Tag: translation

JA-EN Translation Note 003: 矮 in the world is this happening? All dwarfs are not created (or translated) equally.

In the field of astronomy, the term dwarf star has a long history. That history dates back far before the word police would raise their eyebrows and raise a fuss about dwarf being offensive. Perhaps little person star would be more acceptable.

That history has followed the term into the Japanese language, where the expression 矮星 has long been used and is still used to refer to dwarf stars, including on numerous pages of the website of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

In the age of the word police, however, the demotion of Pluto to the status of dwarf planet presented an opportunity for the authorities (at least here in Japan) to allow the ideology of political correctness to intrude into language. The result is that the term is treated differently between Japanese and English.

Whereas 矮星 is still apparently accepted for dwarf star in Japanese,矮惑星 for dwarf planet is avoided, surely for fear that the word police would coming knocking on the door of the transgressors. The NAOJ website gives a nod to the dwarf planet use in English, but avoids mention of 矮惑星 in Japanese, preferring to use the safer English term dwarf planet in running Japanese text, rather than use the dreaded 矮 character. In English, it is not the fault of the NAOJ.

One example, from a FAQ page of the NAOJ website:

太陽系のdwarf planetとは、「太陽の周りを回り」「十分大きな質量を持つために自己重力が固体としての力よりも勝る結果、重力平衡形状（ほぼ球状）を持ち」「その軌道近くから他の天体が排除されていない」「衛星でない」天体である。

Another method used to avoid 矮 is to call these dwarf planets 準惑星.

I guess the only thing that language realists can be thankful for is that the language revisionists have not yet banned 矮星 for dwarf star, but perhaps the day will come when we will see that character banned in dwarf stars as well. Time will tell. In any event, I would render these planets as dwarf planets in JA-EN translation.

A few suggestions that might be useful

[I have covered some of the points cited here in my IJET-30 presentation in Cairns in 2019, and I hope some colleagues can continue to offer actionable advice to at least the few translators who will be left standing after the AI dust clears.]

There are few survival paths for agency-dependent freelance translators who might survive the AI transformation that has demoted professional human translators to unrealistically low-paid AI repair workers.

One path is to work in-house. Because the agencies controlling most of the market and clients have very few translator employees relative to the volume of translation they purchase and resell, in-house employment will need to be sought at non-translation entities. That is not possible for some freelancers, conditions such as location presenting hurdles. There are, of course, many more hurdles to negotiate in obtaining an in-house position.

If you want to continue translating and are currently relying on work from agencies, just about the only other path is to start actively engaging in the business of translation and behaving like you’re in business. You will need to walk the walk if your goal is to break away from agencies and sell to direct translation clients.

Some of the things you should do first are trivially easy, others are difficult.

  • Stop using free email services for business. Things like Gmail are unprofessional and do not inspire trust. Quitting them is trivially easy.
  • Register your own domain—this will enable you to have your own business email address(es) and a website. This is easy to do and won’t be free, but you’re in business, and businesses have expenses.
  • Build your own online presence with your website. Where you need to be as a professional translator in business is not on a platform such as LinkedIn, with over a billion other users, where the clients you need will not find you. Building a website is not that difficult. One dumb way to do it is to buy a book about it and borrow the html code, after which you can learn to add and modify the site as appropriate. Then start learning about websites. For people not wanting to struggle with html and css, another method, if you can get over the ethical hurdles, is to ask an AI model like Claude to provide you the code for a website. It won’t have lots of bells and whistles and it won’t be very elegant, but you’ll have a website of sorts in no time. Because of the potential difficulty in adding material to your website, however, it’s best not to order a website from an entity that packages the site design with its hosting services, as some make it difficult to manage the site yourself, this leading many people to have essentially abandoned websites.
  • Once you have your website, grow it to demonstrate that you’re still active and can write things of substance, another way of saying don’t take the commonly seen approach of having a website that is no more than a CV and a plea for work.
  • Build a network of specific individuals (known as humans in real life) at entities you want as clients—that’s best done in real life, not just sitting in front of your computer. Online is not real life, and the chances of you reaching those individuals on LinkedIn or the like are extremely slim. Network building in real life is a much more difficult feat than the earlier items.
  • Turn your computer off and get out in the real world, where potential clients hang out. Interactions in those places, high-risk as they may seem, will be much more valuable than hanging out with colleague translators, be it online or in person.
  • If you haven’t yet done it, acquire field-specific expertise that can be convincing when interacting directly, including face-to-face, with a potential client who has that expertise. This must be to a level that is convincing when done in an environment in which you cannot use Google. Direct clients will find you out quickly if you try faking expertise.
  • If you are living in your B-language (source-language) country, acquire spoken ability in that language to a level that would be convincing in live conservations with natives of that language. This is not a given; Dunning-Kruger is not your friend, and this is a particularly critical deal-breaker for native English speakers trying to obtain Japanese clients here in Japan.

The last two items can require an investment in at least time and perhaps money as well.

Also, remember that, unlike the translation-brokering agencies, you can’t lie about your abilities with impunity. Agencies can lie about their 1000s of experts, but you are alone, and your potential direct clients will discover that quickly; you won’t be able to hide.

Speaking of not hiding, disclose your physical address—not just your country—on your website.

Some of these things might seem unnecessary or be impossible for many freelancers. If that is the case, it might be better to abandon the idea of starting to operate and behave professionally. Without the professional infrastructure, skills, and behavior, it will be difficult to build trust with entities that are themselves operating as full members of their business communities.

Language matters.

It certainly does, and the language used by agencies and even freelance translators discussing selling language services to agencies tells a story of deception or surrender, depending upon which side of the inappropriate terminology in that brokering relationship you’re on.

Collaboration?

Well, hardly ever does this term make sense when a translator sells translation services to an agency. This is particularly the case with the large agencies that control most of the translation-consuming clients and sell most of the language services that are paid for by clients.

Translators don’t collaborate with an agency any more than a chicken laying eggs is collaborating with a poultry farmer who cannot lay eggs themselves, but sells the eggs laid by chickens to egg consumers or to other egg sellers.

It’s actually worse with translation agencies, because, whereas most poultry farmers can probably at least themselves judge the quality of eggs laid by their chickens, many translation-brokering agencies need to enlist and pay yet other people who are not their employees for confirmation of the quality of, and correction of errors in the translations they purchase, because the agencies generally don’t have that ability themselves and need to purchase and resell that ability, again from people who are also not “collaborating” with the agencies, but rather selling them services.

People who think collaboration is an appropriate term in these cases should think about the etymology of that word.

Onboarding?

I don’t mind this term when used to describe what can happen when an employee is hired by a company, but that’s not what goes on when an agency gets a freelancer to agree to a rate and to sign an NDA. Agencies are very seldom hirers of translators, but rather are purchasers of translation services from freelance translators for resale of those services, often with post-purchase processing, which they most often need to outsource as well.

The terms collaboration and onboarding are feel-good terms that agencies hope will compensate at least in part for not treating as professionals the professionals that enable their continuing business.

These terms are also widely adopted by freelancers themselves, perhaps in the hope that they feel good if they reflect reality. They rarely do.

In decades of selling translation and interpreting to consumers and purchasers of those services, I cannot think of a single instance that I could fairly claim to have collaborated with a client. And, of course, I’ve never been onboarded by a client.