Michael Wetzel Germany Local time: 01:42 German to English
regarding your suggestion
Mar 11, 2011
Hello José,
I made several false assumptions:
1. that almost every country has some procedure for recognizing "sworn translators"
2. that no country would recognize the work of "sworn translators" accredited by other countries (seems to defeat the purpose)
3. I simply forgot about the issue of extreme federalism in countries such as the US.
I agree that the indication "sworn translator" is useless without information about where.
Point 1 doesn't seem that problematic: it only means that there would be no "sworn translators" listed for some countries (and also no demand for them). Point 2 only means that the clients would have to inform themselves ahead of time. Point 3 would cause significant problems for searching in such countries, but only in those countries.
Your final question seems to imply that it might be possible to be recognized as a "sworn translator" in some countries without fulfilling one of the other credential criteria, is this really the case?
Your last question also seems to conflate state certification in general and state accredidation as a "sworn translator". In Germany, for example, there are three typical credentials for translators: 1. degree in translation studies, 2. chamber of commerce test, 3. state test. The options (2) and (3) are obviously not equivalent to (1) but they represent absolutely solid credentials that make sense for a lot of translators who do not have a degree in translation. There is no question of getting by with the help of "clout" (unless, perhaps, one happens to be a prospective minister in the national government, to have 6-7 middle names and a "von und zu" preceding one's last name - but in that case a degree or doctorate is no problem either).
Sincerely,
Michael
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Hello José,
I made several false assumptions:
1. that almost every country has some procedure for recognizing "sworn translators"
Worse than that. Even a country having such procedures has its shortcomings. For instance, AFAIK there is no sworn translator in Brazil for Swedish not Turkish (plus a long list of less popular languages). So there is a procedure (and a fee, of course! almost USD 100 per document in the Sao Paulo state) that enables one to get a translator appointed ad-hoc. The process itself (in SP state) takes three weeks.
Michael Wetzel wrote:
2. that no country would recognize the work of "sworn translators" accredited by other countries (seems to defeat the purpose)
Australia is a typical case. They have their own NAATI, however they accept translations from government-certified translators in other countries.
Michael Wetzel wrote:
3. I simply forgot about the issue of extreme federalism in countries such as the US.
In Brazil the law (on sworn translations) is federal, however the administration and supervision, as well as many rules, including mandatory rates are statewide. Nevertheless, sworn translations from any state are valid nationwide.
I agree that the indication "sworn translator" is useless without information about where.
Michael Wetzel wrote:.
Your final question seems to imply that it might be possible to be recognized as a "sworn translator" in some countries without fulfilling one of the other credential criteria, is this really the case?
This is far off-topic here, however I have evidence of three cases where this happened. Not three people, three places. I feel some relief from knowing that the exam I passed was thoroughly serious and on the up-and-up.
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Lingua 5B Bosnia and Herzegovina Local time: 01:42 Member (2009) English to Croatian + ...
My experience exactely.
Mar 11, 2011
Neil Coffey wrote:
I should say that some outsourcers (including myself when I'm looking for collaborators in a particular field) may be cautious of translators who haven't actually studied the language in question to a high level. In my personal experience, I've had more trouble with experts in the field making extremely basic mistakes in terms of misinterpreting the "core language" than I have with language specialists with a "first year of a degree course" level of knowledge in the field being unable to research terms and concepts. But I appreciate that depending on the field and project, your mileage may vary.
This equals my experience as outsourcer. I also found that, apart from not being able to parse sentences and thus clarify certain meanings and tone of voice, specialists without language degrees also have quite a stiff and not so compelling writing style. It's one thing to be a field specialist, and another thing to be a field author ( the former not necessarily includes the latter, although it can).
I'm also wary of people who have some semi- knowledge of source language but are convinced that their subject-matter knowledge will make up for it, thus they start using some kind of implicit or subconscious/ psychic techniques to guess certain meanings in the source ( no need to explain how "reliable" this technique is).
In general terms, my experience with language specialists in expert fields has been fantastic so far, with them providing excellent translation quality. This, of course, applies only to my personal outsourcing experience.
[Edited at 2011-03-11 16:10 GMT]
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Cathy Flick United States Local time: 19:42 Member (2003) Russian to English + ...
TOPIC STARTER
caution is justified
Mar 13, 2011
Neil Coffey wrote:
I should say that some outsourcers (including myself when I'm looking for collaborators in a particular field) may be cautious of translators who haven't actually studied the language in question to a high level. In my personal experience, I've had more trouble with experts in the field making extremely basic mistakes in terms of misinterpreting the "core language" than I have with language specialists with a "first year of a degree course" level of knowledge in the field being unable to research terms and concepts.
Your caution is justified. Just knowing the field is no guarantee of competency as a translator. I once had to fix a horrible translation by an M.D. who considered himself bilingual. I'm sure he could talk with his patients in both Spanish and English, but he just wasn't a translator. I think he just dictated it, had his secretary type it up and then mail it off to the agency, without a second glance. He didn't bother checking anything, so he was completely wrong about terminology and phrasing in biochemistry, immunology, and medical transplant areas. Plus it still sounded like Spanish ... He just didn't have the mindset of a translator: check everything - read what you need to read to verify how experts in the field talk about such things, make sure you actually understand the source text first and then make sure you are rendering the text in real English (writing as an English-speaking expert would have written it, basically, except you need to be faithful to the original author's intent). Some people are just naturally like that, others are not. Translation takes an attention to detail that many people just don't have, along with some interest in how language works.
Translators are typically good self-learners, so it's not surprising that many of them stretch the boundaries of their formal background quite successfully. But some fields are simply not so amenable to self-study, and that's where even excellent translators can fail. My fields seem to be in that particular category (chemistry, physics). Most people without the proper training will avoid real physics (and anything with a plethora of mathematical formulas...), but too many do think they can manage chemistry quite well based just on their knowledge of the source language. I don't know why chemistry is so deceptive this way, but I've had to "fix" and evaluate many texts done by non-chemists. Sometimes I can see clear signs that they are good translators in general, but they produce work that is really bad even though they may have spent a lot of time on it.
Many years ago Pat Newman (who later was a President of the American Translators Association) was giving a workshop about technical translation. Pat was handling in-house and outsourcing translation work for a national laboratory; she herself had a degree in engineering and also a degree in Russian and German (I think she went back later in life for the latter degree). Someone asked if, when choosing a freelancer, she would rather have someone with a master's in Russian or someone with a Ph.D. in physics but no special language degrees. She immediately said she wanted the Ph.D. in physics, because she needed people who really understood what a Fourier transform was ... She knew that a reading knowledge of Russian or other languages in specific fields could be picked up by self-learning, and scientists have been doing just that for ages. But some fields really do require help along the way, as in formal education.
So it does very much depend on the field. This is why teamwork is essential for many projects. I prefer to work for agencies that have real editors, and specifically ask that the editor know what I don't (and I turn down jobs that don't provide that when the document is not purely technical). I don't trust my attempts to translate ordinary chit-chat or bureaucratese or legalese, for example. I want an editor who will fix whatever I break in those areas, and who will be able to field queries about linguistic matters if needed. But my clients know my limitations (I tell them often enough...) and it doesn't bother them. They want me for what I do well. One client (an excellent translator and editor himself who often did edit my work) gave me one job and casually said "Half of this you won't be able to figure out because it's so project-specific, but just put something in and we'll fix that in editing. We really need you for the physics part." I get the same attitude from clients who have docs with embedded legalese/bureaucratese in an otherwise technical text - they can fix that part, they need me for the highly technical end of it. I'm told that I'm not as bad as I think when it comes to the non-technical bits, but that's only because I work really hard at it (and hence it's not cost-effective!). Regardless, I won't work without a net on such jobs. Actually, even in purely technical jobs - I don't like working without a net. I want another pair of eyes to go over everything, since the eyes see what the brain expects and once a mistake is made - it can be invisible no matter how often the original translator looks at it.
I can easily work with general translators as my editors, as long as they have eagle eyes and inquiring minds. I can always explain/reassure as necessary if they are wondering about a particular technical term or phrasing. But hiring a translator who doesn't know a highly technical field and expecting someone like me to fix it - well, you'll be paying twice for the translation, because typing out the draft is the easy part. I'm not going to rent out my brain cheap to do the hard part, especially since I do a lot of thinking while typing out the draft... It can indeed take longer to fix a bad translation than to translate it myself from the beginning.
I do have to point out that unless the agency has someone on hand who really knows the field - they can be fooled easily by someone who is a good writer in English and who knows the source language well but doesn't know the field. The translation can sound good to a non-specialist and a general editor may not find any obvious errors or omissions. But it can still be quite unreliable. One agency recently wanted me to translate an updated version of a standard operating procedure for some chemical production, based on the translation of the first version. I had to honestly tell them that they might as well have me retranslate it entirely since it would cost them as much to have me properly revise the old parts - just a glance told me that the first translator just didn't know relevant chemistry and the translation could not be trusted. There were serious terminology mistakes that indicated lack of even a little chemical background. The project manager was unhappy with me, insisting that the first translator was a "specialist". Well, maybe, but not in chemistry. I just couldn't do the job at the price they wanted (the PM thought it would take 2-3 hours to update it, I said it would take at least 9 to 12 hours because in good conscience I couldn't just leave the old translation unaltered).
The agency might not even get negative feedback about such bad translations - they're so common in technical areas that the original requestor may just assume that all translations are bad anyway and will just hope to extract something useful from the doc... One head of a translation department for a government agency told me that they had to stamp 95% of the outsourced docs "unedited" and pass them along, due to the small in-house staff that had to concentrate just on the most critical material. But the requestors often found such unedited work practically unreadable.
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Aude Sylvain France Local time: 01:42 English to French + ...
good idea
Mar 14, 2011
Cathy Flick wrote:
2) Extend the meaning of credentials on our profiles to at least include advanced degrees in specific fields (perhaps separating into "language-related credentials" and "field-specific credentials" for clarity). This would be helpful for people in other areas as well. If the separation is made, though, ProZ still has to warn job posters about the "pool shrinkage" problem if they check off "language-related credentials required".
Hello,
one more vote for this idea - that would be a great improvement.
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Cathy Flick wrote: 2) Extend the meaning of credentials on our profiles to at least include advanced degrees in specific fields (perhaps separating into "language-related credentials" and "field-specific credentials" for clarity). This would be helpful for people in other areas as well. If the separation is made, though, ProZ still has to warn job posters about the "pool shrinkage" problem if they check off "language-related credentials required".
Hello,
one more vote for this idea - that would be a great improvement.
In this case, it would be worthwhile to qualify the "language-related credentials".
Checkboxes (or a multiple-choice, ctrl+click, dropdown list) will do, e.g.:
University degree in translation
Secondary school diploma in translation
Governmental accreditation (e.g. sworn)
Language school diploma in translation
Peers association accreditation (e.g. ATA, ABRATES, etc.)*
Any others???
*Proz PRO-tag is indicated elsewhere, so it shouldn't count here.
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Aude Sylvain France Local time: 01:42 English to French + ...
language-related credentials
Mar 15, 2011
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
In this case, it would be worthwhile to qualify the "language-related credentials".
Checkboxes (or a multiple-choice, ctrl+click, dropdown list) will do, e.g.:
University degree in translation
Secondary school diploma in translation
Governmental accreditation (e.g. sworn)
Language school diploma in translation
Peers association accreditation (e.g. ATA, ABRATES, etc.)*
Any others???
*Proz PRO-tag is indicated elsewhere, so it shouldn't count here.
Yes, fully agree José!
I think that language diplomas/degrees (vs. translation dip/degrees) would also be relevant there, if we are to speak about "language related credentials".
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