We’ll resume regular posting in September and we hope to see your smiling face then!

Have a great summer everyone,

Ashleigh

2. If you have a unique translation specialty, charge more. This is especially relevant if you are able to translate documents from a unique specialized field like practical philosophy or the mating habits of Red Hills salamanders. Charge even more if your unique specialty is highly sought after.

3. If you translate highly technical documents, charge more. Your specialized expertise and knowledge of technical terminology, phrasing and formats have taken you YEARS to refine and perfect. Why give this value-added experience away for free?

4. If you offer additional design sensibilities or capabilities for laying out documents or performing desktop publishing work on documents that combine text with graphics (e.g. technical manuals, product specifications, and similar types of documents), charge more. You’re putting in additional time to design the layout of a translation, so you should be charging additional fees for that extra work.

Have another tip for charging proper rates as a translator? Share it with us in the comments!

What is a literal translation?

Literal translations, or word for word translations, are translations in which the content of a document is communicated by replacing one word with another, regardless of whether the resulting translation is accurate or reads well in the target language.

How do literal translations happen?

There are two main types of translators that can typically produce literal translations: 1) novice translators with limited experience and training in the genuine art of translating; and 2) translators of varying levels of skill and experience translating into a language that is not their first language.

For example, an English translator (whose first language is English) translating a document into French may adopt awkward syntax or non-standard idioms to keep the translation close to the structure of the original English. At first glance, you might assume that the translation was produced by a Francophone with an incomplete command of the French language; however, it can quickly become clear that the document may have been translated from English or another language by a non-native speaking translator.

But what’s the harm in a word for word translation? Are the translations of poor quality?

Many documents, when translated literally, result in mistranslations, language and grammatical errors, and calques (words improperly “borrowed” and “re-translated” from the source language). If you’ve ever used a machine or online translator to translate a website written in another language, you should have an idea of what a word for word translation looks like.

Although the perils of literal or word for word translations are well documented, many clients may not understand how important it is to hire a translator who is capable and experienced enough to translate the meaning, rather than the structure and words, of the original document.

But I don’t speak the target language. How can I tell if the translator I hired has produced a word for word translation?

There are a couple ways to spot—and stop—a word for word translation in its tracks. Since my main languages are French and English, I will focus my comments on those.

One way to spot a literal translation is by looking for words that seem out of context. A translator substituting each word for an equivalent in the target language may translate the same word every time regardless of its context.

For example, the translator sees the word “caisse” and translates it as till every time. However, caisse in French has many meanings, including credit union, case, crate or even checkout. The English word till can mean a drawer in a cash register where money is stored or to farm/cultivate land for planting. A yard can be a backyard, a front yard, or a unit of measurement. Homonyms can occasionally challenge even native speakers, so these are especially important to watch out for in word for word translations.

Another way to spot a word for word translation is through false cognates, false friends or faux amis. These are words that may look and even sound similar in both English and French but that may have completely different meanings.

A few examples: The word chagrin in French can mean sorrow or grief, while chagrin in English usually refers to embarrassment or annoyance. Actuellement in French does not mean “actually” in English but instead currently. A tissu in French is not “tissue” in English but instead a piece of fabric. If words seem like they are out of context, the translation may not have been done by an experienced or professional translator.

A third way to spot a word for word translation is to look at where the adjectives are placed in a sentence. In English, adjectives always come before the noun. In French, they usually come after the noun. So if you are reading a document that’s been translated from French to English, and your sentence says something like: The scenery beautiful took my breath away. You’ll know that it might have been translated word for word by an inexperienced translator or one without a strong command of the target language.

And a good general rule of thumb is that if it sounds awkward when you read parts of it aloud, it probably reads awkwardly too!

I would define copywriting as a finely tuned blend of promotional or marketing writing targeted to a specific audience with a specific goal in mind. The goal could be to get a company’s customers to sign up for a newsletter, visit a store or buy a product, and the way the copy is written along with the words that are used will of course vary based on this goal.

Professional translators make great copywriters for a number of reasons. First, and perhaps most importantly, they are specially attuned to the nuances of language in their first or target language. They have a comprehensive and very specific knowledge of what word to use in what context and for what purpose. With a superior understanding of two or more languages, translators understand how words can dramatically enhance, change or temper the meaning of a sentence or paragraph, which then affects whether the translated passage has remained faithful to the original document (or not!).

Second, most professional translators are subject matter experts (SMEs) is one or more specialty areas or fields of interest. If you are producing a brochure that promotes a highly technical product or one that makes extensive use of technical specifications, a translator who specializes in the expert field of a certain product will have first-hand knowledge of what the product looks like, sounds like, how it works and how best to convey its qualities as a copywriter, without burdening the consumer with all of the technical jargon that should appear in a technical manual rather than in a marketing website or landing page aimed at selling it and getting it into the hands of a designated audience.

Third, professional translators are comfortable, familiar and often well versed in the culture of the source language or the language they are translating from. They can write the content for a promotional brochure based on their knowledge of the cultural norms and standards that apply to the country where the promotional brochure or other marketing copy will be issued. This is especially important for companies who export products throughout the world and wish to appeal to the values and needs of a target audience in a given country.

You should keep this information in mind the next time you’re considering multilingual promotions. Perhaps instead of hiring a translator to translate existing content written by a copywriter you might want to hire a translator to write the content for your marketing materials, brochures, websites and other promotional copy.

Can you think of another reason translators make great copywriters? Let me know in the comments!

Well, let’s put ourselves in your client’s shoes for a moment.

Imagine you’re passionate about scuba diving and you’re browsing the web looking to buy a pair of diving shoes. You come across a fast loading, content-rich website that is written in Swedish, German, Russian or some other language you don’t know or recognize. How do you react?

Do you look for an English version of the website?

Do you search Google for English press or articles about the company or its products?

Do you rely on Google Translate to provide a jist of the content?

These are things to keep in mind because these are the same things your potential customers may be thinking when they land on your English-only website.

Sometimes if you can muddle along and figure out a few words here and there, you might be willing to stick around a bit longer. Especially if this site’s content is unique and targeted toward a narrow niche. In that case, maybe you’ll spend another minute or two trying to “translate” the content and find what you’re looking for.

If you can “translate” some of the words, how long do you usually spend struggling to figure out what the website is saying? How long do you stick around before leaving and returning to your search page?

But most importantly, how likely are you to buy from a company if you can’t properly understand what you’re getting, how much you’re expected to pay for it, and any recourse you might have if the product or service does not live up to your expectations?

If you were buying insurance, mutual funds or an insulin tester, would you take a chance on a company whose product information wasn’t available in English?

Well, your customers may be thinking the same thing about you. It’s not likely that customers will want to gamble on a language they aren’t familiar with or they don’t understand well. Especially in fields like finance, insurance and medicine, it’s important to provide content in your customer’s own language. It also elevates your company above your competitors because it shows an awareness and respect for other cultures, language proficiencies and needs.

Let’s focus on marketing materials for a second. Ultimately, what’s the purpose of your marketing materials?

Maybe you said to introduce new customers to my company or my products. Or maybe you said you use marketing materials to entice current customers to buy from you again or stimulate repeat sales. Of course, all of the above are true. Marketing materials can help teach your customers about your company, your current products and services, any new products and services you have launched, or even your company’s mission, values, brand and value proposition. By helping your customers understand you, you make it easier for them to buy from you.

In today’s intricately globalized economy and world, English isn’t enough for your global buyers. So, YES translating brochures and marketing materials into other languages CAN increase your company’s product or service sales.

Here in Canada, it’s called National Mourning Day, and it has been recognized annually on April 28 since 1991. It’s a day that recognizes and pays tributes to the many workers who are injured or killed while on the job.

In 2008, 1,036* workplace deaths were recorded in Canada, which is about 2.43 deaths per day. In addition, another 942,478* workers were injured or fell ill on the job.
Workplace statistics are frightening and sobering.

In a globalized economy and world, large companies are often a kaleidoscope of different people, languages, cultures, and lifestyles. This also means that they are home to a variety of audiences who very likely do not all speak the same language. They may speak enough English, French or other major language of the host country to get by, and carry out the tasks required of their jobs, but they may not be fluent enough to understand and follow complex technical documents that use specialized vocabulary.

Since the construction, chemical and manufacturing industries in particular rely heavily on technical manuals, safety documents and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs), workers in these workplaces are especially vulnerable to workplace injuries. The importance of providing accurate, faithful translations of the material is absolutely critical. As you can imagine, this would be the very worst time to rely on machine translation software, which could provide a stilted, and likely faulty, translation of your documents.

It’s critical that companies provide information in at least the official languages of the country or countries where it is doing business. Here in Canada, that means French and English. In the United States, it might mean English and Spanish. Large populations of speakers should also be represented, with Mandarin, Punjabi, Arabic, Italian and Dutch some good choices here in Canada. Companies have a responsibility to ensure that their employees understand the risks relevant to what they are doing. Companies also need to ensure their employees understand any occupational health and safety procedures they need to follow if something unexpected does happen.

It’s also critical that the translations you give your employees are clear, easy to understand, and use a suitable level of language. Don’t forget to consider the different dialects of a language: the Spanish spoken in Spain is very different from the Spanish spoken in Mexico or Ecuador. And where relevant, your translation documents should also be accompanied by appropriate graphics because—and as anyone who has ever tried to put a piece of Ikea furniture together can attest—a picture really can be worth a thousand words.

Today is an important day for language professionals everywhere because our job as language experts, communicators and translators is made even more important by the reality that an inaccurate translation could play the difference between health and illness, or life and death, for workers here at home or abroad.

* Statistics were drawn from the website of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety: http://www.ccohs.ca/events/mourning/

Well, excuse the sensationalism for a minute but you’ll soon see why we think it’s necessary.

An idiom is a phrase, a common saying, or a string of words, that gains its meaning from the combination of all of its words. Take away one of the words, and the phrase may suddenly lose its meaning. Because of their linguistically complex and colourful nature, idioms are almost never translated literally or word for word.

One of the real difficulties that automated translation systems (and not unsurprisingly, foreign-language speakers learning English) face is interpreting and understanding the real messages conveyed by certain language constructs. Idioms often lack context and it’s difficult for both computers and new language learners to understand what’s really being said.

In the case of online translation software, the computer-generated process takes one word in one language and replaces it with the corresponding word. However, the process of human-powered translation, or “transcreation” as it is becoming known, is vastly different and involves an exceptionally high level of language knowledge, language ability (both reading and writing), and creativity.

To test the limitations of online translation software, we gave Google Translate a few idioms and recorded the results. Here’s what we found:

It’s easy to see how an online translator might “misinterpret” the meaning of the saying because it doesn’t understand what the idiom really means. It just looks up a word, finds its equivalent, and substitutes one word for another. And we think that has about as much to do with translation as washing dishes with green soap does with corporate greenwashing.

Idioms are some of the hardest parts of any language to translate… luckily you can find the appropriate or accepted equivalents if you look hard enough. Try a Google search with the idiom in parentheses “like this” and add the language you want the equivalent in. It could be good way to get a translation of the idiom without resorting to Google Translate and risking a faux pas in another language.

Better luck next time, Google Translate!

First, who is the intended audience of the document(s) to be translated? Is your translation targeting the local population or foreign travellers? Are you translating documents for tourists, resort staff or employees at a travel agency? Someone else? Who is your audience, what are they like and what do they like?

Knowing who your audience is and most importantly, understanding exactly what your audience needs from the translated information, is essential to the success of your multilingual project. It’s also important to convey this information to your translation firm because it will help ensure the translator produces a translation that uses the right vocabulary, level of language and writing style suitable for a well written, idiomatic translation that speaks to your target audience. Translating an advertisement that will appear in a local or national publication will require a different tone and writing style than a pamphlet that provides safety information and tips for female travellers, for example.

Second, what kind of translation materials are you producing? Are you having a brochure, a website, informational packages or other written documents translated? Are the materials intended to provide information to your customers before they buy, when they buy, or when they arrive at the destination on vacation? Knowing the answers to these questions can help the translator identify other marketing opportunities that you may not have considered, such as complementary audio or visual products in your customer’s own language.

Third, what kind of graphic content are you providing and will you need to localize it for a different target audience? Translations for the tourist industry must be culturally appropriate both in terms of the translated text and the graphic, video or audio components that complement them. If your current graphics are not appropriate for the readers of your translated documents, you risk alienating them. Discuss whether your translation company can provide an additional service to localize your graphics or produce new ones to suit the audience of your tourist translations.

Fourth, do you have any previous translations, terminology glossaries or terminology reference tools that might be helpful for the translator of this specific project? Previous translations or term databases can help a translator who is new to the project maintain consistent terminology that maintains your unique image, voice and brand.

These are four easy but important questions to ask before you hire a translator to translate your tourism documents into another language. Of course, the beauty of these open-ended questions is that they can all be applied to other specialized industries and sectors, regardless of the type of documents you are translating, so what are you waiting for? Ask away!

Although much of the content remains the same, feel free to browse or explore the new design and get your bearings for where things are. If you have a comment or suggestion to make, we would love to hear it. Our Contact Us page is a great way to get in touch, or you can always e-mail or phone us. You’ll get a speedy reply and a big thank you.

We expect to get back to our regular blogging schedule starting next week. We’ll have a new promotion for May and lots of other surprises in the coming weeks.

Unfortunately, our French site will be going offline while we develop the framework for it based on our new design. We hope to launch the new and improved French version of our site soon… so keep your eyes peeled!

Thank you for being such patient, loyal and awesome readers.

The content of our interview follows. Please note that none of her answers have been edited or amended. Please feel free to comment and join in the conversation, whether you’re a translator who specializes in literary texts or any other kind!

• How would you define or describe literary translation?

I think that, to an extent, literary translation is a different kind of technical translation, but with different needs.

• How did you first get into the field of literary translation? Is it something you always wanted to do?

When I was thirteen, the school gave us a test to see where we were heading towards, professionally speaking. It was personality test aimed at what jobs we were best suited for. In my case, the results said that I was going to work in the field of arts. I distinctly remember having an awkward feeling of hopelessness and thinking: “How am I going to make a living?”. I’m trained as a script writer, did an MA on literary writing and another on translation, and I am a keen reader; so, once I started translating, I guess it was a matter of time before I attempted “creative” translation.

In my case, I was extremely lucky, since one of my friends works in a publishing house. Without that kind of connection, I would have had trouble getting into the field, since my background was mainly in technical translation and I had no literary translation training. But she trusted me and gave me the chance to do my first, second and third books. After that, it’s all been up to my CV and some translation tests for publishing houses.

• How are literary translations different from other types of translation (e.g. general or technical translations)?

They are different in many, many aspects. To start with, you don’t generally have to compile any kind of glossary or do much research before you start translating a novel (unless it’s something really specific like, let’s say, a novel set in a 16th century pirate ship, where you’ll have to look up lots of maritime terms), but you do have to have read it with attention and understood not just the text in itself, but what the author intended to convey and why they’ve chosen the words and images they’ve used. You also need to learn to discern between what may be language conventions and the author’s style, because when you translate the text, you need to make it sound good in your language while respecting their style.

You also need to bear in mind that different languages work in different ways and, although certain things work in the original, they may not do so in your language. For example, in Spanish, we tend to avoid repetitions a lot more than in English. Another obvious difference is the length of the text, I think that in general you become more involved in the translation of a literary text simply because you spend a great deal of time working on each project. Also, whereas in technical translation content is generally more important than form, when you translate a book you need to make it sound as good as the original and try to respect any subtext that may be present.

• What’s the best thing about being a literary translator? And the worst?

The best thing about being a literary translator, apart from doing the job that you enjoy the most and not having to work all the time against deadlines, is that you actually see the end result. You can go to a library or bookshop and see the books you’ve translated (If you’re lucky you may see somebody buying them!).

The worst part is that (at least here, in Spain) you don’t get paid until you deliver the translation. So you may spend six, eight or twelve weeks working on a project, which you then deliver and invoice; after that, the publishing house may take an average of forty-five to ninety days to pay. One needs excellent cash flow skills to make ends meet! Also, many times the deadline is too tight and your work may suffer because of it.

• What special skills or qualities do literary translators need to have in order to be successful in this translation specialty?

You need to be a good reader, an even better writer, be suited for long projects (otherwise you may become extremely bored), be able to revise and maybe even rewrite long texts, and have good communication skills in order to make sure you know exactly what the publishers expect from the text you’re translating and be able to solve with them any problems that may arise during the translation. It goes without saying that you also need excellent command of grammar and spelling rules. Literary translations undergo a process of proofreading and editing, but if you give them a text which is correct to start with, the publishers may like you over other translators.

• Do you have any advice, tips or suggestions for other translators trying to break into the literary translation world?

Well, in my case I got my first chance thanks to a friend who works at a publishing house and without her help, I think it would have been extremely difficult for me to enter this world without prior experience. I can’t speak for other countries, but here a good CV, knowing who to send it to in each publishing house, good communication skills, and the right academic background can help a lot, although they are no guarantee that you’ll get any response from prospective clients. If and when you do, if they give you a test, this is going to be your proverbial “foot in the door”, so you must do your very best to impress them (and afterwards, when you’re translating the whole book, you must make sure that you maintain the standard).

About Maia Figueroa

My name is Maia Figueroa and I love translating. I am a qualified bilingual translator with several years’ experience in general, technical, literary and subtitle translation. I translate from English and Catalan into Spanish and from Spanish and Catalan into English.

My journey into the world of languages begun at a very early age. I was raised in a bilingual home and I soon started to make myself understood in English, although my native language was Spanish. My English grandmother always used to recall with pride that when I was four, during a visit in England, I run in from the garden and asked for “the thing to make look big”. I wanted a magnifying glass to look at ladybirds and garden bugs.