The translation crowdsourcing debate has made several appearances on this blog. It’s back with a vengeance thanks to a seriously deficient crowdsourced translation, which — ironically — comes from an online translators’ portal.
Protecting the French linguistic heirloom (sic)…how about protecting your image for starters?
Crowdsourced web page from Proz.com - click to visit page
The quality of the copy on this page speaks for itself. Clearly, whatever crowdsourcing system was used here failed to produce a readable — or even accurate, for that matter — translation. The result is gibberish.
But what does it all mean for translation buyers?
1 – Don’t confuse anonymous, wiki-style, free crowdsourcing with controlled, managed use of collaboration-enabling tools and technologies to enhance the teamwork of a group of seasoned professionals.
2 – There’s no such thing as a free lunch: Would you consider allowing a group of non-professional writers you’ve never met and who know nothing about your business to develop the copy for your company’s website? Translation is no different. Direct contact with the translator adapting your copy for foreign markets is an absolute necessity if you are to ensure that your message and image make it through the translation process unscathed.
3 – If you can’t come up with a compelling business case for a professional translation of your copy, don’t adopt “crowdsourcing” as your default setting. If the ROI for a professional language service provider is not there, weigh the potential costs of unreadable — or worse, laughable — foreign-language copy in terms of damage to your reputation and image. It could be that no foreign-language version at all is better than a poor one.
From exchange-traded futures to naked swaps, recent…ahem…innovations in the financial markets and planned regulatory changes to deal with the aftermath of some of these products have spawned a slate of new financial terms, neatly inventoried in a recent Reuters article.
Here is an example — handily, the article not only offers up a definition, but also a brief summary of the current regulatory context as related to the term:
Position limits – a cap or limit on the number of futures contracts that can he held in a particular commodity. The CFTC proposed in January a crackdown on excessive speculation in energy trading by restricting the holdings of big players. [ID:nCFTCREG]. It also is considering similar curbs in the metals arena. [ID:nN25212518]
Gensler, under mounting political pressure, has pledged to be more aggressive on position limits. But the industry has lobbied against them, and some of the five CFTC commissioners are worried limits could push speculators to unregulated or overseas markets.
Of course, translating these new financial terms can be tricky, and often involves substantial amounts of research. In the absence of adequate dictionaries, financial translators are scouring the latest financial press releases and articles, consulting and comparing publications by international economic organizations, and quite simply picking up the phone and leveraging their networks in the worlds of banking, finance, and government to ask “How do you say this?”. Now that’s innovation!
Have you encountered any novel terms on the financial markets? How have they been dealt with in your language?
I’ve talked about translating marketing and advertising copy on this blog before. Have you ever wondered how some of your favorite ads would read if the agencies had hired Dieter to write the copy? Well, now you can see for yourself!
One of my favorite magazines, Vanity Fair, has worked some Google Translate magic on copy from a few well-known advertising campaigns. The iPad ad is my favorite (although the race with Hershey’s Kisses was a close one!).
• English: “Imagine being able to page through websites, write an email, flick through photos, or watch a movie. All on a big, beautiful Multi-Touch screen. With just the touch of a finger.”
• English-German-English: “You write watch bodies to the side through websites, e-mail, flick through photos, or a movie. All on a big, beautiful multi-touch screen. With just one finger.”
Sadly, much of the marketing and advertising copy that goes through the commodity translation process does not read much better than this. So, if you don’t want your marketing and advertising copy to sound like a sketch from Saturday Night Live, best to call in a professional translator-copywriter with experience adapting marketing and ad copy. In the meantime, run a few of your favorite ads through Google Translate and back again for a few laughs!
Tagged as:
automatic translation,
machine translation
