Low rates: What are translators supposed to do?

Back in the early ’90s, U.S.-based translators were pretty busy. They had the Internet, the WWW, CompuServe, AOL, FTP, and access to the latest and greatest of software and hardware, not to mention CAT tools…while countries in the so-called developing world had older equipment, no Internet or WWW, and no CAT tools. We cornered the market when it came to Spanish translations (for example). Proximity to our clientele was very important. Even with email access, clients were still sending us floppies and CDs via FedEx or courier. We commanded good –not great– rates.

Then globalization happened. The Internet, email and the WWW started to break down borders and reach into remote home offices in the developing countries, where a low cost of living allowed translators to charge much less per word. I lost some clients, who could no longer afford 10 cents per word in 2001. Clients started to outsource projects with a rate 50-60% lower than what we translators residing in the States were accustomed to charge.

Translation job boards started to appear on the Web, such as Aquarius, TranslatorsCafe, and Proz. Then places like Odesk, SoloGig and Elance started to offer translation jobs, among other freelance offerings. Nowadays, many projects are being outsourced through these freelancer job boards. I recently came across a posting on Odesk:

We are in need of translators to handle high volumes of Spanish to English (and sometimes English to Spanish) translations for the indefinite future. We need translators willing to work with us at a lower rate due to the high volume, so please respond with rate per word. (Source: https://www.odesk.com/jobs/Spanish-English-Translation_~~ad93d707bb4e3d74?utm_source=SimplyHired&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=SimplyHired as viewed today).

I have heard this excuse before, lower rates offered in exchange for high volumes. There’s even a parallelism at play here: low/high, which targets our hearts, not our minds, and primes us for an emotional response…a desperate one perhaps?

I received a slightly different spiel yesterday in my email box, something that went on like this: “We are a well-known translation company based in Silicon Valley and we are offering 4.8 cents per word…”

What is a Spanish translator supposed to do with such unfair competition? First, we can react, gripe and complain about this unfair competition. Second, we can respond to such an email in a professional way but letting them know we find these rates unacceptable. Third, we can ignore it, not allowing it to push our buttons, and move on to capture the customers who are not hung up on rates per word.

This last suggestion is part of a larger recommendation that I have set out to follow myself: Do not use –nor react to– emotionally charged words, such as low, high, top-notch, etc. For this same reason, I have begun to reject the adjective high-quality in “high-quality translations”, because high cannot be measured objectively.

Perhaps it is time we adhered to another way of charging for language services, either per hour or per project. The per-word rate model is moribund and it should be the subject of a new conversation among all the market players.

Testing medical software or how I learned to love the whirring microscope

In a previous post, I visited lightly on the concept of multiple meanings in a word. In Alice in Wonderland the March Hare gently tells Alice “you should say what you mean”. Many misunderstandings between two people are usually attributed to poor communication. We hear talk about communication skills, but analyzing the reason of the poor communication is a rare sight indeed. Then, we tend to go with logic in our assumption and call someone a “poor communicator” or someone who does not get it. The main problem is that we are using the same words for different meanings.

A customer calls and requests my services as a translator, claiming that the text in question is “non technical”, perhaps in an attempt at getting a competitive (ie, bargain basement cheap) rate. I deal with technical texts on a daily basis but, what do I mean by technical? And here’s the rub, the misunderstanding. If you ask people on the street what a technical document means, they’ll probably associate it with technology, computers or rocket science. That meaning scratches the surface, because technical has at least 6 different meanings, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. A user’s guide to a wristwatch is a technical document because it has some specialized language in it, even though most people would have no trouble understanding it. An IRS publication intended for the general public is also a technical document because it has plain-English words dressed in narrow meanings (tax law). So, it all depends on the situation and the purpose of the document.

To put the argument to rest for now, let’s just say that nontechnical documents mean documents intended for the public in plain English, with no arcane words or obscure meanings.

I recently finished a software verification project for a customer. This involved working on site for 17 days in the Bay Area in Northern California. The software in question is medical in the sense that it involves a powerful microscope and a workhorse of a workstation running Windows XP (64 bits) and 12 GB of RAM. The system is intended for histopathologists and pathologists at clinics and hospitals. They use the microscope to place dozens of slides with specimens inside and then analyze, magnify, create reports and share findings in a network by using this elegant and powerful software.

Now, pathology is just one specialization in medicine, and a specialist would call this program pathology software. For reasons of simplicity, most translation companies would refer to it as medical software. To find and place translators for such a project, they look for medical translators or software translators. Do you start to see the problem here? Many medical translators may have never worked with pathology-related documents, but they have experience with the general language of medicine besides the specialized medical language of their field or domain, for example, radiology, biology, epidemiology or oncology. Now, most translators and translation agencies would consider software translation as any content that uses software-related words, such as RAM, CPU, networking, data packets, wafer, chip fab and hard drive. But there are dozens of subspecialties within the software domain. This point was driven to me a few days ago while I was testing a particular feature in this pathology software with a Belarus-born electrical engineer. I asked him his opinion about NAS (network attached storage) hard drives, and his face drew a blank.

In short, many experts in translating software may have translated specialized medical software with varying degrees of expertise. It is up to the translation company to decide if the combination of experiences is suitable for the project at hand. The selection does not have to be a gamble, though. I am a firm advocate of stating expectations at the beginning of the work relationship to avoid misunderstandings in the end. I am glad my customer saw the whole of my expertise and decided that the mix of experience in and knowledge of software and medical texts struck the right balance for the benefit of their client in Northern California.

Who tests the translators?

Translation tests can be a welcome sign of interest from a prospective client for a translator…or an annoyance that elicits loud groans among some of the more seasoned linguists. I recently took part on a group discussion on LinkedIn regarding a translator’s reaction to a client requesting a translation test. The topic is so hot and thorny in the translation community that the discussion collected more than 125 postings in its thread.

I am not going to engage in endless arguments about the pros and cons of translation testing. Having said that, I strongly believe that a business (the translation agency or LSP) has every right to vet the assets it hires to perform linguistic services, especially because ours is an unregulated profession (at least, in America).

What I am going to propose to you, gentle readers (sorry about pilfering your phrase, Miss Manners), is this: let’s face the issue in a productive manner. Let’s talk about standardizing the translation test, maybe get the American Translators Association involved in the discussion. Some might say ‘But we already request ATA certification.’ Yes, but the ATA certification is no proof of performance.

What I propose is bringing all interested parties under one roof to discuss the pros and cons of translation tests, the current situation (maybe run some surveys among LSPs?) and suggest ways to address the weak points. Translation agencies need a tool to vet the translators, translators need feedback but also need feedback from peers, not bilingual staff. Also, this feedback accompanying the translation test results needs to be fairly and professionally delivered.

I am in favor of an ethical translation test, conducted by translation companies or other organizations that hire translators. The review of the tests must be in the hands of peers having no affiliation with the translation service provider administering the test; otherwise, the tested translator might think –and with reason– that the results are tainted by bias.

In addition, a standardized, ethical translation test can complement the ATA certification and benefit both translation companies and translators: everybody knows the rules, plays by the rules and abide by evidence-based decisions. Such a test can also become as valuable as a QA standard in many spaces in the language services marketplace.

What are your thoughts on the subject? If you administer translation tests, is it a chore, a necessary evil, an effective tool to hire linguists? If you are a translator, do you have examples of fair tests? Please share with us.

Ads that blithely ignore world outside of America

I am not a football fan, but I can recall a certain Groupon Super Bowl ad with Timothy Hutton in it. I like Mr. Hutton as an actor, but if the flurry of negative tweets is to be believed, the ad makes light reference to Tibet, which is a faux pas in advertising (or it should be). Click on the following image to read the article.

Super Bowl games are no longer viewed only in America. According to Initiative, a New York-based media research firm, the 2005 Super Bowl event attracted about 2 million viewers outside of the United States.

One of the most difficult things to translate or convey in another culture is humor and jokes. If you are a multinational corporation or a company that is trying to stretch your business horizons overseas, you cannot claim ignorance or innocence when your advertising is deemed unfunny, even offensive, in other countries, even in foreign enclaves within the United States.

Andrew Mason, Groupon’s founder, issued an apology and the ad was pulled afterwards. The Super Bowl championship is the biggest event in America, and advertising during the Super Bowl is the most expensive of the year. So, it was not a matter of cost, but of awareness.

The moral of the story seems to be this: don’t be penny wise and pound foolish, do your homework on the language, culture or country you are targeting your product or service.

I don’t tweet

Twitter worth $7 billion? VC Fred Wilson doesn’t buy it. – May. 10, 2011.

According to the article that the above link points to, I share similar concerns: what if Twitter is just another tech bubble? The company hasn’t executed as expected. How will it make money for its investors?

And why is this important to you and me in the translation industry?

For years, I resisted using Gmail because it was a new service and I was not sure that the Gmail platform wouldn’t become another Rocketmail or CompuServe (remember those services?). For years, I resisted using Internet Explorer because Netscape was my browser and platform of choice, from browsing the Web to hosting my email account. Only after I lost my emails (my fault) on Netscape did I start to think about a different solution. I bit the bullet and went with Outlook. I have been an Outlook user for more than a decade now. Call me a late-late adopter.

Twitter is yet another social phenomenon in the Web 2.0 technology landscape being built on the so-called cloud. Marketing buzzwords aside, the cloud is nothing more than a server farm somewhere in Nebraska or North Carolina. Remember what happened to Amazon a few days ago? What to do if your enterprise or company documents, files, and other assets reside in a cloud account? A perennial solution is what engineers call redundancy. RAID arrays are useful for medium- to large-sized companies seeking to protect themselves from a catastrophic loss of data. The other side of this coin of risk management is data privacy: if you tweet for business, how safe is the information you are tweeting?

Back in the days of bulky cellphones and prohibitively expensive cellphone plans, I was using an electronic dialer (it cost me $40) as a pocket phone directory (poor man’s PDA). What a waste of 40 precious dollars! Then, the wave of PDAs swept the country towards the end of the century. Every time I visited CompUSA or Office Depot, I would give those slick PDAs a passing glance, leaving the store without buying one, even those on clearance. I did not see the need to have a PDA, but I saw colleagues use one.

I used a Blackberry for two years because I wanted a cellphone with a phone directory and email capabilities. Thinking of my enthusiasm for the Blackberry’s marvelous email functionality seems quaint now. I use an iPhone 3GS for my needs here and abroad. It has what I need. I was able to find a reason –not a rationale– to buy an iPhone because my business and professional needs so required it.

But I can’t make a business case for the Tweet service. In an era where many language service providers (agencies and translators alike) compete fiercely with each other for your business, I know I can’t be useful to you in 140 characters or less.

A follow-up on 50 Best Jobs (book)

I received a letter from Dr. Laurence Shatkin today. Dr. Shatkin is one of the authors of the book titled 50 Best Jobs for Your Personality, 2nd edition (JIST Publishing). In short, he explained that he had to base his book on the Department of Labor’s SOC (Standard Occupational Taxonomy). Because Dr. Shatkin’s letter is both gracious and professional in tone, the least I can do is to include excerpts from it:

The most important limitation is that I must rely on career information databases from the Department of Labor to provide information on the hundreds of occupations that I put into my books, and those databases sometimes lump together occupations that you or I might prefer to be defined separately. For example, although the government’s official Standard Occupational Taxonomy (SOC) recognizes one occupation called Accountants and Auditors, the O*NET database (which is what I used for the personality types in 50 Best Jobs for Your Personality) splits this into two separate occupations. Sadly, with Interpreters and Translators, both SOC and the O*NET keep these two titles lumped together. The O*NET does not provide separate information on their personality types or on any other characteristics or requirements.

What results is an average. I would guess, although I do not have any data on hand, that there are more interpreters than translators. (I’d appreciate hearing from you about whether this is true). This would explain why Social is the second personality type listed as the average for this combined occupation, although a translator’s work environment is not very social. In fact, translating is probably an excellent occupation for an introverted person.

I should point out that the Department of Labor tends to keep occupations lumped together in cases where the initial stages of the preparation pathway are similar. In the case of Interpreters and Translators, one would start preparing for both of these occupations by becoming knowledgeable about a foreign language. Eventually, one would reach a fork in the road and would decide which occupation is more suitable.

The statement about the type of education/training required is also based on information from the Department of Labor. Most occupations allow a range of preparation routes, and this one (or two, if you prefer!) probably allows a wider range than most. The policy of the Department of Labor is to list the shortest of the possible entry routes, even if it’s not the one most preferable. So, for example, they list associate degree as appropriate for Registered Nurse, even though a nurse without a bachelor’s degree faces severely limited job choices. That’s why “long-term on-the-job training” is listed for Interpreters and Translators.

This open dialogue is encouraging. Care to participate?

The language of business

The new facilities of my alma mater, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba’s Facultad de Lenguas, sit as part of the jigsaw puzzle that the whole campus reflects nowadays: school buildings that look like bunkers, spread in all directions like so many pebbles on a dusty playground. The 3-story building of my former language school is always buzzing with activity. Although Portuguese, German, French and Italian are part of the curriculum, English is by far the most popular for translation students.

Many of these English majors will graduate with a shiny diploma in translation studies into a harsh global marketplace that cares very little for diplomas. Still, diplomas and degrees confer an authority and an aura of respectability to its holders, but this newfound status does not negate the fact that they have to go on teaching English en masse at different private institutes, demoralized by what they see as predatory practices of the local translation agencies. Thus, the most venturesome will go on a join forces in pairs or trios to form “estudios de traducción” (translation bureaus) to offer language services. Alas, the last thing they know is business practices. Many don’t know how to market their services. Egos inflated by their recently acquired diploma will think nothing of working for some of the despised agencies and will try to fly solo in a market that is ruthless and ever unforgiving of costly mistakes.

One of these mistakes is ignorance of the business language. Concepts like return on investment, value-added services, and building customer relations are like Greek to many of these students and graduates. One reason is that their professors hardly mention them. These are professors well versed in the intricacies of language, linguistics, text analysis and dictionaries, but a love of language does not a successful businessman make.

I was fortunate. I attended a business high school and graduated with a degree in bookkeeping. We studied business letter writing in English and Spanish, and had typing classes for at least 2 years. Next time you talk to a translator, ask her how many words per minute she can type, and whether she can touch type.

However, I had to learn to market my services, write a resume that was geared to the business customers I was going after and network effectively. It took me years and I am still learning from my hits and misses. I recently revised and updated my résumé to highlight what I did for my previous customers and employers that added value to their organizations. And that’s the key for translators today: Are you a well-educated French, Arabic or Spanish translator with two university degrees and a 50-dictionary library at home? How do you translate your linguistic knowledge into a value that will improve my bottom line? How does good grammar and syntax help me close a deal? What difference does your expertise make for my industry?

I have to compete with thousands of Spanish translators of all stripes. If I want to build on my past achievements, my rates cannot be the defining factor but the value I add to your business. Bring it on!

Give feedback to your vendors

I just received an email from a very powerful organization. We were in interviews towards an in-house position in this organization. As part of the interviewing process, I was sent proofreading and writing tests to assess my skills. To their credit, the tests were well designed. Some of the paragraphs contained errors on purpose to make detection difficult unless you spent time reading it twice or even 3 times. An excellent exercise.

But this organization failed miserably when it came to providing feedback. In their formal email, they indicated that I did not qualify for the position because a great deal of linguistic and grammar acumen are required for it. No details, no examples, just a blanket statement, which I found troubling and telling.

In the everyday discussions about QA that many translation bureaus and translation vendors have, feedback is key to secure good assets and nurture good relationships for the long haul.

On another occasion, many years ago, I applied for a position at a well-known multinational from Europe. The translation test was economics. After I sent in my test, I received a terse explanation that it hadn’t passed because I did not know some of the industry terms. Not a word about writing style, grammar or accuracy.

If you provide feedback to your translation vendor or to a candidate, be specific. Better yet, agree beforehand on what constitutes a major or unacceptable error and how many errors are allowed. Do not assume. Spanish is spoken and written in more than 20 countries, and some syntax and phrase variations are going to take place. Style is also an important component in assessing the quality of translation, but it is difficult to gauge because the customer’s reviewer may add too much subjectivity into it. Also, be open to discuss what standards your organization adheres to, whether corporate style is paramount, etc. Again, be specific because it is a way of showing respect to a professional linguist.

The distant project manager

Quick, translators! Name your favorite project manager from one of your clients.

What? No favorites? Okay, how about naming the PM that treated you most favorably. Take your time.

Over the years, I have worked with a variety of project managers (PMs) in the language services industry, from the asinine to the eager. I don’t have a favorite PM, but I do have favorite traits that I seek in the PMs I have the opportunity to work with. Since I hate lists, you’ll have to deal with just a small bunch of brief descriptions.

1. Approachability. This means grabbing the phone to talk to your translator or editor, not just shooting emails. In the current sea of email messages, a phone call or an invitation to call you is a welcome respite and it helps to build rapport, trust…and exchange a jovial note that could make a difference in your otherwise busy day.

2. Full disclosure. An element generally related to NDAs and confidentiality of information, this is more an attitude than a check mark or obligatory note. It means that you will disclose (ie, answer and volunteer) all necessary information to your translator or language professional. This may require anticipating the needs of your translator, not just talking about word count and deadlines. Take an interest in the finer details, such as “The document is targeting young Puerto Ricans. Can you do that?” instead of “This document needs a US Spanish translation.”

3. Availability. Some of you must be using a macro to print this phrase at the end of your emails: “If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write or call.” Seriously, how many of you are quick to answer your emails, especially with project-related questions? I wonder if some PM might think: “Gee, this is a dumb question. This translator should read the instructions file I attached to the first email!” And you would be right. However, part of good customer service in any industry is the availability to answer any questions cheerfully and promptly.

4. Don’t ignore our questions. Sometimes we translators ask silly, dumb and risky questions. Sometimes we need to be put in our place because, well, some of us are just getting started in this profession and we don’t know all the boundaries. A risky or nosy question for me –as a translator– would be “Is the editor who is going to work with me a properly trained translator?” That question may be obnoxious and provocative in tone. Think for a second, however, that it just might be a request for information, not an indictment on your company’s screening procedures. If you choose to ignore our questions, we’ll keep asking them until satisfied.

5. Respect our role. We are thankful that you chose us to do this project. You sure have a good taste in translators! However, please, please do not second guess our work. We are trained professionals, we do the research, we know why we chose this particular word over that one. We appreciate that you know some Danish or Spanish but do not try to play translator with us. I personally don’t like to pull university degrees with my PMs simply because it’s gauche and just the wrong approach. I had to do it only once, however, in the past 5 years, because the PM insisted on second guessing his client and telling me how to write a certain passage in the translation. To the PMs out there who are nervously fretting over what the translator might or might write, remember: you chose us to do the translation, please do not micromanage us.

Now, I’ll do some crossover. If you liked the above content, I am sure you will appreciate the blog postings of a company owner who works with translators, Grace Bosworth, at http://global2localcommunications.com/category/blog/