume platforms, the structure of platforms like ProZ-dot-com and Translator's Café definitely look "last century". The times they are a-changin' and maybe we should be too in the platforms we use to promote services that our potential clients need.

Games agencies play, Part 1: "basic information" for Google searches

The other day a fellow freelancer called me up, irate to learn that a translation agency owner in her country had appropriated one of her ideas and literally taken her words from an online interview to represent his services as something they probably are not.

This started quite a discussion about some of the tactics we and others have observed in the trench warfare being waged for business in some segments of the market. It's not often I see egregious cases of plagiarism like the one I was shown two days ago, but there are plenty of sneaky moves and not-so-sneaky ones employed to try to get those little prospect fish in a world wide net online.

So I've decided to offer a little "series" featuring a few of these tactics and how freelancers might respond appropriately to them to promote their own business and support the real interests of translation consumers in an ethical way. And maybe we'll find a few candidates for the Hall of Shame on our tour.

In Twitspace and in my YouTube content research, I have encountered quite a number of pages, video clips and other material describing basic concepts of translation technology or translation processes, such as translation memory, terminology mining and management, etc. Rarely these are quite good presentations of academic value, which are prepared by knowledgeable colleagues or university instructors, and which are so clearly presented that I am pleased to share them with my clients and others when they are needed. More often these are superficial overviews stuffed with keywords, which communicate too little of the real information needed to assess a technology and its relevance to certain types of problems. Some of the self-serving crap I've seen on YouTube by agency representatives pushing their services is so bad that I'm sure their competitors must smile. What are they trying to accomplish?

Quite a number of different things most likely. Being noticed first by potential prospects searching for information is certainly high on the list for some. Influencing the discussion of certain technologies and approaches to translation is probably another goal of the more clever content presenters and one which freelance service providers should consider.

I am not going to give links to any of these pages I've found. Today's gem - "Guide to Translation Memory (TM)" - found on a US agency site, is fairly typical. It's superficial, but not particularly toxic, but it really makes no useful contribution to helping clients understand the advantages and limits of translation memories. The description of fuzzy matching is actually wrong in some contexts and by no means describes what a fuzzy match might be in some major translation environment tools.

But as more translators discuss their tools and working methods (which may or may not interest translation buyers and consumers), a lot of jargon gets used without adequate definition or appropriate references to consult for more information. And important concepts related to the limitations and risks of these technologies or their most appropriate uses are also very often missing.

A good response to this on our own freelance business web pages would be to present such information on secondary pages of our own sites or provide links to balanced, reputable information sources that can help our clients deal confidently with the concepts if they have an interest in them and avoid some of the traps. Linking good information pages on association web sites, university information pages or even Wikipedia may also help to raise the ranking of these pages and bury the SEO spammers in agencies or propaganda organizations like TAUS or the CSA in the far-back pages of a search where they belong. If an agency like Lionbridge, TransPerfect, thepigturd and others offers such "infopages", for God's sake don't be stupid enough to link them or tweet them; there are more ethical alternatives to be found for sharing such information.

I'm not calling for a boycott of any page associated with a translation agency. There are plenty of good ones out there with highly knowledgeable people who should be the first stop to find information on some topics. There was a guide to preparing source documents for optimal translation prepared by a small agency in Australia years ago; its original link is dead now unfortunately, but I would add the new one to a page of mine without hesitation, and if the author draws in a little extra business for that, I consider it a well-earned reward for sharing his hard-won expertise. But pages like the Guide cited above offer no real expertise; they are just more spam in a too-polluted online world.

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.

We are the wind beneath their wings

I've been translating now for some 35 years, though the first two decades and a bit more I did so to support my personal interests and research rather than to pay my way. But I've had a close eye on many developments in the profession since my student days, when I dabbled in Russian to German translation and a bit of Sumerian, and later, when I was married to a sometime translator, I watched as technology began to have a greater impact on the profession. I can even plead guilty to having introduced modern computer-aided translation technology to an unsuspecting corporate translation department, which was dissolved about a year later as the company realized that outsourcing kept the translators on their toes and prevented some too-frequent abuses.

There are many advantages to having an in-house translation team. Those who are part of one or who have one in their organization can likely cite these better than I can. One of the greatest advantages I see is continuity: the translators and editors know the products and the people who create them and usually use terminology more appropriately and represent product characteristics more accurately. Let's not talk about the horrors of L2 translation (into one's second, third or fourth language) imposed by management that often does not understand linguistic competence and how best to use it in the corporate interest.

Some understand these matters, at least in principle, and rely on experts to guide and support them. For a very long time, translation agencies have been part of this network of experts. There are good ones and bad ones, and I have known very many good ones, and I continue to support some of these as a translator and consultant. But the raw truth is that most of the time, using a translation agency is a poor substitute for the relationship needed to sustain or even enhance one's foreign language communication. And many of my experiences in the past few years lead me to the conclusion that even the best agencies as they are now operated are not in their clients' best interests.

I think that Once Upon A Time the translation business was relatively straightforward and did not challenge the business skills of many translators and agency operators much. There were - and continue to be - great inefficiencies, but in the manure of that inefficiency a good amount of healthy expertise flourished and nourished those who called on our profession for assistance. Expectations were perhaps often lower (at least with regard to schedules) and I imagine they were often exceeded. Perhaps not; old hands can enlighten me.

Now, however, one sees a commoditization of our "product" - expression in other languages and cultural contexts - and a widening gap between the linguistic "haves" and "have nots". Experienced agencies whose management has usually long since ceased to live from their personal labor of words have jettisoned in-house translation competence and rely on a juggled network of external language service providers (often referred to as freelancers) to do the work as young, inexperienced clerks shuffle schedules, quote projects by outdated and/or inaccurate means and off-load anything requiring technical competence to other "departments" or the external translators themselves.

It's a dirty secret that the pool of truly good translators and revisers is very limited in many specialties, even in the most common language pairs. Or at least the pool from which dozens or hundreds or even thousands of agencies draw is very small. Many of us have been asked to revise our own work by an agency which was not contracted for the original translation. Conversations with agency owners and product managers in organizations with high standards reveal time and again that they use the same list of a half dozen or fewer people for their best work involving law and science. So even if you, the corporate translation consumer or private individual with translation needs, choose the best agencies around, there is absolutely no guarantee that they will get the best translators for you. In fact, very often your work will be auctioned off on public sites like human exports from Africa used to be about two centuries ago, or it is pandered in mass mailings and given to "first response linguists" who might be good at some things but not at yours.

What can be done about this? A lot actually. Most of us wouldn't think of relying on streetwalkers for our social support and personal health, and building a relationship with linguists who will loyally and competently provide you with the best service you can hope for is easier than you might imagine. It starts by finding and connecting with the right people. And understanding the fair value for the services you require.

The mangled words in the picture above were photographed on the wall of an exhibitor's booth at the recent Security trade fair in Essen. I had my camera with me and, as I walked the floor with my copywriting partner, I could have taken similarly appalling photos at nearly every display in nine full exhibition halls. Some of these were the result of in-house "expertise"; many were the unhappy result of being serviced by agencies and their outcall "translators". Imagine the damage to corporate images!

There is a reason why premium freelance language service providers like Chris Durban have long passed cent per word benchmarks for piece rate translation that many of the better agencies consider unachievable and why others I know charge on a schedule similar to a good attorney. This is because smart companies and individuals understand that good communication is critical to surviving a difficult market.

After the day at the trade fair, I talked to an agency friend who told me how happy his end client (who exhibited there) was with recent work I had provided, how much better the service was than anything the company had received before. Small mis-steps like giving earlier projects to a cheaper, less experienced translator after I had helped to acquire the client in the first place (and been promised the business into English) were forgotten. And I imagine that future relations with this valuable manufacturer of high quality safety equipment will soar as they should with a competent team. When I spoke to a freelance copywriter later and told her how, in the current market, I often have a picture in my head of many good translation agencies as biplanes, trailing a bit of smoke and losing altitude, coming close to the trees or to crashing into a hillside. Then they are borne up suddenly with an updraft of air, a competent translation or revision from a skilled linguist with an understanding of the field and a sensitivity to the psychological nuances of words. They rise and fly safely for a while until once again that saving wind is needed. She thought about that image, and about her future, and told me "This draught of air isn't drafting any more."

Are professional organizations worth the bother?

There are two broad categories of professional organizations potentially of interest to language professionals such as interpreters and translators: those which are intended specifically for providers of language services, such as freelance translator and interpreters, and those which are not. The latter, which would include chambers of commerce, business clubs, technical societies such as the American Chemical Society and so on are clearly of great value. They are a means to stay abreast of new developments in areas of interest (perhaps an earlier profession) and perhaps to meet potential direct clients.

What about the other kind, professional associations for editors, translators, interpreters, terminologists and other language-slinging rabble? Well, as one reader from Putinland commented on my post about finding good translators, she saw no single benefit to her membership in that country's largest translators' association. She was aghast at the idea that someone might cancel a ProZ membership, because she assumed that corporate clients would not look for professionals but instead would only work with agencies, and these agencies in turn would cast their nets at The Translators Workhouse. (I looked up Cravy's profile at The Workhouse and when I saw the wealth of information there, it was hard to imagine how agencies would not be dueling each other for the opportunity to offer her work. But that is not the right profile - see the comments. That is an ongoing problem with ProZ and other portals - anyone can set up a profile under nearly any name or pseudonym, with no verification that the person behind the registered e-mail address is real. This is why the portals are often playgrounds for scamsters.)

Fortunately, the real world isn't quite as Dickensian as that, though perhaps a bit darker and more Satanic at the wordface in some parts of the world. But King Henry's sockpuppet is partly right: all organizations are not created equal. They exist in a particular social context of the countries in which their members live or do business, and they are very much dependent on the efforts of their members.

The professional translators' organization of which I am a member, the German BDÜ, can be a real mixed bag at times; one fellow I know who places enormous value on professional conduct quit his local chapter in disgust a few years ago, referring to it as the Hessian Housewives' Association. Since then, however, he has come back and contributed to the serious business focus of his state chapter, and across Germany the organization offers first-rate continuing education seminars, free legal counseling, affordable liability insurance, an excellent private forum for members to exchange information and job requests, a superb online search tool for translators and their specialties and more. To say that I get my money's worth out of membership would be a huge understatement. I don't have to like everything the BDÜ does, but I applaud a great deal of it.

As I was compiling the list of professional organizations for freelance translators and interpreters which provide online search tools for potential clients to find a service provider, I was a little shocked at how parochial and unprofessional some of these venerable organizations appear on the Internet sites. In a discussion of that list on a private site, one colleague commented that it is a shame there isn't some sort of meta search engine to serve up the data from a great number of professional sites around the globe. I'm not really sure that would be a good thing if it were possible, and a quick look at the search tools for a few of the association sites quickly makes it clear that a programmer attempting such a task would soon turn to the bottle. There is no consistency at all in the lists of specialties used; some organizations simply list members in a given region with no statement of the types of text they feel they are fit to translate. Appalling.

I think that attracting an international clientele is important to many translators in this age; for those living in countries with developing economies, this is one of the keys to the best rates. But in order to do that, it is necessary to offer the site in languages which are probably understood by potential international clients. The Germans do it. So do the French. The Swiss and Italian associations I looked at failed this test. If you are a member of a professional association for language service providers, has your association given due attention to this point? If not, get out the thumbscrews or find and organization that does. (That's called "voting with your feet", an option familiar enough to some who live in parts of the world where that is the only effective vote.)

Linking online search engines for the associations would require using the same list of specialties or at least subsets thereof to be effective. But what chance of that is there with an organization that feels it is important to list beekeeping but nothing to do with chemistry or chemical technology? Quite a lot, I'm sure. Unifying and merging search tools might be a good project for groups like the Canadian umbrella organization I listed. I was not happy to see that I would have to go to each individual state organization to do my search. Really!

This is the 21st century, but some organizations for language specialists seem to be stuck in the 19th. The disorganization one can see in some areas, even in developed countries where one might expect better, make it obvious why even a highly flawed commercial portal that many serious professionals avoid like herpes can be a "success". But fortunately, there are some organizations, big ones, that get it and offer a hunting ground that is generally happier than the portalZ with their spotty or non-existent identity verifications for members and silly aliases. Mind you, I eventually adopted an alias myself on ProZ, but that was to avoid having information I wanted to present about myself or my business get buried in spammy pages repeating my commentary for Tamil, Swahili, Tagalog, Urdu and other languages at the center of the world stage.

So are these professional organizations for language service providers such as freelance translators, interpreters and editors worthwhile? Definitely. If you choose the right one.

German BDÜ plans to publish directory of translators for technical documentation

I received the following notice (edited slightly here) describing an offer open to all BDÜ members.

Nach dem Erfolg der "Exotenliste" in den vergangenen Jahren und der im vergangenen Jahr erstmals herausgegebenen "Fachliste Medizin, Medizintechnik und Pharmazie" planen wir, nun erstmals auch eine bundesweite Liste von Übersetzern für das Gebiet "Technische Dokumentation" herauszugeben.

Diese "Fachliste Technische Dokumentation" wird von der BDÜ Weiterbildungs- und Fachverlagsgesellschaft mbH (vormals BDÜ Service GmbH) verlegt und soll in gedruckter Form als Beilage zur Fachzeitschrift "Technische Kommunikation" (Herausgeber Tekom, Auflage 9.500 Exemplare) verbreitet werden. Zusätzlich soll die "Fachliste Technische Dokumentation" in den "VDI-Nachrichten" beworben und auf der BDÜ Homepage zum Download bereitgestellt werden.
Die Liste wird - nach Sprachen sortiert - die Kontaktdaten qualifizierter Übersetzer in Deutschland enthalten, mit Angabe der jeweiligen technischen Fachgebiete und Unterlagenarten. Es werden bis zu neun technische Fachgebiete in die Liste übernommen. Wir wissen, dass viele Kollegen - wahrscheinlich auch Sie - in den letzten Jahren Zeit und Geld in einschlägige Weiterbildungsseminare investiert haben. Ein Eintrag in die "Fachliste Technische Dokumentation" bietet Ihnen nun mit geringem Aufwand die Möglichkeit zur gezielten Akquisition neuer Kunden in diesem Bereich. Die Eintragung steht nur den BDÜ-Mitgliedern offen, die - wie Sie - ein technisches Fachgebiet in der Mitgliederdatenbank angegeben haben.

Ihren Eintrag können Sie ab sofort über www.bdue.de/techdokliste zu einer Eintragungsgebühr in Höhe von EUR 70,00 zzgl. MwSt. pro Sprache bestellen (siehe Link auf der Startseite von MeinBDÜ). Die Eintragungsfrist für die "Fachliste Technische Dokumentation 2011" endet am 06.05.2011. Die "Fachliste Technische Dokumentation" für das Jahr 2011 soll im Juli 2011 erscheinen und jährlich neu aufgelegt werden. Die Kosten für Herstellung und Versand der Fachliste werden mit den Gebühren für die Eintragung finanziert.

Da die Liste erst dann erstellt wird, wenn mindestens 300 Einträge zusammenkommen, erhalten Sie auch erst dann Ihre Rechnung für die Eintragungsgebühr. Die Anzahl der Eintragungen ist aus versandtechnischen Gründen zunächst auf 400 begrenzt. Alle darüber hinausgehenden Eintragungswünsche werden zunächst auf eine Warteliste gesetzt und dann bei Fertigstellung der Liste je nach tatsächlicher Kapazität der Liste übernommen. Wenn Sie sich Ihren Platz auf der "Fachliste Technische Dokumentation" sichern möchten, sollten Sie also rasch Ihren Eintrag buchen.
Wir würden uns freuen, wenn dieses neue Angebot des BDÜ auf Ihr Interesse stößt!

Questions can be directed to service@bdue.de. 

Who's afraid of the big, bad MT post-editing job?

Still somewhat groggy without my third double espresso eggnog latté of the morning, I was woken up quickly by an interesting tweet from Andrew Bell, curator of the translator's social network The Watercooler. It pointed to a PDF file with eight slides summarizing the results of a global TAUS survey on MT post-editing by translation agencies.

The data are interesting and could be spun quite a number of ways. There were altogether 75 respondents out of God-and-TAUS-know-how-many-approached. I presume the latter figure was mentioned in the live presentation. About half of these actually provide such services to their clientele. Given all the talk about MT and "our" post-editing future, what fraction of business do you expect this activity to represent among the respondents? For 86% it was less than 10% of current revenue. I'm guessing much less. A mere 1.8% reported in the 26 to 50% range and none above that. Reality Check #1. The tsunami of MT hasn't hit the profession, nor do the waters appear to be retreating at the beaches. So don't head for the hills just yet. I assume that a certain company which MT'd and post-edited some fifty kazillion Wikipedia articles into Thai was among the respondents, and even that visionary firm didn't break 50% for MT-postedit revenues. So, people, there probably is other work out there in at least the near future.

Reality Check #2: The majority of respondents also reported little or no increase in such business in the past year. Most (75%) of the "post-editors" are in fact part of the regular stables of translators at these agencies, but I suspect these workhorses are those unable to digest better feed and make more than horseshit out of it. Or they are starving. Or a bit adventurously masochistic and can't find where they left the cuffs and leather whip.

If you want to surf the MT-postedit wavelet, do so by all means. It could be an interesting diversion, and as in with any path taken in life, I expect you'll meet some people, possibly even ones worth knowing. But if this isn't your sport, don't think you're doomed to starvation and oblivion.

I don't know how large the total market is for my German to English translation pair, much less for any other combination. An estimate of 100 million euros would be far too low based on a quick napkin calculation of how many translators it supports and what they probably earn on average. Some billions I expect. In any case, even in a relatively small "market" for a common language, a translator would need to capture only a miniscule fraction of the business to make a moderate to good living. I suspect that even our blogging overworked American translator serves somewhat less than 0.001% of the German to English market. The line between starvation and survival and between survival and prosperity is not drawn by the available volumes in the FIGES markets nor even really by the average rates charged in them. Nor by skill as a translator beyond a certain reasonable standard to be expected in a particular discipline.

If you want to earn "enough" as a freelance translator in major language pairs and avoid the ball-and-chain future of an MT posteditor, and you have sufficient linguistic and personal skills to avoid embarrassing yourself or anyone who recommends you, getting "there" is mostly a matter of organization, discipline, initiative and a good service attitude. My attitude is mostly bad, and I still do OK. And I strive to improve that attitude by shooting and skinning pigs instead of customers that may appear to share some of their characteristics. Find a way to get the message of fair service to those who need it and you'll have the freedom to worry about other things, like if the apple grafts in the garden will take. If you're clueless as to what to do, I can't help you. But I can offer you a link to 25 things translators should never do.

Take out the garbage!

We all need to do it once in a while so the house doesn't stink too badly. The same goes for online information: the accumulation of stale, irrelevant, obsolete and undesirable infotrash that accumulates really stinks after a while, and I don't imagine it's particularly helpful to one's "professional brand". Before the beginning of this year I had a sense of nagging irritation about outdated profile information on various portals where I had once registered and then forgotten because they were of little or no value. Worse yet in my mind are the portals that "register" me without my permission, having scraped the data from elsewhere. Social media sometimes remind me of a social disease with their harmful promiscuity of errors and obsolete data.

But the worst offender, as it turned out, was ProZ.com. The portal is very good at getting its content indexed by Google; for years this was a real advantage to me, because it made my CV and my profile prominently visible in various relevant online searches and brought in a lot of interesting project queries. Then I started participating more in the forums several years ago as part of a research effort on common software user habits and problems, and things began to get out of hand. The first time I really became conscious of the amount of garbage tagged with my name which ProZ spread on the Internet was when an old friend tried to look me up on Google and found that my name autocompleted almost as soon as he started typing my surname. There were nearly 60,000 Google hits associated with my name! That seemed excessive, even for a compulsive blogger and commentator like me. Then I had a look at the individual entries and noticed that the same forum posts were being indexed separately for a zillion languages. Korean. Hungarian. Estonian. And so on. The information I wanted people to find about me was being buried in a huge pile of virtual trash. I felt I had to take action.

Although for years I had made it a point to use my real name on the public portals, because a serious business person does not hide behind aliases in my opinion, I promptly changed the name displayed for my ProZ profile from "Kevin Lossner" to "KSL Berlin". There were other reasons for doing this, but the main motivation was to take out the trash and give "real" information more visibility. My real name is still displayed on my profile and CV there, which are the main areas of interest for me. I would recommend a similar approach to all those who maintain profiles on that site and wants to avoid having their online information buried in irrelevancy. Now the 60,000 hits have dropped to under 9,000, most of which are old forum contributions where someone quoted me or referred to me by name. Although to judge by the recent unexplained imposition of vetting on my PrAdZ posts I'm persona non grata there, staff have not yet done me the favor of expunging my name from the electronic records as good Stalinists might do with history books.

After the "purge", my Google record is more or less as I would like it. Of the top the hits today, there are really only two that I don't feel belong there, from a "bingmusic" and a "pipl" site that seem to have lifted data without permission. Most of the hits in the first few pages point to reasonably current, relevant professional information.

If you haven't done a "health check" on the online results list for searches with your name, I encourage you to do so, and if you find a lot of unhelpful stuff in the most prominent hits, think about how you might change that.

Life beyond Mordor

One Site to rule them all, One Site to find them,
One Site to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
On the Portal of PrADs where the Shadows lie.

Let's get one thing straight: Henry Dotterer is not the Dark Lord however much some of his staff and a few incompetent moderators like to play Nazgûl. And however much weak-willed translators feel that He holds sway over their lives. But when yesterday it seemed that my business web site and e-mail had disappeared into the Mines of Moria and been eaten by a balrog, I realized that the time has come perhaps to cast the last boat off to other shores. The fact that ProZ apparently had no emergency plan to respond to a failure of its hosting servers and that it took many hours after the initial posts in the ProZ forums indicated that there was a problem is somewhat disturbing. For several years now, I have experienced intermittent problems with mail service on my domain hosted by ProZ, and although this often resulted in the loss of service for specific e-mail addresses which could last up to days (while other addresses on the same domain worked fine), my generally busy life and inertia have conspired to keep my business hosted there. This obviously cannot continue given the further weaknesses now revealed in the system. My brother experienced a similar mail issue recently on another domain I own which is handled by Hosting Matters, and the matter was resolved within an hour. I suppose that's the difference between pros and amateurZ.

Still, there is economically redeeming value for some at The Translation Workhouse, even if the moderator purges and overzealous hypermoderation in the past year have diminished the socially redeeming value somewhat. Community is where you find it, and these days, the community of translators which developed over a decade at ProZ is mostly found elsewhere. The site retains considerable entertainment value if you are fond of historical philosophy and economics as I am (particularly Hobbes and Malthus and their relevance to the "translation industry"), and I still get contacted by the occasional really cool client via my profile. Now that the troublemakers have moved on to other pastures, I am comforted by the predictable litany of complaints about low rates, trouble with SDL Trados Studio 2009, difficulties understanding PDF and even greater difficulties understanding basic business issues like how to write an invoice. Which you can do, of course, with the handy-dandy invoicing tool on the site ("Trust in me, just in me...."). There are some who don't have an issue with waking up in a snake's belly some day. I'll stick to Translation Office 3000 or other solutions, thank you.

Today I got a call from a friend in another country who has relied on PrADs up to now for nearly all her marketing, and she is one of the crowd who have long bought into the KudoZ game to position themselves in the search engine rankings. Her language pair is now beginning to experience the same politics and discord that I have heard of with Chinese and other languages, she's being virtually "stalked" by some nutcase who compulsively disagrees with her answers, she has been reprimanded for being "aggressive" by answering with a smiley, etc. Like many others, she was worried about how to work within that system, "fix" it, make it more "fair" and so on. Ain't gonna happen. Life's unfair, and you're even more unfair to yourself if you rely on a single platform for your livelihood. That's just as stupid, really, as relying on a single client. Spread your risk!

My advice was to move beyond Mordor, let the orcs squabble among themselves and create your own platform for expression and advertising. If you are a Latvian legal translator, for example, frustrated with idiotic KudoZ answers that are chosen over your correct ones, don't eat yourself up with frustration. Rejoice at the opportunity. Start a blog about legal terminology in Latvian, and highlight correct solutions, warn of possible mistranslations, publish brief reviews of special vocabulary for various legal sub-areas, etc. Show that you are an expert in a public forum that is well indexed by search engines, and a better class of clients will find you. Your bank manager will love you for it even if your psychiatrist will miss those weekly sessions. Other translators will love you. One guy did something like this for Swiss legal German and its English equivalents, and although I'm not gay, I'm tempted to kiss him. Swiss German can be a real challenge at times, and there are few good references. Can you say the same about specialties of yours in your language pairs? Yes? Then be the standard for reference!

Listening to Jeffrey

I'm a big believer in interdisciplinary principles. General education. Cross-fertilization. Recently I had a very disappointing conversation with a bright 16-year old planning to go to the university next year, who informed me that German education was superior because no time was "wasted" on general education and there was far greater rigor in the individual disciplines. Right. I suppose that's why the "best" university in Germany is ranked something like #65 in the world. And why objective studies place the country nowhere near the top of the European scale.

Germany has a lot to offer. And there are many brilliant, creative Germans in academia, industry and elsewhere whose contributions will stand up to those of any others. But I could probably say the same for Iran. The stars here, as in most places, do not draw their experience and ideas from one well; instead they synthesize information from many sources and look for underlying, general principles which often apply across disciplines.

Often, translators are far too insular. We spend our days with translations. We talk to translation clients about translations. Agencies about translations and translating. Colleagues - the same. I'm sure some of our pets are damned sick of hearing about Trados. (Yes, Astrid and Russell, I can say damned and even make it red, bold and italic here ;-)

Some of my translating colleagues - successful ones generally - draw their business inspiration from many sources, most of them having nothing to do with translation when taken at face value. But these smart people understand that the principles of general education apply throughout a lifetime and are usually the basis for success. That's why so often you'll find the English major with eclectic minors and broad general education in the board room raking in the multi-million dollar salary while the specialist Ph.D. labors unloved and unnoticed in the lab. I've been there and seen it in action at Avery and elsewhere. That's reality in the professional world, and the "nerd" who makes it to the top probably has a lot more on his shelf than the engineering degree would suggest.

This long, dull pontification is my silly way of leading up to a recommendation for a man who is on my list of must-read inspiration sources. If I met Jeffrey Gitomer in person I might have to step out for air after ten minutes. Maybe not. Sharp sales types get on my nerves big-time, unless they are 100% genuine, like a certain ex-decathlete sales and marketing executive I know who cares more about the well-being of his customers and his family than he does about making a sale. He is, of course, superbly successful, and he sleeps well at night with a good conscience. Mr. Gitomer is the author of a number of books on selling and related topics, none of which I have read, though perhaps I should some day. What I do read, however, is his weekly newsletter with advice on how to meet the challenges of selling. Lately - not surprisingly - his emphasis has been on how to survive and thrive when so many do not in the current economy. On the lower left side of the home page of his frighteningly bright web site, you can subscribe to his Sales Caffeine newsletter. Some days it is really a major jolt of java.

Mr. Gitomer makes a very real impression. At least the advice he dispenses fits with the experience (good and bad) I've gathered over the years, and his suggestions for doing better are plausible. Some are dead obvious, but many are not. A lot of what he says is directly applicable to the freelance translating professional, even though his main audience is very obviously salaried salesmen and -women. Ditto for agencies looking to save their businesses. This weeks's jolt is titled "Take a Internet lesson from the big companies. Don't do it their way." Gotta love it. Don't let the screwed up indefinite article upset you, my pedantic peers, the man is sharing the wealth there, and you'd be fools not to fill a sack or two before you move on.

Four months of Twitter

Last May I finally decided to become a tweeter on Twitter (or a twit some might contend). Four months on, my use and perceptions of that medium have changed little. I follow few and am overwhelmed by those feeds , so I simply can't imagine how anyone following hundreds can pan the gold out of all the mud. Major filtering tools I suppose. However, I am finding it an interesting channel of communication, particularly with colleagues and strangers who go light on the self-promotion and details of when they take showers and point me to interesting resources. I also appreciate the pointers to news I might otherwise miss.

It's a medium that is clearly abused by some. I killed one feed, because the woman writing it seemed to be intent on retyping an entire book of crappy aphorisms. Multilingual feeds in languages that I don't understand are occasionally frustrating (and I'm sure some reading my feed feel that way about my German tweets), but it's also fun to puzzle out the odd tidbit of Portuguese or Italian with no pressure. Lately I've been getting spammed by "nice" girls offering themselves for sale, and I wish I knew a way to block nonsense like that and not restrict others with reasonable intentions.

On the whole I think that Twitter has been a worthwhile addition to my communication toolset. I'm not sure where else I could get a bunch of good, fresh tips on children's book reviews and publishing like Carsten Peters (calutateo) provides or follow the tasteful reading lists of others. Since I'm not selling anything at this point (plans for a technical book have been delayed indefinitely due to surprise developments in the technology in the past year), I can't confirm or refute any of the claims of Twitter's importance for marketing, and I really don't care about that point. I'd rather trade work philosophy one-liners with colleagues, point to useful sources for self-education and have a bit of fun.

Tweet, tweet, chirp chirp

When I logged in for my daily dose of Doonesbury today, I found Roland Hedley tweeting away with important messages for his follower base about the impending dismissal of his houseboy and whatnot. A few months ago I wouldn't have understood the joke; now I'm part of it. In February, my colleagues the Jenner sisters (Twin Translations) put a post on their blog about having joined Stephen Fry and other celebrities on Twitter. I was rather skeptical about the whole thing, being inclined to agree that this Web 2.0 "phenomenon" was blogging for those with ADHD. Recent endorsements by The Petshop Boys haven't done a lot to persuade me otherwise.

So why am I now GermanENTrans on Twitter? Rather often I've had short bits of news that I wanted to post to my blog, where there was neither good reason, nor sufficient information, nor time to make a "normal" post. A bunch of one-liners for stuff that might be valid for a limited time only would look really silly in the main text. Other thoughts also played a role, like being able to communicate availability or the lack thereof without logging in to and updating a dozen agency calendars (I'm asked to do this, but I ignore it, because it's an unreasonable waste of time I don't have).

Currently I'm only "following" a few people on Twitter, and I'm quite overwhelmed trying to keep track of that limited data feed. I don't send it to my mobile phone or any such thing, because the constant interruptions would be as bad as telephones that never stop ringing I think. I just log into my page once a day or so and scan for interesting tidbits. As you can see from looking on the left column of this blog, I feed my twitter posts to my translation blog, thus achieving exactly what I wanted in the first place: passing on short bits of information on (mostly) translation-related topics in an efficient, timely manner. Since I expect to have a lot of short messages regarding dog stuff in the future, I'll probably do a separate Twitter ID for that. I don't think there are a lot of translators out there interested in laying blood trails through the woods or dummy training.

At the ProZ powwow in Berlin recently, I met quite a number of other translators who have made Twitter part of their personal and professional communication toolset, including a number of old fogeys like myself. That's where I heard about hash tags and a number of other "insider tips" for the first time.

So is Twitter the crest of the wave of the future? I don't know and I don't care. It's accomplishing the limited result I want from it now with no bother, and that's good enough for me.

Which 95% are you?

Something a lot of freelance translators (and perhaps a few agency folks) don't like to think about is the sales role of our chosen profession. Or if we think about it, we do so from a perspective that is not necessarily productive on any time scale you care to choose. Once in a while I find it useful to look "outside the box" of translation and see what those in other fields have to say about selling products and services and consider if any of it is relevant to my situation. Some time ago I became aware of Jeffrey Gitomer through another translator's blog. In some ways he seems just the kind of guy to raise my blood pressure and make me want to retire to a quiet, tenured teaching job somewhere. Over the top colors in his promo material, graphics in your face and fairly hardcore hype right up front. I can just see most of my translating colleagues run screaming from this.

Their loss. Some time ago I subscribed to his "Sales Caffeine" newsletter, which often makes a rather overcaffeinated impression. But when I manage to quiet my sensitive artist's nerves and look past the obnoxious graphics and the fact that much of the content is aimed at staff salesfolk, there is a lot of useful stuff left lying around for the likes of me to pick up. Often it's just reminders of things I learned long ago in sales training with Apple Computer or observations I've made in my own businesses over the years. But known or not, his tips are often good reminders of things I ought to do to improve my ways of doing business as a translator and consultant.

Jeffrey's latest article, "The 95/95 proposition" emphasizes once again the importance of structuring your marketing efforts so customers contact you rather than you spend your time chasing them with cold calls, Dear John mailings, etc. That is a goal that cannot be emphasized enough for people in our business, which is why advice to improve one's online presence is so valuable. It does indeed draw business over time if done right, and having the service requests come to you put you in a better position for negotiation. If your online presence draws only bad requests from cheap time-wasters, take a careful look at it. Statements about "competitive prices" signal a willingness to work for peanuts or sacrifice quality for price. Comments like "Holder of in with top grades" on your home page might not interest a customer who is more interested in sound experience and the quality of your work than what your GPA was 20 years ago.

If you want to catch a certain kind of fish, you have to bait the hook correctly: present the value your ideal customer is looking for and eventually customers of that type will come to you. Like Jeffrey says in his article: there are two 95% selling scenarios. Which one do you want?

Talking about what works

Having grown somewhat tired of online discussion threads in which worried translators resonate with each other over their concerns about the world economy and their extra capacity in the past months, weeks, day or even hours in a manner all too reminiscent of the wind and the former Tacoma Narrows Bridge, I decided to start a discussion on ProZ.com regarding what seems to be the reasons for the continued success of some translators in difficult times. Some of the reactions are to be expected, including the objections of some who find the idea of discussing anything but trouble offensive or who think that success is all a matter of "luck", but there have been some rather interesting points raised, and I'm curious to see how the discussion develops. I've gleaned a number of useful ideas from the responses, which I'll be thinking about in the weeks to come.

Some people appear more interested in sympathy rather than solutions, which is, of course, understandable. But sympathy won't pay the electric bill. The public woe-is-me routine also exposes the individuals involved and others to a greater likelihood of disrespect and exploitation by present and prospective clients. Some clients have already tried to put the thumbscrews on translators in interesting ways; one I found especially "entertaining" was a claim by an agency in Europe that many translators had volunteered lower rates because of the "crisis" and more should follow suit. No comment on that one except to say that if anyone wants to negotiate a lower rate for my electric bill, a lower interest rate on my mortgage and other loans, lower prices for the same quality of vegetable and meat and... well, that will be enough I suppose... I will give that person some super-favorable rates and probably a big bouquet of flowers as well. For all others, I'll just offer my best work at a fair rate.

I am in a very fortunate situation so far. I have a language pair with a huge demand, I have in-demand specialties that represent a big chunk of my host country's industry, and I live in a country where my source language is the official language. Not everyone enjoys these advantages, so I find it entirely plausible that some very good translators who have been successful for years and have reasonably good business models (for the past at least) are experiencing difficulty now, even if I see no evidence of trouble in my own situation. Anyone can be caught off guard by events - in recent months, the "experts" have ended up with egg on their faces too often to count. Discussions of "fault" are really beside the point, though analyses of why certain difficulties may exist or how they might be addressed are entirely relevant. And whether "fault" is a word you want to use if nothing changes is something I'll leave up to you, Dear Reader. But I am rather fond of the saying that "a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing all the time and expecting a different result." If the old ways don't work in the new world situation, obviously one needs to find new ways that do. It's so obvious that it would be insulting to say it if so many people were not too dense or insecure to accept that basic principle.

I'm a really big believer in Darwinism as some may realize from another rant here. But I don't subscribe to the so-called Social Darwinist views of some who have a rather different view of human evolution and survival. I think it is important to note that human populations stayed rather small through most of our evolutionary history. Life was not only nasty, brutish and short, but the scope of social contact was rather limited. Only when humans began to organize into larger groups were significant improvements in wealth, living standards and life expectancy achieved. Cooperation and specialization made survival possible on a scale that was unprecedented in earlier hundreds of millenia of human history.

Translators would be well advised to leverage these Darwinist principles and engage in behaviors that promote their survival and well-being, by cooperation, information sharing and positive mutual support which includes looking for new ways to cooperate with and support clients to help buffer them against potential trouble. Let's skip the destructive discussions, and for those who really insist that public breast-beating sessions about how desperate their situations are (which, of course can be and are being read by clients), I would like to remind them that rope is cheap, but cooperation and adaptation have a better future.

The Wealthy Freelancer

It's been another one of those weeks where I've had too much to do translating and writing bills as well as frittering my time away arguing with frivolous Frenchmen in public forums. (One of these days I'll let the prophets of doom drown in their own self-pity, but I dislike the fact that they distract innocent novices from focusing on necessary skills to survive as freelance translators.)

However, I have had a bit of time to explore, and while doing so I discovered a real gem: "The Wealthy Freelancer", a blog for advice on successful freelance careers. I hate the title of the blog, and it really doesn't seem to have much to do with the actual content. The title sounds like some sleazy "get rich quick" promotion or maybe something creepy and Amway-like, but the posts have a lot of sound advice. The comments are very good too, at least those I've seen are. Check it out! (It will go into my list of recommended blogs visible here.)

Social media marketing

After a recent discussion on Corinne McKay's blog Thoughts on Translation regarding the utility of LinkedIn for translators, I've been giving some thought to my approach to that platform as well as Xing and a few others. The only environment of this sort where I have invested any serious effort over the years is the translator's portal ProZ, where I have established some very satisfying client and colleague relationships. However, one seldom encounters people from outside the translation profession there; to develop one's direct client base through online networking other approaches are needed. So when I found a reference to a list of 42 free e-books covering various topics for social media marketing I was rather pleased. The post is in German, but most of these works are in English, and it's easy enough for those without German skills to scroll through the list and download titles that may be useful.

Sad Sack Sam strikes again!

Many translators wonder why they have a hard time acquiring and keeping customers. For those with basically good linguistic skills, a little business education can go a long way. In rare cases, perhaps the only hope lies with psychopharmacology. Susanne Aldridge called attention to a rather disturbing mail exchange between a translator and his prospect posted on a German marketing blog. The original post is here.

I've put this post under the keyword "marketing", because the approach of this self-designated translator is, of course, a fine example of what not to do. His behavior is so extreme that the point is obvious, but in some cases I see others encouraging practices that might in many cases prove counterproductive. There are so many good ways to build one's business, so why waste time spamming "prospects" and chasing after clients who aren't in a desirable market segment. Too many do, but now of course, their excuse for failure will be the Great Worldwide Financial Crisis. Hey, your crisis is my opportunity!

Postscriptum:

I seldom make changes to old posts; for better or worse I let them stand unless the information is completely outdated and a possible source of technical trouble. In this particular case, however, I've made an exception after receiving 14 e-mails (and still counting) from a deeply disturbed individual with bizarre obsessions involving sex, baldness, Scottish water creatures and scatology. This is, unfortunately, the typical operating mode for this individual, who has made a number of bizarre attacks on clients of mine over the years and has apparently been stalking one colleague on XING for weeks now. His example is more valuable than his name, which appears to be known to all, as he is one of the most dedicated spammers of agency lists that I have ever heard of. The recipients of his mail are, alas, not as open to business as might be wished, so I passed on an opportunity which he surely deserves and wished him Godspeed.

In contrast to cases like the Great Snake, there are no specific warnings required here; the warning is writ large in every communication with this individual with Braille subtitles for those who can't trust their eyes.

Here's a truly unique approach to marketing from which we can all derive some good laughs. Now go and market otherwise.

Edited comment:

Sonja said...

Oh yes, I've seen this mail exchange and found it rather embarrassing. It does cast a negative light on all translators but then we cannot be held responsible for somebody else's mental state, can we? What strikes me as odd is that is still in business after so many years, and apparently so many years in trouble. How come natural selection hasn't worked here?

NordicTrans hits the bottom

Our colleague Jeff Whittaker was kind enough to draw attention to a press release announcing new, low prices from NordicTrans in response to the current economic crisis. Very interesting.

There are many ways to process that information. I could call the company an opportunistic bottom feeder for offering translation at below what I do (given today's exchange rate with the euro) when including proofreading by a second native speaker, but since I doubt that the quality a big agency can deliver at that price will every be any threat to me, I won't. For those translators who think that the sky is falling and prices with it, I'll agree that this is probably sound evidence of that: it's hard to afford a monkey at three cents a word when you're only grossing eighteen cents. Mistresses and Maseratis ain't cheap, and I for one am not about to give up my hard-earned profits to the undeserving just because they can't afford their winter heating bills. That would be bad business.

In any case, according to the press release, this represents the bottom of the scale pretty much. I do know of a few kitchen table wannabe agencies that charge about the same (well, a bit higher usually, given the exchange rate), maybe even a few pennies less in some extreme cases. But indeed, this is more or less rock bottom I think. Those who are a few levels down on the outsourcing food chain should think about this and consider it carefully in their "marketing strategies".

No mercy for PDF jobs!

I'm always amazed at the BOHICA attitude of many translators and agencies when it comes to PDF documents submitted for translation. As we all know, these usually involve considerably more effort to produce a document which often falls short of the original in terms of the quality of its layout or other factors. I've addressed this issue in the past by lecturing on handling PDF documents at conference in Berlin together with an expert on the subject, the German/Swedish/English translator Peter Linton, as well as publishing a short article on including OCR in one's business model and providing some guidelines for post-OCR workflow and QA that cover PDF and other formats.

To many people in our industry are hesitant to charge for the real nuisance involved in working with PDF documents of all kind, and they do end customers a great disservice by not educating them in the fact that PDF is not a valid format for translation. The number of ignorant queries from translators in online forums asking how to use Trados on PDF files indicates that this lack of knowledge is probably pandemic in some parts of our industry as well.

Aside from the fact that I have added many additional thousands of euros to our revenues for conversion work I had to do anyway simply by charging normal hourly rates for the effort, there is another big advantage to insisting on significant PDF surcharges (10 to 25% in my case). When the client knows exactly how much more a PDF job will cost, the "missing" original document in MS Word or other usable formats is often miraculously found. This happened to me again this morning. Last night I informed an outsourcer than an OCR conversion would take several days and cost at least an extra 400 euros, and this morning - wonder of wonders! - her client managed to find the original file, saving everyone much hassle and allowing those involved in the project to get started right away. A meek acceptance of the format without insisting on an extra charge would not have led to the result, and in a document with very complex tables, the end result for a team project with a tight deadline would have been a real disaster.

Quotes to support your marketing

Tonight I found another technique for adding to one's marketing portfolio which I found rather inspiring. Katalin Horvath McClure, a Japanese/Hungarian/English translator did something rather clever on her ProZ profile. She asked her clients various questions like "why did you pick me?" or "how did you find me?" and posted a couple of nice answers that are basically good plugs for her services. This is a nice variation on posting spontaneously received feedback (usually good) and trying to fish for such feedback (bad karma in my opinion).

This question technique of hers could be a good way of getting nice quotes to add to your web site or marketing brochures. It's useful to ask such questions even if you don't want to use the information this way; I get a lot of contacts, but the callers or persons sending e-mail often do not tell me where my contact information was obtained. I like to know this, because it gives me a hint about what means of "spreading the word" are working and which ones are not.