| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Are translators still important in the modern translation industry? Thread poster: Jeff Whittaker
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Jeff Whittaker 
United States
Local time: 10:07
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
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| Phil Hand
China
Local time: 22:07
Chinese to English
| Devil's advocate | Apr 5, 2014 |
I feel the author's pain. Of course there's a very obvious parallel to the financial crisis: mortgages stop being about judiciously lending money to reliable homebuyers, and started being about repackaging, slicing, and reselling. The results were not pretty.
But I have a theory about jobs like ours. We think that we're "professionals", and deserving if decent pay. But what if we're just labourers like street sweepers? All our white collar jobs were invented in the 20th century, and... See more I feel the author's pain. Of course there's a very obvious parallel to the financial crisis: mortgages stop being about judiciously lending money to reliable homebuyers, and started being about repackaging, slicing, and reselling. The results were not pretty.
But I have a theory about jobs like ours. We think that we're "professionals", and deserving if decent pay. But what if we're just labourers like street sweepers? All our white collar jobs were invented in the 20th century, and we white men took those jobs and told ourselves that we were better than manual workers. But it turns out we're not. As soon as globalisation gave them the chance, the capitalists reduced us to the status of navvies like everyone else. We thought that professionalism could replace ownership as the main path to security and material comfort. But we were wrong, and Hobbes and Marx were right. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:07
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Without us, nothing would happen | Apr 5, 2014 |
Phil Hand wrote:
I feel the author's pain. Of course there's a very obvious parallel to the financial crisis: mortgages stop being about judiciously lending money to reliable homebuyers, and started being about repackaging, slicing, and reselling. The results were not pretty.
But I have a theory about jobs like ours. We think that we're "professionals", and deserving if decent pay. But what if we're just labourers like street sweepers? All our white collar jobs were invented in the 20th century, and we white men took those jobs and told ourselves that we were better than manual workers. But it turns out we're not. As soon as globalisation gave them the chance, the capitalists reduced us to the status of navvies like everyone else. We thought that professionalism could replace ownership as the main path to security and material comfort. But we were wrong, and Hobbes and Marx were right.
I reject this point of view. The translator makes it possible for a company, an author, a fashion brand, a manufacturer, to make themselves known outside their own linguistic world.
Without the translator they would forever be confined within that world. Manufacturers would be unable to sell their products in other countries, authors would never become known in other languages, nobody would be able to enrol at a university outside their own country, etc.
The translator plays a key role in international trade and the exchange of ideas. Without us nothing would be possible. That's why we should be paid extremely well and the highest value should be placed on our work.
That's my attitude to what I do. If I hated myself I wouldn't be able to do anything.
Oh and by the way unless you're fluent in German you wouldn't be able to read Marx at all. You'd need a translator.
[Edited at 2014-04-05 09:36 GMT]
| | | | Markus Nystrom
United States
Local time: 09:07
Swedish to English
+ ...
| Joining the devil's advocate's opinion | Apr 5, 2014 |
Of a piece with most aspects of our super-duper diabolical modern times, the majority of the workers in this industry (the producers, if you like) are becoming completely irrelevant thanks not only to relentless technological advances but also to their own inability to add value. Like any other industry, this one is saturated from top to bottom with parasites, freeloaders and scam artists. One might double down on the advocacy of deviltry here by noting that the prevailing rates of pay are so lo... See more Of a piece with most aspects of our super-duper diabolical modern times, the majority of the workers in this industry (the producers, if you like) are becoming completely irrelevant thanks not only to relentless technological advances but also to their own inability to add value. Like any other industry, this one is saturated from top to bottom with parasites, freeloaders and scam artists. One might double down on the advocacy of deviltry here by noting that the prevailing rates of pay are so low for entry-level and non-specialist translators that substandard working methods are practically assured. GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out.
Barring the emergence of legitimate standards associations (whose existence would not be geared solely toward the aggrandizement of the organization or be subservient to corporate LSP's) or transnational trade unions for translators (pardon the thought crime), the only way to avoid succumbing to the mire of mediocrity is to stand out from the irrelevant crowd through excellence, knowledge, and of course personal relationships.
It's a lonely business, this. In the end, those who have something to offer will survive. All others will move on to the next grift. That probably goes for the "service provider" side as well. ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:07
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Markus Nystrom wrote:
Of a piece with most aspects of our super-duper diabolical modern times, the majority of the workers in this industry (the producers, if you like) are becoming completely irrelevant thanks not only to relentless technological advances but also to their own inability to add value. Like any other industry, this one is saturated from top to bottom with parasites, freeloaders and scam artists. One might double down on the advocacy of deviltry here by noting that the prevailing rates of pay are so low for entry-level and non-specialist translators that substandard working methods are practically assured. GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out.
Barring the emergence of legitimate standards associations (whose existence would not be geared solely toward the aggrandizement of the organization or be subservient to corporate LSP's) or transnational trade unions for translators (pardon the thought crime), the only way to avoid succumbing to the mire of mediocrity is to stand out from the irrelevant crowd through excellence, knowledge, and of course personal relationships.
It's a lonely business, this. In the end, those who have something to offer will survive. All others will move on to the next grift. That probably goes for the "service provider" side as well.
There's no profession in the world that isn't polluted by "parasites, freeloaders and scam artists" - including the profession of translating. But just as not all lawyers work for the Mafia and not all politicians steal public money, not all translators are mediocre purveyors of substandard garbage.
And you can't produce quality by setting regulations and standards - all those crooks and shysters are fully registered pillars of their professions. You can only produce quality by personally demonstrating it. I can't tell you how many really bad, untalented, stupid, crooked architects/lawyers/notaries/doctors are professionally registered and quality-assured.
[Edited at 2014-04-05 10:18 GMT]
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Tom in London wrote: Phil Hand wrote:
I feel the author's pain. Of course there's a very obvious parallel to the financial crisis: mortgages stop being about judiciously lending money to reliable homebuyers, and started being about repackaging, slicing, and reselling. The results were not pretty.
But I have a theory about jobs like ours. We think that we're "professionals", and deserving if decent pay. But what if we're just labourers like street sweepers? All our white collar jobs were invented in the 20th century, and we white men took those jobs and told ourselves that we were better than manual workers. But it turns out we're not. As soon as globalisation gave them the chance, the capitalists reduced us to the status of navvies like everyone else. We thought that professionalism could replace ownership as the main path to security and material comfort. But we were wrong, and Hobbes and Marx were right. I reject this point of view. The translator makes it possible for a company, an author, a fashion brand, a manufacturer, to make themselves known outside their own linguistic world. Without the translator they would forever be confined within that world. Manufacturers would be unable to sell their products in other countries, authors would never become known in other languages, nobody would be able to enrol at a university outside their own country, etc. The translator plays a key role in international trade and the exchange of ideas. Without us nothing would be possible. That's why we should be paid extremely well and the highest value should be placed on our work. That's my attitude to what I do. If I hated myself I wouldn't be able to do anything. Oh and by the way unless you're fluent in German you wouldn't be able to read Marx at all. You'd need a translator. [Edited at 2014-04-05 09:36 GMT]
Translators are definitely very important--they ain't no street sweeps, although those might be important too--especially in dusty places. If they think translators are some mechanical unskilled labourers working for $0.02 an hour--let them translate all the texts themselves--the people who think like that. They would be dead meat anyhow even with their Machine Translation programs, if not our TMs. This is how Machine Translation is built. They use professional translators' TMs among other things.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:07
Member (2008)
Italian to English
LilianBNekipelo wrote:
This is how Machine Translation is built. They use professional translators' TMs among other things.
Tell me how they do that and how I can prevent them from using mine.
| | | | manoj oza
India
Local time: 19:37
English to Gujarati
+ ...
| IT IS BRAIN V/S BOLT | Apr 5, 2014 |
Dear All,
With advent of artificial intelligence, the human beings are offered and may be compelled in some cases to make way or to have rest or to devote to more interesting[read leisure] works.
With GOOGLE TRANSLATION one has noticed the instanteneous responses popping up in the reply bar with an alternative word in a desired language. But, believe me ,it is never perfect.Many a times far from the expectation and at certain times hilarously off the mark.
They themselves kno... See more Dear All,
With advent of artificial intelligence, the human beings are offered and may be compelled in some cases to make way or to have rest or to devote to more interesting[read leisure] works.
With GOOGLE TRANSLATION one has noticed the instanteneous responses popping up in the reply bar with an alternative word in a desired language. But, believe me ,it is never perfect.Many a times far from the expectation and at certain times hilarously off the mark.
They themselves know the limitations of the task and therefore a trigger is there to RECORD your satisfaction or otherwise of the word produced!
Ultimately translation is a brain job, a reference to context job , a near to the meaning job, A NEAR TO THE FEELING JOB,a response from the heart job -saying what the author wanted to mean by using certain pharase and that can be done by the brain not the bolt. ▲ Collapse
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Doing some background reading for a large translation project, I freshened up on history and learned some new terminology a couple of weeks ago.
Among other things, how Henry Ford reduced the time taken to make a Model T
from 728 minutes to 93 minutes
http://motor.history.sa.gov.au/collections/vintage-vehicles/1921-ford-model-t
<... See more Doing some background reading for a large translation project, I freshened up on history and learned some new terminology a couple of weeks ago.
Among other things, how Henry Ford reduced the time taken to make a Model T
from 728 minutes to 93 minutes
http://motor.history.sa.gov.au/collections/vintage-vehicles/1921-ford-model-t
The men who took 728 minutes were skilled craftsmen, who could make large sections of each car if not all of it.
Those who made a car in 93 minutes on the assembly line were 'specialists', each responsible for a tiny fraction of the procedure. Each specialised in one tiny routine, which he repeated over and over again, barely knowing what any of the others were doing. Most were unskilled, and none could make a whole car.
But Henry Ford made a fortune... and went down in history.
He was not a complete villain.
He introduced the 'Five dollar day' for his workers, and started literacy classes and social work.
Five dollars was a fair wage in those days.
But it took the soul out of building cars, and a lot of other manufacturing work.
_____________________________
So what has all this got to do with translation?
People are still dreaming of applying the same principles to translation, and getting 'specialists' to mass-produce translation with the help of computers and TMs.
And if you can do all the work in a fraction of the time, in principle you can still earn a fair wage, even if you are only paid a fraction of the rate per word...
_____________________________
To quote the article
A new concept pushed by a brand new model of translation agencies is human-assisted machine translation, which is something that could use a new abbreviation.
HAMT? Or can somebody think of a better and snappier abbreviation?
What about
HAMPER
Human Aided Machine Production of Errors and Replicating them
? 
Happy translating, folks!
[Edited at 2014-04-05 13:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 16:07
Italian to English
In memoriam
Christine Andersen wrote:
Each specialised in one tiny routine, which he repeated over and over again, barely knowing what any of the others were doing.
OK then, Christine.
You do the nouns, I'll do the verbs and when we get up to speed we can unionise and have a demarcation dispute over the gerunds.
We could call it translation by Operational Micromanagement Integrating Grammatically Ordered Distribution.
| | | | | Yes--definitely. | Apr 5, 2014 |
A hybrid between A HAMPER and a garbage can.
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| It's galled GIGO... | Apr 5, 2014 |
Garbage in, garbage out...
| | | | | Think we'll still have jobs short-medium term | Apr 5, 2014 |
Agree with Phil's earlier point that 'capitalists' would ideally like to reduce translators to 'street sweepers', however luckily think them unlikely to achieve this in the short-medium term.
Barring the actual invention of the FUMT (very short for Free, Easy to Use, and Publicly Available Doomsday Machine Translation Tool) , I'm not so sure that either machine translation or competition will be able to significantly drive down earnings for savvy freelance translators.
... See more Agree with Phil's earlier point that 'capitalists' would ideally like to reduce translators to 'street sweepers', however luckily think them unlikely to achieve this in the short-medium term.
Barring the actual invention of the FUMT (very short for Free, Easy to Use, and Publicly Available Doomsday Machine Translation Tool) , I'm not so sure that either machine translation or competition will be able to significantly drive down earnings for savvy freelance translators.
Let's say that in 5 years machine translation has continued to improve, to the point that some firms are able to use this to provide reliable, high-quality translations (some would say that there are already firms that do this). Would this mean the end of the high-paid freelance translator? I'm not so sure.
If the blog linked in the OP is correct, and the translation industry is a mess, then I don't think this situation is likely to resolve itself in the next 5 years. So if in 5 years Company A has a great MT system, reliable proofreaders, and is able to produce high-quality MT translations at half the present cost (and if you read blogs dedicated to MT, there is no guarantee that it's possible to produce high-quality MT at half the cost), I think it's also quite likely that there would exist a bevy of Company Bs, Cs and Ds producing low-quality MT translations, also at of half the current cost.
If this is the case, it will be difficult for translation consumers to differentiate between Company A and the others, meaning that a large percentage of these consumers will choose B, C, or D, and receive poor quality 'MT' translations. This would have to give MT a bad name, wouldn't it? If consumers are receiving poor 'MT' translations from at least some providers, giving MT a poor reputation, there would have to be a large market space for higher-priced, higher-quality translations done 'traditionally', right?
But you say, wouldn't the high-quality Company As of the world out-compete the others? I'm not so sure that a Company A could maintain its quality past a certain size- at some point I think it would begin to hire inexperienced proofreaders to do the post-editing in order to ensure that it could meet increasing demand, and that the company's quality would decline, eventually bringing diminishing returns.
This is really where I feel the Ford assembly line model breaks down. Ford was able to provide vastly greater numbers of cars of nearly identical quality at greatly reduced prices. Due to the nature of the translation market, I'm just not sure that, when looked at as a whole, the MT industry will be able to do the same. I foresee a MT market with translations of varying quality and low prices, not so different from the overall translation market as a whole today. Some consumers will go for these of course, just as some consumers go for low-rate human translation today, but I think there will be quite a bit left over for us freelancers.
A second point. Let's say, for kicks, that the MT revolution really does happen, and that there are lots of companies offering relatively high priced MT translations at low rates. What exactly would this mean? I feel that many people who post about this imagine a scenario in which translation rates collapse completely to one or 2 cents per word. But isn't a substantial drop much more likely than a complete collapse? Let's say that the rates that end clients are willing to pay for translation actually is halved by MT (quite a substantial decline, though also not one or two cents per word). You know what this means? This means that the rates that end clients would be willing to pay are about what many freelance translators such as myself currently make from agencies.
Now the agencies would try to half the rates they pay to translators of course, but I'm sure as heck hoping that if this ever happens I (and other freelancers) will be ambitious (and desperate) enough to go out and get myself some more direct clients, charging them the same rate as I do to agencies now.
One final thought- why is it that everyone assumes that agencies would be the winner if great MT technology is produced? Isn't it also possible that good freelancers, with lower overhead and higher language-specific expertise, would be just as likely to obtain such technology, and take market share from agencies?
So I'm not unduly pessimistic about the future of translation for freelancers who are expert in their fields and willing to accept that they are businessmen/women in addition to translators. As Tom from London pointed out, translations provide great value to their end users. So long as the FUMT remains a pipe dream, I think there will be a place in the market for freelancers. We may have to work harder, and market ourselves directly to clients, but I'm not sure either of these are necessarily bad things. To answer the premise of the OP's post, I do think translators are still important to the industry, and that they will continue to be so for some time to come.
I'm still somewhat new to the industry, but have great respect for some of the more experienced translators whose blogs I read. The day I begin to worry greatly about the future of translation for freelancers will be the day I see several of these more experienced translators (most of whom indicate that they are doing quite well financially) start to post about serious declines in their translation-related income. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Carole Wolfe
United States
Local time: 09:07
Member (2006)
Russian to English
+ ...
Giles Watson wrote: Christine Andersen wrote:
Each specialised in one tiny routine, which he repeated over and over again, barely knowing what any of the others were doing.
OK then, Christine. You do the nouns, I'll do the verbs and when we get up to speed we can unionise and have a demarcation dispute over the gerunds. We could call it translation by Operational Micromanagement Integrating Grammatically Ordered Distribution.
This sounds like the technique that has allowed McDonald's to produce fast food and spread worldwide. The workers there are not chefs, not even cooks, but each does his/her own part, i.e., you put the fries in the fat, and I'll flip the burgers. And voila! the customer's meal is ready at the drive through. What's lacking is pride in one's work. The only thing that matters (to the shareholders) is that this mass production leads to profits.
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