Translating in the real world

A few months ago I received a phone call from a UK-based
agency specialized in training materials. The agency was looking
for translators with a background in psychology to render the
Spanish versions of some psychometric assessments – that
is, tests of personality, aptitude and ability – back into
English as a quality check on the original translations and had
seen my profile at an on-line "café". There was an
important condition, however: the back translations had to be
done by American English speakers.

Now, typical "American" stimulus materials, such as: "A
stockbroker, advising clients on their investments" or response
modes, such as: "Strongly like – Like – Slightly like
– Slightly dislike – Dislike – Strongly
dislike" hardly send the rest of the English-speaking world
rushing out to buy a copy of Webster"s dictionary.
[1]But I was honest and owned up to being a Brit.
If J.K. Rowling"s U.S. editor, Arthur Levine, felt it necessary
to make only 26 word/phrase changes in the American edition of
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a 734-page novel
aimed at the demanding 9-12 age range, what could possibly go
wrong with a formal test for adults? After all, I am a
qualified translator as well as a psychologist and I have worked
with American clients for donkey"s years (or yonks, if you
prefer).

"Maybe I could send you a sample by e-mail," I said
confidently.

"Well, no," the lady from the agency answered ruefully.
"The client is Canadian and they insist on American-born
translators".

The lady"s name and accent were Italian and by now I was
intrigued. Living, as I do, in Argentina, I could not help
thinking that this was global business at its most
bizarre.

"And what sort of Spanish are we talking about?" I
asked.

"Some of the tests are for Latin America and some are
for Europe," she replied.

I put down the phone, wondering whether she or her
client knew that older Spaniards still claim – only half-
jokingly – that "Europe begins at the Pyrenees" or that American
translators working for international organizations such as the
International Organization for Standardization, the World Trade
Organization, the International Telecommunication Union and the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development as well as
the UN and its agencies (the World Health Organization, the
International Labour [sic] Organization, UNESCO, etc.) are
supposed to use British English but that some "forget"
this.

With hindsight, this anecdote seems a useful starting
point for exploring some of the problems in today"s globalised
translation industry, namely: (1) the predominance of political
and commercial interests over purely linguistic and cultural
considerations; (2) a growing distance, psychological as well as
physical, between translators, agencies and end-clients as a
result of the search for cheaper services and labor; and (3) a
general lack of consensus among stakeholders in the industry
– including translators themselves – about
appropriate training and accreditation. Broadly speaking, this
chapter sees the basic problems of individual translators as
arising within wider social networks, starting at the level of
global trade relations.

Why focus on the
translation industry?

Now, you may find it strange that I have chosen to begin
a practical guide for trainee translators by analyzing the
problems of the translation industry. Most undergraduate texts
start with a focus on the individual translator (for example, the
qualities needed to be a good translator) or on the translation
process itself (what the translator actually does). Also, a focus
on problems might not seem the best way of attracting newcomers
to the profession. 

To be sure, there are many satisfactions in translating.
Some translators enjoy the challenge of creating a voice for an
author in another language just as an actor creates a character
for the stage or screen. Others indulge a passion for crossword
puzzles: the satisfaction comes from nailing that one elusive
word or phrase that fits the context perfectly. Yet others take
pleasure in learning from and – if they are experts in a
particular subject- sometimes co-authoring informative or
technical texts. Nearly all are driven by a love of languages and
foreign cultures.

On the other hand, the difference between a profession
and a hobby – and most academics do not translate for the
money – is that in a profession, you have to worry about
practical and financial matters. Anticipating the pitfalls that
lie ahead is a good way to avoid them. Moreover, by reflecting
first on issues of power, relationships and communication in the
"real" world, you will find the theoretical discussions presented
in academic books and journals much less perplexing than they
sometimes seem to be. To cite the physicist James C. Maxwell"s
famous saying: "There is nothing more practical than a good
theory." Let us begin then with the first problem: that of
political and commercial interests

Neutral Spanish:
"Made in the USA"

In English to Spanish translation, the pressure of
political and commercial interests comes mainly from the United
States. Take the audiovisual and publishing industries, for
example. It is not just that English-speaking countries in
general – and the United States in particular – import
hardly any films or TV programs from non-English-speaking
countries (Szarkowska, 2005). Thanks to its huge domestic market,
which assures costs and profits, the United States accounts for
about 83 percent of world box-office revenues (Brooks, 2004) and
supplies 70 percent of Latin America"s cable TV programming
imports, a market with overall revenues estimated at between 8
and $10 billion a year (OAS Office of Cultural Affairs,
2000).

To achieve this, the US film industry has actively
promoted its own special brand of "Neutral" or "Latin American"
Spanish as something separate from "European" Spanish, even
though the varieties of colloquial Spanish spoken in Mexico City,
Caracas and Buenos Aires are as different from one another as
they are from the colloquial Spanish of Madrid. A form of
"Neutral" Spanish was used by Disney as early as the 1950"s, when
Disney"s films were dubbed in Buenos Aires. Later, between 1960
and 1975, films were dubbed in Mexico, Puerto Rico and Florida
(Gómez Capuz, 2001). But promotion of español
neutro did not begin in earnest until the 1980"s, when
Spanish-language TV networks in the United States, aiming to
capture the fast-growing Hispanic entertainment market, invented
a form of Spanish reportedly based on a blend of highbrow accents
from Mexico and Cuba, two countries with large immigrant
populations in the United States (Melia, 2005).

However, business always has its political side. At one
time, Spain had more cinema seats per thousand of the population
than any country in the world except the United States and
"Neutral" Spanish might well have evolved very differently if
Franco"s authoritarian regime had not insisted that all foreign
films – including Disney cartoons – be dubbed in Spain by
Spanish actors. Despite a three-year boycott by the American
Motion Picture Export Association between 1955 and 1958, this
requirement remained in place from 1941 until 1977, when
censorship was largely abolished (Hooper, 1995).

Neutral Spanish:
the Emperor"s clothes

If "Latin American" or "Neutral" Spanish were used
simply to promote audiovisual productions, translators would have
few worries. After all, the meaning of a film is conveyed as much
by the action as by the words. There is even some justification
for using español neutro in news programs and
documentaries (Petrella 1998: 982, 987). But this colorless
verbal construct (Cabanellas de las Cuevas, 2003), lexically
impoverished and plagued with Anglicisms (for example, jugar
fútbol, olvídalo ) is now demanded by North
American companies for contracts and product descriptions,
leaving translators wondering what the "neutral" term might be
for a washing machine (lavadora, lavarropa?) or even a
humble hairgrip (horquilla, pincho,
gancho, presilla, pasador?). True,
Microsoft has created its own "International" Spanish, neatly
avoiding controversies like "computadora" (or
"computador") vs. "ordenador" with
non-committal terms like "equipo" that no Spanish speaker
actually uses. But Microsoft employs teams of
lexicographers to develop its terminology and style manuals
– hardly something that freelancers or even most
translation agencies can afford to do.

The growing demand for español neutro
owes much to the fact that business managers in the United States
seldom learn foreign languages and, with increasing competition
and a trend towards low prices, (Arevalillo Doval, 2005),
translation agencies have jumped on the bandwagon. Like the
courtiers in Hans Christian Andersen"s tale, nobody is willing to
admit they cannot see the emperor"s new clothes.

On the other hand, in the publishing trade, words speak
louder than actions. Spain is reasserting herself as the former
colonial power. In 1998, the Spanish publishing industry
exported 40 percent of its production to Latin America and since
then it has taken over the largest Mexican and Argentine printing
houses as well as major bookstores and distribution centers (IDB,
2000 cited in Moneta, 2000).  Buenos Aires, once the most
important publishing center in the Spanish-speaking world, is now
inundated with American and British books translated in Madrid
and Barcelona. Sometimes this competition between rival forms of
Spanish is bizarre. Recently, at a bookshop in Buenos Aires, I
found Jane Austen"s Sense and sensibility translated in
Spain as Sentido y sensibilidad while, at the DVD shop
next door, Ang Lee"s film adaptation of the same novel was being
sold as Sensatez y sentimientos with subtitles for
"Region 4: South America".

The hegemony of
English: "One size fits all"

Not surprisingly, it is generally the United States and
other English-speaking countries that make the rules when it
comes to translation into English. Sometimes these rules go well
beyond differences between American vs. British spelling –
an absurdity which Spanish has thankfully been spared – to
include text organization, rhetorical style and even content.
This is particularly noticeable in the academic and scientific
world. Most of the world's 100,000 academic journals are
published in English and, because of the size of the American
academic market, the predominance of English, and the overall
output of the American academic system, a large number of these
are edited in the United States (Altbach, 2006). In 1997, the
Science Citation Index reported that 95% of its articles were
written in English, even though only half came from authors in
English-speaking countries.

Of course, some Spanish-speaking academics produce
articles directly in English. But others, working in Spanish, may
draw on quite different writing conventions from those favored by
the Anglo-American scientific community and translators are
sometimes forced to make extensive changes in order to comply
with editorial norms. Commenting on the way in which the English
translation then tends to become the "approved" version at the
expense of the original, Arthur C. Huntley, M.D. asks in the
Dermatology Online
Journal:

Does it make sense that excellent academic work of our Spanish and Portuguese
colleagues should
be first translated into English to undergo peer review, and then translated back into
the original
language for those readers? (Huntley, 1997)

In fact, notions about what is acceptable are so firmly
ingrained in the Anglo-American academic world that even
"critical" disciplines, committed to opposing such hierarchies of
power, have problems in embracing the "Other" wholeheartedly, as
this extract from an editorial by Kathy Davis in the European
Journal of Women"s Studies shows:

In order to be submitted to our journal, papers which
have originally been written in French, German, Italian, Spanish,
or any other European language, have to be transformed into
English. Not infrequently, this results in an article, written in
less-than-perfect English, which seems stilted, superficial, or
just plain incomprehensible. We have often agonized about this,
wondering whether this is just a poor article, which doesn"t
deserve to be published, or whether it is a good article, written
in poor English. In other words, has something been "lost in the
translation"? The dilemma is, of course, how to balance the
desire to produce an international journal which does justice to
the diversity and richness of local theoretical, methodological
and political traditions and debates, with a desire to produce an
academic journal of quality. (Davis 2005: 5)

Notice the confusion between language ("stilted") and
content ("superficial") as well as the implied distinction
between "local … traditions and debates" and "quality". To be
fair, Davis goes on to suggest that "the Italians be the judge of
Italian-English, the Germans of German-English and so on" (ibid:
6). But it is hard to see how this would make writing by Italian
or German women more comprehensible to speakers of other
languages, which is presumably their reason for using English in
the first place.

Market
fragmentation and the decline of in-house
translation

A second important problem currently facing translators
is that distances are growing, not only geographically but also
mentally, between translators, agencies and end-clients. I will
focus mainly on this triangular relationship because, although
some translators are employed directly by institutions like the
United Nations or have their own clients, the vast majority of
translators nowadays are freelancers who get at least some of
their work from agencies. Most translation work comes from the
commercial sector and, in general, companies and organizations
find it more practical to deal with agencies.

According to a report published in the United Kingdom by
the National Centre for Languages in 2004, of 304 translators who
took part in a web-based survey, 181 claimed to receive more than
50% of their work from commercial clients, as compared to 71 for
the public service sector, 15 for government and only 4 for
charities (see Schellekens 2004:10). The Spanish Association of
Translation Companies (ACT), in its first survey of the Spanish
translation industry published in 2004, also concluded that "The
core demand comes from corporate and industrial needs,
supplemented by government bodies and individuals" (Arevadillo
Doval, 2005: 9).

At the same time, translation agencies, faced with an
increasing number of subject areas and language combinations, are
cutting back on in-house staff in favor of independent providers.
The same report found that of 17,821 interpreters and translators
employed by 28 different translation companies and agencies in
the UK, scarcely 3% were employed as permanent staff (Schellekens
2004). 76% of this workforce was ad hoc (i.e. occasional)
freelancers working three days a week or less for any one agency
(ibid).

Similarly, although ACT claims that "there are 3,500
freelance translators working in Spain, with an average annual
turnover of 21,000 Euros" (Arevadillo Doval, 2005: 9), a survey
of literary translators carried out in Spain by ACE Traductores
in 2001 found that only 38% were registered as self-employed in
the Régimen de Autónomos de la Seguridad
Social. Another 20% did not pay any Social Security or
income tax [2]at all and most of the remaining 42%
worked in the private or public sectors and so paid Social
Security and tax for those jobs but not for their translation
work. Most of those registered as self-employed translated full
time, were over 46 years old and tended to live in the wealthier
and more "European" region of Catalonia (Macías Sistiaga
et al. 2001, 20-23).

In contrast, the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of
Labor Statistics (2006) states that in the US "interpreters and
translators held about 31,000 jobs in 2004" and that only 15%
were self-employed. However, the Bureau also recognizes that "the
actual number of interpreters and translators is probably
significantly higher because many work in the occupation only
sporadically".[3] According to the Bureau, the
translation industry in the US is projected to increase 26
percent over the next eight years with demand for the "PFIGS"
languages (Portuguese, French, Italian, German and Spanish)
remaining strong. This probably means that the number of
part-time workers and moonlighters will increase still
further.

Agencies, clients
and freelancers: an uneasy ménage à
trois

Outsourcing and developments in information technology
have undoubtedly meant greater flexibility for agencies and
translators. Many jobs are now posted on the Internet, making it
possible to recruit freelancers anywhere in the world.
Freelancers do not take up expensive office space and they pay
for their own computers and other supplies. Freelancers, in turn,
are free to accept or reject jobs and enjoy more flexible hours.
According to the British report cited earlier, around half
combine translating with other activities, especially
teaching.

Nowadays, enormous files are routinely sent by e-mail in
all sorts of formats and desktop publishing means that files can
be returned in color, complete with graphics and photos, and
ready to print or upload to a website. The Internet also allows
translators to find glossaries and other reference materials and
consult colleagues through on-line communities, while translation
memories – databases in which translations are stored and used
again later – make it easier to standardize
terminology.

These new working conditions have led to a massive
expansion of the translation industry – research at the
University of Malaga in Spain found that 88% of the 211 Spanish
translation agencies advertising on the Internet in 2001 had been
created during the 1990"s (Navas and Palomares, 2001). However,
the new ménage à trois of agency, client
and freelance translator has also brought new
problems.

Despite confidentiality agreements, companies are much
more reluctant to trust agencies with sensitive information than
in the past. After all, how many agencies can guarantee that
their e-mail or that of their freelancers is not tracked and
hacked? Many freelancers have experienced the difficulty of
having to translate (say) a speaker"s notes for a PowerPoint
presentation without having access to the slides and where the
true magnitude of terms like "relevante" (important,
outstanding) is a mystery.

These misgivings work both ways. Some agencies –
especially in the United States – are so afraid of being sued by
clients that they try to force freelancers into signing contracts
with totally unacceptable terms and conditions such as the
following:

"Translator shall indemnify and hold [agency] harmless
in any suit initiated against [agency] as a result of an
inaccurate or unacceptable translation, and shall be liable for
all costs, including reasonable attorneys fees, expended by
[agency] in defense of such suit."(Cited by Wilford,
2005)

A few even insist on translators carrying expensive
liability/indemnity insurance against "errors and omissions" even
though these agencies – supposedly – proofread work
before sending it on to the customer.

And then, of course, there is the question of trust
between agencies and freelancers. Large agencies offer an
advantage to companies in providing project management,
localization services (i.e. adaptation as well as translation of
texts to another culture) and extra quality checks. Smaller
agencies, however, are sometimes mere go-betweens and are
naturally disinclined to risk freelancers discussing pricing and
other business strategies with an end-client who may be paying
double the translator"s fee.

The sound of
silence

One consequence of all this is that translators nowadays
have fewer opportunities to speak directly to clients. I can
remember, for example, receiving a text for a corporate website
where it was impossible to maintain the terminology and style of
the pages already published because the agency had obliterated
anything that might identify the company or its
products[4]

The American Translators" Association (ATA) gives a more
extreme case of the consequences that can arise from faulty
communication:

In 1999, French utility Electricité
de France spent over $150,000 on ad space for a full-page ode to
its expertise in a range of premium press vehicles. A clumsy
English text was sharply at odds with the international image the
company sought to project ["EdF offers competitive energetic
solutions"]. The translation provider, who had received no brief
(and hadn"t asked), had churned out what it assumed was an
in-house memo. Cost of translation: under $100.

(Translation: Getting it right. A
guide to buying translations, 2003)

Of course, queries can be relayed by e-mail through the
agency. But sometimes more extensive consultations are necessary.
Draft-in-progress documents, especially, tend to have many
ambiguities, discrepancies, omissions or errors but these can
occur even in published literary works. In this sense, literary
translators are fortunate since they usually work directly for a
publisher who owns or controls the printing and distribution
rights of the translation and so cannot "lose" the client. Ian
Monk, who specializes in French crime fiction but describes
himself as a 'general' translator, remarked in an
interview:

I just think it's necessary to be able to contact the
author if necessary, and if you have any queries or have noticed
inconsistencies. The advantage of working with living authors is
that you can explain any mistakes you feel they have made and
then agree on any corrections together. This avoids the
translator having to take it on himself to 'improve' a book. I
have, for instance, pointed several cases of impossible timing,
or chronological slip-ups which have been corrected in the
English text, and subsequently in the French paperback, too. Most
authors are very happy to receive this sort of query.

(Foreign Crime Fiction: The
Translators Unedited: 2007)

In the case of academic publications like the
European Journal of Women"s Studies, one would also need
to agree with the author on the strategy for translating. The two
basic strategies are foreignizing translation,
emphasizing source language (SL) concepts and writing
conventions, or domesticating translation, making the
text conform to target language (TL) norms (Venuti, 1995) but
there are obviously many compromise solutions. Here, the
translator will definitely not be working for the publisher
although publishers normally provide instructions on preferred
length, spelling, foonotes and references.

Authors are strongly encouraged to write their articles
in English, however, articles in other languages, including
Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish, will be refereed. If
accepted for publication, the author will be responsible for
translation into English.

(European Journal of Women's Studies:
Manuscript Submission Guidelines, 2007)

The fact that the editor of this journal claims "we have
often agonized (…), wondering (…) has something been "lost in
the translation"?" suggests that authors are either hiring
amateurs or going to the wrong sort of agency.

What about the
workers?

Since Lawrence Venuti"s book The Translator"s
Invisibility first appeared in 1994, academics have given
plenty of attention to the idea of "liberating" translators (from
linguistics) through courses in cultural studies. The translation
boom has also led to a proliferation of specialized courses
focusing on different approaches, subject areas and skills, as
can be seen in the following sample list of Master"s degrees
available in different parts of the world. For the sake of
brevity, I have omitted those which contain the name of a
particular language (e.g. MA in Spanish Translation).

• 1. MA in Translation and
  Linguistics

• 2. MA in Translation Theory and
  Practice

• 3. MA in Translation
  Studies

• 4. MA in Translation and.
  Intercultural Studies

• 5. MA in Translation and Cultural
  Relationships

• 6. MA in Translation in a European
  Context

• 7. MA in Applied Translation
  Studies (non-literary)

• 8. MA in Literary
  Translation

• 9. MA in Translation and
  Comparative Literature

• 10. MA in Religious Translation
  (also MA in Bible Translation)

• 11. MA in Audiovisual
  Translation

• 12. MA in Legal
  Translation

• 13. MA in Financial
  Translation

• 14. MA in Technical
  Translation

• 15. MA in Bilingual
  Translation

• 16. MA in Trilingual
  Translation

• 17. MA in Translation and
  Bilingual Communication

• 18. MA in Translation and
  Interpretation

• 19. MA in TESOL and Translation
  Studies

• 20. MA in Translation and
  Professional Language Skills

• 21. MA in Translation/Localization
  Management

• 22. MA in Computer-Aided
  Translation

Surprisingly, however, the variety of qualifications now
available has done little to improve the general standing of the
profession. In 2003, the International Federation of
Translators, a world federation of professional associations
of translators, interpreters and terminologists located in
Montreal with more than 100 members in some 50 countries and
representing over 60,000 professionals, felt it necessary to
devote International Translation Day to the subject of
translators" rights.

In a press release announcing its decision (see Box
1.1), the Federation refers to The Translator's Charter,
Sections 2 and 3 of which deal with questions of translation
copyright and royalties, fair remuneration and social insurance
schemes for translators and ways to achieve these through legal
protection and regulation of the profession, professional bodies,
standard contracts, collective agreements and contacts with users
of translation.

Significantly, the current version of The
Translator"s Charter was approved in Oslo in 1994, the same
year that the Council of Europe (in its Strasbourg
Recommendation) affirmed the translator's right to royalty
percentages on primary, subsequent and subsidiary uses of a
translation. At that time, few people could have foreseen the
extent to which the Internet was to revolutionize the translation
industry. In 1994 electronic publications were a relatively new
phenomenon while the first free online translator did not appear
until 1998[5]

Perhaps the most telling comment in the Federation"s
Press Release is in the final sentence: "The International
Federation of Translators wants to heighten awareness among its
member associations (…) of the need to recognise translation as
a profession." Some associations in the Spanish-speaking world do
carry explicit information about royalties – with recommended
percentages according to the number of copies sold and whether
the author is alive or not – such as the
Asociación Argentina de Traductores e Interpretes
(AATI ) [6]

Unfortunately, only associations of sworn
translators seem to have enough members or enough clout to be
able to enforce minimum rates (by debarring members who
undercharge) and then only for certified translations, where the
question of royalties does not usually apply. Sadly, the report
published by ACE Traductores in 2001 reveals that in Spain
younger males moonlighting as part-time translators are the most
successful at collecting royalties while older females who pay
their Social Security and taxes and depend on literary
translation for their income receive hardy any royalties at all
(Macías Sistiaga et al. 2001, 32-33).

The root of all
evil

Regarding fees and prices, Michael Benis, in his survey
"Rates Charged by Interpreters and Translators Working Using the
Internet/Compuserve in 1997" found little variation in prices
charged by translators living in different parts of the world and
working over the Internet. Benis claimed that the main factors
influencing rates were target language, client country,
experience and specialization rather than where the translator
was based.

The biggest difference seems to be after 10 years,
however. When combined with specialisation, the difference in
rates charged can be up to four times the average figures for the
target language concerned. The most profitable specialisations
seem to be advertising, the chemical and pharmaceutical industry,
medicine, banking and finance, nuclear energy, petrochemicals and
the law. Established specialist translators tend to work direct
with the end customer and charge more than agencies. (Benis,
1997)

What Benis says about established specialist translators
is probably as true today as it was ten years ago. But the UK"s
National Centre for Languages (2004) highlights some more recent
trends:

• A growing number of unscrupulous
  translation agencies who go for quantity (i.e. low
  rates/higher profit) rather than quality;

• Price dumping by agencies and
  translators from low-wage economies;

• Price pressure on freelancers from
  agencies;

• Demand side: purchase of translation
  services by large companies increasingly driven by
  procurement departments looking solely at price but with no
  knowledge of language market and no language skills to assess
  quality. (Schellekens 2004:23)

The most unscrupulous agencies, of course, are those
that do not pay at all. Unfortunately, as Jana Paripovich,
Professional Editor and Translator for NMBooks explains, it is
all too easy for those that commit fraud escape to
change their name and their website and start again (Paripovich,
2005). Some Internet translation portals, such as
TranslatorsCafe.com, have a "Hall of Fame and Shame" where
members can report dishonest clients and agencies, but the right
to consult these lists is only open to "premium" (i.e. paying)
members.

More difficult to detect is a scam that has become much
more frequent thanks to on-line profile pages and e-mail job
alerts – the "free recruitment test":

If you"re a beginner, be careful. What some unscrupulous
agencies might mean is "Do a section of this for free, we"ll put
it together with all the other "tests" we"ve sent round and
voilà! Our project is done for free". (Garnier,
2006)

Obviously, a request for a sample of over 250 words
should make you suspicious – but scammers know this, too.
My own strategy is to send tests or samples as Acrobat files
protected against copying or printing so that the text cannot be
scanned[7]

On-line communities have also been a godsend for price
dumpers, as shown in the linguistically sub-standard posting by a
self-styled Argentinean "agency" in Box 1.1. The spelling and
grammar are poor and the fee is ridiculously low even for
Argentina – AR$.03 is one US cent and AR$.04 is one Euro cent –
but the person who wrote "Cuenta conmigo" claimed to be
Spanish. To earn 21,000 Euros a year (the annual average for
Spain mentioned earlier) at one Euro cent per word, this person
would need to translate between 2,100,000 and 2,800,000 words
– the equivalent of a full-length novel each day, weekends
and holidays included!

Most on-line communities, of course, are businesses that
make their money from translation agencies or freelancers (or
both). Through these websites, agencies encourage freelancers to
undercut their own advertised rates by bidding for jobs. The most
successful of these sites is the giant ProZ.com which, until
2003, encouraged a system of open bidding, allowing providers to
see all the offers for a given project before placing their own
(lower) bid. Interestingly, the rhetoric has changed: nowadays,
ProZ.com promises "featured" (i.e. paying) members "better
translation prices due to less competition".

On the demand side, the UK report also complains of
over-reliance on translation software. Properly used, translation
technology can achieve terminological, phraseological and
stylistic consistency, especially in large, team-based
translation projects (Austermühl, 2003). However, many
clients expect every phrase to be saved in the translation memory
to achieve faster turn-around-times and lower word fees. To add
insult to injury, freelancers are often forced into signing away
their rights over the databases they create, which become the
"property" of the client for no extra fee.

Translation software has thus increased the
psychological distance between translators and clients,
effectively deskilling translators and making them slaves to the
machine"s decisions (de Saint Robert, 2003). As a result, many
qualified and experienced professionals are leaving the
profession while novices are not receiving the training and
support they once received as in-house translators.

Never mind the
quality…

A special case of deliberately imposed non-communication
is back-translation. Back-translation is widely used in business
and professional contexts so that SL speakers unfamiliar with the
TL can judge the quality of translation work and, if used
together with other methods, it can be a useful first step
towards achieving translation equivalence (see Ozolins, 2009). By
comparing the back-translation with the original text, one can
see whether any sentences, bullet points, or paragraphs have been
added or deleted and inaccurate terminology can be readily
identified (Larson 1984, 534). 

However, when it comes to judging naturalness,
back-translation is of little help. In the case of the
psychometric assessments mentioned earlier, a
domesticating strategy is normally used in the forward
translation into the TL while a foreignizing strategy is
used in the back-translations. But, as anybody who speaks a
foreign language knows, expressions that are very easy to back
translate may mean something quite different – or nothing
at all – in the TL. [8]Equally, expressions
that are perfectly correct in the TL may sound like errors when
translated literally into the SL. At the very least, back
translations are usually broader or narrower in meaning than the
original without a non-linguist being able to say why (see Box
1.3).

As Hambleton and Patsula (1999) point out in their
guidelines for improving test adaptation, a more reliable method
is to have an additional team of translators check for
differences in meaning between the two language versions, first
individually and then at a group meeting. However, in the case
mentioned earlier, it is doubtful whether the client that had
opted for a "one-size-fits-all" test for Latin America would have
been willing to pay the additional cost involved in such
meetings.

A house
divided

The subject of teamwork brings us to the third and final
problem mentioned at the beginning of this chapter: the lack of
consensus about appropriate training and
accreditation.

Firstly, as María Calzada Pérez (2005)
points out, there are currently at least seven major approaches
to teaching translation, including language-based and
culture-based approaches. We will be returning to some
of these in a later chapter so suffice it to say for now that,
despite the proliferation of theoretical approaches, few
translation degrees seem to concentrate enough on basics. The
essential qualifications of a competent translator include the
following:

• a thorough knowledge of both the source and the
  target language

• a comfortable familiarity with both
  cultures

• an up-to-date knowledge of styles and dialects, and
  of linguistic innovations and changes

• exceptional reading and  writing skills, to
  achieve accuracy, clarity and style in the target
  language

• flexibility to translate appropriately in different
  genres, media, and subject areas

• research and reference skills

• ability to use computer hardware and software
  effectively and efficiently for translation, communication,
  and research. (Sofer 1999, 33-37)

Although the abilities listed by Sofer overlap to a
certain extent and all require constant updating (or "lifelong
learning", to use the fashionable phrase), there is an obvious
progression from the general to the particular. It is no
coincidence language comes at the top of the list and computing
at the bottom. Yet all 28 translation companies consulted in the
United Kingdom"s National Centre for Languages (2004) report
agreed that:

"Too much emphasis these days is put on teaching
"technical" skills, such as working with translation memory
tools, and too little emphasis on actual language skills in the
mother tongue. Few translators can actually write in their own
language and can even distinguish a poor translation from a good
one." (Schellekens 2004:25)

Similarly, another British organization, the Chartered
Institute of Linguists, which offers a well-known postgraduate
qualification at Master"s degree level for practicing
translators, the Diploma In Translation, states in the
examination Handbook and Advice to
Candidates:

The lack of willingness or ability on the part of
candidates to look at the whole first before finding the
appropriate means of conveying it into the target language has
been more detrimental to overall quality of the translations
produced than lack of knowledge or of specialised terminology
(2006:16).

Secondly, although bachelor's degree courses in
translation have existed since the 1960s (the first degree in
Translation and Interpreting and Modern Languages was awarded in
Spain by the Catholic University of Paris in 1960) and
translators are increasing seeking some form of professional
accreditation, the profession is still unregulated in most
countries. In countries where a degree and perhaps a postgraduate
certificate are quite rightly required to teach languages at a
primary school, anyone can call themselves a
translator.

Even sworn translators – that is, professionals
authorized to certify translations for official purposes –
are not always required to have a degree in translation. In
Spain, for example, this qualification can be obtained by passing
an exam organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The exam is
open to all EU citizens with three years of undergraduate
education (less than a Bachelor"s degree). In any case, many
countries do not have "sworn" translators" as such. In the US,
for example, any translator can certify a translation by signing
a statement before a notary public that the translation is true
and complete. The signature of the translator is notarized but
not the translation itself. A similar system applies in the
UK.

It is true that in 2004 the American Translators
Association (ATA) introduced a new accreditation procedure–
misleadingly known as "certification" –which requires
candidates to meet certain eligibility requirements related to
education and experience in order to take the exam. But, in fact,
the higher the level of education, the less translating
experience is required. Candidates with a Master"s degree or a
Doctorate, which need not be in translating or interpreting or
anything remotely related to languages, do not require any
experience at all. This places them on the same footing as those
with an approved bachelor"s degree or certificate
translation.

On the other hand, candidates with any other type of
bachelor"s degree must provide evidence of at least two years'
full time work as a translator and those less than a degree must
be able to prove at least five years' full time experience. Many
translators in the US and other countries are unhappy with these
new requirements. Roger Chriss, a Canadian professional
translator with over 15 years of industry experience and author
of the book Translation as a Profession points out
that:

With salaries for in-house translators soft and rates
for freelancers flat or falling, and good job openings hard to
come by, the ATA's offering a new, more expensive path to
certification and requiring either years of experience or a
costly education may represent an ill-conceived step. (…) Few
people last even five years in the translation profession, and
hardly anyone makes it past ten. (Chriss, 2006)

In short, a classic Catch 22 situation: fees will not
improve until the profession is regulated and the profession is
not regulated because fees are too low – every procurement
manager"s dream.

Not really a
science

Bearing in mind all that has gone before, it is hardly
surprising that scientific models for evaluating translations
have, so far, been largely ignored by the profession, if not
rejected outright (Lauscher, 2000). Indeed, many translators are
either hostile to any type of theory at all or, as a Canadian
colleague of mine once put it, "set aside the theory to meet the
deadline". This is despite the fact that Eugene Nida"s (1964)
seminal work, which established the often-repeated principle of
dynamic equivalence requiring the relationship between
TL message and TL receiver to be the same as that between SL
message and SL receiver, was entitled Toward a Science of
Translating.

Testing is one of the few areas in which SL readers
reactions to the SL text are compared systematically with those
of TL readers to the TL text using large groups of people.
Interestingly, the statistical methods used often show quite
different patterns of response for each language group even after
a team of translators has agreed on the TL version. For example,
Guerrero (2001) found that around 40 % of the items on the
Campbell Interest and Skill Survey (cited above), originally
designed for English-speakers in the U.S. functioned differently
with Spanish-speakers in Mexico.

Less surprisingly, the same Spanish version functioned
much better for Spanish-speakers in the US, suggesting that the
use of "Neutral Spanish" does not guarantee the same response
from the "average" reader in terms of interest, agreement or even
understanding across national boundaries. It is precisely for
this reason that many companies now "localize" advertising copy
nowadays rather than using translations.