It has become more and more difficult to win new clients and maintain the existing ones as the global economy is experiencing one of its toughest moments in history. Unemployment rates are rising in all continents, governments are in record high debts and there doesn’t seem to be any clear solutions on the horizon. How does this situation affect all actors within the Translation Services Industry and what can we do about this?

I believe that the need for translation services will not drop as much as expected, as translation services are closely linked to companies’ core activities. The necessity for translation Services is inevitable in International Commerce, such as packaging, labels, manuals, legal documents, medical documents, promotional brochures, marketing material and the like.

However, the effects of the crisis can definitely be felt in the Translation Industry as many companies are deciding not to have certain documents translated into all of the required languages, and only the most important, as the return on investment might be either not worth it or too risky. A good example would be that of an employee handbook, that would have been translated not long ago into several languages. Now companies will only have it translated into one language – such as Spanish- to save costs. In addition, many companies that have been using translation agencies for their translation needs are now solving these demands internally, in order to cut down on cost.

What can the Translation Industry do to survive and get through these difficult times? Client relationships have become ever more important in order to keep clients and not lose them. It is important to fully understand and know the needs of one´s clients and this can only be achieved by asking the right questions to fully know the scope of the translation project. Special per word rates for the “best” clients are being introduced, in order to secure a long-term relationship. In many cases, contacts have been added to Skype or Messenger to improve communication.

These are for sure difficult times, not only for the Translation Industry, but staying positive, focused and being innovative will assure to make the best of this difficult situation.

Remember the Telephone Game? Most of you probably remember it from childhood. You would whisper a short sentence into someone’s ear and so on until it went full circle. When the message reached the last person it was totally different from the original and it had everyone laughing out loud. You’re probably thinking, “Yes, I remember that game. But what does it have to do with Machine Translation?” Machine Translation is playing a fast-growing role in the translation industry. Some companies admit that it’s only partially effective (some say 70%); I beg to differ. Let’s play the Telephone Game and see what happens after 10 consecutive translations of the same text.

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This little box here is the prototype for what Fuji Xerox claims will revolutionize the translation industry. How does it work? You put a document written in one language into it and the translated version pops out in the EXACT SAME FORMAT.

Currently, the machine only “reads” Japanese, but can translate into English, Chinese and Korean. Fuji Xerox has promised that more languages will be available shortly.

As for the quality of the translations, this remains unseen. The company is being very secretive about the translation technology employed, and more details have emerged on how the formatting is done than on how the content is translated. Too good to be true? Yep.

Those in the translation industry have long laughed at machine translation and its incorrect wording, awkward sentence choice, etc., so when Google Enterprise product manager Cyrus Mistry proclaimed that the new Google Translate would be “analogous to giving every employee in a business 34 translators sitting at their desk and translating everything they want to look for within a 10th of a second,” professional translators the world over spit their collective coffee onto their computer screens.

With the shortcomings of computer translation programs like Babelfish and Promt no secret within the industry and, to some extent, in the general public, Google’s bold claim seemed outlandish. Google Translate however, is based on statistical analysis, a radical departure from the traditional “rules-based” approach to machine translation. Starting with over twenty billion words in seven languages (from official United Nations documents), Google Translate solicited contributions of human-translated documents in other languages to add into its database. What truly sets this program apart however, as more bilingual text is entered into the program, the results of the statistical analysis, and therefore the translations, become that much more accurate. By cross analyzing the new sources with the old, it is essentially improving its own translations.

Rather than write a scathing critique on how translation will always be an art form done by humans or wave a white flag and start looking at careers on monster.com, I will leave you with a few lines from John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, its translation by Google Translate into Spanish, and the back translation into English.

Original

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

Spanish

En la larga historia del mundo, sólo unas pocas generaciones se han concedido el papel de defensa de la libertad en su hora de máximo peligro. Yo no rehuir esta responsabilidad-que acojo con satisfacción. No creo que ninguno de nosotros sería el intercambio de lugares con cualquier otro pueblo o cualquier otra generación. La energía, la fe, la devoción que aportan a este esfuerzo se iluminará nuestro país y todos los que sirven y que el resplandor del fuego que puede verdaderamente la luz del mundo.

Back Translation into English

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I will not shirk this responsibility, which I welcome. I do not think any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. Energy, the faith, the devotion they bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who served and that the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

Love languages? Looking for a stimulating career path or some freelance work on the side? Becoming a translator may be for you. Professional translation has been growing rapidly in the past decade, yet remains a mystery to many outside the field. What does it take to get started in the translation industry? What does a professional translator do? For the next few weeks, I’m going to take you through the steps of what you need to know and what you need to do to get started.

Language Knowledge and Education

First off, you need to know one language exceptionally well. You mean two, right? I’ll get to other languages later. I’m talking about your native language, be it English, Spanish or Farsi. This is something that is often overlooked in the translation field.

A translator is first and foremost a writer (of someone else’s material). Hopefully you paid attention in your grammar courses and are a voracious reader. You need to have a grasp of different genres of writing in your native language, know the rules of punctuation and basically have such a strong grasp of this language’s structure and use that you can spot a missing comma from 30 yards away in the dark. This can be learned in school (from elementary upwards) or can be acquired on one’s own through reading, private study and writing.

Now, what about your second, third or ninth language? Ideally, this will be your source language, or the language you are actually translating. The value of a good foreign language course cannot be snubbed, be it learning the colors in kindergarten or writing your thesis on the greats of Russian literature. These classes will introduce you to different cultural aspects, grammar structure and more. Formal University study is not a prerequisite, but a strong desire to learn this new language certainly is.

In my opinion, the key to truly understanding the vocabulary, grammar and basically every other aspect of the written language itself comes from reading everything in that language that you can get your hands on. Reading different styles and types of writing in this language will serve you well. Whether it’s a novel, bird watching magazine, online cookbook or instructions on how to put together a ping-pong table, it’s going to teach you something new or reinforce what you already know.

So those are the basics on what you need to know to get started as a translator. In the coming weeks, I’ll talk about the actual act of translating, the translation industry and some other significant topics.