Drunken monkey needs German to English translator to translate from medieval Czech!

You can always count on ProZ.com, The Translators' Workhouse, for a good laugh. Here is yet another #FAIL by staff to screen job postings properly, with a clueless agency desperately seeking a German to English translator to work on a 9th century Czech document. Best rates only, please!

Such competence speaks for itself and further makes the case for disintermediation. If you want a job done right, go straight to a qualified translator; don't put a put a monkey in the middle.

Dey wanna be like U!

Dear Mr/Ms,

We are a new, aspiring translation and interpreting office at the Munich Zoo. Please visit our web site to get to know us.

We are contacting you today because we might be able to offer you a large assignment for translation or review. We are taking part in a request for tender from the German Federal Ministry of Monkey Business.

If we are awarded the contract we will receive German text of a general political, legal, economic, engineering or scientific character which is to be translated into Englisch. The project is expected to begin at the end of May or beginning of June and must be delivered no later than July 10th. The order will be about 20,000 pages or 5 million words altogether.

Are you generally interested in being part of this project?

One requirement to participate is the use of a CAT tool, because the client will give us a list of terminology. If you do not have your own CAT tool, we can lay you Across our knee and provide you with access to ours.

We offer you a fee of 7 peanuts per word for translation, 3 peanuts per word for review and, for successful contribution to the project, a bunch of ripe bananas and a written reference confirming your successful participation in this big project. Of course your successful collaboration will be followed by offers of many other translation projects ;-)

If you are interested in this assignment we look forward to your positive response. Please submit the attached non-disclosure agreement, signed, no later than April 28, 2014 along with your CV emphasizing your expertise in the subject and a reference list of your customers from the past three years. 

Thank you very much for your understanding and cooperation.

We look forward to your response and the possibility of working together.

Your lingoking Team

Ima Dyantochukup
Crowdmanager

lingoking GmbH

Alas, I had intended to post this opportunity last week in time for hungry colleagues to take advantage, but such is the way of the profession that ones like it will surely come again. If you hang out near the seedy watering holeZ of wordworkers, you may hear these summons to the feeding trough often enough, CALLING ALL TRANSLATORS!!!

The "crowdmanager" title is real. Seriously. I had to wonder what a corporate or government client must think when seeing such a title in the signature of an e-mail with a service quotation. Most of those I have met would rather not have their texts masticated and regurgitated by a crowd and feel that qualifications generally ought to go beyond a CAT tool and opposable thumbs. But then I try to hang out farther up in the rainforest canopy where the branches usually won't support big, fat snakes and other predators.

The request for the list of clients from the past three years is also real. Quite up front, unlike the attempt of the owner of the now-defunct Language Promotion in Zurich to get a list of my clients and their contact details by using a false name and posing as a medical device company prospect with a €50,000 project. But just as sleazy in its own way. Think about it. If I want to be a lazy sneak about my marketing in an area I target, I could post a "potential" job on a translation workhouse board, specifying the desired subject and qualification profile and demanding any number of specific references for past translation work in that area, and I then have a good list with which to begin approaching the clients of these suckers and selling my own services. It happens. There are also frequent enough instances of CVs submitted to fraudulent service providers who then use that information to impersonate translators that one ought to consider how such information should be restricted and protected and whether it should be provided at all. In some cases I may refer someone to a professional association directory or official list of court-sworn translators in which I am listed, where there has already been some rigorous screening of certain qualifications. The occasional suggestions one sees of "profiles" or marketing-oriented qualification summaries rather than a résumé or CV are also worth listening to and considering. I haven't heard a peep of complaint from anyone receiving one of these. It's perfectly legitimate to want to know a bit about the person with whom one intends to do business, and this often covers that need more than adequately.

The above call to swinging translators is also typical of the recurring problem of a great number of unscrupulous language sausage providers (LSPs) suckering translators into providing their details for large EU or other government tenders. These companies often bait and switch, using the records of highly experienced, qualified professionals to get the contract, but with most or all the actual work being done by cheaper and off much less qualified persons willing to accept a handful of shells for their work, the peanuts inside taken to feed the more deserving zookeepers. I'm not saying one should never support a business partner in an RFP, not at all. But be sure that you are really dealing with a partner, and perhaps consider a few terms of your own. Next time I have occasion to chat with a qualified attorney for contract law, I would be curious to see what that individual might think of a binding, signed letter of agreement from an authorized representative guaranteeing a certain volume of business upon the condition of a successful submission for the tender.

Many of these tenders are, I am told, open to individuals or at least smaller organizations, and it might be worth considering submissions with a favored small agency or a team of trusted colleagues rather than support a sausage producer with business goals which may be at odds with values you hold. Information on European public procurement can be found here: http://ted.europa.eu/TED/misc/chooseLanguage.do. Others which may be of interest:

• Directorate General for Translation - Free-lance translators 
• EU DG - Tendering for contracts
• EIB procurement
• Translation services - calls for tenders

(Thank you to colleague Christine Schmit for providing those links!)

Do proZtitutes make translation easier than ever?

It's surprising how some are surprised when certain online language service auction portalZ hit new lowZ all the time. The latest controversy arose when a German colleague clicked an advertising link (ka-ching for the King, more ad revenue) which displayed something like the following:

This took him to the site of a service provider in India offering to convert and machine translate a variety of file types, creating formatted output, and doing OCR conversion for what some might assume were "reasonable" prices. To convert and machine translate about three scanned pages of double-spaced, typed text (about 1000 words) costs a mere USD 7. Ramalamadingdong, what a deal. Let's forget for a moment that OCR is often a no-brainer job with professional or even second-tier OCR software, and Google Translate and other garbage engines are free or nearly so, and let's not even think about potential issues of confidentiality that too many forget to consider. And then, of course, one can ignore the fact that it sometimes helps to understand the language of the text you are converting if there are decisions to be made about blocks and sequences or corrections to deal with.

The German colleague, who runs a small agency, commented that at the rates quoted, he would have done nicely with the 1.2 million words he converted last night. But he was more worried about other things:

I'm not sure I understand the concern with Ze Zite's reputation; in many eyes it has been disreputable for some time now. That ProZ is now advertising services for low-end garbage services like this is hardly much of an insult on top of the record of its past injuries. This is also entirely consistent with phoax at the commercial portal "certifying" bottomscraper agencies and other amusing stunts.

I don't think he has to worry much about Ze Zite trashing his reputation by association. I'm sure, like any good businessperson, he has developed a number of better channels for acquisition and collaboration and prefers to work with professionals.

Some time ago, I wrote about discussions of a "translator's dream site". I had intended to follow this up with a review of various alternatives I have seen develop in recent years. I don't believe that there is one ideal "site" for all needs. Where you troll for quickie assignments might not be where you feel like a serious technical discussion about your CAT tools, and I hope it's not where you would discuss truly sensitive business matters.

Abandoning the illusion that a for-profit portal with a history of exploitation and pandering to interests at odds with those of freelance translators and other small service providers is a good first step.

After that I would look for the right mix of public and private platforms, both virtual and in the real world: local or national translators associations, Yahoogroups and other online list servers, local business associations or organizations associated with your major areas of interest, regular conferences and trade fairs, private online forums - whatever works best for you as you like to work and interact with clients and peers. I won't presume to say how to go about this, as we each have our own unique strengths, and my way might not work well for you. Some days it doesn't even work for me ;-)

I've found that my personal mix of networking at professional conferences and trade fairs of interest to me, Twitter, Facebook groups like Networking Translators (where a lot of German peers seem to congregate in a chaotic cluster), the forum for BDÜ members and the private forum Stridonium give me a richer, more diverse professional experience than one typically enjoys with PrAdZ.

If you want to support a Zite willing to proZtitute itself with any and all promiscuous promoters of Gargled Translation (however well formatted), be my guest. You are free to choose your market segment within the limits of your abilities. But should you opt for the compelling deal from "Imaginary Solutions" to machine translate your texts, I'm sure your competitors will have kind words for you.

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.

TM Follies

A recent comment by Iwan Davies on Twitter revealing a reviewer's rather odd notions of the requirements imposed on translation by the use of a translation memory tool led me to reflect with a friend on some of the very strange and wrong ideas that persist in some minds with regard to such technology. In the case of the twitstream discussion, the reviewer's stupid notion that each segment in a translation must stand on its own without context provoked an interesting flurry of responses, ranging from the astute observation from @PaulAppleyard that "if you wanted to translate segments as 'standalone', then you would work in a random segment file, not a text that flows..." to some rather disturbing remarks from a few to the effect of "this is why I don't like to use such tools". Various people pointed out that modern translation environment tools such as SDL Trados Studio, OmegaT and memoQ make use of context in their translation memories to avoid the problems of more primitive systems which, in the hands of translating monkeys, too often result in matches being used in very inappropriate ways.

The list I could compile of wrong-headed ideas about TMs is a long one, and I would probably only capture ten percent of the foolishness on a lucky day. A few highlights in my memory include:

• A statement by an otherwise respected colleague some years ago that translators must not sacrifice potential "leverage" by combining segments to make sense in the translation. This included cases where someone inserts
  carriage
  returns and line
  breaks into the sentence to
  make it fit in some odd space. In a source language like German, where word order is often very different than in a good English translation, this can quickly pollute a TM to the point of being worst than worthless. This in fact describes the real state of many "promiscuous" agency TMs that I have seen over the years. Fortunately, advanced features in modern translation memories, like memoQ's "TM-driven segmentation" encourage much better practice among smart service providers today.
• The widespread notion that translation memory systems are only useful if one works on repetitive texts. I've got news for you: much of the repetitive stuff was outsourced to King Louie & Co. years ago. And yet I still find great value in working with good TMs. Why? A friend of mine summarized it nicely the other day when she talked about how she spent two hours researching a very obscure term for roadworks equipment in a minor European language: "The next time this comes up, I can find it right away and see the context." Indeed. I am amazed sometimes at the obscure technical terminology that comes out of my personal TM with its 12 year record of my work. Sometimes that amazement is even positive. An hour invested in researching a term and saving it in a TM (or much better: a proper termbase with metadata including domain´, source and examples of use) is probably several more hours saved over the next few years. At least.
• The idea that a translation memory is a reliable source of terminology and obviates the need to create and maintain termbases or proper glossaries. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Particular offenders in this regard are agencies with their brothel-like practices of letting any number of translators screw the end customers' texts. Do a concordance search to find the right term in one of those TMs? Riiiiiiiiiight. Even agencies I've worked with for years who have made a real effort to keep TMs clean can't keep the terms in them on the straight and narrow. And using TMs to replace a real termbase, even a limited one, sacrifices the enormous potential benefits of automated terminology QA procedures offered by some modern translation environments.
• King Louie & Co. as well as many other agencies in the race to the bottom of the quality barrel truly believe that once a good TM has been established by top translators, the second- or third-tier team can take over at lower cost and keep the customer happy. Well... at the moment, the lock on my Volvo's rear hatch is broken. I could get it fixed by a mechanic on Monday, or I could follow my neighbor's suggestion, and just hold it shut with a bungee cord. And the next time a tail light cover gets broken, I could just tape some red or yellow plastic film over it. Replace the hubcap that flew off when I hit that pothole? Naw. But sooner or later, people will notice the difference and draw their own conclusions. Will those be good for business? Can a jobbing student equipped with a good TM really produce the quality of legal translation you can rely on before the court? Trägt er auch 'nen gold'nen Ring, der Affe bleibt....

I have noted over the years, that most of the best clients never ask about translation memories or the tools related to them, even though a good number of them are aware of the technology and many of these use it. But these are the ones who understand that the monkeys who rely slavishly on CAT tools without the use of BAT* too often produce stale, stilted text unsuited for its communication purpose. At best. And all the king's machine translation engines won't change that.

Nonetheless, I believe there is great value for nearly all translators, even "creatives", in using advanced translation environment tools. But that value will not be in the same methods nor in the same features necessarily. Calls to "throw away your TMs" with the introduction of advanced alignment technologies like Kilgray's LiveDocs in memoQ, which allow final edited versions of past documents to be incorporated quickly when a new versions are to be translated, may be a bit premature, but they are often appropriate in my recent experience. And combinations of that with voice recognition technologies, term QA tools and other features offer a wealth of creative possibilities for taking the best and leaving the rest in our quest for better results and working conditions.


* brain-assisted translation

Monkeys in the zoo

Ooh. There were so many little monkeys in the zoo this weekend! And the one was a real genius... I wouldn't be surprised if he manages to break out someday soon. It was in an open area, one of the old brick enclosures. He grabbed this really long stick and kept leaning it against the wall and climbing up it, reaching towards the top. Every time he realized it wasn't high enough, he climbed down again and propped it up higher.


It was hilarious to watch, it was just a shame we couldn't give him a longer stick.
One of the other monkeys was watching for a while and once it got what he was trying, it grabbed its own pole.


:D I wonder whether they'd make it out if they worked together.

-- from a Skype chat with my daughter, a beginning university student in translation studies

Doug McCarthy's recent blog post about the Future of Translation discussion at memoQfest 2011 offered a good perspective worth considering. In particular, I think it is good that he has highlighted once again the problems created in generating translation statistics and carried forward the discussion of what is a fair and appropriate basis for the pricing of translation work. Standardizing these factors or at least approaching them in a more educated, understandable manner, is as important to the future of translators as anything that will happen with technology.

Another point that was raised in the panel discussion in Budapest is that the most important elements of the future in translation are the same as its present and past: the people and their relationships. A vision of the future driven purely by technology is a peek through the gates of Hell. So many of the problems we experience in our society, our professions and our personal lives have their roots in a world where too often in crunching the numbers, we crunch our spirits and those of others as well, and the failed crop is called "progress" by those disconnected from their own humanity.

While I support many of the goals of the No Peanuts movement (linked in my blog roll to the left), I do strongly reject what I often perceive to be the confrontational tone and bad attitude toward agency partners. Now anyone who knows me knows very well that I do not shy from confrontation, but the conflict must make a certain amount of sense for me to engage in it. If someone wants to declare war on the TransPerfects and Lionbridges of the world for their ridiculous practices, abuse of translators' and customers' trust and more, count me in to ship a few boatloads of ammunition. The Quadaffis of the translation markets do not deserve our support. But there are so many others, small and medium-sized agencies, and even a few large ones, who are honest partners working diligently in the interests of both freelance contributors and translation consumers (private individuals or organizations of all sizes), and these we should embrace and support. In our relationships with peers and clients, cooperation and respect are the best modus operandi, and in many cases, it's the only way we'll make it over the walls that keep us from where we want to be.

No Monkeys!

The recent launch of colleague Wendell Ricketts' No Peanuts blog got me thinking. I endorse the basic concept that translators who do decent work deserve a decent living or better yet an indecently good one, but in our discussion of "living wages" and "sustainable fees" let us not forget the elephant in the room... and the monkey riding on its back.

Frankly I wouldn't pay peanuts for some of the work we've been asked to review in the past. I doubt that a bad rate was a primary determinant of the quality in those cases; though a hurried, overworked translator is likely to deliver sub-par translations at least occasionally no matter how good her skills, it's those monkeys banging away at the keyboard on the way to randomly reproducing the works of Willie Shakespeare that do the really spectacular damage. And there are, alas, quite a few of these. It's a scary day when I have to agree with a PM that a machine translation would at least be consistent in its awfulness, but I have more weeks of those days in a year than I have vacation.

So in the spirit of quality, reform and professional development, I urge you all to join the No Monkeys movement. Ours is not an exclusive movement; we welcome even those stricken with Simian Syndrome and support them in their search for a cure. Career change is an obvious step in this direction, and I have long suspected that many of those slaving away at new translations of Dostoevsky would make better plumbers and bricklayers. But for those who have dreamed since childhood of translating corporate financial reports, instructions for use for toothpaste and high school diplomas, I propose a twelve step program for shedding the tail, thinning out the fur and participating in the Ascent of Translators.

1. Acknowledge that you are powerless against Human Stupidity, including your own, and follow the plan of a Higher Power. That HP would be me, so pay attention.
2. Do your homework on sustainable rates, quote them and stick to them. This one is just so basic that you'd think the discussion would have ended long ago. If you think that as a house hubby, student or a reeking rank novice you shouldn't be charging full professional rates, think again. Forget all those whining arguments about undercutting your colleagues by charging less than the typical translator in Peru or Bangladesh. Heck, you might live in those countries for all I know. No, there are better reasons to do this. Greed first of all. Greed is good. Just ask Gordon Gecko. Or your favorite outsourcers. There's also the little matters of self respect (ignore that, it's a vicious myth intended to inspire peasant and worker revolts), the need to pay bills even if the main breadwinner ends up on the dole or worse (on second thought, who needs to eat? lean translation, like lean software development and all the myriad starvation diets are surely healthier alternatives....) and a professional future. If you're not at the top of the game, give yourself a chance to develop and charge a top rate and pay the extra to the best editor willing to overhaul your junk language vehicle and make it run like a well-tuned Ferrari.
3. Do your homework on sustainable rates, quote them and stick to them. Yes, yes I know. This was Step No. 2. It's good that you've noticed; there's hope for evolution. But I'll bet those simian synapses are still not firing fully. Just for fun, take your current rates and double or triple them. If you live in Bangladesh or Peru, please pentuple them at least. Make that the goal for your evolutionary plan and set a date for new clients to pay those rates. Now move the date up by a few years. Try setting it about three months from now.
4. Now think about what you can add in value to your translation and other language service work to achieve those rate goals. What? You lack the education to offer a credible specialty? McDonald's is hiring I hear. Or we can start with an English lesson. If you don't know the word autodidact, look it up and become one. Good translators who get top rates are usually autodidacts, and that club's membership is open to any aspirants. Of course you've already created style guides for your target languages which you share with clients and prospects when planning projects and adjust to fit their interests and specifications. But have you thought about how you might leverage your terminology expertise to squeeze a little extra out of a project, even if it's just extra smiles and warm thoughts of a client looking forward to the next project with you? Do you have a colleague who's a super proofreader or editor and has capacity? Have you made arrangements to join forces for greater client satisfaction?
5. Join a real professional translators' association, and if you don't qualify, figure out how to close the gap and do so. Sure, some of these people are snooty twits who waste far too much energy wishing that it were possible to close off a wide-open profession, and there are just as many clueless newbies (including many with translation degrees) who have never learned how to write an invoice as you'll find on the ProZ forums. By professional association, by the way, i most definitely do not mean public translation portals, even if these do pass out shiny red virtual "pro" badges and the like. Think ATA, ITI, those NAATI Australians, AdÜ, BDÜ, all those French associations that I'll never learn to pronounce or spell or whatever else may be within your reach. It's best if the association offers a member's directory which is popular with local or national businesses looking for a good translator. Oh, you don't want to evolve into a good translator? Like I said, McDonald's is hiring. And that's a disciplined company that might teach you some skills you need to succeed in translation. 
6. Find a mentor. This one is not optional. Most twelve-step programs involve a sponsor, usually one who has struggled with the same issues in the past. In our movement we offer more latitude: you don't have to seek out a recovering monkey as your mentor. You can also work under the watchful eye of someone who got things right the first or second time.
7. Develop your writing skills in your target language. If you think this is for monkey only, think again. If you think you've got this one down, learn more about when to break the rules. But make sure you actually know those rules first and are capable of applying them. Seek lots of feedback from your mentor and other Higher Powers, because it's easy to develop blind spots on this point. How often have I re-read my own texts and thought "quam tauri merda!"?
8. Improve your source language comprehension. Doh. Or maybe not. Those with very long tails may need to brush up on grammar basics, learn about false friends and other beginners' stuff, but for those who are new to the business or are simply thick as bricks with respect to linguistic awareness, it may be important to point out that most authors of texts are not fully in control of the language they write, even if it is presumably their native language. Learn about screwups. Dialect. Guess what? Engineers writing repair manuals in Stuttgart are too often heavily influenced in their writing by the Swabian dialect. You might think of them as linguistic monkeys, but get over it. You have to make something comprehensible out of that mess, preferably something which will keep the client from getting sued very often.
9. Just say no! This one works for drugs, excessive alcohol, extra-marital affairs, the seduction of translating into one's second, third and fourth languages and taking on that extra 20,000 words for the weekend. No is a wonderful word, worth learning in every language, even if you learn nothing else. Can you really, honestly handle the subject and register of the text on offer? Not sure are you? NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!!!!!!!
10. Learn an effective project management system and apply it religiously. This can start with something as simple as the project folder system I developed for myself years ago. It might involve software tools, such as Translation Office 3000 or OTM, but a good spiral-bound notebook with tab dividers or a paper-based organizer or chalkboard on your home office wall or some combination of these and other options might do as well or better. Find a system that works for you and improve it as you make mistakes. That improvement is critical to evolution.
11. Get a good translation environment tool, but understand clearly that it's your brain that does the real work! Even if you have Jurassic aspirations, you can use these tools to filter much of the crap people want translated and put it in a nice format you can handle in any word processor on most any computer platform. MemoQ version 4.2 with its exportable RTF tables for any source file format is a good example of this, but by no means the only useful one. But never forget: a fool with a tool remains a fool and trägt er auch 'n goldn Ring, der Affe bleibt a häßlich Ding.
12. If you can't handle Steps 1 to 11 and anything else necessary to evolve as a translator in the modern world, consider joining a monastery or choosing a different pursuit. Actually, the monks I've known (I used to teach for the Capuchin Franciscans) won't cut you any slack, so think about doing gardening service, cleaning houses, dog sitting or anything else you can enjoy some measure of real success doing. My first choice would be gardening. It's how I earned a lot of my pocket change as a kid and college student, and it gets me out of the house into the sunshine and fresh air. Or the rain, which is also pretty cool for someone who grew up with the perpetual curse of heat and dry, polluted air in the LA basin. I would dearly love to be a professional musician or at least a singer, but I can't carry a tune and Chopsticks is the best I can manage on the finest grand piano, so I'm doomed to pursue the lesser path of the linguist. Any honest work is honorable, even the much-maligned role of the translation project manager or agency owner. (Just be careful not to follow bad examples.) Pursuing something you're not good at and never will be good at is of no sustainable use to anyone. I'm not one of those who believe that translation is an art requiring an artist's talent and temperament; it is a craft with many aspects, at least some of which can be mastered by most people with sufficient basic competence in two languages. But success requires more than just talent or desire. Commitment and right action are absolute fundamentals.

Don't be a monkey!

A new blog has been added to the list of recommendations on the left bar of this one: "No Peanuts!" The genius behind it is our translator colleague Wendell Ricketts whose with and wisdom regarding our profession is surely known to many. I support the goals of this new online forum and have given my permission to Wendell to repost anything he finds relevant. I may make an original contribution there too ocassionally if I find the time, because there are so many reasons why we need to respect ourselves, our colleagues and our clients and charge a fair rate to ensure a secure livelihood and the best results for all. This is often not as easy as it sounds, so I'm sure there will be a lot of discussion there.

See also the related post: No Monkeys!