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| User | Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff Poll: What percentage of your agency clients wouldn't mind working with translators not native of the TL? |
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The Misha
United States
Local time: 17:53
Russian to English
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| | Amen, brother | Dec 1, 2011 |
Chun Un wrote:
... Being a native speaker, sometimes, doesn't really mean much.
[Edited at 2011-12-01 16:58 GMT] |
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PRAKAASH 
India
Local time: 03:23
 Member (2007)
English to Hindi
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| | Not sure about percentage | Dec 1, 2011 |
I am not sure about percentage. But I know that some agencies provide editing jobs at half of the rates of translation itself.
So, they get translation done by their staff itself or by google translate and forward it for editing. Hence, they try to get translation done at half of the total rates.
I know about an Indian agency, which I wouldn't like to name here for personal reasons, pays only INR 150 for one hour of editing. For them, 1000 words should be edited in 1 hour. It means editing at INR 0.15 per word only.
I suspect, in an effort to provide services at lowest possible cost to clients/agencies, such agencies may play with quality easily by employing non-native TL translators or keep on exploiting linguists/translators.
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David Andersen
Australia
Local time: 07:53
Member (2011)
Indonesian to English
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| | Comprehension in conjucntion with naturalness | Dec 1, 2011 |
I find the native speaker of the source language can have an advantage in terms of better comprehension of the source text, whereas the native speaker of the target language has an advantage in terms of greater ability to choose between many different ways of expressing the meaning so as to find the most natural and clear alternative. But many native speakers of the target language don't make the most of this advantage if they fall into the temptation of being too literal and not creative enough in restructuring the meaning. Then they produce translations just as unnatural as that done by a non-native speaker. Just having a simple dichotomy between native speaker and non-native is simplistic. The best translators will either be a native speaker of the source language who is also highly fluent in the target language, gving a combination of perfect comprehension and high naturalness, or else a native speaker of the target language who has very high comprehension of the source language as well as high awareness of good translation theory so as to avoid overliteralism
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Chun Un
Macau
Local time: 05:53
 Member (2007)
English to Chinese
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David Andersen wrote:
I find the native speaker of the source language can have an advantage in terms of better comprehension of the source text, whereas the native speaker of the target language has an advantage in terms of greater ability to choose between many different ways of expressing the meaning so as to find the most natural and clear alternative. But many native speakers of the target language don't make the most of this advantage if they fall into the temptation of being too literal and not creative enough in restructuring the meaning. Then they produce translations just as unnatural as that done by a non-native speaker. Just having a simple dichotomy between native speaker and non-native is simplistic. The best translators will either be a native speaker of the source language who is also highly fluent in the target language, giving a combination of perfect comprehension and high naturalness, or else a native speaker of the target language who has very high comprehension of the source language as well as high awareness of good translation theory so as to avoid overliteralism |
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patriciacharnet
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:53
English to French
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Chun Un wrote:
David Andersen wrote:
I find the native speaker of the source language can have an advantage in terms of better comprehension of the source text, whereas the native speaker of the target language has an advantage in terms of greater ability to choose between many different ways of expressing the meaning so as to find the most natural and clear alternative. But many native speakers of the target language don't make the most of this advantage if they fall into the temptation of being too literal and not creative enough in restructuring the meaning. Then they produce translations just as unnatural as that done by a non-native speaker. Just having a simple dichotomy between native speaker and non-native is simplistic. The best translators will either be a native speaker of the source language who is also highly fluent in the target language, giving a combination of perfect comprehension and high naturalness, or else a native speaker of the target language who has very high comprehension of the source language as well as high awareness of good translation theory so as to avoid overliteralism |
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I agree - the number of times that I saw French speakers in France made a mess with a revision because they did not understand the nuances of the original text at all or French native speakers understanding the original text but letting their native language getting contaminated with turns of phrases appropriate to the original language - it's a very fine balance requiring you to actively maintaining both source and target languages at optimal levels - I've also seen many English speakers who failed to understand some French nuances when translating into English - most of the times when I was corrected it was not by a French speaker (who were most often pedantic in imposing a turn of phrase in the target language) but by an English speaker when I failed to pick up a very slight nuance in English! Although now rare (when I make a mistake) I've learned more from the original language native speakers (English) than the target native speakers (French) when I've been translating with my main (95%) language combination from English into French.
[Edited at 2011-12-02 10:19 GMT]
[Edited at 2011-12-02 10:19 GMT]
[Edited at 2011-12-02 13:29 GMT]
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Alexander Kondorsky
Russian Federation
Local time: 01:53
Member (2011)
English to Russian
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| | being native in source language may be precious | Dec 2, 2011 |
In certain kinds of texts, especially scientific, technical or just vaguely and poorly worded, being a native of SOURCE language may be much more important than being a native in TARGET language. In my opinion, TL natives are definitely required to translate such things as fiction or poetry
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David Andersen
Australia
Local time: 07:53
Member (2011)
Indonesian to English
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| | Why the heavy emphasis on target langauge native language? | Dec 13, 2011 |
If in fact for various translation tasks being a native speaker in the source language gives an advantage, and there is no guarantee that being a native speaker in the target language will protect one from all sorts of translation mistakes, what is the historical or commercial reason behind the heavy emphasis on being a native speaker in the target language? Any ideas?
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Yelena Fukalova
Russian Federation
Local time: 01:53
Member (Feb 2012)
English to Russian
| | If there is a supply there is a demand. And vica versa. | Jan 18 |
Some of my colleagues work with such clients. May be it's cheaper for customers. May be it's the way some translators used to work. Sometimes both. But I am sure that being a good translator means that one can translate both ways and customers I guess can find those good translators.
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The translation workplace 
