Today is International Translation Day. Although the job of a translator is not necessarily more important than that of a lumberjack or a manager, it is certainly a good thing to wait for a moment and consider the value of our work. Especially now the job of a translator is threatened from many sides – even from inside the industry.
A conference with big brands like Apple, Google and Facebook as the main sponsors does not happen that often and certainly not in the translation industry. Nevertheless that is exactly what happened last weekend in Copenhagen, where the 2017 Conference on Empirical Methods on Natural Language Processing was held. You guessed it: participants to this weekend conference with the long and difficult title dived into machine translation. The sponsorship by the big brands clearly shows a huge interest in MT by companies that spend billions of dollars on research that will probably pay off some day. What is all the fuss about?
It is a simple rule of thumb for communicating: if you want to convey your message, you should find the right tone of voice. Have you ever imagined a grumpy voice-over for a nappies brand or a tired voice-over selling city trips? Chances are great that you would shake your head in disbelief and never decide to buy those nappies or book that city trip again.
Tone of voice is a powerful tool for selling products and services, but finding your unique voice in translations also comes with some considerations worth sharing.
Technology has opened a whole new world of endless possibilities. That not only applies to the manufacturing industry, but modern developments show us that technology is shaping the future of the industry as well. Many translators have ambiguous feelings about these developments as they seem disruptive to a great extent. However, there are clear signs that the industries of translation and interpretation are not dead yet.
On April 19 Google announced the introduction of the new Google Translate algorithm for English to Dutch translations. Soon it was flooded with critics from industry professionals and media alike. There seems, however, to be one point that is often overlooked: Google Translate now understands the art of merging words better than many Dutch-speaking citizens.
The ever faster pace at which the world evolves seems to have its influence on every aspect of the translation business. Nowadays, clients seem to have translations within a shorter deadline everytime. But by calling each and every job ‘urgent’ they are undermining the real meaning of an urgent job. The aspects that make an job urgent are changing – and so is the workflow of translators.
If translations are a hammer, then language skills are the nails – indispensable to convey a message from one language in another. Of course translators should master a couple of languages in order to deliver the best possible translations. At the same time PMs should be the guardians of a translation’s quality. And that is where many project managers fail.
Since I have been in business as a translator I have had the honour to work as a translator for many different manufacturers of smart devices. In those eight years I have seen smartphone brands rising and falling, and witnessed the successes and failures of different marketing campaigns and products. If there is one lesson I have learned, it is that market share and translation quality* are more intertwined than I ever supposed.
The development of CAT tools is one of the most advantageous developments in the translation industry until now. Splitting long texts in sentences improves their readability and efficiency while translating, while the archive of translations in memories offers loads of options for future use and reference. But the mathematical formulas that determine the similarity between two sentences are used more and more as a tool to offer lower prices to clients. Companies focusing on improving their margins or attracting more customers by putting 100% matches beyond their scopes are acting irresponsibly however, and even putting their clients at risk.
Times are changing and technologies are changing as well. In an era of social networks and continuous availability there are plenty of options to reach out to translators quickly. One of them is WhatsApp. Companies are exploring the popular messaging service more and more. Can it help translators to find new work?