Saving money on translators and interpreters.

Saving money on translators and interpreters

In the latest issue of The Linguist, the journal of the Chartered Institute of Linguists, there is a snippet from an article that appeared in the Daily Mirror a few weeks ago concerning the interpreter appointed by Wigan Athletic for their star Egyptian striker, currently with them on loan, Amr Zaki. The football club discovered that the interpreter wasn't up to the job. Not surprising really, as they had appointed him after finding him selling pies on a stall and being told that he was fluent in Arabic.

Wigan Athletic is in the top football league, and players of this calibre earn several hundred thousand pounds a year. Manager Steve Bruce moved to Wigan last year for a reported salary of £3m a year including bonuses, according to an article at the time. The club's hospitality packages start at £1250 per person, and there is a package that costs twice as much (see here). Yet the club didn't see fit to shell out the going rate for a professional interpreter. Incredible!


Stories like this are all too common. Companies that spend a fortune on entertaining clients, and that wouldn't dream of appointing trainee or unqualified accountants or medical staff, think it's perfectly ok to get translations done by someone's daughter, brother-in-law or other willing volunteer. In a document produced by the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, there are some translation horror stories. A US manufacturer of radiation equipment didn't bother to translate instructions into French, assuming that technicians would all be fluent in English; they weren't and some patients died of radiation overdoses. In April 2007 the prime ministers of France and Canada held a memorial service to honour Canadian soldiers who had died in France during the First World War. Journalists spotted that historical plaques put up nearby were riddled with grammar and spelling errors, and it turned out that they had been translated by well-meaning but unqualified volunteers.