A great divide emerging

It is becoming increasingly apparent to this observer of the language services industry (in Western Europe) that a great divide is emerging between language service providers (LSPs) that deal with, or hope to deal with, the departments that actually use their products and LSPs that have to deal with corporate purchasing department.

The former have at least the prospect of discussing quality issues, hence pricing, whereas the latter have no option but to compete on price and speed. And... for translators who are committed to the 'very end user' (i.e. the client's customers), the client and the job itself, the latter prospect -- save perhaps for the very fastest workers -- promises nothing but drudgery.

Many language industry observers have commented on how amazingly fragmented the sector is (language combinations, areas of specialisation, types of customer needs, types of target audience, document formats and so on), but I am not aware of many who have clearly identified this particular form of fragmentation.

Corporate purchasing departments are the option of choice for purchasing commodities. And certain types of language services are indeed very close to commodity status. Some examples among many, many other, include:

• pharmaceutical documents based on existing standard templates
• risk- and safety phrases relating to the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) have agreed equivalents in key languages. R-phrases, S-phrases
• hazard statements under the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals.

The great mistake many companies make is to assume that all language services are commodities and therefore should be purchased by the corporate purchasing department.

Comments welcome.

From Idéfix to Dogmatix and from Panoramix to Getafix

A post on a couple of brilliant into-English literary translators.

The Saturday 16 November issue of the Guardian featured a brilliant article by literary editor Claire Armitstead on translator extraordinaire Anthea Bell, translator of the Asterix series, among many other works from French and German.

Two quotes: 'It's all about finding the tone of voice in the original. You have to be quite free'. 'The secret to successful translation is invisibility.'

Bell's transformation of Idéfix into Dogmatix and Panoramix into Getafix contributed to her reputation as a great translator of great puns.

Interesting to see that the Guardian article links directly to My hero: Asterix by Tom Holland. Holland is himself a remarkable translator, this time from ancient Greek, as demonstrated by Edith Hall's enthusiastic TLS review of Tom's recently published The Histories by Herodotus under the heading Herodotus the Homer of European prose.

A quote:

This is a twenty-first-century Herodotus. It is a Herodotus whose tongue is often in his cheek: the conflict between Greeks and Persians began long ago with ‘a bout of competitive princess-rustling’. It is a Herodotus who can speak directly to modern capitalism: the Phoenicians ‘began investing heavily in the long-distance shipping business’, exporting goods ‘to a wide variety of markets’. Arion, the travelling poet, ‘raked in an absolute fortune’. It is a Herodotus who knows the language in which powerful men are described today: Peisistratus the tyrant was attended by a retinue of ‘heavies’. Cyrus is described as ‘eyeballing’ Croesus from his rival camp.

But this is also the Herodotus of a translator who respects the old-fashioned niceties of retoric and prose style.

Speaking at a conference?

If you're scheduled to speak at a conference -- and more particularly a conference with simultaneous interpretation -- take a look at this presentation by Calliope interpreters first.

If you know anyone who is organising a conference, suggest that they view the presentation too.

Highly recommended.

RSA Animate version of Pinker on dialogue

In this RSA Animate, linguist Steven Pinker demonstrates how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings. Along the way, he makes it clear why a good appreciation of cultural conventions is an essential ingredient for effective translation and why fully automated methods will never achieve 100% success in areas like the translation of dialogue whether for film scripts or business presentations to name just two.

To hear and see Pinker's full-length presentation on this and related issues, but without the wonderful animation, go here.

Pricing translations

Excellent piece on pricing translations here. Very well reasoned.

Step 9 of Netherlands-based Dutch-to-English translator Grayson Morris's pricing method reads:

I figure out the minimum I am willing to do this project for. I think this is an important step. Some projects make me go “ugh” and droop my shoulders when I see them. What price would perk me up enough to be glad to do that job? Other projects make me drool in anticipation. How unhappy would I be if that job didn’t go through because of price? I adjust the number I got in step 8 to reflect this. Now, if the client for Unfun Project A says, “Great! You’ve got it,” I’ll be glad. And if the client for Awesome Project B says, “Sorry, that’s just too much for us,” I won’t be sad. Well, not very.

Johnson on untranslatably

'Johnson', the Economist columnist on linguistics and related matters has an excellent article on untranslatably entitled Is fairness untranslatably English?.

Quotable quote:

Lists of “untranslatable words” bounce around the internet constantly. They’re good fun. But almost nothing is truly untranslatable. And that anyone would choose “fair” as a case in point is almost exactly backwards.

Email to Lucy Kellaway

Following FT columnist Lucy Kellaway's article, published on 22 September, entitled Do we hug? Kiss? Shake hands? Bow? We need to be told, I wrote her the following email:

Lucy,

Thanks for another excellent article in the form of 'Do we hug? Kiss? Shake hands? Bow? We need to be told'.

I suspect that there is little prospect for widely acceptable change, but, in exploring that avenue, it might be a good idea to explore the hygiene aspect. Cheek kisses (if that's a suitable name) and hand-shaking are significant hygiene hazards. I occasionally daydream -- especially when coughs and colds are abroad -- of a world where everyone suddenly adopted the bright idea of a polite bow of some sort along the lines of what Thai people do. We could even agree to call it the GGP bow!

Today, Lucy replied:

Belated thanks for your suggestion - a more hygienic alternative!

Lucy's article also resulted in a letter from FT reader Christopher Robbins in Binissalem, Spain, that was published under the subheading Greetings (almost) lost in translation. Mr Robbins remind us that when addressing Sikhs a sat sri akaal is more appropriate than an almost pan-Indian namaste.