Tag: translation

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.

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.

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 make allow the politics of correctness to intrude into language. The result is that the term is treated differently between Japanese and English.

Whereas 矮星 is 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 offensive 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.

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。

[from https://www.nao.ac.jp/faq/a0508.html]

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 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.

It’s not that difficult: Translators, Interpreters, and Linguists

A surprising number of people seem to misunderstand the distinctions between translators, interpreters, and linguists. Worse yet is the misunderstanding that any of these categories of professionals should be expected to be able to do the job of the others.

Admittedly, even respected dictionaries leave room for—and can be accused of promoting—confusion between these terms. People spending large budgets on language services, however, should reasonably be expected to distinguish between these three terms of art in the field of language services. The differences are not difficult to grasp.

To be sure, there are a small number of people who cross the boundaries between the professions, but these are quite rare, and a translator should not be assumed capable of interpreting, or an interpreter of translating.

Translators

A translator engages in translation, which is the production of a text written in a target-language from a text written in a source language. Translators write words, but work without uttering a word that they are translating. A Japanese-to-English translator works from a Japanese source text, translating it into an English target text. Only a small portion of Japanese-to-English or English-to-Japanese translators are capable of interpreting between those languages, and most do not even want to be interpreters.

Interpreters

An interpreter engages in interpreting (rarely, but confusingly, sometimes called interpretation), which is the expression of a message spoken originally in the source language as a message spoken in the target language. While there are exceptions, most Japanese/English interpreters consider themselves exclusively interpreters and do not actively seek out translation assignments. Many of them would not be good translators.

Linguists

The term linguist is just a bit more problematical, because of a range of meanings. Strictly speaking, a linguist is a specialist in, not surprisingly, linguistics, which deals with the characteristics of language, including aspects such as structure, syntax, semantics, and origins.

In many years of serving the commercial translation market, we have encountered only a small number of working commercial translators who were also linguists, and have met very few linguists who are actively translating or who are even capable of translating or wish to translate as a profession. That separation is even greater when we consider linguists who might interpret. There are very few such people. Similar to the case of translators, interpreters and linguists are two quite distinct groups.

People who should know better, but don’t, misuse the term linguist, and some who know better, purposefully misuse the term.

You often see translation companies (particularly the ones more accurately characterized as translation brokers) boasting of all the “linguists” they have. This makes one wonder why they would talk about a group of professionals not generally engaged in or proficient at translation when they are trying to sell translation services.

Perhaps they think it makes the people they sell translations to feel better that their documents are being translated by people called linguists. Or perhaps they think that the translators they purchase translations from will feel better working for low rates if they can wear the title of linguist.

To be fair, there is the argument that linguist just means someone who is good at a number of languages, but professional translators realize that being “good at a number of languages” doesn’t mean you can translate.

There you have it, a short description of three often-confused professions. Although it might be optimistic for language professionals to expect people outside these fields never to confuse them, when a non-specialist such as a client gets it right, we feel more comfortable than when we need, for example, to inform an interpreting client that will we not be translating in their meeting or deposition.

Choosing what feels good is useful in avoiding facing what is true.

Adopting AI into your translation workflow is fine if it helps a translator and it provides a wonderfully anodyne topic for a conference presentation, while avoiding talking about the more serious challenges faced by freelance translators. But adopting AI will not get you work or be a survival solution if you are dependent on brokers for your translation work.

Although we would never drop a customer document into an AI system and then attempt to repair it, for very good reasons, the translation brokers that most translators depend on for translation work are well into their shift to looking for only post-editors. They pay peanuts and you cannot live on peanuts unless…