Most translation blogs are written by freelance translators. This one is somewhat different, as it features the views from a translation agency owner’s stance. It includes some apparently controversial and thought provoking articles, since the purpose of this forum is to discuss the translation market, its features and nuances, the translation agencies vs. translators relationship, rates, the future of our profession, in other words, topics of interest for those involved in the translation business, either as clients or service providers.
Despite the rather controversial title, the intent of this article is to help translators to understand what translation agencies do and how they operate. Translators quite often ask, “Why doesn’t agency X call me to translate any more?”, or “Why agency Y doesn’t assign me any work?” The points below may help in explaining these and other questions.
Working in translation for over 10 years, the word crisis is one that has certainly been a major concern, and has crept in each one of them. Nevertheless, facts have shown quite the opposite: a market growing by leaps and bounds. Common Sense Advisory, an independent firm that surveys and analyzes the translation market, expects 2012 to record US$ 25 billion worldwide, not too bad. Furthermore, this is an extremely democratic market. There is room for translation agencies, freelance translators, good and bad translators, expensive and inexpensive ones, as well as hacks, unfortunately. There is a little of everything, because after all is said and done, the customer is always right.
One recurring question from our clients is, “Do you employ automatic translation?” Most likely they are thinking of tools like Google Translate, Babelfish, and alikes — free online services where all one has to do is to enter their text in one language, and have it almost instantly translated into another. No, we don’t use such tools simply because the translation quality is bad. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us, translation companies) there are no miracles. These automatic translation contrivances serve only to provide a general idea on the text being translated, however they are far from offering professional translation.
We translators have a peculiar trait: we get a kick out of spotting and exposing our peers’ mistakes in translation. I say ‘we’ because I plead guilty as charged of doing it myself. Our company’s first two newsletters were about this: translation bloopers, many of them hilarious. Clients just loved them, found that to be very amusing.
However such sadism in our trade seems somewhat self-defeating. Right now we carry the stones, but later on we might become the targets. After all, who has never made a mistake? And who doesn’t ever make mistakes? Particularly in a profession like ours, where we are subject to very tight deadlines and an increasing pressure from our clients to produce every time more in less lime.
