Tag: brokers

Feel-good, deceptive language in the translation business, Part II: Collaboration

Perhaps some translators feel good thinking that they are collaborating with the translation brokers they depend on for work.

Translators are not collaborating with translation brokers. The term collaborate implies that both sides are contributing. Most translation is sold by translation brokers that are incapable of becoming involving in the translation process, beyond purchasing a translation from a translator and reselling it to a client. Even when a translation broker performs some intermediate processing on the translation they purchase before reselling it, that processing is usually also a service that they outsource (purchase) and resell as part of the translation. There is no collaboration in sight.

Translators sell translations to translation brokers. They are no more collaborating with translation brokers than a chicken owned by a chicken farmer is collaborating with the farmer when the farmer takes an egg from them and throws them some chickenfeed.

Feel-good, deceptive language in the translation business, Part I: Linguist

When did translators get “elevated” to the position of linguist? Was it around the time toilet paper became bathroom tissue? Or when problems became issues?

The timing of this mischaracterization aside, the inappropriate use of the term linguist to refer to translators has taken hold, and even some translators have embraced the term, although the usage is almost always wrong, regardless of which definition we chose to use to defend the usage. Let’s take a look at the definitions.

(1) : a person accomplished in languages

especially : one who speaks several languages

(2) : a person who specializes in linguistics

Regarding definition (1), yes translators should be accomplished in at least two languages, although just speaking two languages won’t suffice. Being accomplished in two languages does not mean you are a translator or are capable of being a translator. Being a professional translator requires a number of skills and areas of areas entirely unrelated to being a linguist.

Definition (2) is even more distant from reality. I know many translators and can name only a handful who could or would lay claim to being specialized in linguistics, an academic field devoted to study of human speech including the units, nature, and language, these aspects of language not being necessary or sufficient tools for success as a translator.

Years of studying linguistics will not qualify someone to be a translator. There is some small overlap between linguists and translators, but it is small, and becomes very tiny when we compare the population of linguists with that of translators of commercially important texts. John McWhorter is a linguist; almost none of my capable translator colleagues are linguists.

But if translators enjoy being mischaracterized as linguistics, they will be able to continue to enjoy, because translation brokers continue to mischaracterize them, perhaps thinking that it makes translators feel good (perhaps some do) and perhaps thinking that it makes their clients feel good about the elevated academics doing their translations (i.e., selling translations to the broker), although the purchase-resale transaction is not apparent to many clients, many of whom surely think that the company they purchase translations from actually does the translations.

There is nothing wrong with characterizing translators as being translators, and translators should strive to educate clients regarding just what professional translators are capable of doing and why they don’t need the title of linguist to do it.

Part II will deal with another deception in the translation business, that of collaboration.

With a few lifeboats still available, too many translators are both cursing and holding onto a sinking ship.

Numerous translators are actively discussing in various online venues the problems with AI translation and are saying that clients will come back to them when they discover the problems of AI. Although these discussions provide opportunities for bonding among colleagues, they serve no other identifiable purpose, and they certainly do nothing to impede the obvious headlong race into a world in which translation is viewed as a commodity by both translation brokers and their translation-consuming clients.

The underlying, persistent reality is that translation is a business.

The amount of money translation brokers have needed to pay translations they purchase for resale has been a constant profit-diluting annoyance to the LSB (language service broker) community. In response, brokers have employed numerous devices over the years to lower their translation purchase price. One device is the mandatory use of broker-specified CAT tools, with an accompanying discounting of rates that can be received by translators. Another is forcing translators to work on hamster-wheel online translation platforms in order to receive work.

But now the brokers on which most translators depend have a new way to lower (or almost eliminate) the cost of obtaining translations to sell, this being the elimination of professional translators from the translation process step.

And there is abundant evidence that they are succeeding at doing just that.

One reason for the brokers’ success is that the good-enough paradigm has been widely adopted and is working for a huge portion of the translation market.

Another reason is more serious for freelance translators and needs to be recognized by translators wishing to survive:

Brokers conduct themselves based on the correct understanding that very few translators from which they purchase translations can compete with them in acquiring direct clients themselves. Most translators don’t even know who their potential direct clients are. And, even if they do know, they generally don’t know who to approach at those clients or how to approach them. Many, for a variety of reasons, do not have the ability to access potential direct clients.

The adoption of AI by brokers succeeds largely by the monetization of their control of customers, combined with the inability of most translators to compete with brokers. It succeeds because good enough is good enough and, more critically, because most translators are trapped, with little ability to compete with brokers and no alternative income-earning path.

To survive by translating for earnings anywhere near what they previously could expect to earn, translators will need to acquire direct clients. For most translators, that will not be possible.

That is where broker-dependent freelance translators are, and it is essentially the end of the road for most translators wishing to pursue translation as a way to earn a living.