Thanks to Ney Fernandes for sharing this.
1. We are ISO certified.
This bombastic
and totally meaningless statement is often accompanied by a magic number (as in
“our ISO 9001:2008 certification assures the highest quality of our
professional translation service). You can design a method and standards for
example for the correct meat processing method, from the correct way to butcher
a poor pig to the best way to make a tasty sausage, or for mixing of concrete
for bridges and high rises and
atomic fallout shelters, and for other manufacturing and even for some service
processes. Unfortunately, a handy method applicable to translating does not
exist because the translation result will depend in this case not very much on
the method but mostly on the competence of the translator, which is something
that is very difficult, although not impossible, to measure and quantify.
A blanket
statement saying “We are ISO 9001:2008 certified” is just a marketing gimmick
aimed at gullible clients and anybody who knows something about translation
will understand this.
2. We translate all languages and specialize in all
translation fields.
This statement
often means that nobody at the ambitious translation enterprise has any special
knowledge about anything and that is why the sorry outfit has no choice but to
eagerly accept work from and into any language and in any field. How can
anybody claim with a straight fact to have the relevant understanding of every
field of human knowledge (and in every language) in the middle of the second
decade of the 21st century?
Universal wisdom
of this kind, called pansophism (which means knowing everything about
everything, or just about, from that fabulous predecessor of chemistry called
alchemy to mathematics and everything else, including the most important
languages of the small world back then), was still attainable at the beginning
of the 17th century when the scope of human knowledge was quite limited.
But of course,
since brokers selling translations really need only to know one thing: how to
buy low and sell high, they are the new self-proclaimed “pansophists” of our
age who shamelessly claim to “specialize” in all languages and all fields.
3. We don’t use translators – instead, we work with
doctors, lawyers, specialists with a Ph.D., etc.
This statement
shows a complete lack of understanding of what translation is about. Every good
doctor or lawyer needs special education and pertinent experience, and so does
a translator. It is possible to become a translator without having specialized
linguistic education, but not without having a thorough knowledge of at least
two languages, which is something that can be obtained only after many years of
studying, and many years of experience as a specialized translator. A very good doctor can be a very bad
translator because different skills sets are required in this case
for two different jobs.
Also, doctors,
lawyers and specialists with advanced degrees are not very likely to work for
the low, low rates that translation agencies who like to use this spurious
marketing claim on their website are paying to the uncredentialed translators
who are willing to work for next to nothing.
4. Every translation is checked through our system
of several layers of careful editing and improved several times by our numerous
bilingual category experts in 5 (6, 7, up to 10) experts in our own, patented,
translation quality checking stages.
This marketing
ploy is aimed at particularly gullible clients because it is so transparently
false. Even if multiple levels of deconstruction and reconstruction could
result in a good translation, and they couldn’t as I argued many years ago in
this article for the ATA Chronicle, how could possibly anybody pay 5 (or up to
7 or 8 highly qualified experts) to work on a single translation, and how much
would such a translation have to cost, given that most highly qualified experts
are loathe to work for free?
5. We have 3 (4, 5, generally not more than 10)
thousand highly qualified expert translators in our database.
Well, there are
not even a few dozen, let alone 3,000, highly qualified expert translators for
any given field and language on this planet. What this absurd claim really
means is that the translation agency is collecting as many entries for its
database of translators as possible so that if and when a translation is
required, the job could go to the one translator who is listed in the database
as offering the lowest rate, as this will mean the maximum profit for the
translation agency.
Good, honest and
experienced translation agencies, who really specialize and know their job very
well, generally work only with a few translators who are known to them as the
best in a given field, because this is the best guarantee of a good
translation. They know that one would need to have (3, 4, up to 10) thousand
translators listed in a database mostly in order to zero in on the rock bottom
prices which are often offered by zombie translators whose product is only
slightly better than the product of machine translation as I wrote for example
in this post.
And that is not
what they are interested in.
6. Our custom-designed, specialized
computer-assisted translation technology translates into major savings for our
clients.
Everybody,
including translators, is using computer technology these days. Some
translators use special memory tools called CATs, which stands for
computer-assisted translation software, some don’t. These tools are very handy
for certain types of translations, such as for example highly repetitive
updates of printer and computer manuals, but not very suitable (in the humble
opinion of this Translator) for example for patent translation, and completely
useless for other types of translation, for example translations of novels or
of advertising materials.
One big problem
with these tools is that some translation agencies have been trying to pay less
or nothing at all for words and passages that are repeated in the text (called
“full matches” and “fuzzy matches” in the CAT lingo).
The translator
thus often becomes just a glorified word processor who must strictly and
slavishly adhere to terms prescribed to him or her by the omniscient CAT tool,
and who is often shortchanged by the translation agency based on the magic of
the knowledge of mathematical facts hidden in the word-counting software.
This is hardly a
recipe for the highest possible level of translation quality, although from the
viewpoint of some translation agencies, it is of course an excellent way to
ensure that the translators, if we can still call them that, will be paid as
little as possible.
The savings (the
money that is not paid to the translators) are sometimes passed on, at least
partially, to the clients, and sometimes not at all.
7. Photo-shopped images of sexy young people posing
as experienced translators on websites of some translation agencies.
Sexy blondes are
preferred for this purpose, although redheads and brunettes will do too, and at
least one of the young people has glasses and a pensive look on his (although
usually her) perfect face to project the image that this particular highly
experienced translator is concentrating right in this moment on a particularly
complicated translation problem. Studly males can be included as well, sometime
even a guy who looks like a gym trainer with a touch of gray in his hair, and
at least three races should be represented.
These images
often mean that the agency does not want to disclose who the actual operators
of the website are because they are often monolingual and without any
particular qualifications for the job at hand. That is why potential customers
are shown instead illusions from Photoshop stock of images designed to make the
customer feel happy about these pictures of pretty models that have absolutely
nothing to do with translation.
I like to look at
pictures of sexy blondes, redheads and brunettes as much as the next guy. But
if I were a client who needs to have important documents translated, instead of
their pictures I would want to see exactly who are the people who will be
translating my documents, or at least the people who will be managing the
translation.
A good
translation agency, run by experienced translators or translation managers,
will list prominently, proudly and with gusto the education and qualifications
of the people who are offering specialized translation services or specialized
translation management services to demanding clients, and thus will have no
need for Photos-hopped images of sexy young people who never translated
anything in their sweet short life.
The sad truth is,
the younger and sexier the translator or translation manager seems to be, the
less likely it is that he/she is a highly experienced translator or translation
manager.
