| User | Thread poster: Ty Kendall Hounslow - Clueless about languages |
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Ty Kendall 
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:11
 Member (2011)
Hebrew to English
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I stumbled upon this the other day by chance. Rates aside, they value translation/interpreting by its degree of "difficulty" ("We group our languages based on how difficult they are to translate and interpret.") ...and they have two main "tiers".....
Top tier is for so-called "easier" languages.
Second tier is for "difficult languages".
http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/index/business/translation/translations_rates/language_tiers.htm
Now, I don't know who they consulted when they dreamt this up, but I'm not sure why they think Spanish and Mandarin belong in the same category when that category is based on level of difficulty to translate to/from English....or that Arabic and Albanian are "easier" than French.
Another thing, the rather relative term of "difficulty" is more often cited when learning languages, in which case many would agree that the Romance languages don't rank among the hardest for English speakers (not compared to Mandarin and Cantonese anyhow)....
However, the Hounslow tier ranking is based on how difficult they are to translate and interpret. Surely this is even more ridiculous....How is this quantified?
Admittedly, some languages are so divergent (grammatically, lexically etc) that it poses more of a challenge to the translator. Strangely though, the "easier" category only contains languages that considerably divergent from English grammatically and otherwise.
Then you have their view of Russian. A category-jumping language which is apparently "easy" to interpret, but "difficult" to translate.
The whole category thing is practically moot anyway, given that the rates are almost indistinguishable.
http://www.hounslow.gov.uk/index/business/translation/translations_rates.htm
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Lisa Simpson, MCIL
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:11
 Member (2010)
Portuguese to English
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| | Interesting and off-the-wall | Feb 8 |
I also wonder why they've separated 'Face-to-face interpreting' and 'Telephone interpreting' since their very sophisticated language tier system is identical in both?
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Diana Coada
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:11
Member (2010)
English to Romanian
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| | I want to know who the consulted experts are! | Feb 8 |
So Portuguese is difficult to translate but easy to interpret? They should remove this nonsense all together.
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Melissa Dedina
Czech Republic
Local time: 01:11
Member (2010)
Czech to English
+ ...
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Well, Russian. Easy enough to understand, but all those funny letters that mean something other than normal letters!
This is kind of hilarious. I'm trying to imagine the mental process that would lead one to a breakdown like this, but it's not quite coming to me...
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Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:11
Member (2011)
Hebrew to English
TOPIC STARTER | |
Edwin
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:11
German to English
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As a translator who (OK, unfortunately) lives near Hounslow, if its inhabitants could learn to speak their own language correctly, that might be a step forward.
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Rudolf Vedo CT
United States
Local time: 18:11
Member (2008)
Croatian to English
+ ...
| | Another explanation? | Feb 8 |
Whenever I've seen breakdowns like this, I've assumed that the "difficulty" lies in finding a translator/interpreter for that language (based on the demographics of the vendor pool) not in the work itself, or in learning the language. If there are few vendors for that combination relative to demand, their price might reasonably be higher. Difficulty of the language will play a role to some extent, as surely fewer English native speakers go on to master Arabic or Chinese than say, Spanish, but the situation may then be reversed for opposite combinations.
That's how I read it, anyway. The "difficulty in translating" is probably just an unfortunate turn of phrase that masks what is really meant, namely "difficulty in finding a suitable translator".
[Edited at 2012-02-08 18:43 GMT]
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Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:11
Member (2011)
Hebrew to English
TOPIC STARTER | | Unfortunately I think it is that retarded.... | Feb 8 |
The languages they class as "difficult", such as French for example.... I think if there's one place in England abundant in competent French - English - French translators, it's London!
This kind of linguistic ignorance is completely unsurprising....unfortunately.
[Edited at 2012-02-08 18:48 GMT]
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TranslateThis
United States
Local time: 18:11
Member
Polish to English
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| | "secoind" tier - must be difficult... | Feb 8 |
to translate and interpret. Sure enough, it is even difficult to spell!
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The translation workplace 
