ProZ.com Translation Forums

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Better information on a new language pair

Soonthon LUPKITARO(Ph.D.) — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 03:23:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Soonthon LUPKITARO(Ph.D.)
Post title: Better information on a new language pair

[quote]ProZ.com Staff wrote:

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?".

View the poll results »

[/quote]

I confess that I started my language pair of EN>TH but I earned a lot from JP>EN or EN>TH pair. Now I concentrate on EN>TH pair since I can read of many many latest information from what I translate or interpret. My JPEN, TH pair also killed my lingual flexibility since Japanese is used only in the Islands of Japan while English is used globally.

Soonthon L.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Please keep the discussion in line with rules

Paula Durrosier — Mon, 16 May 2016 13:03:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Paula Durrosier
Post title: Please keep the discussion in line with rules

Hi all,

Please remember that the discussion should be kept within site rules, specially rule #2, [url removed] #2

Thanks for your cooperation and participation!

Best regards,

Paula

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Agree and disagree

Muriel Vasconcellos (X) — Mon, 16 May 2016 07:45:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Muriel Vasconcellos (X)
Post title: Agree and disagree

[quote]Mario Freitas wrote:

Aren't less competition and more lucrative options the same?

The options do not consider the balance between supply and demand. Increasing the supply without the corresponding demand is pure waste. So what really matters is the demand for the pair, not how rare or pleasant it is. You would certainly be sort of exclusive if you translated from Arabic to Swahilli. But how much work would you be able to get as compared to German-English or Japanese-English?

Competition is proportional to the demand. What you have to do is to become more competent, offer better quality, overcome the competition, whatever your pair is. The best professionals are always busy and well remunerated. The incompetent ones are always watching TV and fooling around in social networks. [/quote]

I voted for a language with less competition, but Mario wisely points out that there has to be sufficient demand to make it worthwhile. The Scandinavian languages might be a good example, and since I am half Norwegian it would make sense for me to learn the language well and translate it. But it wouldn't be worth switching to a pair for which there is little demand.

Though I am stronger in Portuguese-English, for which there is less demand, I get most of my work for Spanish into English, where the demand is much greater even though the competition is greater as well.

---

About incompetency and fooling around, the remark was uncalled-for and makes no sense.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | I'm happy with the languages I chose to learn.

Denise DeVries — Sun, 15 May 2016 22:23:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Denise DeVries
Post title: I'm happy with the languages I chose to learn.

[quote]Doan Quang wrote:

[quote]neilmac wrote:

I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair. [/quote]

Oh, yes! I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair (English into Vietnamese). [/quote]

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Interpreting is a must in translation!

Mario Freitas — Sun, 15 May 2016 20:56:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Mario Freitas
Post title: Interpreting is a must in translation!

[quote]Mario Chavez wrote:

[quote]Mario Freitas wrote:

The best professionals are always busy and well remunerated. The incompetent ones are always watching TV and fooling around in social networks. [/quote]

Well, aren't we happy to know we translators who also watch TV and use social networks are the incompetent ones? Dogs can't distinguish colors but they surely don't see life as so black and white.[/quote]

A translator must be able to correctly interpret what they read.

Message: "the incompetent ones are always watching TV and fooling around in social networks".
Undue interpretation: "those who watch TV and use social networks are incompetent".

Please do not distort my words to make a point.

[Edited at 2016-05-17 06:16 GMT]

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Fooling around in social networks

Mario Chavez (X) — Sun, 15 May 2016 18:06:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Mario Chavez (X)
Post title: Fooling around in social networks

[quote]Mario Freitas wrote:

Aren't less competition and more lucrative options the same?

The options do not consider the balance between supply and demand. Increasing the supply without the corresponding demand is pure waste. So what really matters is the demand for the pair, not how rare or pleasant it is. You would certainly be sort of exclusive if you translated from Arabic to Swahilli. But how much work would you be able to get as compared to German-English or Japanese-English?

Competition is proportional to the demand. What you have to do is to become more competent, offer better quality, overcome the competition, whatever your pair is. The best professionals are always busy and well remunerated. The incompetent ones are always watching TV and fooling around in social networks. [/quote]

Well, aren't we happy to know we translators who also watch TV and use social networks are the incompetent ones? Dogs can't distinguish colors but they surely don't see life as so black and white.

I agree that increasing the supply regardless of demand is a fool's errand, but that's exactly what is happening in language and translation schools here and there. For example, I calculated that about 700-750 English-to-Spanish translators were graduating in 2005-2007, based on figures from that school of translation (Córdoba, Argentina). One should ask: Where are those 700 translators going to find work?

I also agree that what matters is the market demand for a given pair. Back in the Cold War years, studying Russian was “fashionable” only to fall out of favor in the 1990s as the relations between the West and the Soviet Union warmed up. Japanese was once a fashionable language for translators, commanding around US 0.18 dollars per word. These days, Japanese translators can only hope to charge 25% less than that.

I disagree that one should not take into account the rarity or pleasantness of a language pair. Translation is not that mechanical!

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Less competition = more lucrative

Mario Freitas — Sun, 15 May 2016 17:32:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Mario Freitas
Post title: Less competition = more lucrative

Aren't less competition and more lucrative options the same?

The options do not consider the balance between supply and demand. Increasing the supply without the corresponding demand is pure waste. So what really matters is the demand for the pair, not how rare or pleasant it is. You would certainly be sort of exclusive if you translated from Arabic to Swahilli. But how much work would you be able to get as compared to German-English or Japanese-English?

Competition is proportional to the demand. What you have to do is to become more competent, offer better quality, overcome the competition, whatever your pair is. The best professionals are always busy and well remunerated. The incompetent ones are always watching TV and fooling around in social networks.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | A combination of reasons, I think

Mario Chavez (X) — Sun, 15 May 2016 13:06:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Mario Chavez (X)
Post title: A combination of reasons, I think

Translating and writing are very similar to composing for piano, orchestra or violin. I've been reading about composers who were young precocious children and who were touring Europe before the age of 18. Others applied themselves for the love of music and/or composed mainly for one particular instrument. Some excelled at playing an instrument or at composing a certain type of piece, but suffered economically in the end. One such example is Luigi Boccherini.

I'm okay with learning an additional foreign language for lucrative reasons. Actually, I thought hard and long about which ones to add: Russian? Chinese? Portuguese? Italian? French? Arabic? German?

No matter what language, it had to be one I could find talking and writing opportunities rather easy. As practice makes perfect, a few years worth of taking courses in a given language could have given me the advantage. However, Writing practice makes perfect writing in my book. It's not enough for me to speak a foreign language but to write it well like an educated native. In my experience, it takes at least 5 years to learn a language well enough to write somewhat fluently in it.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Which are...?

Mario Chavez (X) — Sun, 15 May 2016 13:00:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Mario Chavez (X)
Post title: Which are...?

[quote]Thayenga wrote:

Since I've seen a few requests/posts for Native American languages, I'd choose 2 or 3 of them because there's hardly any competion, the rates are usually high (compared to other language pairs), even though there are, of course, fewer jobs. One of the benefits of working in rare language pairs would be to keep endangered languages alive. ;) [/quote]

Do tell us, Thay, which Native American languages you currently work with.

:)

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Other: add more pairs

José Henrique Lamensdorf — Sun, 15 May 2016 12:39:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: Other: add more pairs

When I began translating professionally in 1973 there was no Internet, of course, so the information I had on the translation market was strictly local. When I moved from full-time employment (where translation was just ONE of my duties) to freelancing in 1978 there was still not enough info about translation as a business worldwide.

Bottom line is that I started out with a few tenets that came from my intuition rather than facts.

The first was that IMO any translator should be equally competent to work in either direction. Of course, PT is my L1, but I always strove to be equally proficient in EN, my L2. Of course, the early - all local - demand was overwhelmingly EN > PT, which did not prevent me from honing my PT > EN skills all the time.

On another front, I completely gave up on translating IT and FR, which I had studied and still speak fairly well, because I'd really have a hard time translating into them. This led to the corollary that "if I should charge more for translating in reverse gear, I shouldn't be doing it." As a consequence, I've always charged exactly the same rates for either EN > PT or PT > EN.

My preparation paid off in the BR gov't exam for sworn translators in 1999. Some folks took crash courses, burned the midnight oil studying, whatever, and less than 25% of the candidates passed. I merely went there on the set dates, and did a [i]veni, vidi, vici[/i] act. For sworn translations, the law requires me to charge more for PT > EN than for EN > PT, so I do it, but only in these cases.

To my disappointment, I see many people eking their lives as EN > PT translators with a lesser knowledge of EN than I have of IT (my written FR is really lame). Should I have studied the 3-4 additional years of each that would enable me to start translating IT/FR? I don't know, but anyway, it's too late for that now.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Yoda says: There is no change. Only add.

Stephanie Mitchel — Sun, 15 May 2016 11:01:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Stephanie Mitchel
Post title: Yoda says: There is no change. Only add.

I have basic German, and always thought I might be able to bring it up to working level, but with the demands on my time now, that particular goal feels out of reach. Meanwhile, I'm still working on learning Italian, which requires daily practice (and is more fun). I'd love to be one of those autodidacts who speaks seven self-taught languages fluently, but I think I'd have to be obsessive.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Other

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Sun, 15 May 2016 10:42:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Post title: Other

I wouldn't change, but I would add one: DE-PT. Besides that I do regret having lived in Belgium for 30 years and not knowing more than a dozen words in Flemish...

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | A combination

Thayenga — Sun, 15 May 2016 09:45:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Thayenga
Post title: A combination

Since I've seen a few requests/posts for Native American languages, I'd choose 2 or 3 of them because there's hardly any competion, the rates are usually high (compared to other language pairs), even though there are, of course, fewer jobs. One of the benefits of working in rare language pairs would be to keep endangered languages alive. ;)

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair

Doan Quang — Sun, 15 May 2016 09:34:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Doan Quang
Post title: I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair

[quote]neilmac wrote:

I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair. [/quote]

Oh, yes! I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair (English into Vietnamese).

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Other

neilmac — Sun, 15 May 2016 09:31:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: neilmac
Post title: Other

I'm perfectly happy with my current working pair.
However, as my main degree subject was Russian, I've always slightly regretted never having been able to reach the same level of bilingual fluency to be able to work translating from Russian to English. This is mainly due to personal reasons, as I would be unable to live there happily for the length of time required to achieve what I consider to be sufficient levels of fluency and knowledge of the language and culture, due to certain political, legal and cultural aspects I find deeply distasteful.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | Other

Katrin Bosse (X) — Sun, 15 May 2016 08:29:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: Katrin Bosse (X)
Post title: Other

Since the target language in any possible language pair I could imagine working in would always be my mother tongue, the choice would be restricted to the source language. I have a colleague who, for years, has whispered in my ear to learn one or more Skandinavian languages, exactly for those reasons: more lucrative, less competition, rarity.

I see her point, but a) being a single working mother, I don't have the time to learn a new language and b) learning a new language only as an investment into my business seems totally unattractive to me.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose? | I did change my language pair

EvaVer (X) — Sun, 15 May 2016 08:17:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: EvaVer (X)
Post title: I did change my language pair

or rather I added more, as I didn't expect the demand for the first ones I was working in to remain high enough to sustain me - and I was right. There was a time when I worked mainly in CZEN, which I dislike, but things are getting better and I am back to my favourite pairs and some more I acquired on the way. I still do CZEN, mind you, but mainly for direct clients and in my specialty fields.

Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?

ProZ.com Staff — Sun, 15 May 2016 08:10:02 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?
Poster: ProZ.com Staff

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "If you could change your working language pair(s), which of these would you choose?".

View the poll results »