Articles

The Native Guy

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From time to time, a quote of ours is declined because the customer decides to handle the translation “in-house”.

Aside from the fact that a translator is a professional in his or her own right who could only really be replaced by another translator, this choice primarily reveals poor management of human resources within the company.

As a result, translations are allocated to a foreign employee who is assumed – by his or her exotic nature – to be gifted with excellent writing skills and flawless spelling in his or her native language.

Yet, we all know that the mere fact of being born in a particular country and having studied at university level does not necessarily mean a person knows how to write well. French, German, Spanish, but also English and Italian, are languages often persecuted by company executives. So why trust someone without a literary background to do a translation? That’s right, I do mean literary background. You can be fairly sure that a person will write well in his or her native language if he or she has studied literature (the question remains whether that person will be able to understand and convey the source language message without cumbersome phrasing). But I will swear my life on the fact that if the person has, for example, a language degree, he or she will be incapable of correctly translating even a short press release.

Even this very post – written by my fair hand in French – has been proofread by my colleague Laura, a French translator. Nor have I attempted to translate it into English myself (merci Jazz!), even though I am a translator… and bilingual to boot.

Let’s say though that there is “a native guy” in your company who is perfectly bilingual and can give Balzac, Shakespeare or Goethe a run for their money, translation is highly unlikely to be included in his job description. You are therefore forcing a person who is supposed to be focusing on other objectives to devote time and energy to a task for which he will not be evaluated and which prevents him from doing his real job. It takes a lot of time to do a good translation, and even more so when it’s not your line of work. That poor marketing director, webmaster, engineer, salesperson or secretary is bound to rush this complicated task in order to be shot of it as quickly as possible. The translation won’t be checked by anyone anyway (because if there were someone capable of evaluating translation quality within the company, the job would be entrusted to a translator, not the first available native speaker). The end result will be sloppy, not only because you need years of study and experience to produce a good translation, but as it’s presumed that any old person knows how to translate, the translation will be considered and treated like a minor task.

So here is how communication, at the very heart of the company’s concerns and budget, finds itself taking last place in the development plan as soon as the target audience happens to be across the border.

Still think you’re right to handle translation in-house?

Editing and proofreading

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Often clients ask me if I have translations “proofread” by a second linguist.

In fact, they mean « edited » which involves comparing the source and target texts step by step to ensure that the original has been correctly understood by the translator and to check that there have been no omissions or copy-paste errors for numbers and proper nouns. Editing also involves the correction of writing, grammar and terminology. The editor will also standardise style and glossary for large projects which have required several translators. It is therefore a task which must be entrusted to a translator with the same level of skill and who works in the same languages as the translator(s) who first worked on the translation. This service costs on average 50% of the translation rate (if the translation costs 10, editing will cost 5, for a total production cost of 15).

Proofreading, however, simply involves quickly reading through the translated text to correct the most visible style and grammar errors. Comparison with the source text is only carried out to ensure nothing has been omitted, or when the translated text is incomprehensible. This work is often done within an agency by a project manager (not necessarily a linguist) whose native language is the same as the target language but who does not necessarily have a perfect understanding of the source language (it goes without saying that the agency nevertheless charges the client an « editing » rate). If this task is entrusted to a linguist, he or she will charge up to 20% of their translation rate. Proofreading can also be entrusted to someone who is very competent in the field covered by the text (for example, a surgeon if the text describes new surgical instruments). This person will have precise knowledge of the terms and turns of phrase used in documents written for professionals in the sector, even if he or she does not speak the source language (if the specialist has any questions, he or she is put in direct contact with the translator who can explain what was translated and how). In this case, the rate is as high as – if not higher than – the editing rate.

You can also ask request a ‘Super Deluxe’ service: translation + editing by a second linguist + proofreading by a technician/expert. I dream of one day having such a demanding customer!