C
chevalier
Guest
For a while, I’ve been working as a translator instead of my learned occupation as a lawyer. I’m holding my own because of having dabbled with languages from very early years and some other factors. So, this time I was helping out an acquaintance with a technical translation (into English) that involved power plants and their parts.
Long story short, the original translator said he would eagerly undertake it, it would be of the highest quality etc etc. The outcome - that my acquaintance had the gut feeling to ask me to proof - was ripe with mistakes that a newbie student of linguistics shouldn’t have made. In fact stuff that gets you yelled at in highschool or possibly lower. I was asked to be slow to pull the trigger, so the proofing didn’t include syntax and some word choices that would have to be amended after concluding the correction that was to be shown to the translator. All in all, proofing those 13 pages of Word text took 6 hours - this meaning the correction of strict mistakes, not clumsy syntax etc.
I told them we’d need to translate the whole thing anew if we wanted it not to be substandard because bringing it to a professional level would take another several hours we couldn’t afford to waste, the text would still count as “his” translation which struck me as blatantly wrong after all the many hours of practically remaking it any way, so it would be better on all levels to start from scratch.
I would lower my rate when learning that it would be deducted from the original translator’s, but it was obvious I’d have to translate the thing anew after spending several hours correcting it and the maximum sum of money available for that part of the order was the cost of the original translation anyway. And we decided not to use the original translation. The guy didn’t take the 25% offered and he stopped replying after a while. Before, he wasn’t concerned about how much time we had to spend, how deadlines pressed us even worse, how he made them believe he’d deliver a top quality product but he made very basic mistakes a school kid shouldn’t have etc. He actually counted 80 lesser and 5 grammatical mistakes (the text being 13 pages long!) from my correction and argued that he should get 70%.
The money I am supposed to get now I deserve twice over. But I’m feeling scrupulous about the way I handled the situation. On the one hand, the job had to be done. I could work for free but wasn’t morally required to. I took money for like half the time I spent anyway and the 25% was offered on my insistence because they didn’t want to pay anything. The guy didn’t show remourse and we felt badly cheated as regards his competence and we’re still struck with disbelief that an MA holding philologist could make such mistakes, let alone one who advertised himself as a contest winner, having book translations under his belt and more. I ended up working 14 hours on the thing directly, not including communication, and some 34 hours of continous work resulted.
And here’s more… In the end, when I was arriving at a 30th hour of continous work and the deadline was awfully pressing (we missed it by up to 2 hours), I actually looked to that translation for some terms that the guy had actually got right and I had some doubts about my decision (or my part in the decision) to start anew. Before then, I wouldn’t look to that translation at all, to make a point. However, my acquaintance and her husband spent a long time instructing the guy on the technical terms used, which took until 3 am one day, without affecting his pay.
My acquaintance’s husband said he wouldn’t have the nerve to proof that original translation, that the guy shouldn’t be paid anything, and that his highschool-attending brother would’ve done a better job with the wording. Another translator was consulted and confirmed whatever I said and more than that, even actually phoning the guy to tell him that translation was unprofessional - I suspect it was the same translator who had previously recommended the guy to my acquaintance. But I’m still second-guessing myself. This is because I experienced temptations to take the order over, to show off during the correction etc, but I thought I overcome those. Given the circumstances, I probably shouldn’t feel bad - I cut the topic when the conversation was getting close to insulting the translator behind his back, I insisted on paying him more than they wanted to (thus cutting my rate), the translation was bad indeed and mine was apparently much better. Plus, the guy didn’t care at all about the mess he put us in or even the harm to his reputation, but only about how much cash he’d get. And my acquaintance was misled by his reassurance of high quality… My correction was deemed lenient, even “gracious” (my acquaintance’s husband said he wouldn’t have had the nerve to keep going until the end of it), the guy got told off on the phone by the next translator to take a look at it, my acquaintance and her husband, as well as the customer, are satisfied with the translation they got and the former two believe it was the right decision to retranslate. So why do I keep second-guessing myself - as in that maybe the guy’s translation should have been salvaged? Even though practically every sentence would have had to be reworded and the language was on the level of a highschooler learning English?
Long story short, the original translator said he would eagerly undertake it, it would be of the highest quality etc etc. The outcome - that my acquaintance had the gut feeling to ask me to proof - was ripe with mistakes that a newbie student of linguistics shouldn’t have made. In fact stuff that gets you yelled at in highschool or possibly lower. I was asked to be slow to pull the trigger, so the proofing didn’t include syntax and some word choices that would have to be amended after concluding the correction that was to be shown to the translator. All in all, proofing those 13 pages of Word text took 6 hours - this meaning the correction of strict mistakes, not clumsy syntax etc.
I told them we’d need to translate the whole thing anew if we wanted it not to be substandard because bringing it to a professional level would take another several hours we couldn’t afford to waste, the text would still count as “his” translation which struck me as blatantly wrong after all the many hours of practically remaking it any way, so it would be better on all levels to start from scratch.
I would lower my rate when learning that it would be deducted from the original translator’s, but it was obvious I’d have to translate the thing anew after spending several hours correcting it and the maximum sum of money available for that part of the order was the cost of the original translation anyway. And we decided not to use the original translation. The guy didn’t take the 25% offered and he stopped replying after a while. Before, he wasn’t concerned about how much time we had to spend, how deadlines pressed us even worse, how he made them believe he’d deliver a top quality product but he made very basic mistakes a school kid shouldn’t have etc. He actually counted 80 lesser and 5 grammatical mistakes (the text being 13 pages long!) from my correction and argued that he should get 70%.
The money I am supposed to get now I deserve twice over. But I’m feeling scrupulous about the way I handled the situation. On the one hand, the job had to be done. I could work for free but wasn’t morally required to. I took money for like half the time I spent anyway and the 25% was offered on my insistence because they didn’t want to pay anything. The guy didn’t show remourse and we felt badly cheated as regards his competence and we’re still struck with disbelief that an MA holding philologist could make such mistakes, let alone one who advertised himself as a contest winner, having book translations under his belt and more. I ended up working 14 hours on the thing directly, not including communication, and some 34 hours of continous work resulted.
And here’s more… In the end, when I was arriving at a 30th hour of continous work and the deadline was awfully pressing (we missed it by up to 2 hours), I actually looked to that translation for some terms that the guy had actually got right and I had some doubts about my decision (or my part in the decision) to start anew. Before then, I wouldn’t look to that translation at all, to make a point. However, my acquaintance and her husband spent a long time instructing the guy on the technical terms used, which took until 3 am one day, without affecting his pay.
My acquaintance’s husband said he wouldn’t have the nerve to proof that original translation, that the guy shouldn’t be paid anything, and that his highschool-attending brother would’ve done a better job with the wording. Another translator was consulted and confirmed whatever I said and more than that, even actually phoning the guy to tell him that translation was unprofessional - I suspect it was the same translator who had previously recommended the guy to my acquaintance. But I’m still second-guessing myself. This is because I experienced temptations to take the order over, to show off during the correction etc, but I thought I overcome those. Given the circumstances, I probably shouldn’t feel bad - I cut the topic when the conversation was getting close to insulting the translator behind his back, I insisted on paying him more than they wanted to (thus cutting my rate), the translation was bad indeed and mine was apparently much better. Plus, the guy didn’t care at all about the mess he put us in or even the harm to his reputation, but only about how much cash he’d get. And my acquaintance was misled by his reassurance of high quality… My correction was deemed lenient, even “gracious” (my acquaintance’s husband said he wouldn’t have had the nerve to keep going until the end of it), the guy got told off on the phone by the next translator to take a look at it, my acquaintance and her husband, as well as the customer, are satisfied with the translation they got and the former two believe it was the right decision to retranslate. So why do I keep second-guessing myself - as in that maybe the guy’s translation should have been salvaged? Even though practically every sentence would have had to be reworded and the language was on the level of a highschooler learning English?