All that is related to public or civil service tends to be regarded in an extremely favorable light in Brazil. Civil servants are well paid, with salaries that are often higher than in the private sector, and they are always paid on time. There is even a new term in Brazilian Portuguese to refer to people who have turned the entire process of applying for a job with the government into an occupation. They are not merely candidates; they are concurseiros. This is not at all surprising in a country where a few “lucky” public officials are paid super-salaries of over R$300,000 per month – way more than a Supreme Court Justice.

Therefore, a contract with the government is coveted by all kinds of companies in a number of different industries, including the translation and interpretation industry. The thought of signing a huge contract that will keep a lot of people busy for a long time is indeed extremely appealing. Many translators work as freelancers and must tackle hunting for new jobs on a daily basis, but closing a deal with the government would make all that just go away. If translators found security in a government contract, they would not have to worry about marketing their services or prospecting clients. With the 2013 Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup just around the corner, there are huge expectations for new business opportunities here and everyone is dying for a piece of that cake.

One of the major problems, as Bianca explained, is that the lowest price is almost always the key factor that will define a government procurement process. Her post lists several reasons why this is a bad idea, and I can think of a few others to complement her thoughts. The red tape involved in the process is one of them reasons – and it’s not for the faint-hearted. It could take months for companies to be paid for services rendered, and they in turn take months to pay translators as well. No self-respecting translator would submit to such demeaning conditions, and many drop out of the project midway because they have found something better to do. In this situation many contractors will just shamelessly feed their material into free automatic translation software and deliver the sub-standard results to their client. Finally, since accountability seems to be a foreign concept to many people in this country, government agencies end up paying for a service they do not ultimately get.

I imagine quite a few of those government agencies had terrible experiences with language service providers in the past, because in the last couple of years a new category of government procurement seems to have been used more and more often: accreditation. Agencies that need to procure language services provide a list of requirements that contractors must fulfill in order to become an accredited provider. Those requirements usually involve minimum qualification standards for the provider, terms and conditions of service, and other relevant details. Individuals or companies are welcome to apply, but only those who meet the standards are accredited by the agency and included in their roster. The agency also sets the rates to be paid to translators/companies, thereby eliminating competition based on the lowest possible price. In my experience, rates have usually seemed reasonable, and I do hope that is true for accreditation-based procurement in general.

This could be an interesting procurement alternative, but whether it will yield better results than the others is yet to be determined. It basically comes down to which standards are set by the translation buyer for accreditation. Those who are not well informed about the language industry most likely do not know which requirements will make a difference in the product quality and will end up accrediting inadequate service providers.

As for language services for the Confederations Cup and the World Cup, there is still not much information officially available, and translation and interpretation services seem to be handled mostly internally (something that can be worrisome, such as the disgraceful case described in another article by Bianca). However, given Brazilians’ penchant for procrastination, I would not be surprised to get a last-minute call desperately seeking a professional. Or am being I too hopeful?

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Beatriz Figueiredo began her career as a Portuguese translator by combining her knowledge of English and a health care degree. While enhancing her skills in her first professional area, she has also expanded her range of specialties by working on technical and editorial translations for government institutions, law firms, publishing houses, and multinational companies. Find more information about Beatriz on her bio.

Last year, a website aiming to market the 2014 World Cup to foreigners was published by Embratur, a government body created in 1966 specifically to foster tourism in the country. We could only expect it to provide top-notch content to foreigners, which should naturally include appropriate translation and marketing copy in English, right?

Well, the reality proved to be different.

The poor material posted by Embratur in 2012 is no longer available, but I still wanted to write about it because this sort of problem is very common. This issue has been present for ages all over the world and, unfortunately, will keep happening as long as people use lame procurement processes.

If you haven’t read my previous post about the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court’s “trilingual glossary,” I suggest you check it out, since that case has a couple of elements in common with Embratur’s endeavor: (1) both are great initiatives and (2) both failed at their main goal because a huge part of the message couldn’t get across due to awkward or overly literal translations and poor terminology work.

Now, where do they differ? Unlike the trilingual glossary, which was put together with the collaboration of amateurs (i.e., non-translators), the amateurish English translation of Embratur’s website was indeed prepared by a genuine translation agency in Brazil.

My goal here is not to comment on the numerous mistranslations found on that website or to look for mistakes in the new one. It’s not about which English words are the best equivalents for such and such, or how much of a foreign accent pervaded the text, or how many translation and terminology inconsistencies could be found throughout the copy…

I’d rather focus on what I believe to be the most important lesson we can learn from this mishap, by looking into the reason, the root of the problem, and answering this question: why in the world would a respectable government agency spend loads of public money on extremely poor language services?

In a great text on language services procurement, Nataly Kelly describes what the general pattern looks like–which I summarize below, focusing on what I find to be the main points:

When procuring language services, government bodies often rely on employees who are inexperienced in working with this type of service, but rather are typically in charge of buying commodities. As a result, these procurement officers tend to treat language services as a commodity and include in public tenders only the basic requirements, such as languages and price, but overlook essential details: “experience actually providing the services, understanding of quality issues, and solid relationships with vendors.” On top of that, these contracts frequently impose unrealistic timelines (and I must add this: huge work volume). Even with no prior experience delivering this type of service (remember: experience is rarely a requirement in these contracts), language service providers apply for these public tenders, seeing them as great opportunities. Lacking a good understanding of the market, these service providers tend to overlook real costs and bid low, hoping to win the contract. The lowest bidder wins the contract, and, as expected, the winner is one of those providers with little or no experience in the type of services requested and doesn’t understand all the costs involved. Now it’s time to get the work done… In order to meet the impracticable deadlines and stay within the nonsensical budget, the winner asks subcontractors, who are usually freelancers, to lower their rates and work more than they typically do.

The piteous results come as no surprise, and you can find all sorts of explanations in Rafa Lombardino’s latest article, Doing it right the first time around, Christos Floros’ Beware of the translation industry “bottom-feeders,” and three texts of my own: Common scenarios, Food for thought, and Controversial approach: “penalties” for low rates?.

To wrap up, I’d like to complement Nataly’s explanation by raising a few points:

• I believe there are indeed experienced service providers who, unfortunately, don’t have “quality” high on their priority list. For these, delivering massive texts in any language combination, within ridiculous deadlines, and earning peanuts (and paying “peanut fragments” to freelancers) is part of their daily chores. They want more and more volume, and that’s how they make money.
• Chopping up a huge text and assigning bits and pieces to ten, twenty, or thirty translators, and never carrying out proper harmonization and review work is another capital sin these service providers often commit.
• In Brazil, due to some cultural anomaly, service providers most often “impose” a low rate on freelancers–take it or leave it. And there’s always someone who takes it. And guess what? These are either inexperienced professionals or those who play on the who-cares-about-quality team.
• Another disturbing fact (common in Brazil and most likely elsewhere) is that many freelancers think so highly of themselves–or care so little about quality–that they translate from their mother tongue into several foreign languages. I’m not saying that is NOT acceptable, but the margin for error in this scenario is much, much higher. (I’ll need a whole new post to properly explore this matter.)

Unfortunately, it’s common to see translation agencies coming to Brazilian online forums to ask Portuguese native speakers for quotes like this one:

Again, a dangerous combination of tight deadlines, huge volumes, translations into several foreign languages, and bidding for “dream” government contracts…

All that said, what I believe translation clients should take from this short case study is what not to do when procuring language services. There are other ways that actually make sense. A fellow translator, Beatriz Figueiredo, has just published a blog post about another method of hiring translation services in Brazil, recently adopted by a few government agencies. I’m excited she has agreed to write a guest post soon.

Suggested reading:

(1) Check out Chris Durban and Allan Melby’s brochure “Translation: Buying a non-commodity.”

(2) If you’d like to know more about the amateurish quality of Embratur’s English website, American journalist Seth Kugel addressed the issue in his column (in Portuguese). You can also find a few mentions in English on Google using search keywords “Embratur,” “translation,” “Seth Kugel.”

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Bianca Bold is the main author and editor of this blog. She has a BA and an MA in Translation and is a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese. She has been working with English, Spanish, and Italian for over ten years, offering translation, consecutive and community interpreting, subtitling, revision/editing, and training for professionals. Find more information about Bianca on her website or bio.

Now, it’s time for our third YouTube video:

Tips for translation clients | Quick tip #3 | Send the final version of a text
Full text: The file to be translated
Text, video & audio by Bianca Bold

Here’s our attempt to explain in simple words a few concepts related to this process.

LOCALIZATION = TRANSLATION + ADAPTING TO A LOCALE

The term “locale” indicates the combination of “language + country.” For example, “en_us” is English language for US users, and “en_gb” is English for Britain. First goes the language code and then the country code. There are, for example, Spanish language variants for Argentina (es-ar), Uruguay (es-uy), Spain (es-es), and so on.

“Localization” (commonly abbreviated as l10n, first and last characters of the word plus 10 characters in between) means not just translating software and web services, but making them look and feel as if they were originally developed for that particular target market. Apart from translation, the following issues should be taken into account in order to avoid user confusion:

• Dates

October 5^th, 1994 is commonly written as 10/05/94 in the USA, whereas in Spain, Canada, Brazil, Italy, and many other countries, it is traditionally conveyed as 05/10/94. That said, people in many cultures would automatically mark their calendars in May—not in October—for an event happening on 10/05 (without further context). When space is not a problem, writing the month is a good way to avoid misunderstandings.

• Time

In North America, the AM/PM format is traditionally used, but most of European and Asian countries adopt the 24-hour format. Most Americans and Canadians, for instance, would probably need to read a sentence twice if it said a meeting would be held at 19:00 on Tuesday.

• Numbers

In the US and Canada, the thousand separator is a comma (2,244), in Germany and Brazil, it’s a period (2.244), in Russia, a space (2 244).

• Units of measurement, telephone numbers, addresses, currencies

The average Brazilian most likely needs to do some research and math (or use an online converter) to understand how tall a 6’3” person really is.

• Cultural references, images, idioms, proverbs

Some colors or signs/symbols may have different meanings in different countries and cultures. White symbolizes death in Japan, whereas in Western cultures it is a symbol of purity, peace, etc. Therefore, an advertisement photo of someone wearing black might symbolize mourning in some Western countries, but this nuance would be lost in Eastern places where people wear white for this purpose.

• Product names

In most cases, trademarked names are left in the source language, like Microsoft, Nikon, etc. However, service names may need to be translated. For instance, “Google Books” is translated into German as “Google Bücher”, and into Spanish as “Google Libros.”

INTERNATIONALIZATION = GETTING THINGS MORE GENERAL
+ PREPARING FOR LOCALIZATION

“Internationalization” (or i18n) aims to make the product more general and ready for use in multiple languages and different cultural environments, i.e., ready for localization. In most cases, it’s highly recommended to carry out this step during the development phase. Otherwise, much extra time and effort might be needed at a later stage to prepare the material for localization.

Internationalization includes the following activities, among others:

• Separating translatable text from the code (externalization)

• Avoiding hard-coding translatable texts, otherwise you’ll have to make extra efforts during string externalizing and localization testing to spot all untranslated text

• Enabling display of different character sets and support of local standards
• Enabling usage of different regional settings like date and time formats, number formats, calendar formats, units of measurements, etc.
• Attempting to write texts with the international community in mind, so that they will require less cultural adaptation to fit each culture at the localization stage (we say “attempt” here because we know this is not always possible)

You may come across the term “simship,” which refers to simultaneous shipment of all language versions to the global market so users don’t have to wait for a product to be localized to their locale. The advantage of this approach is that the buzz about your product release has the most effect globally, but you will most likely face challenges during this endeavor.

The localization of your product into major languages will not only increase sales and revenue, but also allow customers to understand the product more clearly and use it properly, decreasing the need for customer support, which can be rather costly.

Suggested reading:
Dialects: a culturally-sensitive issue

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Marta Chereshnovska is a translation and localization specialist who works with English>Ukrainian and English>Russian. She has six years of translation, localization, and subtitling experience, and her projects have included information technology, telecom translation, and localization projects (software, web, mobile, games). She shares her experience at her Translation and l10n for dummies blog. You can also follow her on Twitter at @Martav88.

Bianca Bold is the main author and editor of this blog. She has a BA and an MA in Translation and is a native speaker of Brazilian Portuguese. She has been working with English, Spanish, and Italian for over ten years, offering translation, consecutive and community interpreting, subtitling, revision/editing, and training for professionals. Find more information about Bianca on her website or bio.

First of all, I love the internet. I love its reach, its speed, its lack of boundaries. I love the interactivity it provides. I love the amount of knowledge it makes available for everyone.

Blogs, podcasts, webinars, online courses and social media are wonderful tools. We are getting more information than ever, kids are learning so much quicker, and ideas are being conceived, developed and deployed globally using web tools.

Language is the biggest obstacle to true globalization — even more than technology, I think. English is currently the world’s lingua franca, but this doesn’t mean that everyone can understand it. It only means that it’s the language that is most translated from and to.

Projects like TED are amazing. Sponsors cover the costs, the speakers waive their remuneration, and the videos are translated into dozens of languages by volunteers through their Open Translation Project. TED offers good support to translators; every translation is revised by another volunteer, and the result is quite good.

However, there are two main issues with crowd-sourcing and similar strategies.

First, crowd-sourcing requires an infrastructure, which is not very simple or free. TED or Facebook or Twitter can use crowd-sourcing for translation and achieve good results, but that’s very different from John Doe wanting to translate a promotional video to put it on the website of his small office supplies business so he can sell items in other countries. Fansubbers translate their favorite shows and movies for free, but I doubt they will be interested in subtitling John Doe’s promotional video. And this video won’t be launched on TED, either. So John Doe, like most other people in the planet, will need to find a translator.

Second and most important: “free,” “amateur,” or “dirt cheap” are concepts that more often than not don’t entail good quality. And by “good” I mean professional-standard good, not good enough.

TED spreads ideas in lots of languages for free. The videos can be understood in all of those languages — the translations are good enough for that. But TED is not selling a product or a subscription; it’s doing non-English speakers a favor. The same applies to the Facebook or Twitter interfaces.

But what about John Doe? He can choose to translate his website for free using a free machine-translation tool, or ask his niece who took Spanish lessons to do it cheaply. A tech-savvy neighbor might even put subtitles on the promotional video for him. The resulting quality would fall between embarrassingly bad and good enough.

What image would he convey to the outside world? We express ourselves through words; if these words suggest carelessness, why should our other products or services be trusted?

I’ve talked about this before and certainly will talk again. If you want to sell a professional service or product, you need to convey a professional image. This shouldn’t require any further explanation. A Geocities-style website and a Hotmail e-mail address can look suspicious and put people off, and the same applies to the way you communicate.

And, when dealing with multimedia, not only do you require a good professional translator, but a good professional translator with experience in the form of multimedia you have in mind. Translating a website is not the same as subtitling a video, which is not the same as dubbing a video. Trying to cut corners will very likely lead to amateurish-looking results.

This is why I was very happy, but not surprised, when I was hired by a client to translate and subtitle a TED Talk. They were going to use it to convey a professional image and so they hired a professional translator and paid what she asked for.

Recently I was also paid to translate videos on health which are freely available on YouTube. Same thing: my client wanted to put those videos on their website through which they provide health-related services, so they didn’t look for free translation.

The same applies to the publisher that hired me to subtitle some interviews with George R.R. Martin, as I described in this other post. They want to sell the translated books, so they didn’t go for fansubbing.

It’s very straight-forward, isn’t it?

The internet is an awesome universe where ideas can be shared and goods can be sold. But these two activities shouldn’t be confused when considering what type of language service works best for each.

• Original publication: Multimedia Translation •

While each argument had its own counter-argument, the underlying notion was that professional translators―those who translate for a living, usually as their exclusive activity―invest in continuing education to offer an added value (their valuable specialized knowledge) and become truly accountable for their work, thus contributing to the success of their clients.

This time, let’s explore three additional topics that I often discuss with prospects.

• “What’s your best rate?” ― My best rate is $1 per word. Oh, you meant my “lowest” rate? Sorry… You see, when I heard “best,” I immediately thought about what would be best for me.If I could earn $1 per word, I would be able to work fewer hours per week, take a longer vacation, spend more time with the kids, and maybe even retire sooner. I didn’t realize you meant the best rate for you…Why don’t we just do this: You send me the files you need translated, I’ll analyze the project, calculate how much time and effort it would take me to complete the job and then send you an estimate. I believe that would make everybody happy!

• “I can find cheaper than that!” ― I’m sure you can, but does “cheaper” mean “better”? It usually only means you’ll pay less for a service, but there will most likely be consequences.What happens if you receive the translation and are extremely disappointed with the final result? Do you pay for the substandard translation service―fearing the wrath of a translator of questionable quality who will badmouth your company on-line―and then hire a proper translator to redo the whole thing? This way you’ll spend more than you had originally budgeted for and wait longer for the project to be completed.

  And that is assuming you can actually read the final result of the substandard translation. What if you hired a translator to work on your beautifully crafted message and have your words written in a language you cannot understand? Do you really want to wait and see whether your marketing materials, those important contracts, or the guidelines that your branches overseas need to follow have actually been translated correctly by the candidate who offered to work for the lowest possible rate?

  Why don’t you make an informed decision to go with the translator who is truly a great fit for your purposes? Don’t be carried away by the “average rate in the market” idea. Keep in mind that you’ll be getting what you pay for. And I’m sure you are looking for accurate translations that will help your product or service do well in foreign markets.

• “We’re just a startup and…” ― If you’re a small company that is trying to break into your own market, you should be in the best position to truly appreciate a good deal when you see one. Maybe you’ve just furnished your office and went with a reliable brand because you want your furniture to last. You sure had to buy computers and equipment to perform your activities, so you identified the state-of-the-art technology that will make your work easier, eliminate re-work, and increase productivity.

  When it comes to hiring translation services, please follow the same mentality. You know good deals don’t always come with a small price tag. Actually, if the offer sounds too good to be true, there may be a catch. The service turnaround is too fast? Quality may suffer. The price is very low? Odds are you’re talking to a beginner translator who may not have the necessary knowledge to convey your message accurately. So, why don’t you go with professional translation services and do it right the first time around?

  Actually, according to colleagues in the industry, including both translators and project managers, startups and small businesses are among their best clients in terms of communication and payment. Companies with this profile tend to appreciate the one-on-one exchange that is only possible when you’re working with your translator as a team in order to achieve a common goal. And, as a company working on a tight budget, you sure would appreciate when things are done accurately, within the agreed turnaround, and without any surprises along the way. Think of translation as an investment that will help your company grow and reach a whole new market. If you’ll make money out of it (even if the return on investment is not immediate), why shouldn’t the translator get his or her fair share for a service that was crucial for such growth?

As you can see, your decision-making process when hiring translation services isn’t limited to the price tag alone. What may seem like a great deal at first, with discounted rates and impossibly fast deliveries, will most likely be far from the results you wish for. Effective translations are produced by professionals who truly understand your needs. And you won’t find these above-average professionals charging the so-called average rates.

Suggested reading:

(1)   For more on low rates, fast deliveries, and translation quality, check out other articles published under the cost-time-quality triangle category.

(2)   Find more tips on what to discuss with your translator when asking for an estimate in an earlier post written by Bianca Bold: “Defining project specifications.”

Audio version of this text:

You would never consider that, would you? Lawyers offer specialized knowledge of the law, help you navigate through legal troubles, and help your business succeed. So why should translators be treated any differently?

Since we don’t necessarily need a degree or license to work as translators, many tend to believe that translating is an informal occupation, a side job we can do in our spare time, you know, while we’re taking a break from our “real job.”

I can assure you that is not the case for most professional translators, at least not in the long run. I started as a translator back in 1997, while I was teaching English as a second language. However, after translation work put me through college, I decided to make it official and become a full-time translator, starting my own business and teaming up with like-minded professionals whose main purpose is to offer responsible language services.

“Responsible services?” you might ask. Being the go-between, transmitting somebody else’s thoughts and intentions in a different language, does come with a lot of responsibility.

Just as a lawyer represents you in court and before authorities, translators and interpreters represent you in your interactions with a target audience that doesn’t speak your language. Translators can make or break a project, contributing to having consumers either rush to the store to buy your product or laugh at your expense.

With that in mind, I’d like to go straight to the point: Why do clients feel the need to ask for discounts when hiring translation services? Here are the Top 3 arguments I’ve heard in the past fifteen years:

• “The text is very short!” ― Translating is not about word count alone; it’s about content and context. Taking an example from David Bellos’ book “Is That a Fish in your Ear?,” the following headline is pretty short, but it takes considerable effort to be rendered in an intelligible way in another language and culture: GOP VEEP PICK ROILS DEMS. Anyone hired to translate these five little words must first know about American politics and be up to date on current events to produce something that can be understood by non-US readers.

• “The text is very easy!” ― Information on sophisticated chemical processes is commonplace for chemical engineers. An article on advances in cardiovascular surgery is very accessible to most physicians. Building codes and regulations are right up a civil engineer’s or an architect’s alley. However, specialization is just one of the aspects that go into translation. What may seem easy in the source language might not be easily transferred to the target language. Do the same technologies exist in the target country? What are the terms and concepts being used nowadays in that market pertaining to the specific area? Are there any cultural sensitivities that need to be factored in? Even the simplest texts take research and tact to sound natural to readers in another language.

• “If you give me a discount, I’ll assign more work to you in the near future!” ― Ah, the good old “volume discount”… More work simply means MORE WORK, period. If you go to a dental hygienist once every quarter, it means you like the service. Any dental hygienist would surely appreciate your loyalty, but they can’t offer you free sessions if you promise to come back periodically. If they did that, they would soon be out of business. The same is true for translators: If we give discounts for a small project on the promise that more work will come our way or―worse―discounts for a huge project because you think long-term commitment provides us with some sort of financial stability, we’ll be making less and less per hour and our bills simply won’t pay for themselves.

When we name our rate per word, page, hour or project, a lot goes into that calculation. Most professional translators have a pretty good idea about our daily output in the best- and worst-case scenarios. When we first take a look at your files, we can estimate how long it will take us to finish the job and how much it is worth, considering our background, specialization, and other important variables, which also include our own expenses in getting the job done well.

We spend years studying and investing in our continuing education and the fruits of that investment go into every single project we accept. We also spend a lot of time learning about new technology, which will make our work more manageable on several fronts, from easy accessibility to legacy material through redundant backup solutions (CDs, zip drives, and servers in the cloud) all the way to the consistency provided by computer-assisted translation tools (which record our progress and allow us to retrieve previously translated sentences and refer to glossaries we’ve built with preferred terminology.)

Our investments actually “translate” into the time savings that we pass on to you when taking less time to get your project done correctly, while being more efficient and accurate in the process. And all that comes with a fair price tag.

Audio version of this text:

Remember you can still browse through the archives and post comments. :-)

Here are the rewards I’ll give myself for completing my MA in Translation Studies, which has to be done in the next six weeks:

• start 2013 blogging happily again (without feeling bad about postponing those school assignments),
• implement new stuff on the blog, and
• have more guest writers collaborating with new content (I’ve been exchanging ideas with a few colleagues).

(These sound more like new year’s resolutions.)

Gosh, this is the earliest I’ve ever said these words… but I wish you all a great holiday season and an amazing start to the new year!