Author: Maria Karra

Too much informations [sic]

Just recently in a translation facebook group we were talking about “informations”, that monstrosity we’re hearing all the more often. Well, on my Delta flight a month ago, the flight attendant -a native English speaker- said through the intercom: “For internet service look in your Sky magazine for informations on how to connect”. Is this going to be yet another case of widespread misuse leading to widespread acceptance? Like …/nucular/ instead of nuclear? Of course it’s not as painful for me to hear as my pet peeve –actually, calling it a pet peeve makes it sound cute. It’s not cute. It’s closer to a knife than to a pet. Not a knife sitting in my cutlery drawer but a knife being stabbed in my chest. So my “stab knife” is …aircrafts (surprise surprise). And spacecrafts. As if mounting an engine is an activity of arts and crafts.

On the same flight, a couple of rows behind me, a mother –native English speaker- was teaching new words to her little baby daughter. I could hear her say over and over again: “Where’s the keys?”, “Where’s the books?”, “Where’s the bus?” (she got one right, sigh of momentary relief), “Where’s the girls?” (back to stabbing). I felt the need to turn around and stop this, I wish it weren’t inappropriate to intervene in cases of linguistic abuse, or to put it less mildly, language butchering.

On a more recent trip, right after I landed in Boston, I received a phone call from a guy claiming that I was in legal trouble and that I needed to pay him two thousand dollars to settle the matter in a friendly way right then and there, over the phone, instead of going to court. You guessed it, he was a scammer, but a professional one! Very well prepared, he had answers to all my questions. “I’m calling from your local police department, ma’am”, he said. When I asked him which police department that was, he said Cambridge. (I don’t live in Cambridge; I used to, many years ago.) He kept saying to me in his Indian accent: “We got informations on you ma’am. We got informations. According to our informations on you, ma’am,…”.

I’d had enough.  The grammar freak in me was getting palpitations, so I interrupted him and said: “First of all, it is information, not informations, there’s no s! Speak English damn it! And second, if you were really calling from the police department you would know that I don’t live in Cambridge!”
The guy went on: “Well, where do you live ma’am? We can transfer this to your local police department…”.  I hang up. I probably should have referred him to some English-language trainings (ouch, I stabbed myself).

CEO, freelancer, or what should you call yourself?

Over the years I have seen many colleagues just starting out and presenting themselves as CEOs, Directors of their “company”, Owners, etc. I think it is great to be CEO if that’s what you want. But is that what you really are? And is that what you really want?

In order to present yourself as CEO, i.e. use it as a job title in your resume or your social-network profiles, you need to actually be a CEO. Being a freelancer / having your own business/ working for yourself is not the same as being a Chief Executive Officer. Chief Executive Officer means you’re someone’s “chief”, that you have people under you. Calling yourself a Director implies that you have people to direct. Directing yourself does not qualify. Does anybody report to you?

Several times I’ve seen the title of CEO under the names of colleagues that had just presented themselves in a translation forum to say they were new in the translation world and needed advice on how to find new clients or what to charge. This makes me very skeptical. There’s a discrepancy here that simply makes those translators look somewhat unreliable or insincere. The above titles require experience, some prior steps/titles, and usually people under you, and I don’t think they should be used lightly.

“Owner” is somewhat different. You can be the owner of a company and be a sole proprietor. If you have your own business, you are a “business owner”. For example, I do business as “FRESNEL technical translations”, I have registered this as my business name in Massachusetts. I am a sole proprietor, so I don’t have anyone reporting to me. I have regular collaborators (e.g. for large projects or for when I don’t have time or when the language pair requested is not one I work in); when I offer them a job the PO says FRESNEL, when I pay them the check says FRESNEL, my bank account is under the name FRESNEL technical translations. To cut a long story short, this is a registered business and since I own it, I can call myself its owner (not that I do, really, it’s of no use to me, but I could). But I wouldn’t dare call myself a CEO. And frankly, I don’t want to. It would be bad for my business. Why?

Because I don’t want to run the risk of having clients see me as an agency. I am not an agency. In fact I state this clearly on my website: “FRESNEL is not a translation agency. There are no intermediaries or non-experts ever involved in your project. In order to handle large projects with tight deadlines, FRESNEL has a small, highly reliable network of expert translators and editors.” And it is for the same reason that my team consists of freelancers and not CEOs or Directors or Chiefs of any kind. Also because I want to make sure that what I pay them goes directly to the person that does the work.

So to be brutally honest, when I see CEO, Director and the like next to a colleague’s name, I stay away. I’m not saying you shouldn’t use such titles; but if you do, make sure they reflect reality. When you ask in a Facebook group how to do a word count in a PDF file or what the cheapest CAT tool is or how to determine your proofreading rate, and at the same time write CEO on your resume or on your online profile (or on your website, if you have one; many people don’t, and that’s even worse because if you’re a CEO of a company, the company should have a website), how do you expect a potential client not to be skeptical? And if the client is skeptical about your title, how do you expect him to trust your description of your qualifications, skills and experience?

On minimum rates

When I first started in translation and was about to write my first invoice, I asked a colleague and friend to check if I had forgotten to put anything on the invoice. He gave me his template as an example and there I saw that he had a checkbox for a “Minimum fee”, which in his case was 35 euros. That was in 2000. Maybe it’s worth repeating: thirty-five euros in the year two thousand. That was back when translation rates were actually higher than today, in many countries. When I saw that, I didn’t ask any questions, I assumed it was the norm. So I included that in my invoice as well, and I’ve had a minimum fee ever since.

How do you determine the minimum fee? Even if the job is 30 words, you still have to read the client’s instructions, save the file, perhaps import it in a CAT tool, translate it, proofread it (sometimes you have to read it multiple times, e.g. if it’s a marketing text), clean it up, check the final layout, and send it off. That takes time. It can take half an hour or even one hour. [To translate Gilette’s “The best a man can get” in Greek may have easily taken several hours, although it’s only 6 words, because the translator would have had to make sure the Greek equivalent is short and catchy and meaningful and equivalent to the original.] Then of course you have to prepare an invoice. I don’t know about you but it takes me a while to prepare an invoice and make sure everything is accurate. My minimum fee is equivalent to my hourly rate. I know people who charge less (25 euros). When I outsource work, translators charge me a minimum fee of 30 euros and I pay it gladly, no questions asked. I find it more than fair. Of course there are exceptions: When a good client asks me how to say something in X language and I see that it will only take me 10 seconds to translate it, I do it for free. Again, in exceptional cases and for good clients only. If I do not know the person I don’t offer a free translation even if it’s one word.

How to break it to your clients: I think the easiest thing to do is tell them straight out: “I’d be happy to do this job. I’ll charge my minimum fee which is X, is that OK with you?” If they say anything, you could answer that you’ll be applying a minimum fee starting in January of next year. Don’t be afraid to tell them that you know it’s the norm in the industry, they surely know it already.

I have some direct clients but they never assign me small jobs, so I’ve never had to charge them a minimum fee; I’ve only had to apply this fee for agencies. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but in my 13 years as a translator, no agency has ever complained about my minimum fee -for having one or for it being as much as it is. I assume it’s because they expect it.

Keep in mind that once you’ve set your minimum rate and informed your clients, it will be hard to increase it next year, you’ll probably face some resistance, so don’t start too low.

Please stop the please™

Please read the following sign and see if there’s anything that doesn’t sit well with you.
  
Done? OK, now let me point out that when I wrote that first line, I started it by “Read the following sign”. Then I went back and added “Please”. It does not come naturally to me. It’s not because I’m rude, it’s because I’m Greek! Yes, it’s a cultural thing. When I read that sign I immediately thought of my colleague Lefteris, an excellent Greek translator whom I hold in very high esteem, and who brought up this issue in a translation forum a few years ago. His posting was titled “Happy new year and please stop the please” (hence the TM in my title). Two seemingly irrelevant things, but perhaps the latter was actually his wish for the new year. I searched for that posting and just read it once again, and I found myself thinking and saying out loud the same things I had said when I first read it: “Yes! Exactly! Thank you! I know! Amen!”
  
If I had to translate this sign into Greek, all these pleases would fly out the window. This is not something that only I would do; it is not personal and has nothing to do with politeness or lack thereof. It would actually be the right thing to do, from a translation/adaptation point of view. You don’t see that many “pleases” in Greek instructions. When you dial a number and you get to have a “dialog” with a machine (alas, this is no longer an American privilege), the Greek voice on the other end of the line won’t say “Please press one, please press star, please dial 12345, please don’t curse at me because I’m a machine and you’re wasting your energy”. It might say “please” the first time only; the rest of the instructions are not adorned. And if you think about it, why should they? They are not requests. They are instructions. You don’t need to be asked politely, you’re not doing anyone a favor by pressing the star key; if you don’t want to press it, then don’t, it’s your job that won’t get done.
  
The liberty to omit the word “please” is actually a blessing in interpretation. Why? Because the Greek equivalent is long! In English it is one short and sweet syllable. In Greek it has a terrifying grand total of 4, 5, or 6 syllables (parakaló, se parakaló, sas parakaló, parakalíste, sas parakalúme – depending on whether you’re talking to one person or more, or depending on whether you –who are saying please- are one person or speaking on behalf of a group, or depending on whether or not you’re using the polite form – it´s similar to saying in English “I ask you to.., we ask you, we ask all of you, you are asked, etc”. And you thought Chinese was difficult.) I remember my very first interpreting exercise in Lucille Barnes’ school in Buenos Aires: the speaker was using the word “coup” (as in coup d’état) repeatedly. By the time I managed to say the 5-syllable Greek equivalent (πραξικόπημα [praxikópima]), the speaker had gone off to another sentence. The 4th time it happened is when I decided that I would never become an interpreter and that I’d rather stick with translation than deal with all the stress caused by a bloody little coup. (I know, never say never, things changed since then and I became a medical interpreter.)  But I digress. My point is that if you don’t have to interpret the word “please” 50 times, it’s easier not to fall behind.
  
As to the sign in my building’s laundry room, it was taken down sometime in the last couple of weeks. Hopefully by a linguistically sensitive neighbor of mine. (I’m saying hopefully because I’d hate to think that I’m the only one that had her blood pressure rise exponentially with every please.)
  
Please excuse the rambling (now this one was intentional!) and thanks for reading.

The absurdity of outsourcing Greek translations to India

Fresh out of the oven, yet another job ad on ProZ, for a Greek-to-English translation.
  
“We have a small certificate to be translated from Greek into English.
We are looking for translator who is immediately available.
Please send your resume with your best possible price per word in subject line at [ e-mail address ].
Source format: PDF Document
Poster country: India”
  
First of all, why on Earth is this request coming from India? The original certificate is in Greek, so the person who wants it translated is most likely Greek. Why would that person send it to an Indian translation agency? Or maybe he sent it to a Greek agency which then sent it to an Indian agency, which in turn posted it on ProZ. The point is that some Greek person sent it over to India. Why? It baffles me. Do they think there are many Greek-English translators in New Delhi? Or do they expect Hindi translators to speak Greek and English fluently and to be able to translate an official document from Greek to English? (side note / question: Who would notarize the translation?) What is the logic here? I guess the Greek person/agency hopes for a very low price. Fine, but in the end, who receives that very low price? The Greek-English translator. Does the Greek-English translator live in India? Probably not. Can he survive with Indian rates? Probably not.
  
So let’s follow the journey of our Greek certificate. The Indian agency receives it from Greece and posts an ad on a site like ProZ to find a Greek-English translator. Then it selects one of the translators that bid on the project. This translator most likely lives in Greece (statistically speaking), or maybe in the US or the UK or Australia, in any case in a country where Indian rates are probably not a viable option. Let me repeat this, to stress the absurdity of the process: the document is sent from Greece to India and it ends up back in Greece or another country other than India for translation. It gets translated and then is sent  back from Greece (or that other country) to the agency in India, and then from India back to Greece to the person who first requested it. So the certificate takes a very long and uninteresting trip, and in the meantime the price has dropped to sewer level. Doesn’t this even cross the mind of the person that needs the translation? And doesn’t it cross his mind that, in the end, the person receiving the sewer-level price will be the Greek translator, who lives in a country with the same standard of living as him? He probably thinks “Great, I got a good translation and I saved some euros, no harm done”. But no, there is harm done, and it’s significant; to that particular Greek translator, to all translators, and to the translation market in general. In this case we’re talking about a one- or two-page document, at a rate of $0.04 per word versus an average rate of $0.14 per word, i.e. a total of $8 versus $28. We could be talking about a much larger document, of 10 pages, and then the price would be $120 versus $420 (assuming about 300 words per page). Or it could be a 30-page document, $360 vs $1260; you get the picture.   
  
Now, as if the low price requested in the ad weren’t enough, the agency needs a translator that is immediately available. This normally calls for a surcharge for urgent work. Also, note that the source format is PDF, which means that the translator will have to use OCR (not always very successful with Greek) or recreate the layout manually from scratch; another surcharge would be in order. Would the agency be willing to pay these surcharges? My guess is that no, no way, what a funny thing to say… Not only may the translator not charge extra, but according to the ad he should give his/her “best possible price”. “Best”, as we all know, means “lowest”. They want the lowest possible rate. Why? Why should the translator give his lowest possible price for an urgent translation from a PDF?  
  
Some years ago, when translators responded to such ads, it was very often to complain about the ridiculous conditions of the work. Of course when ProZ went from being “The Translators Workplace” to “The Translation Workplace”, a new rule appeared that forbade translators to contact the outsourcers for anything other than bidding for the project. So there you have it, you’re not allowed to complain on proZ, it’s a free market, if you don’t want to do the work, don’t do it, but don’t bother the outsourcer with your complaints and don’t try to influence other translators who might agree to do the translation for a fraction of the cost and spend two hours on a certificate so they can buy a small bag of peanuts. On the other hand, is it really the Indian agency’s fault? They simply agreed to take on a project someone assigned to them. I think the problem lies with the lack of common sense of the person or agency that decided to outsource the project to India; lack of common sense and blindness caused by a frantic search for low prices.

What does it mean to “know” a language?

I’d like to share with you an excerpt from the book Interpreting for International Conferences by Danica Seleskovitch. I recently reviewed this book for my medical-interpreting course and I bookmarked things on every single page. I think it should be -if it isn’t already- mandatory reading for all interpreters.
I found it to be not only full of useful information but also very inspirational. I have always admired interpreters and their ability to switch “from one mental universe to another”, and when some years ago I wanted to learn more about how they do it, how their mind performs such a complex task, I inquired in an online T&I forum about book recommendations on this subject. This book by Seleskovitch was the one that was most highly recommended to me by many colleagues. Among the numerous things that are worth quoting, I’m copying here a passage that discusses what it means to “know” a language. How many of us have been asked “How many languages do you speak?” when we told someone we are translators? Of course the number of languages is somewhat -though not entirely- irrelevant to how good a translator is, but I have long stopped trying to give long explanations about this, it’s just easier to answer with a number, or give a vague answer like “a few”. However, my answer always varies; first of all because I’m never happy with it, I find it inaccurate, so I keep changing it (inaccurate because… do I include the languages I’m currently learning and which I can speak moderately well? Is “moderately well” good enough?); and second, because my level of knowledge of each language has changed with time. French used to be my second language; now I think it is my fourth. I used to speak Dutch fairly well but now I can barely utter a grammatically correct sentence without first thinking about it for 30 seconds. Should I include Dutch in the languages I speak? Do I call it a “passive language”, forcing the other person to ask what that is (assuming he’s not a linguist) and to think “gee, who cares, all I wanted was a number”? So now I just say “I speak a few”. If the other person insists, I say “I work with four, but I speak a few more”. And then I usually change the subject. I think I’ll print out this excerpt by Seleskovitch and carry copies of it with me. Here is what she had to say:

Nothing is more difficult than defining linguistic knowledge. What does it mean to “know” a language? A language is not a finite or clearly defined mass, which you either possess in its entirety or not at all. You do not “know” a language in the same way you know a theorem or poem by heart. You can only know it more or less thoroughly. Some speak two languages with perfect ease, yet have a very limited vocabulary in both. Conversely, philologists or authorities on theoretical linguistics, for example, who do not study languages for the purpose of speaking them, may have a very thorough knowledge of the languages they study, but would be unable to use them to communicate. Their knowledge is thus also limited.

Anyone who has to deal with the realities of today’s world has some knowledge, however minimal, of a foreign language, either because his job requires it or because he comes from a country where the language is not widely spoken beyond that country’s borders (the Dutch, the Swedes, the Poles and, increasingly, the French are finding themselves forced to learn another language). But neither the scholar with his literary or theoretical knowledge nor the expert with his specialized knowledge, nor the polyglot can be considered to have an exhaustive knowledge of the language, but merely a working knowledge. Acquiring a foreign language is so difficult that few specialists in linguistics are at the same time practicing linguists.


Seleskovitch, Danica. Interpreting for International Conferences. Pen and Booth, Arlington, VA 1998. (Translation and adaptation of L’interprète dans les conférences internationales – problèmes de langage et de communication, published by Minard, Paris 1968).

Confidentiality and Gmail

This morning I was reading a blog post written by Marcela Jenney, encouraging freelancers to get their own web domain. Marcela says that domain names build credibility and create a sense of professionalism. I agree 100% with that, in fact I’ve had my own domain for years. But there is another reason why we should have our own web domains. A very important reason. These days it may be the most important reason of all.

If you have a Google account, you must have received an e-mail from Google describing the changes to their privacy policy, which will take effect on March 1, 2012. According to the e-mail, the text of which can also be found on http://www.google.com/policies/,

“We [Google] are getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read. Our new policy covers multiple products and features, reflecting our desire to create one beautifully simple and intuitive experience across Google.

This stuff matters, so please take a few minutes to read our updated Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service now. These changes will take effect on March 1, 2012.”

I agree with them, this stuff matters. It matters a lot. The single privacy policy that will cover multiple products and features as of March 1st states the following:
  

Your Content in our Services

Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).

http://www.google.com/policies/terms/

I’ve already talked about the “service” called Google Translate in a prior post and explained why we should not be uploading onto it the documents we are to translate. But that was only one “service”. (I do need to put it in quotes because otherwise I’d have to call this particular application a disservice.)
  
The big change made by Google now is that this privacy policy will be covering ALL of the services offered by Google. Now do you agree that Gmail is one of those services? (No quotes here, Gmail is indeed a service, a great one, at least up till now.) This means that the above privacy policy applies to Gmail. Hence when you upload or otherwise submit content to Gmail, you give Google (and those [they] work with) a worldwide license to use, […] publish, publicly display and distribute such content. I have read this statement at least 5 times trying to convince myself that I misunderstood, that I missed something, that Google cannot possibly be saying or doing this. But the way this policy is written, it says that Google can use the content of our e-mails and publish it, distribute it, use it to improve its services. As to the first two lines, the statement that “what belongs to you stays yours” is pretty useless, because right after that they say that they can use content that is ours. In other words, the policy says that our stuff is ours but we grant Google a license to use it and publish it and share it. I’ve been reading many online articles on this matter and so far they all confirm this. Can you say for sure that you never included in your e-mails any private information that you don’t want the world to see? Credit card information? Passwords? Received password-confirmation e-mails? Your home address? Your social security number? Your negotiations and agreements with your clients? Attachments with confidential documents that you translated? Your invoices? So Google can use our e-mails along with our translations to improve Google Translate, but this is really nothing compared to the damage that can be done if that information is made public. Maybe Google itself remains true to its motto not to be evil, but it certainly facilitates people to do evil, and with our private information suddenly becoming public, you don’t even need to be a hacker to do evil. Confidential information is offered to everyone on a silver platter.
  
So get your own web domain. Look for a web-hosting service that also offers e-mail hosting and use it for your professional website and for e-mails. I don’t know if Google plans to use e-mails sent or received before March 1st of 2012. The privacy policy doesn’t mention anything about that. We don’t really know whether they plan to use e-mails at all, but unless they state explicitly in their privacy policy that Gmail is excluded from the services covered by the policy, I suggest we play it safe. And although we may not be able to do anything about past e-mails, we can do something about future ones. Buy your own domain, they are very cheap nowadays. And buy it from a good hosting service. I use hostmonster because when I was planning to set up my own website I did some research and hostmonster seemed to be one of the most user-friendly and great value-for-money options with really good user feedback, but there are plenty of other options out there (I’m just mentioning my own in case you have no idea where to start and would like a recommendation). As a self-employed professional, having your own web domain shows that you take your business seriously and invest in it, it does contribute to your credibility, and it lets you have some control over the information you exchange via e-mail with your clients and colleagues.
  

NB: I highly recommend reading these two related articles:

Google knows too much about you (from CNN.com)

What Google knows about you (from ComputerWorld.com)

The art of name-chopping

“The simple is the seal of true.
And beauty is the splendor of truth.
With the words above, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, popularly known as Chandra, concluded his Nobel Prize lecture on 8 December 1983. Toward the end of his talk, he was describing black holes in the astronomical universe, explaining the simplicity in the underlying physics and the beauty of their mathematical description within the framework of Einstein’s theory of relativity. ‘They are,’ he said, ‘the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe.’ […]For newspaper journalists and broadcast interviewers, neither the simplicity of the physics of the black holes nor the mathematical beauty of their description was of major concern; the pronunciation of Chandra’s full name seemed to present them with an astronomical difficulty in and of itself.”
This is the introduction of a very good article about Chandrasekhar, which appeared in the December 2010 issue of Physics Today. Although the last statement of the above paragraph is admittedly funny, as a linguist I couldn’t help but find it sad at the same time, because it is true. “Chandra” is a name very familiar to physicists and engineers; in college we learn about the “Chandra X-ray Observatory”, the “Chandra telescope”. I don’t know how Chandrasekhar felt about this but if it were me I don’t think I’d be very happy about people butchering my name. Especially when it comes to someone that contributed so much to science, I think one should make an effort to say and write the full name: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. If nothing else, out of respect. I understand that for translators, who are more exposed to foreign names and complex sounds, names such as Chandrasekhar’s may be nothing extraordinary, but even to the untrained ear the pronunciation difficulty should not be “astronomical”!
  
Chandra X-ray Observatory (Illustration: NASA/CXC/NGST)
Chandra X-ray Observatory (Illustration: NASA/CXC/NGST)
The author goes on to say: “Being the first son, Chandra inherited the name of his grandfather, Ramanathan Chandrasekhar (referred to as R.C. hereafter)”. R.C., like …J.Lo. And further down he writes: “From his high-school days, […] Chandra had determined to pursue a career in pure science. He had as an example his uncle Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (popularly known as C.V. Raman) […]”. C.V. Raman; doesn’t it sound like M.C. Hammer to you? It does to me.
  
“In February and March [of 1928], Raman, along with Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan, made a fundamental discovery in the molecular scattering of light, later to become known as the Raman effect.” I know about the Raman effect but I never knew Raman’s full name, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in my textbooks. It was always Raman, could have been any Raman, as in “Raman noodles” (my college roommate’s dinner every single night for four years). This, of course, is fine, it’s his last name, not a chopped version or …an acronym.
  
I don’t know if I’m too sensitive to “name-chopping”, if I should lighten up, if my lack of sympathy towards name-choppers is because when you grow up listening to names like Hatzigiannakopoulos, Papageorgianopoulos, Hatzipanagiotidis, and Papanikolaou, then a 5-syllable name doesn’t exactly present a challenge.
  
And maybe Indian people don’t care much anyway. Or maybe they do care but are very considerate of those who don’t make an effort to learn or pronounce their full name. Well, instead of speculating, I thought I’d ask one. I asked an old colleague of mine, a programmer, whose name is Vidyasagar Bhakthavatsalam. At work everyone used to call him VB. That’s how he was introduced to me. Sometimes I was confused and thought we were talking about VB as in Visual Basic. A couple of people would call him “Vidya”. VB (my colleague, not the programming language) didn’t seem to mind, I thought that perhaps he even found it amusing. I used to call him VB too, not only because that’s how he was introduced to me but because I didn’t want to stand out as a know-it-all. But I always felt bad when I called him VB. So after not having spoken to him in a while, I e-mailed him out of the blue to ask if it bothered him that I used to butcher his name a few years ago. And if yes, I wanted to apologize (better late than never, I suppose). He sent me a very nice answer, that if one had to shorten his name, he preferred “Vidya” but that “VB works as well”. Which I interpreted to mean that if you call him VB he’ll still answer, but the more you chop off the worse. Then he went on to give me the etymology of his name, which I found beautiful. He said that in Sanskrit, Vidya means knowledge, and Sagar means ocean. So the full name means “ocean of knowledge”. Let me say that these two words are amongst my favorite, both in terms of phonetics and in terms of what they represent. Phonetically I find ocean, océan, ωκεανός, océano, very pleasing to the ear. Same goes for the Greek θάλασσα(sea). The ocean, the sea, is one of the things I miss most about my home country, two of my favorite Greek songs have the word θάλασσα/sea in the title, blue is my favorite color in all of its shades and always has been, and the thought of the ocean evokes to me the notions of openness, adventure, hope, vastness, possibilities, peace. And knowledge… suffice it to say that one of the main reasons I am a translator is because with every text we translate we learn something new. Knowledge to me is like the fountain of youth, a stimulus that keeps me going.  So these two things, ocean and knowledge, combined in a single word, in a single first name, is something I find absolutely beautiful. So my dear friend Vidyasagar, my sincere apologies. The word does represent you indeed, and I apologize for having butchered it for so long.

Confidentiality and Google Translate

Ethical principles, rules and conventions distinguish socially acceptable behaviour from that which is considered socially unacceptable. However, in social science research a few workers consider their work beyond scrutiny, presumably guided by a disinterested virtue which justifies any means to attain hoped for ends.

Ethical problems can relate to both the subject matter of the research as well as to its methods and procedures, and can go well beyond courtesy or etiquette regarding appropriate treatment of persons in a free society. Social scientists have often been criticized for lack of concern over the welfare of their subjects. The researcher often misinforms subjects about the nature of the investigation, and-or exposes them to embarrassing or emotionally painful experiences. […] It was found in a survey by the British Psychological Society that the two major areas of dilemma for members were confidentiality and research. Issues reported in this later area included unethical procedures, informed consent, harm to participants, deception, and deliberate falsification of results. 

The above is from a textbook I used in my applied linguistics studies, “Introduction to Research Methods” by Robert B. Burns. It is a very useful manual for those who wish to conduct research in education and in the social sciences. When I had to interview some subjects for my research, this book was my bible.

I was recently talking to a fellow member of IAPTI about confidentiality issues in translation, and how disconcerting it is that many –for the most part inexperienced– translators use online automatic translation tools such as Google Translate without knowing that they are breaching confidentiality between themselves and their clients. The concept of confidentiality between a translator and his client made me think of confidentiality between a researcher and his subject. I went back to my old textbook. Please humor me and reread the above quoted passage, replacing “social science” with “translation”, “social scientist” and “researcher” with “translator”, “investigation” with “translation method”, and “subject” with “client”. It would go something like this:

Ethical principles, rules and conventions distinguish socially acceptable behaviour from that which is considered socially unacceptable. However, in translation a few translators consider their work beyond scrutiny, presumably guided by a disinterested virtue which justifies any means to attain hoped for ends.

Ethical problems can relate to both the subject matter of the text as well as to the methods and procedures used to translate it, and can go well beyond courtesy or etiquette regarding appropriate treatment of persons in a free society. Translators have often been criticized for lack of concern over the welfare of their clients. The translator often misinforms clients about the nature of the translation method, and-or exposes them to embarrassing or emotionally painful experiences. […] 

Let’s look at that last sentence for a minute: Does the translator misinform clients about the nature of the translation method? One might argue that the translator doesn’t even discuss his translation method, he just agrees to do the translation. Well, we can play with words and use lawyers’ tricks but if we really want to be honest with ourselves, the truth is that when we say “I will do the translation” we are telling the client that “I will do the translation”; I, the translator. And before arguing that it’s not necessarily what we mean, let’s put ourselves in the client’s shoes. What does the client understand when we say that, and what does he expect?

The sentence mentions embarrassing or emotionally painful experiences. Does this apply to us? Let me give just a couple of examples from personal experience:

Recently I translated some academic transcripts from Greek to English for a direct client, let’s call him “Yannis”. Along with the transcripts, I had to translate a long list of engineering course descriptions and a couple of cover letters. I had to rely on my own knowledge (I had taken many of those courses some years ago), on university websites, reliable engineering dictionaries, and my old textbooks. (Who would have thought that my 50000-lb thermodynamics book, also used as a very effective doorstopper, would come in handy after all these years?) What would have happened if I had used an online translation application, say Google Translate? If you think that a lousy translation is the only thing I would have gotten, think again. (And it would be lousy indeed! It turns out that before hiring me, Yannis had tried to do the translation himself, using Google Translate. I guess he didn’t get very far, so he decided to hire a professional. When I sent him my translation he took a quick look and immediately wrote back to thank me and tell me that now he understood why professional translators are so indispensable. I wanted to give Yannis a virtual hug.) Anyway, let’s say I had considered using Google Translate to do this job. First of all, I would have no right to put Yannis’ transcripts on a public domain. If Yannis wanted to do so, that would be his right, those were his grades. I would have no right to share Yannis’ grades with anyone, nor would I have the right to share his personal cover letter with people who are not the intended recipients. Maybe I could remove information that could be used to identify him… His name, address, title, affiliation, all the grades -I’m sure I’d miss something- maybe I should remove the name of the university as well, and the department, and the year of graduation, and the title of the degree. What’s left? Right, the list of courses. But then, would Google really be able to give me a good translation of the description of that specialized course on the dynamics of Diesel engines or the one on welding and soldering techniques? What else would be left? The main body of the cover letters. Again, I have no right to share a letter written by someone other than me with people to whom it is not addressed. Plus if Yannis wanted the letters to be translated by Google, he could have done that himself. If Yannis ever decided to do an online search for some terms or sentences appearing in those cover letters, he might have found the entire text online. Talk about an embarrassing and emotionally painful experience! And of course he’d feel cheated. And if he then mentioned it to me, the embarrassing experience would be all mine.  Now is that the kind of relationship we want to build with our clients? Does the use of an online automatic translation tool reflect the respect and confidentiality that they deserve and consider a given when they hire us? Is that how we make sure they are satisfied and would hire us again or recommend us to others?

Now if a simple document such as an academic transcript is confidential, think about medical records. Or press releases. Or private-meeting minutes.  Or advertising campaigns. Or private correspondence. And yet there are translators who use Google Translate, oblivious to the fact that Google is not Mother Teresa, doing your translation for you asking for nothing in return, out of the goodness of its silicon little heart. “I’m doing this for the common good,” you might say; “if other translators ever need that information, they can find it easily online thanks to me”. Well, the problem with this concept is that the data you are sharing is NOT yours to share!

This brings us to a fundamental difference between the researcher-subject scenario (case A) and the translator-client scenario (case B): In case A, the study is conducted by the researcher, it is his own work from beginning to end; he chooses the topic, he designs the study, he collects and analyzes the data, and he is the one to present the work, for his own benefit (and in the long term for the benefit of the scientific community or perhaps society in general). In case B, the case that concerns us translators, we are given temporary access to work that is not ours. The topic of the document we are to translate, the content, the layout and the presentation all belong to the client, not to the translator, and they are to be used for the client’s benefit. So if confidentiality is such an important concern in case A, think how important it is in case B, i.e. in translation.

To the embarrassing or emotionally painful experiences, as mentioned by Burns, add “professionally detrimental” ones. Here’s an example: I am often asked to translate research articles to be published in American scientific journals. Again, this is research, to be published. Sometimes these papers describe many years’ worth of research. The authors have chosen specific journals through which to make their work known to the scientific community. They have not chosen Google’s database, they have not chosen forums of online translation portals (where translators ask for term advice, and for context they give entire paragraphs that often include highly sensitive and confidential information), they have not chosen anything other than those journals, and it is those journals that will have copyright. Imagine how professionally detrimental it can be to an author of such a paper that describes his work if that paper –whether in its entirety or partially- appears online before the author even has the chance to submit it for publication.

In the same chapter about ethics, privacy, and confidentiality, Burns goes on to say:

The right to privacy is an important right enshrined now in international (UN Declaration of Human Rights) and national legislation.[…] Individuals should decide what aspects of their personal lives, attitudes, habits, eccentricities, fears and guilt are to be communicated to others. […] This does not mean that personal and private behavior cannot be observed ethically; it can, provided that the subjects volunteer to participate with full knowledge of the purposes and procedures involved.

 
The above applies to us as well. Our clients are the only ones who have the right to decide what aspects of their life or work are to be communicated to others, and they must have full knowledge of the procedures involved in the translation. If you plan to outsource the work or if you plan to use an online automatic translation tool or use any other method that might compromise privacy and confidentiality, you should tell your client and obtain his permission. If you are not telling your client because you think it doesn’t concern him, based on the above you’re wrong. If you’re not telling him because you might think he won’t hire you if you do, that means you are knowingly doing something wrong, i.e. you are aware that you are compromising privacy and confidentiality and still choose to proceed. You proceed until a client finds out and complains, or until a client takes legal action against you, or until the translators’ association you belong to tells you that you have violated its code of ethics, or until you simply realize that professionalism in our field of work goes well beyond delivering a good translation.

Ref: Burns, R.B. (2000). Introduction to Research Methods, 4th edition, Pearson Education Australia.

Pursuit of Excellence

I used to work for a mathematical software company that had some core values which were taken very seriously by everyone in the company, from upper management and experienced programmers to the newly hired tech-support specialists and office-services staff. They were listed on the company’s website, they were brought up in company meetings, printed on T-shirts, on company stationery, in our quarterly and annual reviews, and they were followed by all the employees of the company. We adopted them so thoroughly, they were not just a way of working, they were a way of life. One of them was “Continuous improvement and pursuit of excellence”: you should strive to become better at your work every day, try to be a better person every day, and always try to do your best; the goal is excellence, you shouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than that. Even if you can’t always achieve it, you should at least try to get as close to it as you can.
  
When I started studying translation, I kept following this core value and tried to achieve accuracy and fluency and produce the best translation I could. My professor clearly was trying to convey to us this same mentality, with her immense patience for correcting our errors and explaining even the most tedious differences between alternative translations and why we should opt for one over the other. “Attention to detail” was not just a skill as is typically mentioned in job descriptions; it was built in our work method. It was not an extra but a necessity. My classmates adopted this way of working as well, and I was in an environment of people who were trying to do their best, not in order to get a good grade but because they shared this passion for language, for accurate passage from one language and culture to another. 

 

As this had become a way of life for me, like for many of my then classmates too, as a professional translator I strived for excellent quality from the very beginning. I became a member of online forums and saw that my colleagues did the same. We were consulting each other on the best possible equivalent of terms we were to translate, we talked about the nuances and connotations and the most fluent structure and what would sound best to a specific target audience. If you are a translator you know exactly what I mean. We strive for the most accurate and effective communication. We pursue excellence.  

 

One fine day I began to see that my profession was starting to get infiltrated by people who didn’t share this mentality. I discovered to my horror that some people claimed that quality has become of lesser priority, that it is OK if communication is not 100% fluent and accurate and error-free, that it is not up to us language professionals to decide what translation quality means and how high the quality of translation (read, the quality of our own work) must be. This is not just irrational and surreal to me, it goes against everything I have learned as a student, everything I have been practicing as an engineer and then a language professional, and against a core value I follow in every aspect of my life. It goes against what the translation profession stands for and it goes against what we translators stand for. The irony of it all is that it is some businessmen who are defending that low-quality concept, businessmen who apparently saw a niche, a goldmine, and decided to exploit it. And that’s not all, those non-translators, those money-oriented businessmen, are shameless enough to try to convince US, the translators, that what we have stood for from the beginning of our careers is useless, non-efficient, or simply wrong. They even come to translators’ conferences to give speeches as authorities in the field, and bluntly offend professional translators and try to convince them to become worker bees while they can enjoy the honey. 

 

So after striving for years to be the best we can be, to achieve excellence, now we find ourselves in a position where we have to focus our efforts on defending our work methods and philosophy, on defending not the quality of our work, but the fact that our work should be of high quality. Let me impress upon you the absurdity of this: we are finding ourselves having to defend the fact that we should be doing our job well. 

 

We often compare translators to lawyers; let me make yet another such comparison. Saying that quality is not top priority and that we should work towards wholesale translations at low prices is like telling lawyers that they shouldn’t lose sleep over not defending a client very well, it’s OK if a few mistakes are made –so what if a few people are sent to jail unfairly?-, what’s important is having a lot of clients and working on a lot of cases because that would qualify as efficient. Legal defense is a commodity.  

 

Frankly I am starting to have enough of this wholesale mentality. I am getting extremely fed up with being insulted to my face. I am an advocate of “Pursuit of excellence” and so are my colleagues. “Pursuit of mediocrity” has never been in the curriculum or in any code of ethics I have ever seen. If some businessmen prefer mediocrity over excellence, they can do that in their own business, not in mine. They can adopt that philosophy and use it in their way of working and in their way of living if they so choose. Each one chooses his own goals. Some choose the easier ones (mediocrity is much easier than excellence, after all). But trying to convince one that quantity is more important than quality and that it’s better to be mediocre than excellent, is pointless, a waste of time, and it causes quite a bit of damage in the process.