The Great Translation Rate Conspiracy in France!

The French Society of Translators (SFT) is conducting another of its periodic rate surveys. Although the American ATA treads fearfully in matters of rates, deferring to corporates who prefer to keep everyone in the dark, afraid and focused on more important matters like the Kramer vs. Kramer spectacle of TransPerfect and the latest venture capital conquests of Dopeling's Stormin' CEO, European organizations occasionally pander to the masses like the sleazy socialists we all know them to be and do these surveys that injudiciously gather and publish real data from real translators in inconvenient contradiction to the usefully manufactured figures of the Common Nonsense Advisory which aforementioned corporates employ as their rightful negotiating bludgeon to keep 'em down in The Bulk Market Bog that is the world to all those who think that translation is mostly about proZtitution for the sake of Larry the Language Lizard at thepigturd and other industrial luminaries of word sausage.

The survey from those cheese-eating surrender monkeys includes 25 questions and is expected to take 20 valuable minutes of your time which might be better spent translating political propaganda praising Robert Mugabe for Translators Without Borders for free or registering to pay Lionbridge for the privilege of receiving lowball bulk market offers to churn words into sausage to feed their better bottoms' line.

The survey is open to anyone who can puzzle out its French, and those who foolishly believe in the value of free information in a free society for free-thinking translators to make informed decisions with a knowledge of current compensation statistics can support this leftist plot by clicking the link below and not selflessly sacrificing their futures for the good of their Big Bog betters:

http://sondage.sft.fr/index.php/765913/

Put on the red light at thebigword!

For those of you who thought that "House of the Rising Sun" was an Animals original, think again. It's likely that the song predates the recording of Leadbelly's wife here; the traditions of translation and the often similar business described here go back a long time, and these days, they seem to intersect particularly, particularly if one is "in a relationship" with a large Linguistic Sausage Producers (LSPs) like thebigword, which recently issued one of its periodic demands for translator rate cuts in a year in which record profits were posted and fat bonuses paid (see "Meaty Payday for thebigword Director").

Often when veteran translators gather at conferences, online or even down the road for coffee, the subject of project management quality - or the lack thereof - at companies like thebigword, TransPerfect, Lionbridge et alia comes up. There is a widespread impression that these big agencies hire recent university graduates as staff to recruit, test and manage translators, editors and interpreters for their corporate and government clientele. I cannot count how many times some outraged language service greybeard like me has griped about the stupidity of some PM who is presumed to be not only wet behind the ears but in other ways as well, not having yet graduated from diapers.

I am pleased to report that these assumptions appear to be baseless, at least as far as thebigword is concerned. After a tip from one colleague, I began to research the impressive qualifications of the human interfaces at this LSP using their LinkedIn profiles. Here is some of what I found:

Clearly, the next time I do a translation related to veterinary science or training dogs to track and hunt, I will need to take care, because my work might be reviewed by a volunteer dog handler. And I'm sure that these big sausage shops have the erotica angle covered too.

Reviewing the educational histories of some staff at thebigword who claim to recruit and test translators, I found it interesting to note that university education did not appear to be a job requirement. No matter; I can name two good linguists who never attended university, and I'm sure there must be a third one out there somewhere. With project management skills, of course.

So, dear colleagues and corporate clients, the next time you are frustrated in your dealings with some large translation agency and start to grumble about the qualifications of recent university translation studies graduates, be careful. My initial research shows that you may owe a big apology to some recent grads.



If you are looking for an exit strategy from the bulk market bog, don't let the glass door hit you in the a**e!

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.

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.

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."

Sell like a refugee!

I'm a refugee I suppose: one who fled from the clueless, tone-deaf stupidity of PowerLing as they undermined the marketing efforts of my favorite translation tools company, Atril. I think it's fair to say that a great number of the features which translators appreciate most in the modern generation of translation tools were pioneered in Atril's Déjà Vu, and the creative genius of product development there hasn't dimmed one bit as far as I can see, though the slow pace of implementation did drive me nuts at times for years.

When the sad announcement came that Atril had been taken over by its incompetent marketing partner, I thought that there might be difficult times ahead for the product. I never could have guessed how utterly embarrassing those times could be. Then last year I had the displeasure of sitting through a presentation by a rep of the New French Atril, who made me want to crawl under my chair as I watched some silly green dragon in a childish tale which I suppose was intended to teach us about the evils of SDL and possibly other competitors. Hard to tell what it was about, as it was all rather incomprehensible.

Perhaps incomprehensible is the word I should use to express some of what I think about the recent promotion for World Refugee Day. Or perhaps appalling. A shame, really, that the friend who dined so well on a dead horse by the roadside as she fled from the Russian Army and became a refugee is too far gone with Alzheimer's to take advantage of that great offer. Perhaps an ongoing discount could be offered to all those driven from their native lands who now churn words between languages to earn their bread? I wonder if we'll have another sales promotion to celebrate Եղեռնի զոհերի հիշատակի օր or perhaps the atomic bombing of Japan? Why not if it'll call the world's attention to a great product? Surely the marketing geniuses in Paris can find a way to piggyback on human trafficking for proZtitution and so many other evils that plague today's world. Go for it.

Put on de Red Pee fo da agency

When I received a message from a colleague that ProZ had begun "certifying" translation agencies with the dreaded red Plob, I thought she was joking. There are real certifications for serious businesses, verifying that their documented procedures are orderly and traceable among other things. These include ISO 9001 and EN 15038, and the more ambitious agencies usually seek these because they are required for business with some large clients or RFPs. Surely no serious translation agency would feel the need to be "certified" by The Translation Workhouse with its increasingly debased standards. Well, once again, I have learned that human greed and folly have depths which even my cynicism cannot plumb. If one goes to the ProZ home page but is not logged in, the link to these "certified" proZtitution agencies is visible. I followed it and found a list of corporate members, some well known, some with the Plob.

What, I wonder, is being certified here? I am familiar with ISO 9001 and EN 15038, and I can't really imagine a lot of value that would be added here. But perhapZ the SiteStaff have developed important and relevant criteria, such as testing the timeliness of bank transfers for a specified amount. Both end customers and freelance translators would benefit from knowing that an agency using ProZ has been verified as a registered business with a working bank account.

So KudoZ to the phoax at Ze Zite for distinguishing such select translation service resellers (TSRs) as: