| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | How do you tackle revising/reviewing poorly translated texts? Thread poster: Hayley Wakenshaw
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Hayley Wakenshaw 
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2018)
Dutch to English
Most of my work comes from agencies, and they sometimes ask me to review or revise other translators’ texts, especially texts that are supposed to be transcreations. This almost invariably creates a dilemma. I have very high standards for myself, and it’s difficult not to apply those standards to other people’s work. As a result, I sometimes find this work actually resembles PEMT. But, of course, the rate does not reflect that. Simply put, revision seems to involve much more work than I ge... See more Most of my work comes from agencies, and they sometimes ask me to review or revise other translators’ texts, especially texts that are supposed to be transcreations. This almost invariably creates a dilemma. I have very high standards for myself, and it’s difficult not to apply those standards to other people’s work. As a result, I sometimes find this work actually resembles PEMT. But, of course, the rate does not reflect that. Simply put, revision seems to involve much more work than I get paid for.
In the past, I’ve just done the job and told the PM that the text was below par and needed a lot of work. But it becomes awkward when you have to tell the PM this after every translation you check. And the pay ends up being peanuts. I’m currently doing it the other way around and telling the PM before I accept the job that it needs retranslation, but again, that gets awkward when you have to do it often.
Have you experienced this? How have you dealt with it?
[Edited at 2023-11-02 11:59 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 02:58
Member
English to Turkish
I apologize in advance as I have no experience in the matter and therefore any input to share, but I'm just curious: why do you keep doing what sounds like a thankless job? Is it because somebody has to do it?
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I’ve decided long ago after one or two very unhappy experiences to never accept a revision job without having first a good look at it and even so it’s very hard to know how much work will be required as quality varies a lot. Very occasionally I propose retranslating it, but more often than not I just refuse the job. I must admit that I much prefer translation to revision, although I still do it for 3 of my long-standing customers…
| | | | Hayley Wakenshaw
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2018)
Dutch to English
TOPIC STARTER | Because I’m a great big girly swot who hates confrontation… :-o | Nov 2, 2023 |
Baran Keki wrote:
…why do you keep doing what sounds like a thankless job? Is it because somebody has to do it?
…and also, I think, because I initially thought these must surely be one-offs. And the jobs were mostly for my best, favourite client, with whom I really want to maintain a good relationship. But the poor translations keep coming!
I probably shouldn’t be shocked. Bad English translations of Dutch texts are everywhere. Even my Dutch bank has some really quite awful translations on their app and website. For example, ‘mutaties’ is translated as ‘mutations’ instead of ‘transactions’. Often, though, the translations are not wrong, per se. They just aren’t good. Usually, they have just been translated very literally. The meaning is transferred over, and there are no spelling or grammatical errors, but it’s just completely off and looks very much like a translation. I’m not quite able to believe that this is the norm… but it seems to be.
Although criticising other translators’ work feels awful and awkward, my tactic at the moment is to point out that the translation needs more than just revision and review and ask how the PM wants to proceed. I’m interested to know what other language professionals would do.
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Checking is not something I ever enjoy doing, or do much of, but in that situation you have to just talk to the client about it.
I do get the frustration. Why didn't they ask me to translate it in the first place?!
But never do more work than you're paid for.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Hayley Wakenshaw wrote:
How have you dealt with it?
By refusing work of that kind. I'd rather stick needles in my eyes.
| | | | Hayley Wakenshaw
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2018)
Dutch to English
TOPIC STARTER | How to refuse politely though? | Nov 2, 2023 |
Tom in London wrote: Hayley Wakenshaw wrote:
How have you dealt with it? By refusing work of that kind. I’d rather stick needles in my eyes.
How to you reply to such requests?
| | | | | Hourly rates for revision/review | Nov 2, 2023 |
I do lots of revision work, but because the translation quality varies enormously, I only offer an hourly rate for this. Also, my time estimates for such work are given as a range with an uncertainty factor of 2. I know that this is inconvenient for the clients, and some are not willing to agree to this, but it is the only way for me to be able to keep offering this service.
If the quality is exceptionally bad, for instance when translators appear to have no subject knowledge at al... See more I do lots of revision work, but because the translation quality varies enormously, I only offer an hourly rate for this. Also, my time estimates for such work are given as a range with an uncertainty factor of 2. I know that this is inconvenient for the clients, and some are not willing to agree to this, but it is the only way for me to be able to keep offering this service.
If the quality is exceptionally bad, for instance when translators appear to have no subject knowledge at all, or when the text appears to be badly machine-translated, I warn the client that I will probably not be able to stay within my time estimate. In the past, all clients but one asked me to keep working and were willing to pay the extra costs.
Edit: That being said, I try to refrain from any edits that could be seen as purely preferential, if not specifically asked to improve the text as I see fit. If this were something I had problems with, then I would probably not do this kind of work at all. Revision/review should be for correcting errors the translator has made, not for "improving" the translation. The translator themselves should be qualified to deliver a text in publishing quality.
[Edited at 2023-11-02 13:45 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2008)
Italian to English
"I provide translations. I do not offer a service of checking and correcting translations carried out by others"
Or words to that effect.
| | | | Hayley Wakenshaw
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2018)
Dutch to English
TOPIC STARTER | Hourly rates are really the answer but not always possible | Nov 2, 2023 |
Dr. Matthias Schauen wrote:
I do lots of revision work, but because the translation quality varies enormously, I only offer an hourly rate for this.
That’s a good point, and many of my clients are fine with an hourly rate. They know what I am worth. The problem seems to be more common with clients who pay by the word. They really are great clients, but the payment structure can get in the way. Although, to be fair, when a text has been a disaster, they’ve paid my hourly rate to fix it in the past.
I think I’m struggling with how to handle this in a way that is beneficial rather than detrimental to my relationship with these clients. Perhaps I need to be bolder and stricter and a bit less, oh, I don’t know, British?
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 02:58
Member
English to Turkish
Hayley Wakenshaw wrote:
Bad English translations of Dutch texts are everywhere.
I've always thought those were the original works penned by Dutch people who overestimate their command of English...
Can you tell that the translators are native English speakers?
I'd just say "I'm not available at the moment" whenever I receive such requests.
| | | | Hayley Wakenshaw
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:58
Member (2018)
Dutch to English
TOPIC STARTER
Baran Keki wrote: Hayley Wakenshaw wrote:
Bad English translations of Dutch texts are everywhere. I’ve always thought those were the original works penned by Dutch people who overestimate their command of English… Can you tell that the translators are native English speakers?
Oh these are translations. (Funnily enough, a client whom I used to work for seems to have switched to writing their own English copy, and… oh boy… )I don’t think there are many native English speakers who actually have sufficient command of Dutch to be able to translate it. So, I suspect that a lot of NL>EN translators are actually Dutch. Poor translations may also occur when translators who are actually native speakers of English stick too closely to the source text. I know I used to.
I’d just say “I’m not available at the moment” whenever I receive such requests.
I’ve considered that response, but they’ll think I’m unavailable for any jobs and won’t send me anything else!
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Hayley Wakenshaw wrote: Tom in London wrote: Hayley Wakenshaw wrote:
How have you dealt with it? By refusing work of that kind. I’d rather stick needles in my eyes. How to you reply to such requests?
I simply say to people, very honestly, that I got into translation because I enjoy translating - particularly the writing part of it - and want to make a reasonable living from that, and I don't enjoy making edits to other people's writing for amounts that are generally less worthwhile. No one has reacted badly when I've said that.
I know what you mean about translations being not "wrong" as such, just not good. For me personally, style is important. I enjoy producing writing with a style appropriate to the context: journalese, legalese or whatever, with the sorts of words that people in the field would use. There's an element of subjectivity, of course, but I think it's fair to say that some translators don't pay attention to this aspect and produce rather dull layman's language that may be intelligible, but isn't very authentic or persuasive. The problem is that work like this isn't really suitable for what I would call editing; a result that I would be happy with often requires a rewrite. Which is one reason why I don't revise.
| | | | | Are you proofreading or editing? | Nov 2, 2023 |
It seems to me (although it's a bit difficult to tell without any samples of your work) that the best thing to do would be to offer two different services.
If you call them proofreading and copy editing then you can explain the difference in a way that lay people can understand, e.g. the list here: https://experteditor.com.au/editing-vs-proofreading
Then it will b... See more It seems to me (although it's a bit difficult to tell without any samples of your work) that the best thing to do would be to offer two different services.
If you call them proofreading and copy editing then you can explain the difference in a way that lay people can understand, e.g. the list here: https://experteditor.com.au/editing-vs-proofreading
Then it will be easier for you to estimate how long each assignment will take you and thus what to charge, and also easier for the client to accept a higher charge if you decide to edit as opposed to proofreading.
I have heard that people charge half their translation rate for copy editing and a quarter of their rate for proofreading, so in theory you should be working twice (editing) or four times (proofreading) as fast compared to doing the whole translation yourself.
But obviously it's up to you to work out the rate you want/need to charge. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Marina Aleyeva
Israel
Local time: 02:58
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
| My way of going about this | Nov 2, 2023 |
...has been to stop accepting revision jobs altogether. For various reasons, I find it difficult to know at a glance if a translation is good enough or not, and more than once have I found myself almost re-doing what initially looked like a passable translation. And re-doing is not what is expected from us anyway. We are paid "just" to correct errors (whatever the client thinks that means), and "please do not make any changes that are purely stylistic or preferential". Unfortunately, the fact th... See more ...has been to stop accepting revision jobs altogether. For various reasons, I find it difficult to know at a glance if a translation is good enough or not, and more than once have I found myself almost re-doing what initially looked like a passable translation. And re-doing is not what is expected from us anyway. We are paid "just" to correct errors (whatever the client thinks that means), and "please do not make any changes that are purely stylistic or preferential". Unfortunately, the fact that the quality of writing is an important part of the message and that an obscure or awkward or laughable wording is an error even if it seems to "get the message through" just doesn't hit home with most clients, so I gave up.
[Edited at 2023-11-02 22:35 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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