To the best of my knowledge, there is not another person who
can provide a near 360º view of the translation industry. I have worked as a
translation project manager in marketing agencies and as a translation buyer
working closely with translation agencies, freelancers, large multinationals and
their overseas offices, IT developers, DTP operators, printers, etc. I have
been, (oh dear me!), a client. I am now a freelance translator. I am not aware
of someone with a similar career switch.
Attending a translation industry event early after the
career change, my first impression was how much translators and interpreters
rant - and I mean really rant - about their clients. For most of my career, my
role has been facilitating communication between clients or stakeholders,
agencies or freelancers. Clients rant about translators too. They just don't generally
write or speak about their experiences. When they do, I get the impression that
they learn to shut up pretty quickly. Argue with wordsmiths at your peril.
As was recently drawn to my attention, it
shouldn't feel like changing sides. Both sides should feel that they are on the same
side. Moving home this summer, I was struck by how poor client service has
often become. There are so many automated call-lines. Press 1 for this, 2 for
that, 3 for something else, etc. Having pressed 2, you get another complete set
of decisions. Then you get charged a premium rate for the privilege of waiting
around. When you reach a human voice, they can't help much because they often don't
have access to all necessary areas of the computer and you have to wait for
another operator. Many companies are geared up to their own maximum efficiency.
Arggh!!! Come on translators and specialist small agencies, clients won't like
machine-automated translation services anymore than they like automated call
centres. The big agencies don't provide a tailored, personal service. They are
aimed at a different sector of the market.
Clients are human. Many highly educated clients are at sea
when it comes to handling translations. It is hard to trust when you cannot
understand the end-product. When the translation process runs smoothly, no-one
comments. When it goes wrong, you can guarantee that everyone all the way up to
the CEO knows about it.
Translation therefore becomes a poisoned chalice. It is a
hot potato that no-one wants to handle. A failed translation project has the
potential to ruin the career of someone who cannot judge whether the product is
good or bad. It frequently gets caught up in all sorts of internal political
wranglings that have nothing to do with the words on the page.
Translators do not help the situation by arguing pedantically
over one word or being hypercorrect over a grammar point. Frankly, some
translators treat clients like complete idiots, not respecting that their
client has a skillset, knowledge and experience that goes far beyond grammar
and languages. Is it surprising that a client switches off?
There is a tendency to see client changes as purely
stylistic. Some are. However, 15 years on different sides of the industry show
me that something is missing in the service. Even the best translation often leaves a
client or local office dissatisfied. It strikes me that while many fear the
impact of technology on our industry, the answer to our survival is to deal
with this dissatisfaction. Even the best future machine translation cannot hope
to get beyond human capabilities then.
Since my career switch, I have been listening, observing and
researching intensely for the solution. It is a strange situation to have much
knowledge and experience of the translation industry, but to have been reduced
to the status of recently graduated newbie. It is an eye-opener. I have the
utmost personal respect for long established and very
experienced translators. However, the situation for setting up a freelance
business today is very different to their experiences, as related in my recent ITI
Bulletin article on internships. It is sometimes odd to think that I may be
with translators who have worked on my projects in the past. As the work was usually
through agencies, we do not realise that we have worked together many times.
Lack of communication and trust is at the heart of many of
the issues in the industry. I am well-accustomed to clients' lack of trust of
the translation industry. I have been astounded by the lack of trust shown
between agencies and freelancers. At times, I have been absolutely
flabbergasted that freelancers do not even trust each other. Everyone sees
everyone else as a competitor. Yet, we
all have different strengths and weaknesses. As a project manager, I knew to
place different types of work and subject matter with different agencies and
freelancers to play to their strengths. Not all clients do this. Many agencies take
on work for which they are not suited and claim to be able to do everything.
When they fail, the client is not just dissatisfied with a single agency or
translator, he learns to take a dim view of the whole industry. And then he
doesn't want to pay...
In discussions with experienced translators I find that many
already do much of what a client needs without theorising about it. They warn
their clients that something will not work for cultural or linguistic reasons. We
need to take that further to understand more about the client's whole project
and issues that our work fits into.
When working on my own bilingual website, I really struggled
to find the advice and information that I needed. Clients struggle even more.
Most multilingual websites are carbon copies in each language. Yet, my project
management experience teaches me that this does not work. Cultural expectations are different. Corporate
branding wants consistency across nations. I remember working on a brochure and
fact sheet that was intended for the US, South America, Italy, France, Spain,
Switzerland, Nordics and Japan. The Japanese office sent an example of a
document that they liked. It was full of bright, pictures and not as dense in
copy as our US versions. We had to compromise on merely introducing a corporate
history section. It was of great importance to the buying decisions of our Japanese
clients to display a solid corporate history. A machine translation could never
hope to help a client to depart from a source text in this way, only human
translators and language consultants can.
When I compare French and English marketing materials, they
vary not just between our two countries, but also between industry sectors. The
rate of digital progression is different between countries and regions. The devices used are different. The preferred
advertising methods are different. And that is just between France and the UK.
What if translators were able to inform clients well beyond a word for word
translation on the page? Somehow I suspect that there would not be quite so
much ranting around.
When you make a split-second decision to click on a Twitter
link what makes you do it? It is usually a deep emotional connection of some
sort. I have been somewhat surprised by some reactions to my blogs and tweets. What
is the point in writing a bland blog? You want to incite some sort of debate
with a blog. The translation industry is largely formed of language-loving
introverts. Speaking out is largely seen as political or ranting.
One of the difficulties in writing or tweeting is in how
much of ourselves we should reveal in a professional context. The financial
industry is very conservative, environment and innovation twitterers are much
freer. Apparently, many in the translation industry feel that I am being too
political or too much on the client's side. Funny really, in one past
appraisal, I was accused of being too much on the translators' side. If you met
me, you would soon find that I am unsure of more than the basics of political
policies. My Twitter feed reflects my eclectic range of interests. It may
appear erratic and undisciplined against standard marketing advice. It is
authentically me - not a rigid and anaesthetised, fluffy marketing strategy. It
reflects the people, places, interests and issues I care about. You don't reach,
(how shall I say it?), a certain age without developing quite a range of
interests.
At school I would not say boo to a goose. Countless reports
described me as "quiet". Until the day, my parents had had enough, complained
that there was much more to me than that and the school simply wasn't making an
effort. Well, my tutor baited and challenged me for the rest of that year. The
next report mentioned "my mischievous sense of humour". There is much more to clients beneath the
surface too to connect with.
I like writing, blogging and tweeting
about issues that I care about. I care about being British and a
linguist. I care about social (not political) issues that affect my family. I
care about education, because I have children. I care about the healthcare,
because my family have had both good and bad experiences. I care about
the disabled, because one of my sisters is disabled. I care
about linguists (especially the plight of the British linguist), because I have
struggled throughout my career to maintain my languages. I do not find that
focus group reports reflect my experiences accurately. Twitter suits the life
of a busy professional woman. It is a great channel for comment, to reach out
and speak out.
From my own personal experiences of setting up as a
freelance translator, I now know that the ranting has some very real
foundations. The translation industry needs a major realignment in its pricing
to meet client expectations in the future. We need to secure the succession of
the next generation of translators and interpreters on a liveable wage. It is very
necessary to speak up (or "rant" if you prefer). It is possible to
push for changes by working together.
At the 2014 FIT conference, one agency spoke of being under considerable pricing pressures. Yet, once when I budgeted for an increase, not a single supplier asked for one. One freelancer worried about the pricing discussions in the
industry, even insisted on a price reduction. It's a
trifle tricky to increase someone's rates when one's performance is measured by
reducing costs. When working in marketing agencies, I would persuade clients to
spend more on a quality translation and look for the savings in a more
cost-effective revision process, multilingual design and production costs.
Change is possible.
