About the author: Arthur Borges has been translating and interpreting since 1989 and teaching Second Language English since 1975. He is a TC administrator and moderates the French Forum at TC.
First
off, your heart alone can answer that. I can only map out a few
questions and considerations for the two of you to meditate.
The next few paragraphs may amount to a tall order to someone straight
out of university as well as to non-grads with all the right
ingredients but give yourself a break because, if you’ve gotten this
far, your heart headed you here and when you really want something and
start doing something about getting there, you find allies along the
way, along the same way that gives you time to fill in the blanks
somehow or other.
Discard concern about conforming to a one-size-fits-all profile. Good
translators may come in any size, shape and color: neurotic but
idealistic language teachers, laid-off factory workers, ex-army
commandos in from the cold, sharp disbarred lawyers, retired physicians
and poetic alcoholics. We are all human. We all have both failings and
the strengths that flourish from them: you are one of us to at least
some extent.
Next, mercilessly strangle any noble aspirations you may have of
translating enough true literature in the near term to pay bills
regularly: the royalties are small change unless you do dimestore
novels and better literature largely goes to academics with
connections, doctorates, tenures and bibliographies of Amazonian length
and Pacific depth.
Most translations are intended for extremely narrow readerships, e.g.
user manuals for lens polishing machines, sale contracts &
commercial leases, government tenders, depositions, spec sheets and
things of the like. So this begs the question of how innately curious
you are. Innate curiosity is easy to measure: if you see someone in his
70s walking backwards along a park path around a lawn, do you see a
loony and give him wide berth or do you feel like asking him why he’s
doing that?
The Holy Trinity of Translation is Language Proficiency, Specialization
and Writing Skills and the ideal translator is a seriously bilingual
and bicultural lad or lass with several years of work experience in
absolutely any one field who writes great emails and loves crosswords,
anagrams and the like.
Language proficiency is about feeling comfortable in two wordworlds:
have you got it or are you prepared to get it by spending at least two
years in a country that speaks your source language (i.e. the language
you want to translate out of)? Specialization is about hands-on
knowledge of anything from basketweaving and meatpacking to phased
array radar technology and offshore oil services. Writing skills is
about how many different ways you can express the same thought in
properly spelt and punctuated sentences.
But there’s more. Documents arrive in different formats: how much of
Microsoft Office can you exploit? Some terms are special to an industry
or even a company: how deep are you willing to dig to find the right
match in the target language (your mother tongue)? A touch of masochism
helps: are you deadline-drive and able to work under pressure? Being a
bit of a neatness freak helps too: are you a perfectionist about
layout, spelling, carriage returns, numbering, spelling, grammar and,
just before you do the final SAVE, can you go through a document to
remove all the extra spaces after the periods and all the extra line
feeds on the last page? Yes, the spell/grammar checker will help lots,
but it suggests the occasional howler too—you have to have
some
personal judgment now and then.
Finally, translation is as much as business as hamburger retailing: how
much managerial, bookkeeping, advertising and networking skill have you
got? Or willing to cultivate? Some clients studiously avoid immoderate
honesty: can you go after money folks owe you like a Strella locking in
an MH-47 Chinook? How easy is it to browbeat you in believing your work
was gibberish unfit for printing on dried but used nappies? Some
clients freak out when you use terms they’re not comfortable with: are
you willing to adjust your impeccable prose and wordchoices down to someone’s expectations?
Some clients feel alienated and dispossessed of their ideas when they
see the reflection of their thought in the mirror of a foreign
language: are you open to nurturing folks beyond their any vaguely
defined concerns they fret over? Most clients will cheerfully
acknowledge that it’s OK for you to know their business less well than
they do but get justifiably heated up when your translation reads like
pure fudge: are you brave enough to commit to paper exactly what you’ve
understood in plain language, flag it as a question and cheerfully
appreciate the frowns, feedback and corrections? Or are you tempted to
hide your ignorance behind vague, ambivalent terms and syntax?
Language Proficiency
This is far more than speaking one language at home and another in your
environment or pocketing a degree in a given second language. Not only
do different folks use different words and grammars, they also think
differently, their emotions respond to different stimuli and they have
different moral value systems, e.g. the French read women’s liberation
along a scale of values that goes from traditional to modern lifestyles
while Americans read it along a scale from slavery to freedom;
chrysanthemums are suitable gifts only for dead girlfriends in France;
a smaller share of European women consider adultery is grounds for
divorce than American women.
Your immigrant parents probably taught you such distinctions only
incompletely because they’ve been adjusting their native standards to
the country you were all brought up in. Moreover, languages are like
flesh: they are subject to the law of birth, growth, old age and death.
Immigrant parents lose contact with the evolution of their native
tongue by living outside their native culture: you have to go back
there for at least two years to get the hang of how folks think, act,
feel, talk, gesticulate and generally operate. Or you have this degree
in Tibetan from the University of Hintertupfingen that didn’t teach you
any of the Chinese loanwords in the terminology of ATM
maintenance training in Lhasa: you have to go there for at least two
years too—who knows what China will be exporting next! But the
baseline is about becoming bi-cultural: learning the mindset behind the
words.
Specialization
You get these agencies that list every discipline and language they can
think of and polish off both lists with “and others”. So you sit there
and do a piece of dumb arithmetic: you take the 40 languages they list,
multiply it by the 40 disciplines they list and infer that they have
1,600 translators. And that’s only if they do all 40 only into English:
double the figure because they are implying they work both ways and
serious translators only translate into their mother tongue. Start
raising that figure by a few dozen powers because the ad also implies
they can mix ‘n’ match any which way: like Swahili and Urdu or Greek
and Samoan and this is before you factor in the specializations. In
short, get really focused, ideally, by listing one foreign language,
one target language and one area of expertise. Choose the area of
expertise from your job history: a smart bilingual bookkeeper should be
able to translate accounting, a smart factory worker should be able to
do industrial user manuals. If you’ve got a degree, check with friends
with family—you have convenient, readymade mentors all around you: if
dad’s a psychopathologist, if mom’s a sex worker or if your spouse is
anybody’s combat diver, they are walking dictionaries and
encyclopedias (fields: psychology, police/legal and military
respectively). They have detailed knowledge of a trade, know their
trade literature and can find out who publishes their mindfood. Target
their trade literature for your ads—go down to the publishers, talk
to someone who can identify which issues to advertise in: some issues
are far more widely read than others. Relatives and friends with
expertise can also explain the fuzzy parts of any sentences you are
translating, which is critical to minimizing mistranslations. You WILL
make mistakes: we only murder virtual doc files but by analogy, the
more patients a surgeon has killed, the higher her/his skill levels
Writing Skills
You have to enjoy writing. You have to enjoy playing with words and
figuring out the meaning and intentions behind the words: some
brilliant specialists write terribly but clients and readers will be
judging you by the clarity of
your translation. Although the
Internet
and websites like Translators Café are enabling the creation of
social and professional networks whose potential is still early in the
curve, translation is a lonely job and it helps if you can get playful
about the words you handle: can you stop and wonder why aircraft have
no wing nuts? Or why they
have cosmonauts, official state atheism and
censorship while we have
astronauts, separation of church and state,
and news management? If the Hebrew original uses the word “terrorist”,
does your bent of mind translate it as “freedom fighter”? If you do
that, you probably just blooped big time. Or did you add quotations not
found in the original: you blooped bad anyhow.
PC Skills
Translators are keyboard warriors: you need all 10 trigger fingers.
Take touchtyping lessons with a bunch of bowheads for big bucks if you
have to. Documents come in different formats based on different
software: pirate or buy it and learn it (buy the real thing as soon as
you can for the tech support—crashes ALWAYS happen somewhere towards
the end of your document on the eve of your deadline and the lost
business will erase any savings you made using pirated software). You
have to have reasonably state-of-the-art versions: Windows 3.0 and Word
2.0 will not do; Windows 98 and Word 97 can maybe still get by for the
output (as at July 2005) but you may have problems importing documents
into Word 97 that were generated under later versions of Word and the
lost enrichments may cost you repeat business. You have to have, and
regularly update, your anti-virus and spyware software. Though most
clients won’t ask for it, you may need encryption software—all
documents from any client are
confidential by definition. Even a
client’s name is confidential: if your combination is Hebrew to Chinese
and I know your field is electronics, give me the name of a client who
just commissioned a translation system for you, I can find out what the
company makes, look at which China is likely to want and perhaps become
able to infer that, say, Israel is selling China another advanced air
defense system that will have Washington seething, causing your
client’s deal to fall through.
You may also need a safe: the loss or leakage of any classified
material will leave you with many-many time-consuming questions to
answer, sometimes by two interrogators, one nice, one nasty. They take
turns and do shiftwork on you. Room and board will be free but you may
not get a window or have any control over meal times, menus, air
temperature, humidity, noise levels, type of music and volume,
WC/shower access or even the light switch. They take away your
cellphone, MP3 and gameboy too. You will not like that.
But this is very unlikely to happen to you: classified material usually
gets translated in-house or goes to colleagues who already have
security clearances that cost tens of thousands of dollars to
get.
Living With Your CAT
Also relevant are CAT tools, or computer-assisted translation software.
You can still survive without it for the time being but if you have it,
your chances of securing commissions improve nicely. That said,
increasing numbers of agencies and clients expect you to buy that
software and then use it against you to pay you a lower word rate.
However, once you establish your reputation on the marketplace, you
become immune to such practices: nice quality is a jewel that many
clients and some agencies are prepared to garnish with at least the
standard rate for your language pair(s).
Business Skills & Setup
You have to know what a purchase order is: you are a light bulb and the
purchase order is what operates you: when you have one, you turn ON,
without one, you sit tight in the OFF position. If you have a duly
completed p/o, you stand a good chance of securing payment, if not you
fall prey to the mercy of your client plus that of your unpaid
landlord, heartless utility companies, unfed children, wailing
housepets and various bailiffs or Federal marshals—some
traditionally-minded countries do not have such officers because they
send you straight to debtor’s prison.
Next contact a bill collection agency or smart business owner to find
out the right contents of a p/o, its various forms and how to collect
payment from folks with creative payment practices. You will also feel
more comfortable knowing all the rules and, if necessary, making an
appointment with someone who did his best to charm you into using their
services.
You need to do bookkeeping. You have to invoice and track payments. You
have to advertise; to advertise you have to write up the ad copy and do
the graphics to sex it up. You have to socialize on the Internet, join
voluntary associations—many are sponsored, patronized and frequented
by prominent figures with oodles of connections to paid work: 40%+ of
salaried recruitment happens through personal contacts. I don’t know
the figure for freelance translations but I do know that word-of-mouth
will get you the clients who pay the best rates and stand the best
chance of becoming loyal customers.
If you are bookkeeping drives you up the wall, you can farm that out
but you have to understand it anyhow, otherwise you’re leaving yourself
open to all sorts of fraud and embezzlement.
Incorporation
See a smart accountant before going into business—incorporating as a
physical may not be the way to go. The consultation may be expensive
but it will save you more money than you can imagine ever even earning
when you’re all inexperienced and scared about taking the leap.
Power & Humility
You incarnate the skills to package content in polished form; your
client has the content. Most clients realize a good product depends on
an alloy of both skills. If you can’t find a term, flag it and ask. If
a sentence is unclear, flag it, translate it in the plainest way you
can, add an alternate translation if you have one using the NEW COMMENT
function of the REVIEWING toolbar and ask the author. There is no shame
in not knowing something but everybody suffers if you try to pass off
fudge for real substance. Stand your ground on style as gentle-firmly
as possible but bow gracefully to client choices on terminology and,
even if it means a clumsier final wording, rephrase anything s/he is
not comfortable with: remember that the author has to feel confident
about your product.
Secretaries
Hire one as soon as soon as you can afford it. Have separate phones
with HOLD buttons on each. You may be able to find cut-price interns
from secretarial schools. They can be better than fresh graduates with
translation diplomas. But talk to each. At regular points in time, ask
different friends to phone your assistant, inquire about services and
ask for quotes. Have them ask your assistant ask you to call them back.
Then see what happens.
Reachability
You have to be reachable in as many different ways as possible: email,
voice & fax landline, cellphones and mobile messaging. Handwritten
faxes remain the most secure medium of generally available transmission
today. Telephone answering machines are only for use between bedtime
and breakfast; if you sleep lightly and fall back asleep easily
however, spare yourself that investment. Buy an email address: Yahoo,
Hotmail and even AOL are for fly-by-nighters. Choose the account name
carefully: mikethespike@thunderquill.com or bubbleboobs@whoopeeword.alt
will not do. Invest as much money as you can in a
professionally-designed, maintained and updated website.
Deadlines
Deadlines are sacred: miss one and your market value falls to that of a
monolingual kindergartener holding a freshly opened box of brand new
crayons. Baby’s upset tummy that diverted you to the clinic for a whole
afternoon or the broken collar bone from the morning’s football match
mean the same thing: you have missed a deadline with a great excuse but
just lost the customer anyhow. Agencies will invoke breach of contract
and not pay: they just lost their client, right? One marketing study
reports that every unsatisfied customer talks to at least 11 potential
customers; another study says the 11 is 15. You may whine about their
heartlessness but your name will be moaned around the office and over
their professional networks. If you followed the advice to specialize,
the grim news will soon start sinking in.
Negotiate the longest deadline you can, but once you’ve committed to a
date, honor it. Before you commit to a date, make sure you have all the
assurances you need on your end to get the job done.
Help Clients Help You
Ask for background papers, glossaries, earlier editions of the same
document, the purpose of the document and its context in the processes
that spawned it; also inquire about intended readerships and formatting
needs, e.g. pdf, doc or rtf and line numbering. Figure out your
client’s personality to spot insecurities and unexpressed needs. Unless
absolutely impossible, deliver your first translation in person or
arrange for a personal appointment on the day of delivery when
negotiating the deadline—this gives the two of you to identify
problems neither of you had foreseen and to correct them on the spot.
Make notes of any special needs you discover for future reference. If
the client is happy when you part company, s/he is very likely to
become repeat business, if only because you took a personal interest in
her/him.
Free Translations
‘Pro bono’ or ‘voluntary’ translations are a good way to start off.
Contact your town hall and surf the Internet to identify local
non-profit organizations (also called NGOs, PVOs and INGOs) that may
need your services. Because they are local, you can get detailed
feedback on the quality and presentation of your translations, secure
job references and build up a network of professional contacts that
way: all of them can connect you to paid work and they will out of
gratitude sooner or later. Non-profit translation agencies are actually
part of profit-driven translation agencies and they get to keep the
precious contacts to paid work all to themselves—go to them only if
you expect never to need to earn a living from translation. Or if you
cannot use a telephone directory and PC. Moreover, you might be able to
get tax breaks for free translations.
Perks
The perk is working for yourself with freedom to manage your time as
you see fit, within the limits of your deadlines
The perk is being able to live anywhere in range of the Internet. You
can live in Siberia and translate for Miami or work for Hintertupfingen
and live in the Himalayas.
The perk is inside insight to leading-edge research, business deals,
technology and whatever—and a peek at how these things are
interconnecting to shape daily reality and the world around you.
The perk is developing a binocular vision of the world through a deeper
understanding of contrasting mindsets and value systems—the more you
understand them, the more aware you become of your own.
The perk is sharpening and expanding your natural curiosity.
The Translatorium consists of a young, dynamic team of linguists from all over the world, which aims to provide excellent translations at competitive prices. All our translators are talented linguists with at least a relevant master's or bachelor's degree in their language combination(s). They only translate to their mother tongue(s), and all have extensive stays in their source translation countries. We currently offer the following language combinations: English Norwegian - Broad coverage with extensive expertise. German Norwegian English Chinese
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