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How common is this: neither agency nor publishing house nor end client has a professional editor
Thread poster: S E (X)
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
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@ Frankie JB: it's not about end-client queries Mar 15, 2014

Frankie JB wrote:

What's wrong Sarah?

Do you think it's illegitimate for an end client to ask questions to the original translator about the choices s/he made? I don't, at least they show interest in you, unlike some who don't go without showing how much annoyed they are with your questions for them...

Are you sure it means that there's no capable people in-between both ends of the chain? Or isn't it just the logical way of handling client queries to forward them to the source? Do you think someone can answer those questions in your place? Asking you to do it doesn't mean nobody can do it... In a trial, do you want someone 1) you don't know and 2) maybe foreign to the story to defend your case or wouldn't you rather do it yourself?

The only bothering part of the story is that it may be painful for your ego to be asked to justify yourself inquisitively by someone who appears to be far from a genius, or say at least some notches under your own intellectual level (I like to refer to this situation as the "misunderstood genius phenomenon")... And perhaps, too, the time it takes... But in the end IMHO there's nothing abnormal, it's part and parcel of the job... Now you have to prove that you know your job better than them, that your reasoning is more sophisticated than theirs, and possibly seize the opportunity to educate them a bit, respectfully...

In bocca al luppo anyway...


Of course end clients should be able to ask translators about the choices they have made. That is not the issue here, however.

The issue here is that the person who marked up the translation, my client's client's client, has a poor command of English and, not recognising common English phrases, such as 'Speaking of X' and 'on a par with', believed they were incorrect. I would think that either the translation agency or the publishing house, if not both, both of whom signed off on the translation before sending it on, would be able to recognise that, for example 'on a par with' is in fact English and not need me to 'verify' this for them.

And it has nothing to do with 'intellectual levels', but rather linguistic skill.


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
commiserating -- @ Laurence Fogarty Mar 15, 2014

Laurence Fogarty wrote:

Sarah's report reminded of a couple of experiences I have had.
I too work in the IT>EN pair: once an Italian agency contacted me for a translation. In trying to agree a deadline with the agency it turned out that as the agency had no competence in English (the owner was straightforward about it) the submitted translation would not be checked/reviewed and would go directly to the agency's client.
I couldn't believe that an agency would operate in this way, but my impression now is that it may not be totally uncommon. After all, reviewers have to be paid too !
I also found out that a test translation of mine from Italian to English had been assessed by a non-native speaker. Needless to say I found this out by accident, and the agency were not best pleased that I knew this. In fact they denied it was the case, even after I had pointed out to them the errors made by the reviewer in reviewing the test - there were a number of them, in fact.
So you really have to be ready for every kind of surprise in this business - Sarah, it seems like in your case you too had a big surprise. I completely relate to your frustration at being 'expertly' assessed by a non-expert.


Hi Laurence, thanks for sharing these experiences! Commiserating with peers definitely helps take some of the edge off of this exceedingly frustrating situation.


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
good agencies/bad agencies -- @ philgoddard Mar 15, 2014

philgoddard wrote:

In my experience, this happens a few times a year.

Good agencies go into bat for you because they know you're good. Bad agencies dump the problem in your lap and, because they need the client more than they need you, they're more likely to side with the client.

The obvious question to ask the agency is: If my translation is full of mistakes, why did you pass it on to the client?

And I love Attila's idea of "waste the reviewer's time more than your own". I'll remember that next time.


This is how I saw it too, as about bad agency practice.

It was not in fact a situation of actual mistakes in the translation, but rather mistakes perceived by someone with a poor command of English. And I did ask my client, the translation agency, why they needed me to respond to queries of this kind, when they had already ostensibly verified the quality prior to sending it to their client. In reply, my client told me that they had verified the quality and that neither the agency nor the publishing house was questioning the quality of the translation and only needed me to reassure my client's client's client, something I would most willingly do if it were an issue of explaining certain word choices -- in this case, however, it was an issue of, over and over and over again, explaining why 'X' (my translation) is correct English, something that I would think either the agency or the publishing house should be able to handle (especially considering that they had all 'verified the quality' of the translation before passing it on).


 
Jessica Noyes
Jessica Noyes  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 16:04
Member
Spanish to English
+ ...
Search Mar 15, 2014

Hi Sarah,
I believe what you went through is highly inappropriate.

I myself have experienced this type of thing, but on a much smaller scale. What I do is "Google" the term that I have correctly used, and then write them a note, eg: "'speaking of' - 5,529,000 Google results," and add a link to one of the sites that defines the
... See more
Hi Sarah,
I believe what you went through is highly inappropriate.

I myself have experienced this type of thing, but on a much smaller scale. What I do is "Google" the term that I have correctly used, and then write them a note, eg: "'speaking of' - 5,529,000 Google results," and add a link to one of the sites that defines the term, in this case, http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/speaking%20of. (I wouldn't use this for a serious inquiry by a skilled reviewer, but it is a quick way of handling it.)

BTW, I put the word "Google" above in quotes, because I use startpage.com, which anonymizes all my searches by channeling them to Google via their own IP address.

J
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Attila Piróth
Attila Piróth  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 21:04
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English to Hungarian
+ ...
OT: Why Google hit numbers are irrelevant Mar 15, 2014

Hi Jessica,

Here is a short summary on why citing bare google hit numbers may be very misleading: http://www.proz.com/topic/266089

Best,
Attila


 
Jessica Noyes
Jessica Noyes  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 16:04
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Spanish to English
+ ...
When to cite Google Mar 15, 2014

Hi Attila,
Thanks for the link to your interesting article. It's definitely worth a close read.
However, I am not arguing that Google hits are an accurate indicator of anything. I did make the point that I would not handle appropriate inquiries from serious reviewers in that manner.
Still, I too have had a list of perfectly correct terms being challenged by a sub-par reviewer, and the speedy, if inaccurate, Google technique was an effective response.


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
consistency checking and non-professional editing -- @ Sheila Mar 15, 2014

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Attila Piróth wrote:
1. Make sure to waste the reviewer's time more than your own. Ask for detailed explanation about why they think it would be better to use "talking about X" than "speaking about X". Make it clear that as the purpose of this review seems to be to polish the English translation, it only makes sense to have those comments in English. This is likely to make your reviewer uncomfortable, so insist on it.

Thank you so much for that, Attila - like all the best ideas, it's ridiculously obvious and so simple to put in place, yet it will save time, effort and self-respect. I always rush to defend my work (unless it was clearly the result of a "senior moment"). I suppose that's natural, but it will be so much better to ask the client for their reason for challenging it. I look forward to putting that tip into practice.

I agree with you, Sarah. Maybe proofreading can be skipped for some jobs, but if the translation of a book by prominent academics isn't worth the price of a second pair of (suitable) eyes, maybe the the authors should simply have translated it themselves. Apart from anything else, you say you translated "a few long chapters". So what about consistency checking? Who's going to do that? Or are they just going to go straight for publication?

Personally, I would want to put into writing that if non-professionals are going to edit my text, then I cannot accept responsibility for any errors; nor for the inevitable differences in style, register and/or terminology compared with the rest of the book.


Thanks for the feedback Sheila -- I was indeed stunned to find that I was apparently the only person involved in this chain with competent skills in the target language (based solely on the kinds of queries I was asked to respond to, which neither the agency nor the publishing house could [or is it a case of would?] handle), especially considering that the target language is English (lingua franca). The authors are high-profile.

As for consistency checking, either the publishing house or the end client sent the agency a short glossary of key terms after my translations were delivered, which apparently consisted of my translations of said key terms. Possibly for application to the chapters that I did not translate, which were apparently translated before I was brought onboard.

And I like your idea about what to do in the case of non-professional editing. I had in fact, on receiving the marked-up translation, written to my client to say that if my translations are not going to be verified by the agency prior to being sent on, then I cannot accept projects for them anymore (because otherwise, I should be simply working directly with my client's client). The response to this was that the translation had been checked and approved before being sent on, and that as far as the agency and publishing house are concerned, there is no quality issue.

My problem with the whole situation is that none of the three parties involved (agency, publishing house and publishing house's client) apparently has the linguistic skill to know the difference between correct and incorrect English (because I was asked to explain that X, Y and Z etc. etc. are all correct English), which led me to the question of, How on earth can you verify the quality then? If they do have the linguistic skill, then why pass the buck to me? We aren't talking about subtle linguistic points or the choice of one possible term over another, but rather basic English, pure and simple. Uffa.


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
protecting the translator -- thanks, Texte Style Mar 15, 2014

Texte Style wrote:

Frankie JB wrote:

What's wrong Sarah?

Do you think it's illegitimate for an end client to ask questions to the original translator about the choices s/he made? I don't, at least they show interest in you, unlike some who don't go without showing how much annoyed they are with your questions for them...

Are you sure it means that there's no capable people in-between both ends of the chain? Or isn't it just the logical way of handling client queries to forward them to the source? Do you think someone can answer those questions in your place? Asking you to do it doesn't mean nobody can do it... In a trial, do you want someone 1) you don't know and 2) maybe foreign to the story to defend your case or wouldn't you rather do it yourself?

The only bothering part of the story is that it may be painful for your ego to be asked to justify yourself inquisitively by someone who appears to be far from a genius, or say at least some notches under your own intellectual level (I like to refer to this situation as the "misunderstood genius phenomenon")... And perhaps, too, the time it takes... But in the end IMHO there's nothing abnormal, it's part and parcel of the job... Now you have to prove that you know your job better than them, that your reasoning is more sophisticated than theirs, and possibly seize the opportunity to educate them a bit, respectfully...

In bocca al luppo anyway...


Of course the end client should be allowed to ask questions, but the translator should not be bothered with purely subjective idiocies like the difference between speaking and talking. In other words, the editor should be competent at the very least.

When I was a PM I I would always protect the translator from stupid questions like these. I mostly didn't even bother to mention complaints to the translators unless it was a mistake of theirs that had slipped past my beady proofreading eye (this would most often be due to the fact that I didn't know the subject matter well enough, since unfortunately I was obliged to proof texts in fields where I was out of my depth - this sort of thing is all too common in small agencies).

And I wouldn't call this a case of misunderstood genius because the expression rather implies a degree of craziness which I do not detect in Sarah's post (however much of a genius she may be at translating)


You hit the nail on the head, Texte Style -- the frustration here comes primarily from the fact that despite having two professional links in the chain between myself and the person who marked up the text, I was still asked to defend my decision to write things like 'on a par with' and 'Speaking of X'.

I, too, am more than happy to answer end-client questions about terminology, etc., and Frankie JB was indeed way off base thinking that this is an issue of not wanting to answer queries from end clients (and also way off the mark thinking that intellectual level, whatever that means, has anything to do with anything here).


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
degrees of separation -- @ Phil Hand Mar 15, 2014

Phil Hand wrote:

I sympathise. It is ridiculous that both the publisher and agency are failing to take any responsibility for the text. On the other hand, I don't generally mind that much having an author as a proofreader. Authors are often wrong, and you can't work with them *in the same way* as you work with a professional proofreader, but they have a lot of interesting things to say about the text. BUT: you have to be allowed to actually work *with* the author, to enter into a direct dialogue and exchange. The professionalism of a good translator and a good proofreader make it possible for the two of them to work at one remove, through the mediation of an agency. If the proofreader isn't a professional, but an author, we can still work with them, but it must be direct.


Spot on, Phil, and the question that I keep coming back to here is, if the links in the chain between the translator and the end client (or at least the publishing house's client -- I am not sure if the person who marked up the text, who was the publishing house's client, was the end client or another party) can't verify and defend the quality of a translation, then what are they doing there?

There are too many degrees of separation if neither my client nor my client's client can (or will) 'reassure' my client's client's client that 'Speaking of X' and 'on a par with' etc. are indeed proper English.

It would be entirely different if we were talking about an actual linguistic issue, in which case I would be happy to answer my client's client's client's queries!


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
documenting translation choices -- @ Jessica Noyes Mar 15, 2014

Jessica Noyes wrote:

Hi Sarah,
I believe what you went through is highly inappropriate.

I myself have experienced this type of thing, but on a much smaller scale. What I do is "Google" the term that I have correctly used, and then write them a note, eg: "'speaking of' - 5,529,000 Google results," and add a link to one of the sites that defines the term, in this case, http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/speaking%20of. (I wouldn't use this for a serious inquiry by a skilled reviewer, but it is a quick way of handling it.)

BTW, I put the word "Google" above in quotes, because I use startpage.com, which anonymizes all my searches by channeling them to Google via their own IP address.

J


Hi Jessica, agreed -- my method is in fact to send them links to the Oxford Dictionary of English entry, or Merriam-Webster Unabridged, or the Chicago Manual of Style, etc. etc. as the case may be.

In the current situation, it was when I found myself having to explain that whatever I had written was in fact proper English, going to the dictionary, copying and pasting the links over and over, that I started to get frustrated. It wasn't an issue of explaining why I had chosen X over Y, but rather of saying, over and over, that Yes, X is correct, and providing the requested proof.

I absolutely prefer clients and client's clients, etc. who care deeply about quality. The problem here was being asked to defend proper English when there were at least two other professionals between myself and the person I was responding to. If it had been a direct client, I would have been pleased to reassure them and answer the queries.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 20:04
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
The more I read, Mar 15, 2014

The more I think you should send a quote to your client, giving your hourly English teaching rate. I've had to do that a few times, particularly with CV owners. There has to be a cutoff somewhere.

 
Neptunia
Neptunia
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
a little knowledge is dangerous Mar 16, 2014

Hi Sarah,
It sounds like the original author knows just enough English to be dangerous! The publisher and agency probably feel that it is out of their jurisdiction to intervene (and genuinely don't know the answer), thus the simple questions end up in your inbox. As for professionals assuring quality: these days I don't think that original Italian texts are edited thoroughly before publication much less the translated versions. I am sure reasonable English being challenged happens all the
... See more
Hi Sarah,
It sounds like the original author knows just enough English to be dangerous! The publisher and agency probably feel that it is out of their jurisdiction to intervene (and genuinely don't know the answer), thus the simple questions end up in your inbox. As for professionals assuring quality: these days I don't think that original Italian texts are edited thoroughly before publication much less the translated versions. I am sure reasonable English being challenged happens all the time and the best way to deal with it is probably to develop a few short answers along the lines of, "yes, it is ok, these are idiomatic expressions, thanks for checking." I do LOVE Attila's idea of responding in a way that makes more work for someone else but I don't think I would actually put it into practice. As for whether the agency really does much in terms of verifying quality... Hmmm. Do they? Do you really think they read through your work carefully? Meanwhile, it does take a lot of chutzpah to publish books in a language that is not fully understood - - it is a phenomenon I marvel at all the time. Have you seen the final products of these ventures? Sometimes the actual text is English but everything about the book is still so foreign that it makes one weary to look at it. I'm talking about things like having Roman numerals sprinkled everywhere, poor page layout, and enormously long sentences with words like "testimony" and "tutelage" and "valorized." Ugh!
If it is any consolation, I think I happen to be revising some text that you may have translated a while back. If you get any questions from me it probably won't be about general English usage but more along the lines of, "can't we find a better way of saying 'philology?'"
Cheers!
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Diana Coada (X)
Diana Coada (X)  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:04
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Yes, a corpus should be used instead Mar 16, 2014

Attila Piróth wrote:

Hi Jessica,

Here is a short summary on why citing bare google hit numbers may be very misleading: http://www.proz.com/topic/266089

Best,
Attila


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
just the tip of the iceberg Mar 16, 2014

Sheila Wilson wrote:

The more I think you should send a quote to your client, giving your hourly English teaching rate. I've had to do that a few times, particularly with CV owners. There has to be a cutoff somewhere.



Hi Sheila, in fact, the two examples that I provided in this thread are only the beginning. I have really never seen anything like it.

After the first ten pages (of a 30-page file), I did contact my client to say that responding to the queries was really a matter of teaching English to the person who marked up the translation and that surely this should be considered well beyond the call of duty. My client agreed and said to stop there (although I did of course read through all of the comments on the remaining 20, to make sure that there weren't any real queries lurking there and needing replies).



[Edited at 2014-03-16 17:12 GMT]


 
S E (X)
S E (X)
Italy
Local time: 21:04
Italian to English
TOPIC STARTER
more commiseration -- @ Neptunia Mar 16, 2014

Neptunia wrote:

Hi Sarah,
It sounds like the original author knows just enough English to be dangerous! The publisher and agency probably feel that it is out of their jurisdiction to intervene (and genuinely don't know the answer), thus the simple questions end up in your inbox. As for professionals assuring quality: these days I don't think that original Italian texts are edited thoroughly before publication much less the translated versions. I am sure reasonable English being challenged happens all the time and the best way to deal with it is probably to develop a few short answers along the lines of, "yes, it is ok, these are idiomatic expressions, thanks for checking." I do LOVE Attila's idea of responding in a way that makes more work for someone else but I don't think I would actually put it into practice. As for whether the agency really does much in terms of verifying quality... Hmmm. Do they? Do you really think they read through your work carefully? Meanwhile, it does take a lot of chutzpah to publish books in a language that is not fully understood - - it is a phenomenon I marvel at all the time. Have you seen the final products of these ventures? Sometimes the actual text is English but everything about the book is still so foreign that it makes one weary to look at it. I'm talking about things like having Roman numerals sprinkled everywhere, poor page layout, and enormously long sentences with words like "testimony" and "tutelage" and "valorized." Ugh!
If it is any consolation, I think I happen to be revising some text that you may have translated a while back. If you get any questions from me it probably won't be about general English usage but more along the lines of, "can't we find a better way of saying 'philology?'"
Cheers!


Hi Neptunia,

I recognise so many of my own experiences in your post (Roman numerals! Argh!) that it almost seems like we are talking about it all over a spritz at some bar somewhere. Here, though, it's not so much an issue of whether or not agencies or publishing houses are really checking translations the way they should, but rather that the queries I received were really about basic, standard English. The two examples that I provided in this thread were not cherry-picked; they really are representative of the sea of queries I received for this translation. (And oddly, none of the other texts I translated for this project were queried, even though a couple of them were even longer, and they were all written in the same style.) Surely basic English is or at least should be within the jurisdiction of someone at at least either the agency or the publishing house (considering that they handle ‘into-English’)?

As for philology, are you revising Santa Croce? Or maybe Rubens? Whichever project it might be, don't hesitate to contact me, even if it is by accident that we 'met'. My doctoral specialisation is early-modern painting, so I was trained to write these kinds of texts before I started translating them, and I like working with editors. I'm not sure anything can be done about philology though, as it is an art historical methodology borrowed from classics, very roughly meaning 'reconstruction of a visual text and its context(s)'. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about it!

Sarah

[Edited at 2014-03-16 17:22 GMT]


 
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