Article: The dignity of the profession – what's wrong? A couple of current trends in the translation industry adversely impacting the dignity of the translator. Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| | María Diehn 
United States
Member (2007)
English to Spanish
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| Professional issues | Sep 4, 2013 |
This article touches several key issues that affect the dignity of the translation profession. I would like to underline three key statements of your article, which describe familiar situations. I agree.
- "[...] being corrected by amateurs who are wrong does little either for the amateurs and for us."
- "Just like we don't want unqualified people (or not yet fully qualified ones) to take over the jobs that in our respective opinion should be reserved for qualified tra... See more This article touches several key issues that affect the dignity of the translation profession. I would like to underline three key statements of your article, which describe familiar situations. I agree.
- "[...] being corrected by amateurs who are wrong does little either for the amateurs and for us."
- "Just like we don't want unqualified people (or not yet fully qualified ones) to take over the jobs that in our respective opinion should be reserved for qualified translators, qualified translators should not be 'stealing jobs' for which they are overqualified from office staff. And from copy shops."
- "The problem of the bad original connects with the denied right to be human and with the expectation to please. Nowadays, not only is a translator expected to domesticate the foreignness into oblivion (and has to be a native speaker of the target, while any benefits of native comprehension are officially banned from being thought about) and pretend that neither it nor he have ever existed, he is shot like the proverbial messenger when the quality of the document being translated is simply not as good as one would like it to be. Especially one who holds the purpose and perhaps wrote the source."
[Edited at 2013-09-04 09:37 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | magdadh
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:42
Polish to English
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I love all of it (or almost all of it), even though as someone with no degree in linguistics and very much a beginner in the field, albeit with an acute awareness of her shortcomings and limitations, tempered occasionally by the need to earn the crust, I have probably no actual right to love it, or even express agreement in public.
So I will just say that 'the bad original' and 'the cutting edge technology' cover some of my favourite points, and - as a lot of my previous profession... See more I love all of it (or almost all of it), even though as someone with no degree in linguistics and very much a beginner in the field, albeit with an acute awareness of her shortcomings and limitations, tempered occasionally by the need to earn the crust, I have probably no actual right to love it, or even express agreement in public.
So I will just say that 'the bad original' and 'the cutting edge technology' cover some of my favourite points, and - as a lot of my previous professional experience was in the field of copy (report, article, content, etc) writing - some of my biggest dilemmas so far encountered include the degree of editing (sometimes pretty deep editing) that seems to be performed on the ST in some nebulous black box of the 'translation process' before it is even possible to produce translation that resembles a literate text.
The dilemma being that if the TT is met with disapproval of its intended recipient (and I don't mean the client but the target reader), the risk of it being "blamed on translation" is fairly high. Perhaps it's a good thing that many texts don't include the translator's byline, but I tend to forget this and work as if they did. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alicia Eastman
Italy
Local time: 08:42
Member (2010)
Italian to English
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| someone finally said it | Dec 29, 2022 |
A heartfelt thank you to the author of this article, who has finally voiced our indignation in such a dignified way. I've been in the profession for many years now, and today just as in the beginning, I have refused to reconstruct documents with all the formatting (like scans and images) unless I am properly compensated - that is, if I decide I'll even do it - separately, at a professional hourly rate. Ninety-nine percent of the time, this loses that job for me. Even this evening, it just happen... See more A heartfelt thank you to the author of this article, who has finally voiced our indignation in such a dignified way. I've been in the profession for many years now, and today just as in the beginning, I have refused to reconstruct documents with all the formatting (like scans and images) unless I am properly compensated - that is, if I decide I'll even do it - separately, at a professional hourly rate. Ninety-nine percent of the time, this loses that job for me. Even this evening, it just happened again. You HAVE to do it for free in their mind. If only everyone in this field would just practice what the author of this article preaches, that alone would improve the angsty conditions of us translators tremendously. But no...the vast majority of our colleagues in these circumstances seem to have their self-esteem six feet below ground. There seems to be no solution in sight but in the meantime I will reread this article every time another client wants something for nothing!
[Edited at 2022-12-29 18:19 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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