О взаимопонимании между переводческими агентствами и фрилансерамиAndrei E. Gerasimov, Ph.D. Working together1. Introduction - The objectives of this article Freelance translators and translation agencies work together to help end clients to achieve better understanding between them and target markets. To be successful in this area, first of all we need to improve understanding between us (freelancers and agencies). The objectives of this article are 1) to identify typical misunderstandings between distant freelance translators and translation agencies and 2) to suggest ways to improve understanding between the parties. In 2011 I will celebrate the 15th anniversary of my fulltime career in freelance translation in the worldwide market. This article is based on my communications with my numerous clients - dozens of translation agencies in many countries such as USA, UK, Japan, Belgium, Finland, Sweden and more during this period. Fortunately for end clients the majority of translation agencies now understand that they should use only translators who1) translate into their native language and 2) permanently live in the country where this target language is the main language of everyday use. These obvious facts make the use of distant freelance translators even more important. (It is a well-known fact that immigrant translators lose their native language faster than they improve their knowledge of the foreign language). At the same time this situation increases the importance of good understanding between translation managers and distant freelance translators - despite the fact that they belong to and live in different cultural environments. My experience proves that many misunderstandings are caused by cultural differences between western translation managers and freelancers from the rest of the world - whatever you choose to call them - third world, emerging democracies, or developing countries. Fortunately for end clients the majority of translation agencies now understand that they should use only translators who1) translate into their native language and 2) permanently live in the country where this target language is the main language of everyday use. These obvious facts make the use of distant freelance translators even more important. (It is a well-known fact that immigrant translators lose their native language faster than they improve their knowledge of the foreign language). At the same time this situation increases the importance of good understanding between translation managers and distant freelance translators - despite the fact that they belong to and live in different cultural environments. My experience proves that many misunderstandings are caused by cultural differences between western translation managers and freelancers from the rest of the world - whatever you choose to call them - third world, emerging democracies, or developing countries. 2. Cultural differences Below I will outline some cultural specifics of Russia which strongly influence all areas of local business including the translation business (why should it be an exclusion?). As far as I know these cultural specifics are applicable to many other countries of the third world, emerging democracies, or developing countries. Bribe, kickback, unethical methods of competition in business take place in the western world and are regarded as criminal there, however in Russia (and other similar countries) they are widespread norms of conducting any business. Of course the translation business is less prone to corruption than the Russian oil industry, because profits/stakes in these 2 industries are incomparable, however I would state that basic principles of survival and becoming successful are identical. Unethical methods of business competition thrive in the Russian translation industry because of very strong competition and a high percentage of unprofessional low-competence players (too many people, including secretaries with a diploma of 3 month courses in a foreign language, believe they re proficient in English and therefore can offer translation services). Some of these principles are as follows - to be successful you should always try to:
In the 20th century millions of Russians survived by providing false, incriminating evidence to authorities, and such behaviour became a part of Russian DNA. One very interesting Russian phenomenon which is well familiar to everyone with minimal knowledge of Russian politics/corporate life - when a political leader (or corporate boss) has to promote/ / put forward someone else to a high position in the political/corporate hierarchy, very often he will choose the weakest, easily controllable person among all more or less acceptable candidates. Many examples of such strategy are available in the history of the Soviet era as well as in the latest Russian history. Besides, in many situations personal loyalty is considered to be a much more important factor than professional competence. It is a well known fact that today Russian companies hire Russian police, tax inspection agencies and other state agencies to eliminate successful competitors in business. Such "private orders" are an important source of enrichment for officials from governmental agencies. In other words, if you can’t win in business competition, you can send your competitor to jail and grab his business. Russian translators live in this immoral environment, they read newspapers and watch TV, so why should they act in a manner very different from the one described above? Typical situation from real life: A British translation company uses their first choice English>Russian translator. Sometimes he/she is overloaded, and the company wants to find backup translator(s). The company sends several test translations (made by candidate translators) to the first-choice translator and asks him/her to evaluate (rate) the tests. Acting in accordance with Russian ethics, culture and morals, as well as the best interests of his/her own business, he/she will assign lowest rating to the best test translation and the highest rating - to the poorest one. And the naive British translation company will act on the basis of this evaluation of the tests. 3. Malicious proofreading and unfair evaluation It does not take an Albert Einstein to understand how the methods described in item 2 work in the Russian translation industry, especially in proofreading and evaluation of tests and regular translations. So only the most naive western translation managers (who are not familiar with Russian business ethics) take seriously the results of evaluation of tests and regular translations. Another typical situation. A huge international corporation hires a western translation agency to translate a manual or marketing material into several languages, including Russian. After receipt of the translation the western client sends it to their Russian rep. office for evaluation/validation and receives a very negative feedback. This negative feedback may be for 2 reasons - 1) the quality of translation is really poor, or 2) the quality of translation is good, but the evaluator (usually marketing manager) hates the idea that the translation services are bought directly by western headquarters. He/she wants to have complete control over the translation process, to hire a local translation agency and receive a nice kickback! (which he loses in the situation described above). Are you aware of the fact that kickback is the main source of income for the majority of small and big managers (involved in purchasing of goods and services) working in Russian offices of western companies? As to proofreaders and editors, in my opinion they should hold the same responsibility for their work as translators do. This is because proofreaders and editors may bring even more harm to a translation agency and end client than an incompetent translator. The most typical sin of unprofessional proofreaders is excessive, arbitrary, preferential editing. Quite often such proofreaders replace quite correct target terms by synonyms which are less appropriate in the context. They do this just for the sake of showing that they are actually necessary. Excessive unjustified editing should be regarded as unprofessional and unethical behaviour because it steals our most valuable resource - time of translators (who need to respond to such revisions) and time of translation managers who are often misled and confused by such proofreading (especially so when they do not know the target language). The existing situation is absurd - contrary to translation, unprofessional (and even malicious) proofreading may not incur any penalties for the proof-reader. Even on a subconscious level a freelance proof-reader always wants to discredit a translator, who is his more successful competitor, so a full-time in-house proof-reader is a better option, in my opinion, because he/she does not perceive the translator as a more successful rival. Note that successful translators do not offer proofreading services as a rule - they do not need additional low paid work. 4. Attempts to reserve a translator’s time beforehand Quite often agencies try to reserve/book my working time long before they get the source text from the end client. In most cases when I get the job (if I actually get it) the start date, wordcount and the text itself are very different from those specified initially. If I promise to reserve my time for a particular job, I have to turn down some other jobs that may be offered to me by other agencies or direct clients. And when I do not receive the job at the promised date, it will result in downtime and loss of work, so necessary to keep any freelancer afloat. The agencies try to impose unilateral obligations on a freelancer - they can’t guarantee the exact start date and wordcount, but try to commit a freelancer to be available for the job anyway. A translator’s availability changes all the time - I may have a slack day and a heavy overload on the next day. To avoid downtime in such a situation I respond that I will do my best to make myself available when I actually receive the expected job. This response makes clear that I am not ready to accept unilateral obligation and risk to losing work by waiting for a job. If an agency can’t guarantee the start date and wordcount, it should not expect any commitment from a translator. My answer to the issue - any agency should always have at least 2-3 freelance translators for each language direction and area of specialization because the first choice translator may be overloaded, ill or on vacation, and to ensure consistency of terminology they should regularly update the translation memory using bilingual files. Another sub-aspect of the above issue - a responsible translator will not promise to take a job before seeing the source text. I worked as an electronics engineer for 9 years, however it does not mean that I am familiar with all sub-areas of electronics and can translate ANY text from this area. First of all I need to make sure that I am comfortable with a particular source text. Only then can I accept the job. Many years ago a UK agency put pressure on me and made me promise to do a proofreading job before they could show me the translation. After several days (of course much later than promised initially) I received the translation and found out that it was so poor that proofreading was not applicable - it was easier to translate the text from scratch. When I explained the situation and refused to carry out the proofreading, the manager from the agency protested as if I had actually let her down. 5. Misunderstandings associated with payments Another typical misunderstanding is associated with delayed payments. Any agency may have a temporary cash flow problem. I can understand such situations and wait for the payment patiently - provided the communication between parties is honest and clear. However some agencies prefer not to respond to reminders or respond very vaguely. This may result in mistrust and unnecessary aggressive collection actions. As a result, a freelancer loses a client and the client loses its good payment practice reputation. I strongly recommend that agencies respond to reminders immediately and clearly and give only promises they are able to keep. In December 2008 I sent 15 invoices to my long-term clients. The invoices included my new banking details and a note in red colour: "Pls use my new banking details". However 3 clients sent money to my old banking details. This is a typical situation, I had similar problems in the past. I kindly ask all my clients, old and new ones, to read invoices attentively before making a wire transfer. Translators from Eastern countries such as Russia change their banking details more often than western translators - our banking system is unstable. 6. Flexible rates are good for all parties Most of my new clients expect that a freelancer will offer them one rate for all jobs. This is not the best approach since some jobs may be more time-consuming than others. Some clients (agencies) ask for discounts for repetitions and exact matches, other (mostly direct clients) - do not. Therefore it is advisable to specify rates on a per project basis - depending on complexity, deadline, and Trados analysis. Just one example illustrating the above. Last year my long-term client, a manufacturer of garden tools, asked me to translate their website into Russian. I received over 50 files containing around 200,000 words. In accordance with our agreement my rates for this client are 0.08 Euros per sourceword. The total charges for the translation, based on the above rate, amounted to 16,000.00 Euros. I was not sure that the client actually had such a big budget for this translation. Trados analysis showed 25, 000 new words (no matches) and 175, 000 repetitions and exact matches (note that most direct clients are not familiar with Trados analysis and matches and do not ask for Trados discounts). I suggested charging 0.03 Euros per s/w (instead of the usual 0.08 Euros). The budget of 6000 Euros was approved, and I completed the job in 12 days. 6000Euros for a 12 day job is not so bad even if 0.03 Euros is an unacceptably low rate for most jobs. So being flexible with rates may be quite useful for all parties. 7. Small jobs are most time-consuming Some managers of translation agencies seem not to understand that small jobs may be unexpectedly time-consuming. Most translation jobs consist of 2 parts - terminology research and the translation itself. Sometimes terminology research takes more time than translation. Most translations may be completed rapidly after all terminology in the target language has been found. A small 500-words job requiring time-consuming terminology research may take as much time as a 5000-word translation with just a few unfamiliar terms. Translation managers should understand that sometimes a freelance translator can’t take on a small job because he/she is busy. Putting pressure on a translator ("pls help me out, it’s only 200 words, of course you can find time for such a small job") may result in low quality translation and problems for both parties. 8. Most awkward misunderstandings in my career To conclude this article, I will tell you about the most awkward/funny misunderstandings in my translation career. My long-standing Finnish client (translation agency owner) always helps me with very specialized terminology. Several years ago we discussed quite amicably one difficult phrase and could not understand its meaning. Then I found this phrase on a web-site of a big Finnish manufacturer and sent a message to the email address which was published on this website. I asked someone to explain this phrase. Soon I received a very good explanation. Proud of my find I forwarded the message with the explanation to my Finnish client. The reaction was unpredictably incensed: "I shall not work with you anymore… I shall not pay you for the current job… I will expose you and your unethical behaviour… How dare you contact my client?!" I responded politely - "thank you very much for disclosing your client, before your message I had no idea who it was". Later the lady apologized for her inappropriate reaction and we still cooperate with her, quite profitably for both parties. Another confusing misunderstanding took place quite recently. My long-term US client (an agency) proofread my translation and sent me revisions in the notes inserted in the MS Word document. To read a note, you double click it and first of all you see the name of the proof-reader. In this case the proof-reader’s name was "Jorge Castro". I have worked for this client since 2000 to the complete satisfaction of all parties concerned and I was really annoyed when I saw that a "Jorge Castro" (obviously a person with Latin-American or Hispanic origin) dared to revise my translation into Russian. I sent a message to this agency where I wrote some very unpleasant and politically incorrect things about this "illiterate unprofessional proof-reader of non-Russian origin who dares to teach me how to translate into Russian". Imagine my confusion when they responded that "Jorge Castro" was the name of an IT specialist who installed Windows and MS Word on the proof-reader’s computer, and the actual proof-reader was a Russian lady linguist, an in-house translation manager and editor, who offered me co-operation 10 years ago, provided me with good jobs and was always very helpful and polite! I learned my lesson - think twice before being rude in any situation.
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