yndigo

I’m not a good speller. Not in my acquired language, French, nor in English. In fact I’m worse in English, but we should all be forgiven; English orthography is about as regular as the M101 bus in Manhattan, winner of the latest Schleppie Award for least reliable bus.

So I’ve gotten in the habit of spell checking my writing when it counts. Like translations for example (I should spell check emails too… or at the very least stick a post-it to my screen to remind me there are two ‘d’s in address). Surprisingly, many translators don’t run spell check, despite it being a feature on word processors since the beginning of time.

More important and more involved than a spell check, of course, is the process of reviewing a translation. But the lack of a spell check is often a telltale sign that the translator has not reviewed or reread the document. Even seasoned translators should understand that the first sentence to roll off their fingers is not always the best. Exempted are those who began in the age of typewriters, many of whom out of necessity learned to compose beautiful sentences in their head before comitting them to paper. Alas, recent evidence tells me those skills have not been passed on.

Provided a translation is accurate — which is another pair of sleeves, as the French say — reviewing your work does not have to be that time consuming. Having been in the business of revising translations for about a dozen years now, I can say that, besides spelling and clean formatting, the two things that make an English sentence sound the least native are:

1. Unnatural order of words or phrases. The placement of subordinate clauses, adjectives, adverbs, differs between languages. “Shake well the bottle.” No thanks. True, an author may stress a phrase by changing the normal order of things, but more often it is the syntax and conventions of a language that determine how a native speaker orders his or her phrases. A college teacher used to tell us that French is analytical whereas English is like a movie scene where the action follows a life-like chronology. In English we say, “He ran up the stairs”; In French, “He went up the stairs, running.” At best, it sounds non-native. At worst it sounds like something’s missing. He went up the stairs, running his mouth? running his mother ragged?
2. Over-nominalizing, as I have written about in the past. English generally features strong verbs and weak nouns. Anyone reviewing a document will — or should — find it very strange to read, “she executed the translation of the document” and opt instead for, “she translated the document.” Formal writers tend to nominalize more of course but overall, we should get out of the habit.

Certainly, taking on rush work, being easygoing, having a deep knowledge of your specialty, being on time, etc., etc., are all very important and appreciated, but submitting translations that require little in the way of syntactical and typographical repair saves headaches, time, and money and will keep your inbox jumping and your phone ringing.

Speakers of French, Italian and some other languages will know that a page of a book would have made a more fitting image for this blog post (tourner la page, voltare pagina, etc.) than a leaf of a tree. The leaf suggests a seasonal metaphor rather than a new beginning.

Whichever image you have in mind, the New Year often inspires change. A desire to change and improve. Resolutions. Most years I don’t make any resolutions. That’s not because I lack self discipline; it’s because I think the behavior changes a person declares (eating less, exercising more, or my wife’s favorite: stop interrupting) isn’t really something they really want or they’d be practicing it already. Right, honey?

But there are three things I really enjoy, and for which I want to take more time:

(1) Cycling: I love going on short rides through the city or long rides through the country. Rides alone, rides with my family. I want to find time every day to get out, rain or shine.

(2) Learning the harmonica (better): I own several harmonicas in many keys, and love listening to blues harmonica players (Little Walter, Junior Wells, Paul Butterfield). I’ve taught myself quite a bit but I know I will continue to be a frustrated player until I take lessons from a pro.

(3) Blogging: I enjoy writing and I have always wanted to get better at it. Starting a blog felt very natural. I read blogs, mostly those of other translators, and I admire their disclipline. Like everything that is worthwhile, it takes some work, mostly just to get started… and restarted.

Happy New Year!

Many translators working outside the field of legal translation are surprised how often our source documents in the legal realm are still scanned images, the original Word, Excel or PowerPoint versions of which are unavailable to us.

Not only unavailable to us translators, but unavailable to the litigators too. This is because documents are still often delivered to the attorneys in paper form and then scanned, Bates stamped (although not always in that order despite the ease of electronic stamping with today’s technology) and organized in a database.

E-Discovery is certainly changing things but Blake Miller and Mary Mark of the Utah Bar Journal discuss the fact that many attorneys are slow to embrace the use of electronically stored information (ESI), in its native form, opting instead for image files or even good old fashioned paper.

As many translators can attest, legibility is still often an issue. Scanned files frequently show signs of having been annotated, faxed and re-faxed, 3-hole-punched, xeroxed with little attention paid to the copier’s contrast settings, dog-eared, recopied with post-it notes covering essential parts of a sentence, positioned askew on the scanner cutting off text on the sides of a page, etc., etc. Thus a magnifying glass and the notation “[illegible]” remain useful tools in legal translation.

Now, OCR technology has come a long way and many programs are extremely sensitive in detecting hundreds of fonts and languages even when quality is less than optimal. And the formatting anomalies caused when an OCR program tries to approximate tabs and columns and tables are gradually being worked out. So typing a document from scratch would seem like an old and ineffecient way of doing things.

OCR-ing images is certainly a time saver. But we still have to proceed cautiously. Two past projects come to mind. With the first, the translator generated a Word file from the PDF scan of a 100-page Spanish file using an OCR program, which did a good job despite the font in the source being small and the contrast low. But the final product contained some odd spellings of names, usually caused by eliding an r and n into an m to give us the name Amez instead of Arnez. Or mistaking an e for an o, compounding the problem and giving us Amoz. Also, although the OCR software did its best to guess at indents and margin widths, it made them slightly different on every page.

Problems on the second project resulted when the default setting on a German translator’s Adobe Acrobat automatically OCR’d the ugly looking 200-page scan we had sent him. He did not realize until half-way through the project that he had not even set eyes on the actual source document. This meant he believed the original contained hundreds of typos and spelling errors when it did not. Words appeared that were not at all German and the resulting translation was abysmal. The formatting was abominable to boot. Fortunately we had built enough time into the project to have the translation reworked and reviewed by two other translators.

All project managers have horror stories like this. They remind us, both agencies and translators, that we must remain up-to-date on — and on top of — the tools we use in our jobs.

Crowdsourcing and Translation

Even though the term is new as of 2006, and the internet has allowed the practice to take off, crowdsourcing is not new. Think of the Oxford English Dictionary, which included word usage and history researched and contributed by hundreds of volunteers, including thousands of entries by a man in a lunatic asylum.

Now not only is crowdsourced translation being adopted by popular sites like Google and Social networking site Hi5, the translation industry itself is beginning to embrace it. Jeff Howe, a leading expert on crowdsourcing, and the keynote speaker at the upcoming Localization World conference in Madison Wiscosin, claims, “[i]f there is one industry where crowdsourcing can turn things upside down, it is the translation industry.” Howe’s reasoning is based simply on supply and demand, asserting that a few hundred thousand translators worldwide are only a fraction of the number needed to meet the ever-growing need for translation.

However, as Chris Satullo points out in his article on the subject, the strength of crowdsourcing is not so much in achieving huge volumes of work as it is in arriving at a more accurate answer by averaging responses from a wide audience. “Picture a glass jar packed with jelly beans at a county fair. Then imagine that 500 fairgoers try to guess the number of jelly beans. If you add up the guesses and divide by 500, the resulting average will be very close to the accurate jelly bean count - and likely much closer than any individual guess.” Satullo goes on to say that only 10 percent of the crowd’s ideas will be gems, the other 90 percent junk.

But crowdsourcing combined with machine translation is bringing creative solutions to bear on the increasing demand for translation. Take Google, whose Google Translation Center — a translation service based on crowdsourcing that is currently in the testing phase — is likely to help its machine translation tool, Google Translate achieve better and better results.

But before we talk about amateur translators, in my experience not even all “professional translators” are capable of producing adequate translations. And having reviewed many translations by non-professionals (which is the source of the majority of crowsourced translations) the percentage of usable results is far far smaller yet. Thus, just as with machine translation, businesses can see improvements on the horizon and will continue to gauge what solution will produce the best and most cost effective results and shift their strategy accordingly.

We recently had a problem with the comments feature in the blog and I was just able to resolve it. All reader comments had mysteriously dissapeared and no new comments were being recorded. A bit scary.

I actually had to go into the phpMyAdmin database where all my blog’s data is stored. Whoa… it’s a whole other world back there. If you don’t know anything about phpMyAdmin or MySQL, it’s quite fascinating.

Anyway, I apologize to readers who tried to leave comments in the last couple weeks; please come back and try again.

How to achieve a good translation

Although finding the right translator for the job is arguably the most important task an agency performs, most translation agencies do more than just outsource translations. They edit and proofread them, too. And while there’s no such thing as perfection in the translation business, we, like many other firms, try to get as close as we can.

But there’s no agreement on how to achieve a good translation. Even the words editing and proofreading don’t have the same meaning throughout the industry. In journalism and publishing, the meanings are established: editing is a review of the substance and structure of an article or book. Proofreading is a review of the grammatical and typographical elements.

In my experience, editing in the translation industry refers to a review, based on a side-by-side comparison, of how faithful a translation is to the source, especially in terms of accuracy but also style. It requires a second translator who is also fluent in the language pair and conversant in the subject matter. Proofreading on the other hand is a line-by-line check to ensure the translation is free of typographical, grammatical and numerical errors.

I’ve known of agencies, however, that define proofreading as a cursory accuracy check of a translation against its source text, and editing as a review of the translation alone for its readibility and grammar.

While I do not believe the latter process will produce the most accurate translation, I understand agencies’ temptation to adopt it. It’s quicker and less costly and it’s likely to generate a prettier final product, one that will have the appearance of a good translation especially to a client that does not read the source language.

Obviously budget and deadlines have an impact on the quality of translations — and communicating this with the client is essential — but we must begin with a clear idea of what it takes to produce a really good translation. Here is my opinion:

1. Review the document. Most agencies have the know-how to distinguish between languages they don’t speak and to determine the subject matter of a document they don’t understand. But before outsourcing a translation, the entire document should be reviewed both for the level of difficulty and any surprises. Intros can be easy, but several pages in all of a sudden things get tricky.
2. Choose a good translator. This is so important. In an era of growing databases both online and proprietary–filled with translators from across the globe–we can start to think of translators as fungible. Yet knowing the true strengths of your translators is the single most important step to getting a translation right.
3. Choose a good editor. Although I would argue the translator should be the strongest member of the Translator-Editor-Proofreader (TEP) team, the editor must be careful and astute enough to rout out problems. And, if time permits, the editor’s mark-up should be sent back to the translator for final approval.
4. Choose a good proofreader. Seeing a pattern? A proofreader’s job is essential because — and it still surprises me — despite a careful review of a translation, more mistakes inevitably crop up. This is because the proofreader’s focus is different. Their eyes are less on the message and more on the formal qualities of the text, which can be missed by even the most thorough editor.
5. Welcome feedback. Although our clients are not translators, they often work day in and day out on topics that we encounter only for the short amount of time we are translating. All feedback should be considered and often improves our translation and teaches us something in the process.

The Seach Engine Giant enters the World of Human Translation

Google can barely blink without making headlines, and its recent launch of Google Translation Center is no exception. The Center aims to match translation customers with professional and volunteer translators in 40 languages.

Why would Google, a company not know for its human-powered solutions, want to take on this role? Some have suggested — because the results will be stored on Google’s servers — it is an effort to feed their statistical machine translation tool, Google Translate, with corpora of words in language pairs in which they are currently poorly stocked. If this is true, Google is essentially building the Translation Center’s future obsolescence into its much grander plan of seamless international seach capabilities.

Who will be translating? Well, in its appeal to get translators involved in the new service, Google asks, “Passionate about bringing content into your language?” Implication: some translators will work simply based on their desire to make information accessible to other speakers of their language. Other translators will work for pay.

Whether fueled by passion or a paycheck, translators will log on to the service and respond to requests from people who have uploaded a document for translation. All negotiation will then take place between the customer and the translator. And Google will ensure neither quality in one direction or payment in the other. Google will provide its translation tools however, which will include databases of Translation Memory.

As with machine translation in general, dire predictions of upheaval in the translation industry have accompanied the launch. Some say the first victims will be translation agencies, whose most appreciated (and most scorned) role is that of middleman (although some of us would argue our services go far beyond this). Then, as gaps are closed in machine translation quality by a company with Google’s power and scope, human translators will soon follow.

A question for customers and translators alike: does the Google Translation Center sound like a step forward in the translation industry? Will you try it? Why or why not?

For more information, see here, here, here, and here.

I just wanted to pass along a photo from a Flickr member of a restaurant sign in China as an example of why humans should still be involved in the translation process:

This gem has already made its way around the internet, often noting how blind reliance on an internet translation tool led to the biggest translation goof we’ve seen in a long time.

Let’s look at the upside though. It’s unique. And it may just create the kind of buzz they were looking for.

Until you actually need one, it’s hard to imagine how many translators and translation agencies are out there. Especially the first time, how can you be sure you’re getting a good translation?

1. Get a recommendation: Ask a colleague or friend. Chances are good that if they received quality and service at a fair price, you will too. Don’t forget to ask how much or how often they’ve used the translator or agency, as one good translation long ago may not be enough to go on.
2. Ask for samples: If you have the luxury of time, ask a translator or a translation agency for what they consider their best work in the subject matter you’re interested in. This step is really essential if you have an ongoing project because the translator may be your translation provider for a long time.
3. Ask questions: Translators want to do a good job so most will not take on a project that is outside their expertise. You should ask questions, however, to learn how extensive their background is in the field, how they learned it, how they maintain their language skills, how they conduct research, what other types of jobs they have worked on, etc. If you’re speaking with someone at a translation agency, try to talk with the project manager (not just the salesperson) so you can ask about their quality assurance measures.
4. Be a partner: Seasoned translators have seen thousands of documents of all different sorts, but they haven’t seen yours. And you know your subject matter. Whenever possible, help the translator give you a high quality product by providing reference documents, glossaries of preferred terminology, style guides, background information, etc., and be open to questions about the project. It will lead to a much better translation.
5. Read ATA’s Translation: Getting it Right: Get ready, I’ve saved the best advice for last. You can find the ATA’s publication on shopping for translation services here. It’s chock-full of useful information in plain language.
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When a word has no good equivalent

In my last post, I talked about words that were so closely tied to a certain country’s sporting event, they are inevitably used internationally in their original language. But how about words that don’t translate at all because the situation they grew out of just doesn’t exist elsewhere?

Many websites have compiled long lists of these, such as the Mirror.co.uk. Transubstantiation, a blog I follow, covers the topic here and here. Read more of his posts and you’ll see how deeply he gets into the notion of the impossibility of translation in general.

Some “untranslatable” words are less translatable than others. Take the Yamana word dona which means “to take lice from a person’s head and squash them between one’s teeth.” American English has no word for that, thank goodness. And there would be no way to translate “dona” (though I can’t imagine ever needing to professionally) without a translator’s note, which can make the translation either messy or unacceptable.

There are some cases, however, when a more practical “untranslatable” must be used. Keeping the word in the original language is prettier of course, but that’s not really translation. Preserving the original also falsely assumes the reader’s familiarity with that language and/or culture. Somewhere in between these two options, perhaps, creative use of periphrases and neologisms may help to bridge the two languages, even if some of the cultural flavor is lost.

One term that appears on many lists of untranslatables is the French esprit d’escalier, which means “to possess a mind that thinks of comebacks too late, as in when you’re descending the staircase (escalier) on your way out of a party.” The difficulty here is not that the idea does not exist in English (why not ?) but that the French coined a term based on a setting where this term frequently came into play. So we can translate the idea — “delayed wit,” pehaps — but the cultural flavor will be lost. How do you say, “Monday morning quarterbacking” in French?