Articles tagged "industry"
Hold your horses
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on May 27th, 2010
No problem, it'll all be ready by morning (Image via Global Nerdy
I received an enquiry from a potential client asking whether I could verbally translate 400,000 words of specialised texts into English, on-site and over the course of 8 days. Now it’s possible that in my old age (I’m approaching another birthday with alarming speed) I’m slowing down ever so slightly but this equates to 50,000 words per day. The most I’ve ever managed to turn around in a day was around 18,000 words and that took a solid 20 hours to do with a good translation memory and it was for information purposes. Surely nobody could do 50,000 words in a single day?
Translators readying themselves for a revolution
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on April 20th, 2010
One of my articles on rates of pay for translators was recently republished in the ITIA Bulletin – the monthly electronic magazine of the Irish Translators’ & Interpreters’ Association – and almost immediately afterwards I noticed a large jump in the number of people visiting my site. Naturally I was pretty pleased by this, after all you kind of hope that someone will read your articles. Two days later, however, the numbers went through the roof with hundreds of hits in just one day. What was even more unusual, I thought, was that they were all coming from various towns and cities throughout Italy. Ever the pessimist, I wracked my brains to see if there was anything in the article that could possibly have insulted an entire nation. But no, that wasn’t it. Had they found out that I love their food, their music and their culture and they were rushing to tell me that yes, they loved me too? Maybe, but that wouldn’t make so many of them visit my humble little website. Would it?
Translators rise up against the tyranny of agencies and job forums
No. It turns out that the Italian translation community is in the midst of a proper fight against scurrilous agencies who try to impose outrageously low rates on translators and generally treat translators like glorified typists aided and abetted by race-to-the-bottom job auction sites. Now translators aren’t known for their fighting spirit. Normally we might sit and give a muffled grumble or start to write a strongly worded email but before long we turn back to our computers and get on with translating (Those 7000 words of medical reports aren’t going to translate themselves you know!). There’s no fight in us at all. In fairness, with most of us working as self-employed contractors, it does feel that there’s not much we can do. Or so you would think. Cue the Italian translators who, like modern day Gladiators under the banner of their translators association, have said “Enough is enough. The abuse of translators has to stop!”
It just so happened that my article was republished around the same time they were mobilising their troops. One of the leading figures in this push against unfair and unethical business practices is Wendell Ricketts and he emailed me shortly after the ITIA Bulletin issue to fill me in on the story.
Apparently this has been simmering for some time but what brought it all to a head was a job advertisement on none other than Proz.com, where a translation agency called Trust Traduzioni was looking for translators to work on a project on behalf of the Italian Ministry of Tourism. The rate supposedly imposed by the Ministry was €9 per 2600 characters with payment after 90 days. According to Wendell’s site, a rate of €9 per 1500 characters would be considered as he puts it “starvation” rates so basing this amount on 2600 is downright offensive. Now the Ministry of Tourism subsequently denied all knowledge of these rates and said it was filing a complaint with the relevant authorities so you have to wonder who is responsible for the rates. It couldn’t be the agency? But they’re translators just like us. Aren’t they?
It’s times like this that you actually feel proud to be a translator. The Italian translators are doing what most of us secretly wished we could do but never really thought was possible – organising a geographically disparate group of people who have no employment protection and who often work alone and get them to mobilise against what everyone knows is a massive problem for our profession. Perhaps it is because translators do not have the protection afforded to other professions that they feel as if they have nothing to lose. What is absolutely clear to me from all this is that just because translation isn’t a protected or highly unionised profession and just because most of us are self-employed, it doesn’t mean we cannot stand up for ourselves and do something about the appalling conditions many of our fellow translators have to endure. Farmers and fishermen are all self-employed but whenever a supermarket cuts their prices or the government imposes higher taxes, they won’t waste a second in taking to the streets and manning the barricades or dumping a truck load of cow dung in front of the supermarket’s headquarters if necessary. So why don’t we take our lead from the Italian translators. It might work, it might not work but at least the other side will know they were in a fight if nothing else.
You can read more about this story here, here and here.
Weathering the storm in university
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on October 1st, 2009
The new academic year is well and truly underway in pretty much every university everywhere and for most of us, academics and students alike, it’s a very hectic and, in some ways, exciting time as we meet our new students eager (hopefully) to learn new skills, put the finishing touches and generally come to grips with the new timetable and the bizarre room allocations which see us trekking to the most far flung outposts of the campus.
There are easier ways of weathering the storm
This year, however, I’ve noticed that we have a lot more students than we had last year and it’s gotten me wondering why. Last year, I don’t think anyone was surprised at the lower numbers because it came in the midst of the hysteria about the global recession and nobody was certain about anything. In such a climate, you can understand the reluctance of people to commit to the expense of higher education. Why would you leave a job to go back to university when there’s a chance you might not find another one for a while.
But while this explains what happened last year, it doesn’t explain this year. Now, we’ve all come to terms with the recession and most of the feelings of shock, horror and panic have gone, giving way instead to a grim acceptance that the economy will be in tatters for years to come and employment prospects are going to be quite dismal unless you do something beef up your arsenal with some new qualifications.
Are people realising that the best place to sit out a recession is in university? After all, providing you have the money set aside or can get a big enough loan, going back to university full-time means you have at least one full year where you don’t have to worry about whether you’re going to be made redundant. From my own experience here in Sheffield (which is purely speculative and by no means conclusive) this seems to be borne out in part by the make-up of students. We are seeing fewer international students but a lot more European students, particularly UK students. This would seem to suggest that the scarcity of money is causing people to reconsider the expensive business of foreign study; international students pay much higher fees than UK or EU students. But it does suggest that UK students are doing the sensible thing during a recession and waiting it out in the relative calm of university. I’d also wager that the same thing is happening in many other countries. By the time they’re ready to go back to the real world, they’ve survived another year of doom and gloom with their sanity relatively intact and they’ve acquired some new skills which will give them the chance to either change career direction or rejoin the workplace with a competitive advantage. It’s really not a bad idea at all!
The Big Brother approach to job applications
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on September 25th, 2009
Media types have always used wacky tactics or "wacktics" to get jobs
Video CVs are, apparently, the the next big thing. I’ve just read an article on Jobs.ac.uk by Catherine Armstrong in which she asks whether such an approach could ever work in academia. But the idea of presenting yourself on video to prospective employers is nothing new. People have been doing something similar for years, just think of actors and broadcast journalists with their show reels. All of this is perfectly normal for media-type jobs where personal appearance is important but it’s a weird prospect for a “normal” job.
Eager to find out whether this really is a daft idea I decided to do a minimal amount of snooping around to see if I could find an example of a video CV. Lo and behold, the first thing I found after typing “Video CV” into Google was a website dedicated to hosting people’s video CVs in a variety of languages. This site will host your video or, for a fee create one for you. There are three examples on their main page which are presumably some of their best examples but as sure as I’m sitting here they’re the best for all the wrong reasons. I’ve included them below for you to enjoy later. Chris Dautremont’s video looks and sounds like a cross between a media student’s over-the-top Big Brother audition tape and one of those public service ads persuading young people to stay at school. Then there’s poor Dilyara Risbayeva’s video which looks more like one of those videos kidnappers send to the cops with a ransom demand. Bless her, she’s so wooden and uptight that you keep expecting to see her holding up a copy of today’s newspaper while the muzzle of an AK-47 pokes out from the side of the screen. Finally we have David Merhi’s video which starts off like an audition tape for MTV’s Real World proclaiming his general “awesomeness” but then degenerates into a dating video. YouTube is littered with more examples -- just search for video CV or video resume.
A still from my never-to-be-released video CV
I know I shouldn’t mock. It’s possible and indeed, quite likely, that I’m simply projecting my own self-consciousness and painful awareness that I am not in the least bit photogenic. I know that if I ever did a video like this, people would either think it was a help the homeless ad or a heavy metal video. But it’s really hard to imagine how videos like these could help you get a job in any industry other than advertising or media. I try to imagine how a video CV for a translator would work: Bob or Mary translator showing off their computer, reading out a translation or even worse, giving a practical demonstration of how they translate. An academic video CV would be even more interesting considering an academic’s CV is often three times longer than a regular CV by the time you add in all the publications, grant applications and teaching details. It could end up being an epic production with a cast of thousands.
But is it really that daft for academics? After all, a key part of the job of a lecturer is being able to stand up in front of a group of people and communicate clearly, effectively and in an engaging manner. All academic recruitment processes involve the inevitable sample lecture where staff and students are rounded up to provide a ready-made audience where candidates can prove that they have this ability. A video CV could provide a glimpse into an academic’s presentation style and it wouldn’t involve as much organisation as a proper sample lecture. Okay there’s no way of recreating an interactive and high-pressure Q&A session but that’s what an interview is for, right? You would, however, have to factor into the equation the “old guard” that can be found in virtually every university. These are the academics who print off emails before they read them, still use transparencies and overhead projectors and generally eschew anything technical that doesn’t have Thomas Edison‘s logo on it. For them wireless means the radio. Can you imagine them buying into this new-fangled technological flim-flammery? It’s nearly worth the embarrassment of making a video just to see the look on their faces…
Rogues gallery
Fool me once, shame on you…
Posted by Jody in Doc Byrne’s Translation Miscellany on July 5th, 2009
The issue of professional translators providing their services for free has once again reared its ugly, miserable, penny-pinching head again. Some time ago I wrote about a job posting on Proz asking for a specialised text to be translated for free. Now, according to an article in the New York Times, the professional networking website, LinkedIn, has asked it’s translator members whether they would be interested in volunteering their services to localise the LinkedIn website. Yes, you heard right. A professional website aimed at professional service providers is asking it’s fee paying members to provide services for free.
I’ve never made a secret of the fact that translators are sometimes their own worst enemy when it comes to professional recognition. We translators regularly complain that we do not get the professional recognition we deserve and that the money we make is not commensurate with the amount of effort, training and commitment required to be a translator. This, as I’ve said before, is largely due to translators not standing up for themselves and for charlatans working for peanuts. But companies who are prepared to take advantage of translators and employ “yellow pack“, bargain-basement translators are every bit to blame. So it’s hardly a surprise that I’m not impressed by LinkedIn’s new venture.
"Sure, translation has its challenges but the plentiful supply of bananas and the chance to play on a tyre swing make it all worthwhile".
But hold on a minute, I’m detecting the slight whiff of hypocrisy here. Why have I never complained about Facebook’s foray into crowd-sourcing? Or Wikipedia for that matter? Like LinkedIn, Facebook asked it’s members to band together and translate their website into various languages for free. LinkedIn were even promising to credit the translators who volunteered so it’s not like the translators weren’t getting something out of it. But the reason I didn’t have a problem with Facebook is because it, like Wikipedia is a kind of hobby or recreational site and much like Wikipedia, they don’t really have a business model with which to make vast sums of money (if you’re interested in how web companies like the mighty Google make their money try reading “The Google Story
On top of this, the Facebook translation project was just an excuse to get users involved in the website – it wasn’t an excuse to save a few bucks. In fact the way Facebook went about localising its site ultimately proved more expensive than if they had just gone to professional translators in the first place (they had a review system for translations and even got professional translators to translate the strings “just in case”).
But the LinkedIn case is different from what I can make out. They are supposedly a professional site aimed at promoting professional relationships and respecting its members. They also charge their members a lot of money for their premium services. Would LinkedIn have asked its graphic designer members to design a new logo for free? Would they have asked members who are website designers to redesign the website for free? Would they have asked caterers to come around and stock the LinkedIn canteen with food for free? Unlikely to say the least. Yet somehow they felt comfortable asking the translators to give them a freebie. Maybe they have a point, after all we are just trained monkeys who speak a couple of languages real good.
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