The Translator Takes Center Stage

"We labor in obscurity." These are the words of a literary translator
who contacted Nina Sankovitch recently, as reported in her excellent
post, "Found in Translation: Honoring Literary Translators." If you
can't name the Swedish-to-English translator of "The Girl Who Played
with Fire," just imagine who's behind the translation of Apple's
latest slogan for the South Korean launch of the iPad 2. The vast
majority of translators don't just labor in obscurity -- they're
invisible.

Here's the typical scenario: Buyer needs words translated. Buyer sends
words to translation firm. Translation firm sends words to
translators. Translators send translation back to translation firm.
Translation firm sends words back to buyer. Buyer publishes words.



The file format, number of languages, output type, and other items
vary, but the process remains fairly simple. The translator is usually
left completely behind the scenes, unable to ask the source author any
questions about the original text, even when doing so would facilitate
a translation of better quality.

The distance between the buyer of translation services and the
translator is vast.

But oh, how things are changing.

At a Common Sense Advisory event held for buyers of translation at
Google's headquarters last year on the topic of translation quality
measurement, an individual from one large organization complained,
"Even though I have no contact with the translators, I can always tell
when one of them goes on vacation." She went on to share that the
quality degraded, because the replacement translators were less
familiar with her company's work.

I also noticed this trend in some recent research on life sciences
translation. One interviewee explained, "For the first time ever,
we're bringing the translators on-site so we can train them ourselves
and be absolutely sure they're familiar with our brand and proprietary
terminology."

When I was conducting research on translation quality, one buyer told
me that when he is selecting a translation firm, he logs onto some of
the online communities where translators congregate to see what they
are writing about the vendors. "I don't want to work with any company
that doesn't treat its translators as its most valuable asset," he
said. "Our brand is in their hands."

Most translators are not looking for glory. They don't expect to see
their names in lights, or on the cover of a book. They simply want the
ability to do the best job they can. They want to be proud of the
difficult work they do. Giving them a closer relationship with the
buyer facilitates that. Slowly but surely, technology is bridging the
gap between buyers of translation and the translators themselves.

Delivering multilingual content is never truly a solo act. So, it
isn't that the translator will ever take center stage alone. But it's
becoming more common for the translator to join the rehearsals and be
seen as part of the crew. And maybe just once in awhile, she can join
the rest of the cast onstage, not because she needs to be seen, but so
she, too, can see the faces of the people who applaud and appreciate
her work.