| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Poll: What frustrates you the most during the translation process? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Sonia Hill
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:43
Italian to English
Philip Lees wrote:
Acronyms and abbreviations that are (presumably) well known to somebody but can take half a day to track down if you haven't seen them before.
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Igor Moshkin wrote: Catherine GUILLIAUMET wrote: Hi, Maybe I'm stupid, but what is : a ltr word inside rtl text ??? And, first thing, is it "itr" (uppercase i) or "Ltr" (lowercase L) ? As my two colleagues said, acronyms and abbreviations are the problem, indeed they are, even here  Thank you Catherine [Edited at 2011-01-08 09:56 GMT] I believe, these are 'left-to-right' and 'right-to-left' texts and words.
Thank you very much, Igor. I believe you are right.
As Cecila Civetta, I am not sure either of what this poll author meant by "shapes", s/he should have enlightened us at least when seeing our questions.
Anyway, thanks again.
Catherine
| | | | | Poor composition, redundance, having to figure out what the author meant | Jan 8, 2011 |
Krzysztof Kajetanowicz wrote:
The most annoying thing I've encountered is a text written by somebody who apparently doesn't know their own head from their /insert body part/.
It's this text in which the syntax is so bad that you have repeated problems understanding what pertains to what.
If your target language makes it hard to employ the good ol' garbage in garbage out strategy, you're in trouble.
And writing does get bad nowadays, non-native speaker or not.
Nothing annoys me more than a poorly composed text!
| | | | Sheila Wilson 
Spain
Local time: 14:43
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| Everything other than the text | Jan 8, 2011 |
Not badly enough to throw in the towel but I'm just a "word" person nowadays.
25 years ago, I was a computer geek but that was in the days of JCL, DB2, overnight batch runs and OC7 dumps printed out on continuous stationery. If you were around then you'll know what I'm talking about - if you weren't, it probably makes as much sense to you as today's geek-speak means to me!
I don't have problems with PDFs... See more Not badly enough to throw in the towel but I'm just a "word" person nowadays.
25 years ago, I was a computer geek but that was in the days of JCL, DB2, overnight batch runs and OC7 dumps printed out on continuous stationery. If you were around then you'll know what I'm talking about - if you weren't, it probably makes as much sense to you as today's geek-speak means to me!
I don't have problems with PDFs - I simply have to turn down the translation as I know it will really stress me out.
Of course, there are sometimes frustrating things in the text, particularly those abbreviations that so many others have mentioned but heh, if it was all easy it would be boring! ▲ Collapse
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Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 14:43
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| We've got an easy life, Catherine | Jan 8, 2011 |
Catherine GUILLIAUMET wrote:
Maybe I'm stupid, but what is :
a ltr word inside rtl text ???
Thank heavens the French and the English agree on the basic alphabet and sentence structure. I can't imagine the nightmares caused by the whole text changing direction! And when it's just the odd word that goes against the flow ...
| | | | Anne Bohy
France
Local time: 15:43
English to French
| Unbreakable spaces - impossible conversion | Jan 8, 2011 |
In French, we have typographical rules which are different from English : we must add spaces before ';' ':' '!' '?' and inside quotes... Of course, the lines must not break on these spaces. After all these years, there is no improvement in Word for instance, and it does not display according to French typographical rules, so we must prevent possible errors by inserting unbreakable spaces everywhere...
Automatic correction in Word might do the trick, but my speech recognition software doesn... See more In French, we have typographical rules which are different from English : we must add spaces before ';' ':' '!' '?' and inside quotes... Of course, the lines must not break on these spaces. After all these years, there is no improvement in Word for instance, and it does not display according to French typographical rules, so we must prevent possible errors by inserting unbreakable spaces everywhere...
Automatic correction in Word might do the trick, but my speech recognition software doesn't know about unbreakable spaces... I have to change them manually.
I am always very frustrated by this incredible amount of time wasted, while a limited amount of programming time (in Word) would be enough to fix that FOR EVER.
Another nightmare is conversions. Why should a multinational issue all its global communication in U.S. units, leaving to the translators the burden of converting everything? Moreover, some conversions are impossible: how do you translate "3 million bushels of oilseeds"? (i.e. how can you convert a volume into a weight, when you have unknown amounts of products of different densities?) ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Like Sheila, almost everything that isn't text | Jan 8, 2011 |
I started to make a list, but it kept getting longer.
Like Sheila, I don't have problems with PDFs because I simply turn them down when they are illegible or require extensive formatting - unless the client really sweetens the pot or it's a subject I care about. A problem with PDFs that hasn't been mentioned is when the type is so small that enlarging it obliterates the rest of the sentence.
Scanned documents are usually worse than PDFs. I also turn those down, too.... See more I started to make a list, but it kept getting longer.
Like Sheila, I don't have problems with PDFs because I simply turn them down when they are illegible or require extensive formatting - unless the client really sweetens the pot or it's a subject I care about. A problem with PDFs that hasn't been mentioned is when the type is so small that enlarging it obliterates the rest of the sentence.
Scanned documents are usually worse than PDFs. I also turn those down, too.
I am very frustrated by writing inside objects (images) and text boxes when the translation exceeds the space allowed or throws off the connecting arrows.
Writing that's incomprehensible (to me) is challenging, but I usually figure out what the author was trying to say. I consider abbreviations to be part of my job. The answer is usually somewhere to be found, and I enjoy the hunt.
Note to Sheila:
Sheila Wilson wrote: Not badly enough to throw in the towel but I'm just a "word" person nowadays. 25 years ago, I was a computer geek but that was in the days of JCL, DB2, overnight batch runs and OC7 dumps printed out on continuous stationery. If you were around then you'll know what I'm talking about - if you weren't, it probably makes as much sense to you as today's geek-speak means to me! I don't have problems with PDFs - I simply have to turn down the translation as I know it will really stress me out. Of course, there are sometimes frustrating things in the text, particularly those abbreviations that so many others have mentioned but heh, if it was all easy it would be boring!
I, too, cut my computer teeth when you had to wait for results until the next day, delivered in the form of an all-caps printout on continuous paper. Those poor trees! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mariam Osmann
Egypt
Local time: 15:43
Member (2007)
English to Arabic
+ ...
| Shapes would be any embedded object | Jan 8, 2011 |
Catherine GUILLIAUMET wrote: Igor Moshkin wrote: Catherine GUILLIAUMET wrote: Hi, Maybe I'm stupid, but what is : a ltr word inside rtl text ??? And, first thing, is it "itr" (uppercase i) or "Ltr" (lowercase L) ? As my two colleagues said, acronyms and abbreviations are the problem, indeed they are, even here Thank you Catherine [Edited at 2011-01-08 09:56 GMT] I believe, these are 'left-to-right' and 'right-to-left' texts and words. Thank you very much, Igor. I believe you are right. As Cecila Civetta, I am not sure either of what this poll author meant by "shapes", s/he should have enlightened us at least when seeing our questions. Anyway, thanks again. Catherine
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| I voted, "Nothing" | Jan 8, 2011 |
Everything is a challenge for me and I simply love it!
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When the text to be translated was written by someone who doesn't speak or write the source language well. I have come across some Chinglish documents which are so hard to understand that you have to guess. One time, I was lucky that the text in Chinese was also included and could ask for a Chinese-Spanish translation of some expressions.
Acronyms and abbreviations also bother me, but sometimes you can find their meaning in the internet.
[Edited at 2011-01-09 00:11 GMT]
| | | | Eser Perkins
Türkiye
Local time: 16:43
English to Turkish
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Philip Lees wrote:
Acronyms and abbreviations that are (presumably) well known to somebody but can take half a day to track down if you haven't seen them before.
That says it all, for me.
| | | | Amy Duncan (X)
Brazil
Local time: 10:43
Portuguese to English
+ ...
I'm surprised nobody mentioned PowerPoint, especially the ones that have non-editable segments where you have to put the translation down below and the font is so tiny you need a microscope to read it.
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| yes, acronyms! | Jan 9, 2011 |
I have to spend so much time looking them up!
Also: PDFs of scanned documents and images that screw up formatting. PDFS that can be saved as text, I don't mind so much but when I see scanned documents of more than one or two pages, forget it!
[Edited at 2011-01-09 04:16 GMT]
| | | | Mariam Osmann
Egypt
Local time: 15:43
Member (2007)
English to Arabic
+ ...
| Shake your body | Jan 9, 2011 |
Allison Wright wrote: David Wright wrote:
A pain in the part of me that is in contact with the seat of my office chair! You have said it all!
After I watch the doctors.tv series about the 17minutes exercise, which consists mainly of a very easy body shake ... after which you feel no pain.
Just leave your seat and try it even for less than 17 minutes and you feel the results right away.
Back pain is no longer a frustration for me (almost:D)
| | | | NicoleRZ
United States
Local time: 09:43
Italian to English
| as others have said | Jan 13, 2011 |
acroynms and use of foreign phrases that are not in the source language nor the target language!
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