About the author: Andrei Gerasimov is a Moscow-based English-Russian freelance translator,
PhD, ATA&ITI member. He has 56 literary works translated to his credit
and over 20 years of experience in translation. Currently he translates for
Ford Motor (Russia), Philips (France), and several translation agencies.
His website: erussiantranslations.com
In
the highly competitive global translation market quality may be the
main differentiator—a factor that makes the difference between
success and failure.
Quality assurance (QA) in translation may be defined as the act of
maintaining translation services to ensure conformance to customer
requirements or other specifications. QA is implemented by the
translation service provider. Don't confuse QA with QC, which is
implemented by your customer after the translation is completed and
delivered.
Below I suggest some methods that help me to meet the quality
requirements of the most demanding customers from various countries and
areas of business, both translation agencies and direct customers, such
as Ford Motor, Volvo Cars, Philips and more.
1. Accept jobs only within your areas of knowledge/specialization and translate only into your native language.
Some customers try to make you accept a job before you see the source
text. This is a very wrong approach. In such cases I always respond
that I need to see the source text to determine whether it is within my
areas of knowledge.
This is also applicable to editing jobs. I often receive Russian
translations for editing and see that the target text is so poor that
it can't be improved by editing. It is easier to translate the source
text from scratch than to edit. If you accept such a job before seeing
the translation, you will actually have to translate it from scratch at
much lower editing rates.
Even though my customers say that my English is "near native", in most
cases I do not accept texts to be translated from Russian into English.
In rare cases when I have to help out my long-term customers, I do
translate into English, but in such cases I always hire a native US or
UK editor for proofreading.
2. Always use TM software such as TRADOS, Wordfast or SDLX to avoid omissions and eye mistakes.
Besides using the main TM function (leverage of your old translations),
such software breaks the source text into segments (usually sentences),
so you will never miss a sentence or paragraph, which is a rather
common mistake. If a sentence contains untranslatable parts (numbers,
codes, trademarks, company names, designations etc), use Alt+Ins to
copy the source segment into the target text box and overwrite the
translatable parts only. Alternatively, you may use the buttons to copy
the untranslatable elements into the target segment.
However, the TM software has an inherent defect—the segmentation
makes you perceive the text as a sequence of individual sentences. At
each step you are a bit out of context. Therefore it is necessary to
proofread the cleaned-up target language text in MS Word—to improve
the integrity and wholeness of the translation. The result is a
smoother text with consecutive sentences stitched to each other. This
is important not only for creative translation, e.g. ads, but for
other types of translation too.
3. Never hesitate to contact your customer for clarifications.
Some source texts are sloppy, contain mistakes, an overly short-hand
style, omissions, and sometimes the author means one thing and writes
quite another. As they said in the Soviet Union: Говорим "партия" -
подразумеваем "Ленин" (We say the Party — and we mean Lenin). Without
clarifications of such parts your translation will be as poor as the
source text. When I hire another translator to make a complex job for
me, and he does not ask any questions, this cocks me.
4. Co-operate with another good translator—hire him/her for second proofreading.
As the Russian saying goes, one head is good, but two are better. You
can provide the same service to your colleague in return—this is a
win-win solution.
5. To ensure the use of
corporate-specific terminology, use references materials and
specialists/consultants from the local representative office which will
use your translation.
When a French translation agency asked me to translate a Philips mobile
phone manual, I got the agency’s permission and contacted the Moscow
Philips office for reference materials, terminology and consultation.
This was important because all Russian representative offices and
dealers of western mobile phone manufacturers use various terminology.
The TM and glossary created as a result of this initial consultation
have helped me to translate Philips manuals since 2000.
6. Know the target audience of each translation project and translate for this audience.
When you translate into Russian (or any other language), you need to
know where your target audience (potential readers) reside. This info
determines the terminology you should use. Several years ago my
long-term customer, CPLI (NY, USA), asked me to change my translation
of the term "library card" from "читательский билет" to
"библиотечная карточка". I was sure that my initial version -
"читательский билет"—was correct. I took one of several "library
cards" given to me by various Moscow libraries, scanned it and sent the
picture to the CPLI manager to prove that my translation was OK.
However, the manager explained that this translation was meant for
NY-based Russians (this info was not provided to me beforehand), who
had got used to the literal translation—"библиотечная карточка". I
had no other choice than to agree that the use of the
Brighton-Beach-Russian term (even if it differs from the term used all
over Russia) is absolutely appropriate in this situation.
Another example is associated with my translation work for the Moscow
offices of Ford Motor and Volvo Cars. Some documents are translated for
existing and potential car owners (catalogs, ad materials, corporate
magazines), some for journalists (new releases), some for local
mechanics from service departments (service manuals), some for
dealership employees (marketing instructions), and some for
representative office employees (business instructions). My objective
is to facilitate the understanding of translations by these very
different groups. To achieve this, I try to learn and use the
terminology which is most familiar to these categories of readers. For
example, the representative office employees say "апрувить" instead of
одобрить/утвердить, "проспекты" instead of "потенциальные покупатели",
"коммуницировать" instead of "сообщить" etc. This reflects the
aggressive influence of the English language on Russian business
language. Of course, I can't use the above "Russian language" when I
translate for servicemen or car owners or even journalists.
Sometimes even the brand itself determines the language register. When
translating Volvo catalogs, I prefer to use a language register that I
call "Nordic"—a bit reserved, full of dignity, with Hemingway's
undercurrent. As if the brand does not need to shout about how good it
is. I prefer just to intrigue a reader and stimulate his/her
imagination. However, when I translate news releases for Kia,
which is a relatively young and aggressively developing brand—"exciting and enabling"—I try to use a more emotional teasing
style. I also take into consideration that Kia news releases’ target
audience is different from that of Volvo catalogs.
Terminology mini-surveys are very helpful when you need to choose a
correct project-specific language register. When I delivered a
completed localization project to my US customer—a translation
agency, managed by a US-based Russian lady,—she asked me to change
some frequently used terms—see column 1 in the below table. To prove
that the terminology used by me was appropriate for this particular
localization project, I found 5 Moscow-based Russian persons who
belonged to the target audience of this translation (pro PC
users/experts) and asked them to offer Russian equivalents which were
typically used by them. The results are shown in the table below.
Russian terms used by various categories of PC users
0
1
2
3
English terms
Terms offered by my Russian US-based customer
Terms used by advanced PC users in Russia (non-pro)
Terms used by young people and professional PC users/experts in Russia (number of hits in Google in parenthesis)
Content
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Контент (966 000)
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Копия экрана
Скриншот
Скриншот (627 000)
The results of the survey reflect the aggressive invasion of
transliterated English terminology in the current Russian language used
by professional PC users. I sent the results of the survey to my
customer, and she agreed to preserve my initial terminology (column 3).
7. Understand clearly the objectives of each translation project.
You need to understand what this or that text is meant for, i.e. what
task it will fulfill. Some texts are designed just to inform the target
audience about something, some texts (ad copies) stimulate the desire
to buy a service or product, some (PR texts) are designed to create or
improve brand identity, some (manuals) to help users operate a device.
Your translation must be "honed" to fulfill the particular task most
efficiently. This determines the language register that should be used.
8. Arrange close and direct co-operation with the end customer specialists.
Some translation agencies do not allow the translators to contact
directly end customer specialists for clarifications and terminology.
These agencies are afraid that next time the customer may contact the
translator directly, not via the agency, and the agency will lose a
part of its business. IMHO, this fear is unreasonable, because
translators usually sign a non-compete agreement safeguarding the
agency's business. The best way to keep your business is to provide top
quality translation, and in many cases this is possible only through
close and direct co-operation of the linguist and end customer
specialists.
Two year ago a well-known Belgian translation agency sent me a big
project – the translation of 3 Alpine car audio catalogs from English
into Russian. To use correct company specific terminology, I contacted
the Moscow Alpine office, whose expert was
very friendly and helpful. I used the terminology provided by him and
delivered my translation to the Belgian agency. Some days later I
received my translation back after it was edited by another freelance
translator hired by the agency. I noticed that the editor had changed
the corporate specific Alpine terminology and added quite a number of
spelling mistakes. Then the agency sent the "edited" translation to the
end customer—Alpine. Later I found out that the Moscow Alpine office
had to re-work the edited translation to restore the company specific
terminology used by me initially.
Next year I explained this absurd situation and asked the agency to 1)
eliminate the "editing" and 2) permit me to hire the local Alpine
expert to proofread my translation at my expense. I received the
permission, and the job was completed to the complete satisfaction of
all parties concerned (except maybe the editor, who lost the
assignment). The by-product of this approach—we created a TM and
project glossary, which will be very useful for the translation of next
year’s catalogs.
9. Use "test readers" representing the target audience of your translation
The price of mistakes in medical translation may be very high. This is
why special expensive QA methods such as back-translation and the use
of test-readers may be justified in this area.
This year I translated a medical questionnaire created by a well-known
pharmaceutical company. The questionnaire was designed for patients
with urinary incontinence. The budget was rather high, and first of all
I hired a medical translator, MD, who created his own translation
independently of me. Then we met and created a reconciled version. MD’s
input was correct medical terminology and mine was readability and
smooth easily understood Russian.
Then I went to a Moscow clinic, found a urologist and asked him to help
me contact 5 patients with this disease (typical representatives of the
project specific target audience) to proofread our reconciled
translation. On the next day, I met these patients and asked them to
provide their comments regarding readability and easiness/correctness
of understanding. I checked that they understood each item of the
questionnaire correctly. They also confirmed that the translation reads
not like a translation but like a document originally written in the
Russian language. As a result of this approach, when my translation was
proofread by a specialist from the customer's Russian office, he
suggested no revisions.
Remember that you translate not for the translation manager or editor
or proofreader—you translate for your target audience. This audience
has the last word on whether you are good at your job or not, and it is
the target audience that pays for your work in the final analysis.
I called these rules golden because my first-hand experience shows that
nothing improves the translator's bottom line as effectively as the
high quality of his/her translation services.
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