Ten common myths about translation quality

LilianBNekipelo wrote:



How many different varieties have you got? Which varieties may be hard to understand for people from other regions (please include Cockney) In fact what is going on with this variety right now?

LilianBNekipelo wrote:
What about Geordie -- do people from the South understand Geordie well, right away? What about Glasgow English, not even Scots Gaelic?

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
Bottom line is that perhaps Proz should have, in addition to the "native speaker" label, a "native proficiency" one. Yet this would only shift the problem, as there are truly native speakers of a language that don't have sufficient "native proficiency" in writing for translation purposes.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
The least the site can do would be to present a level playing field for all its members. An international translation website like proz.com cannot simply shy away from this issue merely by citing the complexity of the issue as an alibi for doing nothing or for following practices that favour one section of its members.

Now that these discussions have incontrovertibly shown that the native button is discriminatory to those members who have high-levels of proficiency in their target languages, the site should work toward deemphasising this feature in its scheme of things. Various suggestions for doing this have come up in this thread itself.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
The problem as I see it is not the great diversity of backgrounds to be found among translators, but it is that a site like this caters to two distinct target groups (outsourcers and translators) who have conflicting requirements. While the outsourcers want an easy (and often simplistic) method for finding translators for their jobs, translators want unrestricted access to jobs that they can do.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
A lot depends on out of these two major groups of members, whom the site wants to please more. On the native language issue at least, it seems to me, the site is solidly on the side of the outsourcers.

Enrique Cavalitto wrote:
One of ProZ.com's guiding principles is that the person with the need sets the parameters. This applied to job posters but also to KudoZ askers. I don't see any undue bias here.

• Outsourcers are allowed to set the filtering parameters in their job posts and directory searches.
  
• Translators are given ample control of what they enter in their profiles, with some limits such as the amount of native languages, or specialty fields.
  
• Outsourcers get feedback of the amount of translators filtered by their criteria, as well as suggestions to relax some requirements when too few or no translators are being selected.

Regards,
Enrique

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
In something like jobs, the job poster as well as the job seekers are equally needy. The job seeker wants a translator, and the translator wants the job. By giving the job seeker the upper hand in the job selection process by allowing him the option of excluding a section of proz.com members capable of rendering it the service it is advertising, proz.com is clearly siding with the outsourcer and against that section of members (the non-native proficient translators).

And this, in my opinion, goes against the site's own guiding principle of "the person with the need sets the parameters".

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:



In something like jobs, the job poster as well as the job seekers are equally needy. The job seeker wants a translator, and the translator wants the job. By giving the job seeker the upper hand in the job selection process by allowing him the option of excluding a section of proz.com members capable of rendering it the service it is advertising, proz.com is clearly siding with the outsourcer and against that section of members (the non-native proficient translators).

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
And this, in my opinion, goes against the site's own guiding principle of "the person with the need sets the parameters".

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:



The least the site can do would be to present a level playing field for all its members. An international translation website like proz.com cannot simply shy away from this issue merely by citing the complexity of the issue as an alibi for doing nothing or for following practices that favour one section of its members.

Now that these discussions have incontrovertibly shown that the native button is discriminatory to those members who have high-levels of proficiency in their target languages, the site should work toward deemphasising this feature in its scheme of things. Various suggestions for doing this have come up in this thread itself.

The problem as I see it is not the great diversity of backgrounds to be found among translators, but it is that a site like this caters to two distinct target groups (outsourcers and translators) who have conflicting requirements. While the outsourcers want an easy (and often simplistic) method for finding translators for their jobs, translators want unrestricted access to jobs that they can do.

A lot depends on out of these two major groups of members, whom the site wants to please more. On the native language issue at least, it seems to me, the site is solidly on the side of the outsourcers.



[Edited at 2013-08-07 13:40 GMT]

Enrique Cavalitto wrote:

While I agree that this could be true in some cases, I don't believe that this is the normal situation.

S. Elizabeth wrote:
I agree that if proz.com aims to embrace all countries, all language pairs and all specializations, it should not favor one segment of its members over another (and I see these segments as divided not into translators/outsourcers, but rather in terms of definitions of "professional translator"). On the other hand, taking away the "native speaker" designation would favor one segment over another just as much as retaining the designation already does, so removing it would simply shift the favoritism to a different group.

I understand that you are saying that the very existence of the native speaker designation perpetuates the idea that choosing native speakers is tantamount to a quality guarantee, when really it is not.

But if I were an outsourcer, and I turned to proz.com to find, for example, a German>English translator, I would not want to wade through pages of rubbish "hits". I would want some quick way of separating the wheat from the chaff, even if it meant losing some choice "wheat" in the process. (If I were looking for a highly specialized translator in a particular language pair, I might leave off the native speaker requirement, since the number of hits would presumably be far lower for a highly specialized search.)

S. Elizabeth wrote:
Since proz.com is a commercial site and not a professional organization (and therefore does not hold members to an exacting -- or any, for that matter -- quality standard), but at the same time purports to offer outsourcers and other clients a way to find and contact professional translators, there have to be ways for outsourcers/clients to filter for quality. If "native speaker" is not a fair quality indicator, are the other easily filterable attributes sufficient?

With this in mind, looking through the options for selecting translators, I would like to see, in the native language dropdown, options for "native speaker" and "native proficiency", with the option of filtering for both, and, in the language pair emphasis dropdown: the addition of "only pair" as opposed to the current single option for "top pair (only pair)". (Which is not to say that having more than one source language is necessarily a bad thing, but I would want the option of additional filtering.)

Of course this would not resolve the issue of false claims, but maybe that's where the red P could or should come into play.

Tatty wrote:

@ Lilian, yes, "native" language is a central central in the context of professional translation. This is the point that you are failing to grasp.

@ Bala. When reference is made to "natives" in this discussion, we are referring exclusively to native translators, in other words educated people, and not just any Tom, Dick or Harry off the streets.

As to proofreading, this is usually done by natives of your country of residence, by Spaniards in my case. So from a language point of view, your text must read like a native has written it. Nobody comes and cleans up after me. Please remember that consumers pay thousands of euros for their documents to be translated and that they have reputations to maintain.

If anything, standards in translation have been raised over the past 10 years. Translators are much better trained nowadays, quality info is readily available to us on the net, and EU consumer protection has been bolstered as far as translation services are concerned. IMO, standards are set to rise even further in the near future by the workings of the free market.

Tatty wrote:
@ Bala. When reference is made to "natives" in this discussion, we are referring exclusively to native translators, in other words educated people, and not just any Tom, Dick or Harry off the streets.