The "Revision Club"

Colleague Simon Berrill, who works from Catalan, Spanish and French into English, writes a rather thoughtful blog which I have enjoyed very much in recent months. His latest post, "Better Together", describes a rather interesting mutual review arrangement, a linguists' triangle, which I thing could be an interesting and beneficial thing for translators at any stage of their careers.

The particular arrangement between Simon and his revision partners, Tim and Victoria, is striking for me because of its flexibility and the fact that it is not linked to specific work assignments. My first thought while reading his post was something like "Gee, I could really benefit from something like this!", and my mind began to drift to all of the interesting things that could be learned in a swap like this with the right people.

No more spoilers... go read the post yourselves and comment there. Thank you, Simon, for another thought-provoking contribution.

Time-saving tip: the DELETE key!

As one who clings stubbornly to the notion of value in a "personal touch" for business communication, I found this colleague's suggestion that using the name of your target might indeed be important. In this age of HAMPsTr'ized workflows in the Bulk Market Bog inhabited by Luigi & Co., when flexibility for bottom-feeding agencies means suggesting yoga lessons so translators can bend over farther, I do agree that if you ask people to work for peanuts you should at least ask them using their actual names.

I do, however, appreciate very much the consideration shown in many of these inquiries, which ask me to quote my best rate. As a memory aid, I have put the highest rate I have been paid onto a Post-It note on my auxiliary monitor to remind myself that I can certainly do better than that. So each time one of these silly requests comes along now, I up the ante and double down... or just hit DELETE and spend my time instead on the numerous serious business partners in the queue.

Survey for legal translators

Juliette Scott, author of the legal translation blog From Words to Deeds, is conducting a confidential survey of legal translators as part of her thesis research. It took me less than 10 minutes to respond to the questions, some of which I found to be useful reminders of some issues I have intended to address with a few clients for some time.

If you consider yourself a legal translator, please have a look at the survey and help her research:

http://protra.wufoo.com/forms/legal-translators-how-are-you-briefed/

(link corrected!!!)

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.

Miguel Llorens RIP

I just learned that we have lost a colleague I very much looked forward to meeting next week for the first time. Miguel Llorens passed away about two weeks ago. His blog had been silent since mid-August and nothing had been seen from him on Twitter since the beginning of this month. Quite unusual for a man who readily and frequently shared his insight and wit on many relevant controversies in our profession.

We who are his peers in the profession can never know the loss of this man as his family and friends surely do, but I saw him as a man of integrity who did not hesitate to call out naked emperors and other charlatans, and he often did so with a razor wit and a depth of analysis that I cannot match on my best days. He entertained me, he informed me, and he often inspired me. He was a man worth knowing.

Farewell, Miguel. Vaya con Dios.

Free online tutorials for English translation from Birbeck College

English legal translator Juliette Scott recently posted an article on her blog for legal translators about a free opportunity offered by Birbeck College, University of London, for those interested in translation into English from Arabic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. The non-interactive tutorials offer the opportunity to translate various sorts of texts, then compare one's work with annotated reference translations. This would seem to be a useful tool for self-assessment and learning for those considering work in translation or for experienced translators who enjoy seeing how others approach a text. I've copied the relevant FAQ from the Birbeck site below, with a link to all the FAQs in the first line and in the graphic above.

*******

FAQs VI: The Online Programme

• VI-Q1. How do I qualify to take the online programme?
  VI-A1. The online courses are open to anyone who is eligible on the grounds of being both a native Anglophone and having another language (or languages) at an advanced level.
• VI-Q2. How many of the online courses can I take?
  VI-A2. You may take as many as you are qualified for (and can thus benefit from).
• VI-Q3. How can I register to take the online programme?
  VI-A3. By emailing useyourcontact@bbk.ac.uk
• VI-Q4. What does each course consist of?
  VI-A4. Each course consists of: nine passages of 350-500 words each (of different types: three literary prose texts, three journalistic texts and three specialist texts in academic fields) which you will be able to download and work on and of nine ‘annotated translations’ by the tutors, giving comments/reasons for possible translation choices, which you should consult only after you have completed your own attempt at the text.
• VI-Q5. Is the online course interactive?
  VI-A5. No. To get the most out of these courses, you should download and work on each text in your own time, then look carefully at the ‘annotated text’ for it, learning from the comments provided by the tutor before you attempt the next one.
• VI-Q6. Will the nine texts be at increasing levels of difficulty?
  VI-A6. Not necessarily. They are selected to give maximum range and maximum kinds of translation challenge.
• VI-Q7. How can I give feedback on the online courses?
  VI-A7. All those taking an online course will be required to complete a feedback form when they have completed a course. This is both to help us test and enhance our provision and also to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme when we report to our funders. Also, when you first register, you will need to complete a form giving basic information (your name, contact details, affiliation, nationality etc). This is to help us accumulate statistics for our report to our funders.
• VI-Q8. Do the online courses only run at certain times, or have to be done within a certain timespan?
  VI-A8. No; because they are non-interactive, you can do them at any pace and at any time to suit you.

Ask not what your professional site can do for you....

A recent thread on ProZ asked the question "What would your dream translators' website provide?" That's a question with which quite a few have struggled in recent years. And it's one which I suspect is difficult to answer with a single platform or format.

What is a "translators' website" in the sense discussed in the thread? Many things potentially. I think the definition could be applied fairly to online discussions such as mailserve lists or Yahoogroups forums, various Facebook pages with ongoing professional discussions, private forums for professional associations such as the ATA or BDÜ, refuges out of the reach of search engines for private discussions and terminology advice between colleagues and the whole lot of marketplace portals with their often frustrating mix of useful features and slave auction or red light district character.

The simple fact that this discussion began on the world's largest translation-related portal, a virtual workhouse known not only for the repressive policies of its management but also for its residual usefulness as a repository of contact information for translators with obscure language combinations and the breadth of its offerings to an estimated 20,000 paying members indicates clearly that what is lacking is not definable in a set of specifications for development.

Is a jobs board critical to the theoretical dream site? I think not. Some of the most useful and successful sites I know have none such, and the professionals who spend their time there are familiar enough with how to market themselves. Even those new to the profession would benefit more in the long run from interacting with experienced colleagues in the forums of professional associations and engaging in mentorship programs such as that of the ITI in the UK than they would from years turning tricks in the linguistic alleys of Argentina, New York and Ukraine. Mind you, there is a lot of interesting experience to be gained in those alleys, but the good life and sunny meadows of the profession are elsewhere. The noise level of frustrated newbies - crying over a broken Crados project or asking what information is needed on an invoice and how to set a rate for a job (often after the translation has been delivered!) - is deafening.

So what is the ideal translators' website? I can only answer that question for myself. Your answer may be very different and is just as valid if you are speaking of your own needs. But one principle does seem to apply: the best sites will likely not be free (good programming isn't cheap), and the hidden costs of the ones that are might be considerable. Technical maintenance of a good web-based platform is not trivial; as a former software developer with experience in web development, I would not dare to "diss" the skills required to develop and maintain a site like ProZ or even a much simpler one. No matter how good the team, there will always be glitches to cope with as browser technology evolves or hackers develop new strategies to steal our data and identities.

A recent advertisement I received from a commercial portal struck me by how very much it and other commercial portals are aimed at people with a consumer mentality. The advert even offered “prizes” for becoming a paid member. Reminded me too much of virtual bread and circuses. But as with most aspects of life, the greatest satisfaction is not to be found in consumption, but rather in contribution to a community. If you want to find your perfect site, you must contribute to its creation and evolution. Add value to your translators’ site as you are able, and you will likely find much more in return,

The very public character of the professional lives some of us lead can be a real problem. I've had my identity hijacked twice that I know of off the ProZ site (though the problems were handled quite satisfactorily by the management once the scope of things became clear), and until I began using a pseudonym there, the amount of search index spam created by the site's language instance strategy (indexing every page in every language one can think of regardless of what language the content is actually written in) was drowning out more important information I tried to make available on the web. I've seen stolen resumés re-used with other names and other mis-use of data.

Public discussions can also be good... or rather bad... for business. Some of those who vent about a particular client might not be aware that said client monitors their posts on ProZ or Twitter. I say some rather tactless things in public, but I do so with a full awareness of where those words might be read. Not everyone thinks about this. Or they think about it a lot and fear to ask for help when they need it or offer a suggestion, because they don't want to look "stupid". So really, privacy would seem to be important.

Privacy is one of the features of my professional association's member site (mein.bdue.de). And of many others. But in a large organization like the BDÜ (about 7000 members I think), the volume of traffic can be overwhelming. I'm not a guy for big parties and noisy events - my hearing difficulties usually cause me to seek a quiet place where I can have an enriching discussion with a limited circle of very good people. I do the same for the translators' sites that get most of my attention.

It's important for me to keep an overview and not feel like I'm lost in a crowd at the circus. Important to know whom I communicate with and that this person is worthy of respect for his or her character and professional competence. Important to know that the discussions I have with these people stay private or in a limited circle of our choosing. While this can probably be done ad hoc in some way with Google+ (if you feel you can trust Google Not To Be Evil), I like the structure of a programmed site. I need discussion forums with a decent structure and usable search function, and I need a means of seeking and offering help on critical terminology issues completely out of the reach of Google and Bing or other indexing services. This is not completely achievable using the social network sites with which I am familiar.
 
As professionals engaged in an activity which often requires a great breadth of knowledge, research skills and access, we will never find everything we need in one place. But if we have one place, one good place, where we can share our questions and ideas securely and respectfully, it may be easier to find those many other places when we need them.

Some of what we seek in online platforms may really be better found in the physical world. I have found that all the webinars and podcasts I have heard seldom reach me as well as personal attendance at a conference lecture or local workshop. Discussions at my monthly Stammtisch are usually more enriching than threads on a discussion board, and the food shared at the table beats an apple and coffee at my desk. Of course I can’t be everywhere with all those with whom I would like to share my professional life, but I probably could be in more places and be better for it.

Nonetheless, the online world has become a critical element in the lives of a great many translators, and this dependency will most likely increase in the years ahead. So some thought – and action – regarding the kinds of translators’ sites  we need is worth the investment in our futures.

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.

A ♥ for Language Blogs

Judy and Dagmar Jenner, the translating twins behind the Translation Times blog, recently suggested that fellow language bloggers post a list of their "ten favorite" language-related blogs and offered their own favorites. I find it hard to pick ten since there are quite a number in the two languages I read well which I enjoy for diverse reasons, but since the motivation behind the suggestion is to give exposure to interesting writing which might otherwise be overlooked, I shall deliberately omit any favorites I have found posted elsewhere under this title to date. Except Mox's Blog, which I described in a recent post. That brilliant little strip about our profession can be considered necessary comic therapy for any serious translator who reads English and deserves all the promotion it gets and more. Here are my recommendations for eleven (well, twelve actually, or a lucky 13 counting Mox) interesting, unique language blogs in German and English, grouped by language:

German

• 300 words by Susanne Schmidt-Wussow (@frenja). I love her concept: as a writer with an overabundance of vocabulary, she disciplines herself to make a relevant point with each post in 300 words or less. God help me should I ever try that.
• Über-Setzer-Logbuch by Gabriele Zöttl. A friend of mine in Munich sent me so many links to brilliant, thoughtful essays here that I became besotted with the blog and its author before I realized it. Not for the weak-of-German but always worthwhile for a mental stretch and linguistic massage.
• Fidus interpres by Fabio Said. A trilingual blog (English & Portuguese too) with a very large following by a Brazilian translator based in Germany. I've enjoyed and benefited from his posts for years and once learned a lot about traffic analysis from its author. My only regret is that I can barely get the gist of the Portuguese content, so I know I'm missing a lot.

English

• A Pragmatic Eye by Charlie Bavington. The author is an irreverent Brit who translates from French to English and has great good sense as well as an unerring nose for bullshit, both of which make him a suspicious character in a ProZian world.
• Language Mystery by Victor Dewsbery. I became aware of Victor about a decade ago, possibly earlier, because of his many helpful contributions on the Yahoogroups dejavu-l list. He has a rare, thoughtful competence and solid professional ethics, and his occasional well-informed commentaries on his Christian faith are interesting and enjoyable even for a Richard Dawkins fan like me.
• Words Matter by Doug McCarthy, a thoughtful linguist based in Paris. The blog is only a few months old, but Doug's points are well considered, well expressed and carry real weight. Words do indeed matter there as do the ideas.
• Financial Translation Blog by Miguel Llorens. Don't let the tile fool you: most of the content hasn't a thing to do with finances. Miguel takes on and exorcises the major demons of today's translating world, including MT, Lionbridge and content farms. He's possibly crazier than I am, but he's right more often and more entertaining.
• Diary of a Mad Patent Translator by Steve Vitek. Steve also has a range well beyond patents and brilliantly deconstructs the bullshit behind MT (which he uses for some of his work), rate issues and many other topics of current interest for translators. Even when he's trying to explain some obscure linguistic point about Japanese I find his contributions interesting, and even if they're not I enjoy the music videos on every post (and occasionally emulate this when the mood strikes me). I disagree with nearly everything he has to say about translation tools but still like to read it.
• The Greener Word by Abigail Dahlberg, a German to English translator from the UK, now based in the US. She writes a lot on waste management and recycling topics (her specialty), and I often learn a lot from her posts.
• Translating Berlin. Since author Sarah Vilece took a day job her posts have been far less frequent than they once were, but I have always enjoyed them for their content, local relevance (I live near Berlin) and their beautiful style.
• Translationista by Susan Bernofsky is a recent discovery from another world - literary translation. The great thing about reading her blog is that I can enjoy the insights regarding the translation of literature without having to engage in the field's usual habit of starvation. And the writing is good. She also has a good culture blog about Berlin.

Addendum: I see that a number of others have joined the effort inspired by Judy and Dagmar. I'll list links to these posts in no particular order as they come to my attention. I'm particularly pleased that there are few redundancies, and a number of blogs I enjoy but omitted from my own list for no good reason are to be found in these others.

• Jill Sommer's picks on Musings from an Overworked Translator
• Michael Wahlster's list on Translate This! 
• A Culture of Language and Thought by Lisa Carter
• The Interpreter Diaries offered a good list for interpreters
• A Spanish and English list by Silvina Jover-Cirillo of Around The Globe Translations
• Translation and linguistics blogs suggested by Alexandra Milcic Radovanovic 
• Eline Van De Wiele at Jade Language solutions offered a few interesting ones
• Here's a list on Bootheando. Looks like Spanish to me. 
• Miguel Llorens' list has an English blog collection that I read frequently and a very substantial list and commentary for Spanish translation blogs 
• A list from The Delaware Valley Translators Association blog
• Katherine Osgood's favorites
• From Outgesourct, mostly German
• And, of course, the original list from Judy and Dagmar at Translation Times
• And last, but not least, Margaret Marks' unique favorites with the unforgettable comment, "I don't read a lot of translation blogs in detail. There are lots out there directed at people who want to make their business grow, whereas I sometimes want my business to go away." There are days when I know very well what this means. 

I've also noticed that various scumbag spamming content scrapers have taken some of the posts above as well as my own, changed some words and tried to use the content to draw traffic. Apparently they haven't heard the latest fatwa that makes the perpetrators of such actions fair game....

Laughing at ourselves in Mox's world

In ancient times when I was a college student, there were two popular cartoons in the free papers around Los Angeles that succinctly described the absurdity of existence and helped me to laugh at it: David Lynch’s The Angriest Dog in the World and the Life in Hell strip by a young unknown named Matt Groening. The themes of angst, frustration and loathing of self or others were a mirror in which many on the fringes of that fast lane metropolis could recognize their lives. More than thirty years later, after a peripatetic professional journey, I find myself working as a translator among peers whose real world and imagined tribulations are not unlike the comic characters of my college days. Great leaps forward in communications technology and infrastructures have made the global local, and while this has created opportunities for many, there are also many who feel threatened by the wide-opened world in the shadow of the Machine Translator and the threat of terrorist language monkeys in faraway jungles willing to work for peanuts. Online forums bristle with fear and indignation at the perceived attempts of “big player” agencies – puny enterprises on a global scale with laughable fractions of market share for language services – to enslave poor freelancers and grind down their self-loathing souls further.

Enter Mox’s Blog by the engineer and translator Alejandro Moreno-Ramos. Like Lynch and Groening long ago, he captures the spirit of our fast, confusing times in characters which are archetypes well known in the translation world. I can see more than a little of myself or others in my working environment in all the figures of the strip, even the poor pet turtle, who, like my dog, must endure the topsy-turvy life so common for translators’ companions.

It is an odd phenomenon how the most communicative of visual media are so often the simplest in form. The crude stick figures Alejandro draws accentuate rather than diminish the essential characters and their message. Mox is the brilliant, but wide-eyed innocent who will probably never acquire the self-esteem to demand what he is worth. Long-suffering Lena, his girlfriend, doesn’t understand his world of deadlines and linguistic arcana but loves him nonetheless and is perhaps his only hope of connecting with the real world. Calvo, the experienced translator seduced by the Dark Side, is an ambivalent figure for me. He demonstrates the essential truth that to achieve good fees and respect in the language professions it is often necessary to project an attitude which commands them. He has mastered this well, but at the same time he suffers from ethical deficiencies which cause him to abuse others and which may ultimately lead to his fall. Pam the Evil PM and Bill the Clueless End Client show so many behaviors we encounter to our frustration, but in Mox’s world we can laugh at them and perhaps realize that they hold less sway over us in the real world than we might imagine.

Indeed, laughter is empowering and can build bridges of understanding. In his comic, Alejandro covers a great range of our daily professional frustrations and humiliations, often exaggerating in the manner expected of the medium, but so better revealing the basic truths and the feelings we should acknowledge and respect. There is a little of Mox in me and a little of Calvo, and I welcome this realization for the opportunity to laugh at myself and reflect on how I can improve professionally and personally. I don’t know if agency project managers and other translation buyers would feel the same way about Pam and Bill, but I hope so. The world is much less cruel when we see the humor in it, even in its dark situations. And by bring humor to a profession whose participants too often despair at its absurdities, Alejandro does us all a great service.

Not a plague to the eye

The ProZ powwow in Berlin, Germany has been organized by Steffen Walter since before I moved to the area, and it is by far the best such event of its kind I think. Attendees come from far away, in many years from Canada, Mexico and other obscure corners of the world. This year someone even came from Steglitz. Some three, actually, or four if you count the Sheltie. There were few dogs compared with many translators' events; only two in fact. But still, it was a great pleasure to meet familiar colleagues and new ones, one of whom I would like to introduce here.

When Anne Plagemann handed me her business card, designed by a friend of hers, the well-chosen colors immediately caught my eye and interest. Then I tried to read it. The small type made it clear that her target customers were ones with excellent vision or at least a current prescription for reading glasses. I'm looking forward to the large print version, which I'll probably pass along to those in need of the kind of services she offers, because she makes a very professional impression and her English is excellent.

Then I had a look at her web site. From time to time I like to highlight web sites of colleagues for various unique features or other things which I feel makes them a good example. Anne's site is excellent and very much worth a look. The web design by Franziska Pieloth is very easy on the eye. Ms. Pieloth is a Leipzig-based interpreter with talents that obviously extend beyond her language services. I was particularly pleased by how I could navigate between the three languages of Anne's site by clicking on the colored blocks with the word "translator" in German, English and Italian. But overall the simplicity of the site and the ease with which one can navigate it is very refreshing. I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose. The site designer's degree thesis included an extensive study of the good, bad and ugly practices on the web sites of a great number of fellow freelance language service providers. The lessons learned there were clearly distilled into a good site for Ms. Plagemann.

Something completely different: Language2Language

Janet Rubin has been one of my best recommendations for a while for certain specialties in my German to English language combination. My former partner has proofread her work for over a decade, and every time I saw a contract or other text she translated, I was pleased with the result and found very little if anything to criticize.

For years, her web site consisted of a quick list of contact information (sort of like mine at present, after I took it down for re-planning). With active telephones for the US, Germany and Australia, the list reflected her fast-paced international lifestyle. I copied and pasted it into more recommendation e-mails than I'll ever remember. All the time, however, she kept telling me about the web site that was "in the works" and "coming soon".

When I needed to look up her e-mail address to check her availability for a proofreading job recently, I went to http://language2language.net as usual expecting to find the old list. There I discovered that I had missed the rollout party. Instead I was greeted by one of the most interesting, sophisticated web sites I've seen in a while for a freelance translator. I worry about how it will play for customers with lousy bandwidth, but it looks rather good on my DSL connection, and the information on it is comprehensive and well-organized. I like it, though I'm not generally a fan of fancy animation on web sites.

The site is available in English and German. Have a look; I'm sure you'll agree that it is something completely different!

First impressions

"You never get a second chance to make a first impression". We've all heard that old saying, intended to strike fear into the hearts of new graduates and make them obsess endlessly on what shoes to wear for their first job interview.

It's a relevant saying for translators as well. Not so much for the shoes, but for starting a relationship which might come to remunerative fruition. Make a bad first impression and you might not get a chance to make the second, third, fourth and fifth impressions that are on the path to a long-term relationship with a client.

Maybe your shoes are tasteful ands shined, your suit is well-tailored, your dialect and accent(s) are attuned to the selling situation, your CV is perfectly polished, and your web site is a showcase of competence. But while you are fine-tuning your professional packaging, have you had a look lately at what your professional associations and translation provider portals are doing for you or to you?

This isn't another rant about half-naked fat ladies and prostitution ads on ProZ. The Master of the Translation Workhouse has gots RuleZ agin dat sorta ting nowdays. But while the wannapro PortalZ are repainting the walls and job posting boards as part of the Great Reformation Inspired By The Terrible Swift Petition Against Low Rates and the More Respectable Associations For Highly Qualified And Moral Superior Professionals are promoting the highest standards of practice and educating the world about just how necessary we micro-SLPs really are and why our rates really need to be much, much higher, honest truly, has anyone bothered to have a look at these jokers' home pages?

If I fork over $150 each year or some other amount of money I might otherwise spend on wine, song and women (not necessarily in that order, though I've found that this progression is generally suited to maximizing ROI), I want to see that the recipient of the money is making an effort to give me a good return on my money.

These returns can take many forms: access to information, professional fellowship (of rings and otherwise), training, legal advice, service directories which may lead to potential client contacts, payment practices databases and much more. One portal for hire noted for its security breaches and the theft from its servers of translators' personal data even offers online project tracking, customer lists and invoicing. The value propositions are staggering in their variety and occasionally in their audacity.

But this little tour will focus on one small thing. I put myself in the role of a translation buyer who speaks only English and who has an important contract to be translated from German into English. Price is no object, quality – especially legal accuracy – are essential. No monkeys, please! My choice of this scenario is based on my own language pairs and the desire to end up as the "winner" of this prospect's search. You are welcome to try a similar case for whatever language pairs interest you. Post the results in a comment here; there may be others interested in what you observe.

I decided to have a look at the "first impression", defined as the area visible on my Lenovo S10-2 netbook's restricted screen. If what I see doesn't make me want to go further, I'll give up and turn the task over to my purchasing agent, who understands that price is the only real determinant of quality and that the best German to English translators are hiding in the hills of Mongolia in a yurt with UMTS connectivity. Best of all, you can pay them in yak butter, which is currently trading at a favorable rate with peanuts.

I chose the home pages of various translators' associations in English- and German-speaking countries as well as the home pages of various portals on which I have had or do have a "profile" of some sort. (Whether I maintain that profile is another matter and a subject for a future essay.) So now it's time to go on tour in search of the Perfect German to English Translator for my contract:

The American Translators Association

I like blue, so I'll stick around and admire the colors for a few seconds in any case. Need a translator? Well, yes I do. So I'm off to look for Mr. or Ms. Perfect in the online directory... and those hints about costly translation mistakes will keep my mind focused on the real priorities. No monkeys, please!

ProZ.com

Learn the basics? I don't want to learn anything. Looking for work? Free account? Well, my boss is a bit of a jerk, but I'm sleeping with his wife, so I'd like to keep my job. So no thanks. I'll look for that translator, thank you. But wait! 30% faster translation with that Trados AutoSuggest thing? Sounds great, I want one of those. And a side of fries. And a bag of peanuts. But wait! Over 300,000 registered FREElancers? And 77 of them logged in? The other 299,923+ of them must be working hard. And while I'm at it, sure I'll collaborate. It was good enough for the French, wasn't it, and they make those great fries. I'll take mine with mayo, European style. And in this globalized world, I am ready to buy online now. SDL Trados Studio 2009 here I come, sell me a translator. With or without a tail.

The Mouse That Roared (ADÜ Nord)

Great. "About us" in English and that's it. Does "us" include that translator I want? The right one? Where do I find him? This form you mentioned is all in German, what am I supposed to do with that? To hell with it, the purchasing guy took German in high school and he's got a fresh supply of yak butter. Let him deal with it.

Translators Café

Busy place. Yes, I'll take a cup of java. Black, like my soul. Am I a language professional? Well, I'm a professional and I use language, so I suppose so. And I've always fancied myself as a cunning linguist, so if this is the place to meet clients, I'm game. Love that rogues' gallery. I wonder if one of them is the rogue I'm looking for. The maverick translator who will do my contract and give me what I want. The one on the left? She can go on top! Now I was looking, looking for....

The NAUGHTY Ones

Maybe they've got some issues. Maybe they're invalid, not sure. Maybe I'll check 'em out and see if I can find a translator. After this sobering experience (sober? in Melbourne?), let's look at

Go Translators

Go directly to translators. Do not waste time. Just get your project placed and move on. OK, I can do that.

Those Funny Swiss

When the Gnome of Zurich isn't busy taking my money and sweet-talking my wife, his fellow travellers in the local translators' association are trying to let me know they're available in what I think might be French, German and Italian. Too bad, this contract is from my partner in Zug, and a local might have known better about the Swiss legal terminology, which I'm told differs from real German. All I know is English. And a bit of Spanish from my friendly neighbors. Tu madre que hombre, y'know? Chungo, chungo, chungo.

Aquarius

We're past the Dawning of the Age. And our prime, too, it seems: What can I expect of you? Probably not much. Let's start by looking for that translator. But not here I guess. I don't need tweeting twits, I need a translator. A good one. But how am I supposed to sort out all these bozos?

The Canadian Translators, Terminologist and Interpreters Council

Canadians are nice, if a bit boring. Maple syrup is cool. And I hear they were nicer to their native peoples. If I want a vision I can follow Siberian tradition and take some mushrooms for that, but I'm on a mission to find that translator right now, so I'll be moving on....

to those University Guys in Austria

Well, they have a search function to find my translator. That's good. But I'll have to check my document carefully when it gets retyped in the other language, because I don't want those funny question mark diamonds for apostrophes.

The German Association of Interpreters and Translators (BDÜ)

Hm. German ads. Frames. Reminds me of those web pages my grandfather used to program. But hey, I can search in English for the translator I want. I just hope that person knows more about capitalization in English than the author of the home page.

The ITI

Trust those Brits to get an unruly guy like me sorted out and back on track to find a translator. I think I'll just select that Directory of Members wherever it is and get right on with it, cheerio. But first I'll stay here for a while and absorb the rays from that blue layout. Love that blue. But lose that stupid animation at the upper right.

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!

Alex Eames & tranfree are back!

When I first started translating commercially ten years ago, I had two primary sources of inspiration. One was my old college friend and present partner, Monique Simmer, who had served my medical device consulting clients with excellent translations for many years and who made the difficult transition from my beloved farm in Oregon to the urban Hell of North Rhine-Westphalia (Haan near Düsseldorf) much easier to bear. When I decided to translate in addition to my day job as a systems consultant (which was mandatory for visa reasons), I learned a lot of practical business details related to the German authorities and how to deal with them.

The other great source of inspiration and practical advice was Alex Eames, the author of the well-known title How to Earn $80,000+ Per Year as a Freelance Translator (and yes you can BTW). This cornball e-book full of goofy pictures, interesting anecdotes and first-rate advice on getting started in the translation business or adding life to a dead business is still one of my favorite references, though as Alex admits it's time for an update. The world changes, and we develop further as people and professionals. Nonetheless, most of the things and all of the basic principles Alex wrote about in that book are still valid, especially the advice on how to stand out from the crowd and earn the respect and love of your customers. It's more or less the same advice you find in any business book that is really worth reading: in our business, Oleg Rudavin and Corinne McKay say many of the same useful things in their own voices, filtered by their own cultures and lives.

Alex also published a newsletter called transfree, which was also loaded with great advice for freelance translators. The very suddenly, this source of information was silent. I knew there had been some changes in Alex's life; I remembered the birth of his child and something about building a house. Having been through all of that myself ten years earlier, I could understand all too well how he was probably too busy to write. But still I missed the advice from someone I considered a mentor of sorts, though our communication had seldom been direct. So when after registering on the new translators' networking site langmates I received a message from Alex, I was pleased to see that he was still involved in the profession. And I was even more pleased to hear that the issues which kept him busy are now resolved and that he will once again contribute actively to professional development for translators. I invited him to share a guest post with the readers of Translation Tribulations, and this morning I received a contribution from him, which I would like to share with you. Alex, you now have the podium...

tranfree Relaunch

Having been silent for the last two years, why relaunch now?

Simple answer. I’ve now got something to say – something worthwhile I hope. For the last few years, we’ve been having a fairly tough time and I’ve not been in an ideal place to be inspiring to others. One of the things I used to love about the emails I would get from tranfree readers was that they said they found it inspiring and helpful. It’s hard to be inspiring when you feel distinctly uninspired yourself.

Any idea why you felt like that?

Good question. It was a combination of things really. The life-changing impact of having a child, a building project, the cumulative effect of a few years of working too hard, the need to uproot and care for a dying family member for a couple of years, coping with the Polish health system, dealing with the consequences when my father-in-law died. Basically – life got in the way. It happens. If I had to sum it up I’d say burnout coupled with family crisis.

So are you inspired again now?

Actually yes. I started updating “How to Earn” a few weeks ago and, although it took me some time to get into it, the process kick-started me again. Often in life you read something you wrote last year or a few years ago and you think “that’s rubbish – I could do it so much better now”, but I really liked a lot of what I was reading and it’s still true (but then, good, sound business practice doesn’t change much year on year). OK, the technology and software bits all needed radically overhauling, but most of the rest of it is still very sound.

Anyway, the whole process has been very therapeutic. It’s good to look further afield than one’s own personal issues and do something to help others. That’s something which is all too easy to forget when times get hard and you switch to survival mode.

I’m not quite done yet, but in researching for the ebook update, I came across all sorts of issues that are facing translators today and felt inspired to write an article called “How to Kill Your Translation Business”. A rather negative title, but the content is designed to show mistakes that I feel freelance translators should try to avoid. And although the title is negative (it’s a headline designed to grab attention after all) the article is meant to be helpful.

I was amazed to see Wendell Ricketts’ article last week – a good few days after I’d written but not yet published mine – some of the sentiments expressed are very similar. I really enjoyed his article. I like articles that entertain and educate at the same time. It’s what I try to achieve. I think we can be too serious sometimes. Your blog sometimes makes me giggle, Kevin, so you’re not guilty of being overly serious.

So how can we access tranfree these days?

Anyway – the traditional email edition of tranfree goes out tonight (30 March 2010) to all those who are subscribed (subscribe@tranfree.com). There’s about 25,600 on the list but I suspect maybe up to 30% of those may have changed email address in the last two years. But it’s not all about email any more. There’s an HTML version (http://tranfree.com/tf68.html), a PDF version and even a podcast now – and the obligatory RSS feed too – and I almost forgot – I’m blogging it as well (http://alexeames.com/blog)

What’s next for translatortips.com?

Easy answer. A total overhaul of the entire operation. Reviewing and updating products, web site, relocating server. But it all starts the way it originally started way back in 1998 – with the original ebook http://www.translatortips.com/ht50.html 

Anyone purchasing now will automatically get the new edition when it comes out, hopefully in a few weeks. I’ll probably roll that offer back to any 2009 purchases as well. We’ll see.

I also wanted to thank you Kevin for your encouraging emails a couple of years ago. They made a difference. Sometimes the encouragers need encouraging too, when life gets in the way.

Translation blogging in German

Hang out at the Watercooler
The migration of translators to the Watercooler continues to proceed at an impressive pace, and the newcomers are full of suggestions for how to make the environment better. It's nice to see that suggestions are well received, too, even if technical implementation may not always be possible. There are some limits to what one can expect from a working translator who set up that fine, free site as a better place for networking, not a clearing house for jobs and projects or a source of Google AdSense revenue.

One interesting feature of the site is its internal blogging for each member. The Watercooler is a "closed" site, which means access is restricted to approved members and there is no access to search engines. Discussions on the site stay on the site generally, so unlike PrADs forums, where one's posts and comments are visible to the entire online world (including prospective customers), one can get down to some more serious business discussions if inclined to do so. Members who want to restrict a particular blog post or comments permission to a more limited circle ca use the "friends" feature. Very nice.

As part of finding my way in that rapidly evolving environment (which has doubled in size since December), I have begun blogging in German. The German group members are mostly familiar with my appalling written German from the ProZ forums, so I'm unlikely to shock anyone with mangled prepositions. And there I don't have to deal with any flaky moderators who seem to think that offering to work for less all the time is a strategy with a future. The atmosphere is thankfully free of the barrel bottom scraping nonsense I've found elsewhere lately. It's nice writing for a more limited group with a lot of the colleagues I've come to know and respect over the past decade. Maybe I'll repost the occasional German piece here from time to time, especially choice essays for Mr. Hinterberger :-)