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.
I couldn't agree more. Having been a linguist for over twelve years, I pursue nothing but excellence. Unfortunately, money-oriented entrepreneurs have been taking over the language teaching market more and more by the day, bringing about a whole generation of actual non-speakers of foreign languages provided they're unable to get across simple messages in L2. Regarding translations, a livelier part of the language, things get even worse. Fortunately, I haven't seen these cash machines down here in Brazil.
All the best in your blog, my dear and beloved Greek-Argentinian colleague! I've always thought that, one of these days, you could become Aurora's heir in the translation field! Have a nice week!
Thanks for your comments. Fawdawi, I'm not Greek-Argentinian but Greek-American. I love Argentina, though.
Very nice post, Maria. If you haven't already, you should check out Tom Peters' books on the very subject of the pursuit of excellence in business.
Thank you Maria for an inspiring start to the day.
I happen to be a highly trained and experienced engineer but essentially a self-taught translator. I have been amazed at the way translators let themselves be bullied by agencies seeking discounts for repetitions, and clients seeking discounts for little more than differences over personal style.
I've also sensed recently increased arrogance and aggression from some agencies/clients, which is very sad. The aim seems to be to destroy confidence and increase profit rather to encourage and support improvement. I'm fortunate that I can chose not to work for such people.
There are of course exceptions, and we should hold them up as examples, not just because they pay their bills on time, but because they demand high standards and are willing to provide glossaries, detailed feedback etc. to achieve the quality they require.
Thanks again for some interesting thoughts.
Hi, Maria,
I enjoyed your article very much and I'm glad there are still people who defend not only a difficult profession, but a way of life.
Congratulations on your new blog, Maria. This is a great piece that reflects the core values of all founding members of IAPTI. No one better to represent our ethical stance than you. I wish you and your blog every success.
It's not only in the translation market. It's everywhere. There's no more a "build-to-last" approach, but "build to survive Xmas shopping spree".
“Après moi le déluge”
However, personally I take a stand of Howard Roark in Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead". Even if that means that I don't have work as a translator but a cleaner.
If you let your personal values be compromised more than once, it's difficult to look at the mirror.
What a great post! It stroke a chord with me as I am working on achieving excellence in everything I do. This obviously includes translation, interpreting and running a business but also everyday little things that need to be done properly. When it comes to translation, there is no such thing for me as wholesale translation, all I care for is the accuracy and fluency so that the translation has some value. Quantity is much less important.