Linguistic Diversity in the U.S.

Posted On January 3, 2013By TranspanishIn Languages, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

Diversity in North America has essentially been on the upward trend since the continent was first colonized. It’s natural, then, that the region’s linguistic diversity would be increasing as well. But while linguistic diversity in the U.S. in particular has undeniably been rising in recent decades, according to a report by the Census Bureau, these bilingual and multilingual gains have come unevenly.

For one thing, linguistic diversity appears to be intricately tied to geography. For example, Asian languages such as Chinese and Korean are more widely spoken in California and Hawaii, along the Pacific coast. The concentration of French speakers is mostly in Louisiana and Maine, while German speakers are primarily found in North and South Dakota. Meanwhile, Spanish is spoken far more heavily along the Mexico border and in Florida, as is to be expected.

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What may be less expected is the rate of growth of speakers of another language in the US. Sure, with current rates of immigration, it makes sense that the number of foreign language speakers in the US would increase quickly. After all, the country was built by immigrants. Yet what a report from the Census Bureau analyzing linguistic diversity in the U.S. between 1980 and 2007 revealed was that the number of foreign language speakers is increasing faster than population growth itself. And that’s just talking about people who speak another language at home – not the number of people learning a foreign language.

How is it possible that the number of native speakers of a language other than English can grow faster than overall population growth (an astounding four times faster, to be exact)? The answer is that more immigrants are retaining their linguistic heritage and teaching their children from an early age. While there were 381 distinct languages recorded in the report, the languages were categorized geographically by source, including Spanish, other Indo-European languages, Asian or Pacific Island languages, and all other languages. With its own category in the report, Spanish constituted 62 percent of the population of native speakers of another language.

When you should turn down a translation project

Posted On December 21, 2012By TranspanishIn Spanish Translation, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

It may sound counterintuitive, or even just scary, but there comes a point in every freelancer’s career when they have to – or should – turn down a job. Far from being a bad thing, it is a necessary part of freelancing that will ultimately be better for your career and the clients that you work with. Here are some reasons why:

Not Enough Experience or Not Within Your Expertise

Though a project might sound promising and you might be tempted to gain a new client, you should not take projects that will be very difficult to complete. Consider, for instance, that you are an English to Spanish translator, always translating to your native language Spanish. You receive a Spanish to English project and are tempted to accept it, even though you know that you don´t have the right experience. Or maybe you receive a medical translation when your specialization is law. Once the excitement and sense of calm from getting new work wears off, you’ll be stuck trying to hurry through and complete a translation that takes too long because it is outside of your expertise.

Client Has a Tight Deadline

This might be a client that contacts you suddenly for a rush project, or who claims that every job is “urgent”, or who calls you on Thanksgiving day, or on Sunday afternoon, etc. There are plenty of these clients out there, and they should be avoided (unless you really enjoy being at someone’s beck and call and having no life or freedom, or unless they are willing to pay an extra charge.) You might have the patience to get through one or two jobs with this type of client, but beware when that patience runs out and you’re both stuck with a deteriorating situation.

Money Matters

All clients want to save money, it’s just a part of business. But freelancers should be wary of those who ask for big discounts. It could indicate that the client will not value your work, but it also has a negative impact on your business as a translator. Taking low-priced jobs means that you would need to accept more jobs. And that can make you more stressed about finishing projects quickly, and consequently lead to lower quality in the work that you do. Ultimately, charging a higher rate (not abusive, but a reasonable rate) is better for both the client and the translator.

In addition, projects with payment terms that are far from what is acceptable for you should be avoided. This point is particularly important because when working as a freelancer, you have to make sure that you are creating a cash flow that is sufficient to cover your living expenses. If a project does not include payment terms that would allow you to do that, it is best to pass on the project.

Research the Client for Red Flags

With so many online resources for checking up on a client’s profile or reputation, it just makes sense to do it. A good practice is to always search for a new client on Google and to also look them up on a site like the Better Business Bureau for US and Canada (http://www.bbb.org/). If you are working for a translation agency, a good place to see the agency reputation is http://www.proz.com/blueboard.

While you can’t necessarily believe everything you read online, if you Google a client and several sites with complaints about them come up, it’s a pretty good indication of what you can expect from working with them. The kinds of information you may find online include whether they pay on time, if they are easy to work with, and any specific issues that tend to come up in their business relationships.

Uninformed Clients That Are Not Willing to Learn

Beyond the deadline issue, some clients are just pushy and make unrealistic requests for projects. For instance, they ask 100,000 words translated in a couple of days, and aren’t willing to learn what translation is about (and why that request is not realistic.) A savvy translator will not spend too much energy on these clients. Rather than getting frustrated with uninformed expectations, you can explain politely why the project is unrealistic or tell them that it is not the way you work. If they wish to work with you, they can alter the request.

Follow Your Instinct

A final note is to watch out for clients that just seem too eager to hire you and pay you right away without getting basic information. There are new scams created every day, and experience in picking them out can protect you from falling prey. But even if you don’t have so much experience under your belt in dealing with clients as a freelancer, you can always fall back on your gut instinct. This also goes for projects that are not necessarily “scams” but that just don’t seem right for you, your schedule, or your expertise.

There are many reasons why a project might not be right for you, and it’s in your best interest to know what a “right” project looks like.

The Risks of not Providing Safety Information in Workers’ Languages

Posted On December 19, 2012By TranspanishIn Spanish Translation, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

It is no surprise that Hispanics entering the US with limited or no English abilities often end up working in factories across the country. With a limited capacity for communication in English comes a limited set of options for work. Yet factories can be some of the most dangerous places to work in any country, where the ability to read and understand warnings and cautionary signs can mean the difference between health or injury.

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This issue famously came up in mid-2011 in an incident at Tyson Foods, an international corporation with headquarters in Arkansas. The factory incident revolved around a poisonous gas leak that occurred when a worker failed to read the label on a container, pouring a chemical into it that, when mixed with the residue of the chemical previously held in the container, produced chlorine gas. The Center for Disease Control interviewed the worker after the accident, and reported that he said his primary language was Spanish and that he could not understand the label written in English.

While Tyson Foods contests that the argument of the worker in question—claiming instead that his primary language is English and that he simply failed to take note of the label—the case highlights the importance of warning and safety precautions in factories, and the ability of workers to properly understand them. It doesn’t necessarily make sense for companies that run factories and other sites with Hispanic workers to provide language training to all of their employees—in terms of the time and resource investment. So it would seem that providing translations of things such as container labels, warning and hazard signs, etc. would make the most sense.

Another issue that arose in the Tyson Foods case corresponded to the way employees are trained for these potentially dangerous jobs. While the company claims that hands-on training is already practiced in its factories, cases such as this one emphasize why this form of training in the employees’ native language(s) is preferable to video or reading-based training techniques, in which employees may only understand part of the information provided in English, or none at all.

Did a bad translation put horns on Moses’ head?

Posted On December 13, 2012By TranspanishIn Did you know?, Languages, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

Many translators are familiar with the controversy surrounding the horned Moses and his sometimes-amiss translator. Although that translator, commonly known as Saint Jerome, concerned himself with biblical analysis, theological debate, history, correspondence and translation, he earned his place in history mainly through his translations and revisions of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.

Jerome translated these texts from the original Hebrew into Latin, and was humble enough to admit ignorance when warranted and to revisit parts of his translations when it became apparent that he had made a mistake. Nonetheless, his Latin translation of the Bible was later recognized by the Council of Trent as the official version, and to this day he remains a widely respected and studied biblical translator.

The controversy in question concerns part of the text in Exodus 34. The original Hebrew version can be read idiomatically as stating that Moses had “rays of light” coming from his head when he descended from Mt. Sinai. However, the same word for ray of light also meant “horns” depending on the context. And in what some may consider a classic case of mistranslation, Jerome chose the latter meaning.

The result of his possible mistake was a horned Moses appearing in the official Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible. And as a lesson to students of translation and art alike, Michelangelo secured that image in our collective consciousness by basing his 1515 sculpture of Moses on Jerome’s translation—along with a list of other contemporary and subsequent artists.

More recently, scholars have attempted to justify this transgression by citing the metaphorical relevance of horns to “glorification, strength and authority”, in an attempt to align them with the meaning of light emanating from Moses’s face. Similarly, some artists such as José de Ribera in his 1638 interpretation, have tried to visually combine the light rays and horns to be essentially the same. Students of translation, however, will likely take from this a reminder to always look into the meaning behind the words and their historical context.

Michelangelo’s Moses with horns

José de Ribera’s Moses with rays of light

Language Proficiency Testing Among Doctors and Hospital Staff

Posted On December 11, 2012By TranspanishIn Languages, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

An EU directive allowing doctors from member countries to work anywhere in the European Economic Area has come under fire recently. Following the case of a 70 year old British patient who was killed by an incompetent German doctor, critics of the directive have begun pushing for competency tests as well as language proficiency tests as essential measures to protect patients.

The attention has focused on doctors working in the UK without ever having undergone tests to prove that they know enough English to communicate effectively with their patients. Currently, such testing is prohibited under a directive issued from Brussels which considers such measures to be an impediment to the free movement of labor across EU-member country borders. The result, critics say, potentially puts patients at risk of encountering doctors without the basic English skills necessary to work in Britain.

While issues such as this are not new to the EU, which combines so many languages with borders open to travel and commerce, it highlights a concern that can be seen in any area where multiple languages come into frequent contact. If it is not the doctors, for example, who speak different languages, it may be the patients. And that raises the question: at what point is it necessary for hospitals to employ multilingual staff to meet the needs of their patients? Or, as in the case of the EU, at what point should staff be tested for proficiency in one language?

Certain areas of the United States have had their own contact with this issue, particularly in southern states with high and increasing Hispanic populations such as Florida, Texas and Arizona. In some areas, mostly close to the border with Mexico, street signs can be read in Spanish, and even the occasional advertisement in a movie theater will be in Spanish before a movie in English begins. The issue of Spanish-speaking doctors working in hospitals and clinics, of course, goes beyond the question of convenience or marketing to a particular group. As the example in Britain illustrates, the results can be fatal.

At what point, then, does proficiency in Spanish become “necessary” for doctors in the U.S.? How large does the Hispanic population need to get before requirements are put into place? These are questions which face a very complex political environment, particularly in border states. The answers may not come easily, but given the existing population of Spanish-speaking individuals, the discussion is certainly worth having.

Translation: It’s History and Trends

Posted On December 10, 2012By TranspanishIn Did you know?, Languages, Spanish Translation, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

The term “translation” hails from the mid-fourteenth century with an etymological base in the Latin word translationem, a noun of action from the stem of transferre. It also shares roots with the word from Old French meaning “the rendering of a text from one language to another.” The verb form in English, translate, is from the Latin translatus, literally “carried over.” Interestingly, the word translate replaced an earlier word in Old English which carried a similar though not exact meaning, awendan, literally “to turn, direct.”

Beyond the etymology of the word, the act of translating texts has a long history that is intricately connected with human religious, artistic and scientific expression. From the Bible to the travels of Marco Polo along the silk road and beyond, the diffusion of knowledge and cultural heritage—and, indeed, cross-cultural interaction itself—owes a great debt to history’s translators. As many would expect, the bible still holds the title of the most-translated book. But according to the Guinness Book of World Records, another book holds the title of most-translated for a living author—O Alquimista, or The Alchemist, by the Brazilian Paulo Coelho.

The First Translation of the Bible Into English – Ford Madox Brown (1847)

And if you’re interested to know what the most-translated languages are, UNESCO actually keeps a running tally in its Index Translationum. According to the index, the most-translated source language in the world (through 2011) is English, followed by a distant French. It lists German as the language most translated into, or target language, followed more closely this time by French.

You can also find a list of the most-translated authors within the index, with a few surprises. Despite being the author of the most-translated book by a living author, Coelho actually didn’t make the list of the top-50 translated authors. Coming in first on that list is Agatha Christie, followed by Jules Verne, William Shakespeare, Enid Blyton, and Vladimir Lenin filling out the top five spots. Indeed, the former USSR block makes a good showing on this list, with the region contributing a total of seven authors.

The meaning of ‘Cana’

Posted On December 6, 2012By TranspanishIn Did you know?, Lunfardo, Spanish Language, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

Argentine Spanish is strewn with words and colorful phrases from Lunfardo, a rich vocabulary born on the streets of Buenos Aires in the second half of the 19th century. Now considered a fixture of the Spanish language in Argentina (especially in and around Buenos Aires) and Uruguay, linguists cite the use of Lunfardo as a defining characteristic of the Rioplatense dialect. Add a dash of Argentine flavor to your Spanish vocabulary with the Transpanish blog’s ongoing feature highlighting some of the most frequently used terms in Lunfardo.

Of all the slang terms that languages use, it seems every language has plenty of words for police. One of these within the Spanish language is the Lunfardo word “cana”. Although it is decidedly a Lunfardo word that made its way into Argentinian Spanish, its etymology is still disputed.

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It has a long history, to be sure. The word “cana” actually appeared in the work of Cervantes to mean a police informer. But if it was not originally from the Spanish language, it may well have made its way to Spain from France, as some believe. The word has a striking resemblance to the French word “canne”, which means a reed or cane. This etymology would make sense in the context of its current usage, since police officers historically have carried batons which are very cane-like.

Of course the explanation may be more simple—the word could just be an abbreviation of the Spanish word for canary, “canario”, which has been used in Spain since the sixteenth century. Staying with that region as the word’s source, another option is Spain’s neighbor Portugal. Similar to the Portuguese word “encanado”, literally meaning prisoner in a cage made of reeds, the word could have made it’s way over to Latin America via Brazil.

There’s a more humorous usage relating to being a prisoner, with a possible etymological history in reference to someone who has had a setback of some kind, and who may consequently find himself languishing in jail. Or it could have been a reference to re-hired police officers who had already retired, whom thieves used to call “canosos” for their grey hair.

But however the word made its way into Argentinian Spanish, it has managed to become entrenched in the culture. With frequent appearances in the lyrics of tango songs, and common usage in the general population, the Lunfardo word cana is a well-understood synonym for policia.

Aesthetics and Meaning: The Balancing Act of Literary Translation

Posted On December 5, 2012By TranspanishIn Languages, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

Words carry more than just their meaning. They also possess an aesthetic quality that can derive from their meaning, their sound when being pronounced, or even the appearance of the word if it contains symmetry. While these are purely subjective and personal preferences, translators can find themselves faced with the task of trying to decipher and properly transfer that aesthetic quality into another language. As if this alone wasn’t tricky enough, it must also be balanced with the accurate translation of meaning and sense.

Literary translations, by their very nature, offer plenty of opportunities for a translator to use his or her personal judgement when deciding how to translate a text. Indeed, if machine translators ever reach the level of accuracy that a human translator can possess, literary translations may be the final frontier where machines cannot compete. Only a true and complete understanding of techniques being used, such as implied references, understatement, irony, parallelism, rhyme and rhythm in all their manifestations, etc. can produce a correct translation of a particular literary text. The degree of subjectivity in literary texts, and the interpretation that it requires, means that a machine or less-than-apt translator could hardly do justice to the original when translating the meaning into another language. The degree of subjectivity in literary texts, and the interpretation that it requires, means that a machine or less-than-apt translator could hardly do justice to the original when translating the meaning into another language.

Yet when translating a work of poetry or prose, for example, the translator must be sure to remove his or her self and personal expression from their understanding of the text. They must interpret the work on the level intended by the author. It requires walking a thin line of interpretation without interference, with a balancing pole that carries stated meaning and accuracy on one end, implied sense and aesthetics on the other. When done correctly, translating literature of any kind is the ultimate balancing act.

The Fallibility of the ‘100% Match’ and How it Affects Agency Rates

Posted On November 28, 2012By TranspanishIn Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

Continuing with the topic of Trados, or translation memory software, the ‘100% matches’ moniker warrants a closer look. The term can be both deceptive and misapplied, for reasons including the true accuracy of the matches and the way they affect translation rates, respectively. The term applies to any segment of source text that is an exact match with an already-translated segment stored in the software’s database. Different memory systems can achieve the 100% match to different degrees, but even the most effective ones can still suffer misapplication.

Take, for instance, the source text segment “cozy and modern.” If the software’s first encounter with this phrase involves the description of an apartment, it would be stored in the memory as “acogedor, moderno.” The problem arises when this is applied to the same phrase in reference to, say, a kitchen or some other feminine noun. The source language would appear exactly the same, as English does not use gender, but the exact match application would obviously be incorrect in Spanish.

And this is only one example. There are other instances in which software programs cannot necessarily account for the intricacies of language in their “exact” translations. Other examples include verbs that change depending on plural/singular or wider context differences that the software may not pick up on in the words immediately surrounding the segment. All together, these imperfect applications complicate the way agencies incorporate the ‘100% match’ moniker into their rates.

Since exact matches are technically translated by the software and not the human translator, some agencies will not pay for these segments. But the examples detailed above illustrate how even these segments must be proofread for accuracy and are far from fool-proof despite being ‘100% matches’. Even when agencies choose not to pay for these, they should at least have someone on hand to go through and proofread exact match segments. And if it’s the client who doesn’t want to pay for these translated segments, a brief explanation about the software’s imperfect output might be enough to justify a separate editing fee at a minimum.

Should translators be paid by the hour or per word?

Posted On November 26, 2012By TranspanishIn Spanish Translation, Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

It is far more common for translators to quote a per-word rate to their clients than an hourly rate. Yet hourly rates still persist in some particular cases. There are many reasons why per-word pricing is the norm and preferred by both clients as well as translators and translation agencies. Chief among these is that clients can better calculate costs. It’s much more difficult to get an idea of how much a translation will cost when all you know is an hourly rate, and not necessarily how long it will take to finish. And it’s particularly helpful when comparing the rates of one translator to another, when it can be difficult to accurately gauge how quickly each would complete projects relative to their rates.

Per-word rates also provide an incentive for translators to work quickly and efficiently, which is also better for the client. But it benefits the translator, too, as they can ultimately be more productive and earn more with their work. It may also encourage the use of tools to help increase efficiency. Yet despite the benefits, there is still another side to the coin for translators. Some documents may take much longer to complete, due to legibility issues or a higher difficulty level of the content. Charging by the word, in these cases, can benefit the translator less as their per-word rate undoubtedly would have taken into account how quickly they can translate. In these cases, some people choose to include a rate specifically for editing which is per-hour rather than per-word.

One thing that newbie translators, or those branching out to do independent work, should remember is that there is a difference between source word and target word rates. The former refers to a rate based on the number of words in the original document, while the latter refers to the number of translated words upon completion. Different agencies and freelancers may choose to go with one or the other. But it is ultimately more convenient for the client to be quoted a per-source word rate. Why? It lets them know exactly what the cost will be before you even get started.

The final thing to take into consideration when deciding how to charge your clients is whether to go with a per-page rate. It is not uncommon to receive a fax (even these days) or a scanned version of a document that cannot be easily converted into text. This kind of rate is less common than the more popular per-word rates or hourly rate. Which rate works for you will depend on the type of work that you typically receive.

However, charging per page is different than the page rate that some agencies and freelancers quote, which often is a way of referring to a set amount of words (for example, 200 words per page.) So it’s always important to be clear what you mean by “per page” (physical page or predetermined number or words) and “per word” (source word or target word) when negotiating rates.

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