| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Have you ever received compliments from your clients regarding the quality of your translations? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Allison Wright (X) 
Portugal
Local time: 09:53
| Great compliment | Jun 22, 2012 |
Texte Style wrote: An extract from the compliment I am most proud of, in response to a request for a reference: "Cette curiosité lui permet de proposer les mots justes, des options fines, rendant les textes traduits aussi subtils que les originaux" I often wonder how I would translate "options fines" 
judicious choices/well-thought out solutions, perhaps? It depends on your translation of "les mots justes".
I have a similarly-treasured but difficult to translate one in Portuguese.
Great compliment, by the way!
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 10:53
French to English
Allison Wright wrote: Texte Style wrote: An extract from the compliment I am most proud of, in response to a request for a reference: "Cette curiosité lui permet de proposer les mots justes, des options fines, rendant les textes traduits aussi subtils que les originaux" I often wonder how I would translate "options fines" judicious choices/well-thought out solutions, perhaps? It depends on your translation of "les mots justes". I have a similarly-treasured but difficult to translate one in Portuguese. Great compliment, by the way!
All the more precious because it was actually an important translation for me, career-wise, and a linguistic challenge, outside my comfort zone, but which I found really interesting and for which I was prepared to put in extra researching effort. And it led to a recommendation to another, even bigger client in the same field. This was when I stopped feeling insecure about the quality of my translations!
Alison I have been there and done that with clients wanting a dynamic translation to rise phoenix-style from a heap of dead clichés. Once a client actually demanded why I hadn't used a particular phrase she had liked in previous translations of mine, but of course the corresponding French phrase was not in her text, and would not have been appropriate either. We ended up re-writing both French and English to be able to weave it in!
I absolutely love "Poetry in Promotion"!
My slogan "Traduire avec panache", comes from Toy Story, which I first saw dubbed in French. In the scene where Buzz gives his first flying demonstration, Woody sneers that "ce n'est pas voler, c'est tomber avec panache". I long wondered what the original could be. When we finally got an English cassette, I was actually disappointed that it was a rather less inspired "that's not flying, it's falling with style". Then it occurred to me what a helluva translator it was to find an expression that fit the situation so neatly and was even better than the original. I started thinking that the translator ought to use "traduire avec panache" in their slogan... then it dawned on me that I could use it myself.
Only I translated it into "Translating with flair" in English
| | | | Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 04:53
English to Spanish
+ ...
| Define quality | Jun 22, 2012 |
The whole concept of translation quality is a fool's errand because it cannot be quantified and is full of subjectivity.
Having said that, sure, some clients spontaneously congratulate me for a job well done.
This poll is more or less similar to "Has your kid ever received a birthday greeting on his/her birthday?"
What is the point of this poll?
| | | | Tina Vonhof (X)
Canada
Local time: 02:53
Dutch to English
+ ...
| Not quite 'often' | Jun 22, 2012 |
but I've had quite a few over the years. Just yesterday I received a very nice comment from a Translators without Borders client and it really made my day.
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Seth Yarden
United States
Local time: 04:53
Japanese to English
| Often! But what's in a compliment? | Jun 22, 2012 |
Though it can be difficult to support a family as a freelance translator, I have felt very fortunate to have chosen this profession on many occasions over the years.
Definitely it is gratifying, and a boost, when a client or a reader of my work compliments me on the quality of the translation.
However, very often the compliments I receive on my work concern the peripheral things, such as detailed explanations for the terminology and wording choices, aiding the client's understanding ... See more Though it can be difficult to support a family as a freelance translator, I have felt very fortunate to have chosen this profession on many occasions over the years.
Definitely it is gratifying, and a boost, when a client or a reader of my work compliments me on the quality of the translation.
However, very often the compliments I receive on my work concern the peripheral things, such as detailed explanations for the terminology and wording choices, aiding the client's understanding when cultural/linguistic issues arise, recommending foot/endnotes, and various other extras and follow-ups.
As I think others have mentioned in this discussion, in many cases the client does not comprehend the target language well enough to be able to recognize the quality of the translation. I think the client is often pleased when there is a general sense of thoroughness in the translated work, and that may make him or her feel confident in the overall quality.
I guess the best compliment one can get is that the translation, while staying sufficiently loyal to the original, does not feel or sound like a translation.
There are not many people, other than those involved in translation work, who can make such statements. (But I have been lucky enough to receive that kind of compliment too, on occasion!) ▲ Collapse
| | | | Julian Holmes
Japan
Local time: 17:53
Member (2011)
Japanese to English
| Yes - I agree | Jun 23, 2012 |
Translation can be a thankless uphill struggle
Ty Kendall wrote:
With most agencies, no news is good news and if they aren't coming back to you with negative feedback, then they are usually happy with the quality, although it's rare for them to go out their way to come back to you and say how fantastic a job you've done.
Of course it's an ego boost if they do.
This was my most memorable ego boost:
One servicing and maintenance manual for a monochromatic flat-bed scanner -- the first to hit the Japanese market -- that I translated many years back was entirely hand-written by four Japanese engineers.  It was 300 pages long, and had to be translated in a fortnight for an important training session for overseas engineers. This was a very hard and technically challenging project since the manual dealt with complicated hardware adjustments and software processing. The client complemented me afterwards, saying "The English was easier-to-understand and made more sense than the original Japanese."
Comments like these sometimes do offer light at the end of a long tunnel. 
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