Metaglossia: The Translation World

As Luzerne County Court officials seek cuts to help erase the $6.3 million 2013 county budget shortfall, they’re now forced to budget $50,000 for outside language translation services next year, a court official said.

The additional expense is necessary because two employees didn’t obtain the state certification required to continue providing Spanish language interpretation in court proceedings, said county acting Court Administrator Michael Shucosky.

Probation officer Thelma Kennedy, the third employee who provides in-house courtroom Spanish translation, is waiting to learn if she passed the certification exam, he said.

Shucosky said Kennedy and the other staffers – Alma McGarry and Silvana Calderon -- met national courtroom translation requirements accepted by the state in the past.

But the governing Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, or AOPC, now requires passage of a more stringent state certification exam.

Only one person in Luzerne County – White Haven resident Joussy Olsen – has obtained this state certification for Spanish translation, according to the AOPC website. Olsen works as a private translator and has been paid about $5,600 to provide county court translation since 2010.

The law requires courts to provide translation when witnesses, defendants and plaintiffs don’t speak fluent English, he said.

Justice : les interprètes impayés en grève
par franceguyane.fr / D.S-J franceguyane.fr 17.09.2012

Les interprètes de Guyane sont en grève illimitée depuis ce matin. Ils réclament la régularisation de leurs salaires impayés. Outre les retards des années précédentes, ils n'ont rien perçu sur 2012.

Les interprètes de Guyane sont en grève illimitée depuis ce matin. Ils réclament la régularisation de leurs salaires impayés. Outre les retards des années précédentes, ils n'ont rien perçu sur 2012. - photos : D.S-J
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Lire notre article paru le 12 septembre :

« Je travaille pour l'État mais il m'oublie. J'attends des règlements sur 2009, 2010 et 2011... Pour cette année, on n'a pas touché un centime! » Dans le hall des pas perdus du palais de justice, les plaintes des interprètes et traducteurs se multiplient. Les confidences traduisent une situation difficile. « Je me suis juré de ne pas me rendre malade avec cela, pourtant je suis endettée jusqu'au cou » lance l'une des interprètes, reconnaissant que certaines de ses collègues ont craqué.

« Ma banque m'accorde un découvert de 1 500 euros. Je suis à plus de 3 500 euros de découvert et deux mois de loyer en retard. Pour faire face, j'ai dû vendre mes bijoux » , poursuit une autre alors qu'une troisième préfère rire d'avoir vu débarquer à son domicile un huissier pour ses retards de paiement de loyer. Malgré leurs demandes, leurs mémoires de frais de justice afférents à leurs missions ne sont pas réglés dans des délais raisonnables et, faute de revenus, les dettes s'accumulent.

Face à leurs questions, ils ou elles n'obtiennent pas de réponse : « Un magistrat nous dit que c'est un problème technique, un autre avoue qu'il n'y a pas d'argent... On ne sait plus à quel saint se vouer! »

Une situation qui perdure depuis des années (lire encadré), aussi, jeudi dernier les interprètes et traducteurs se sont réunis. Dix-huit ont décidé de se faire entendre en déposant un préavis de grève à compter du lundi 17 septembre. Un préavis qui a été déposé aux chefs de cour, au président de la cour d'assises, aux chefs de juridictions et au tribunal de grande instance. Les dix-huit interprètes ont aussi adressé le 6 septembre un courrier à la directrice des Services judiciaires à la Chancellerie avec l'espoir d'être entendus en haut lieu. Un courrier dans lequel les retards de paiement sont soulignés avec la précision « qu'aucune des missions accomplies au cours de l'année 2012 n'a été payée, alors que le dernier trimestre de l'année est imminent » .

« Nos revendications sont simples : le paiement intégral de tous les mémoires de frais déposés jusqu'à ce jour pour l'ensemble des interprètes-traducteurs de Guyane » , souligne la lettre à la directrice des Services judiciaires.

Beware the hidden cost of cheap translation
Posted by: laura
Should translation be cheap? In the struggling economy of today it is hard to imagine that anyone would say that anything should be highly priced. It is all about saving the pennies and letting the pounds look after themselves. Of course we all love a bargain, but surely the most important thing should always be the quality of what you are spending your money on?
“The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory.” is the memorable quote from Aldo Gucci. This is a good phrase to sum up the negative aspects of bargain prices in many industries, however it rings especially true in the sector of translation. Not only is it a common misconception that translation is simple, but seemingly it is also considered by many to be a service that should not cost much at all. Of course, as with any business, there is negotiating to be done and the best price will always seem the most appealing but it is worth ensuring that this low price is not won at the expense of high quality translation.
Translators are experts in their field – or at least they should be. As heart surgeons or high-flying entrepreneurs must work hard to get to where they are and to perfect their craft, so too must translators, yet these professionals often suffer at the hands of the lowest bidder. It is not just that the customer themselves may lose out when purchasing a translation for a fraction of what it should cost, it is also the translators who have dedicated hours to the study and perfection of their skills. Constantly undercut by low prices offered, they are forced to work for a lower rate or lose out on jobs. That is not to say that these translators are in the job for the money, in fact at times it is often quite the opposite. A passion for language and a desire to see it used well is what compels many into this trade yet they often lose the opportunity to safeguard the language because they cannot feasibly match the prices offered by other, often less (if at all) qualified translators.
It is of course always advisable to get a range of quotations to compare the rates, but if one company’s price is significantly lower than the rest, this should probably be a red flag as to the quality level of translation you will receive back.

Average Medical Interpreter Salary in Anaheim, CA: $43,000. Search and compare Medical Interpreter Salary in Anaheim, CA by location for free.

The Ministry of Justice gave a £90m contract to a company that was out of its depth, says the NAO...

The Ministry of Justice's (MoJ) decision to award its £90m language services contract to a company that was out of its depth – and then not monitor this properly – has been described as "appalling".

In August 2011, the MoJ signed a five-year contract with Applied Language Solutions (ALS) – bought by Capita later that year – for interpretation and translation services. But the company immediately faced "operational difficulties".

So the National Audit Office (NAO) looked into the matter and concluded that while the old system was certainly inadequate in several respects, the MoJ's due diligence on ALS's bid was not thorough enough. Also, the ministry didn't give enough weight to the concerns and dissatisfaction that many interpreters had expressed.

What's more, the MoJ underestimated the project risks when it decided to switch from a regional to a national rollout, allowed the contract to become fully operational before it was ready (ALS had not recruited and assessed enough interpreters), and there were key contractual obligations that ALS didn't comply with (and the company didn't tell the ministry until the NAO discovered them.

On the operation of the contract, initially ALS's performance was "wholly inadequate", the NAO said, leading to missed performance targets and around a fifth of the interpretation work in courts and tribunals being done under old arrangements.

The Price of Sub-Par Translation
I blogged recently on how there are various differing translation markets, from free to high-end. So why is it that some companies are willing to pay top dollar (or euro) for good translation ?

Well, one way of looking at it is that they want to promote their image, and they see translation the same way as they see advertising text, marketing text, and branding. In other words, the good companies (Swiss banks, Apple, etc.) view translation as part of the overall brand image, and they are willing to pay to maintain that.

Those are the people who do not view translation as a commodity.

As they say in Hollywood movies, "... so you must be the other guys".

So who are "the other guys" ? Well, I would argue that a large part of the world consists of companies and clients who view translation as a commodity. And what is a commodity ? A commodity is a product that never differs in quality. Copper is copper, and there is no quality difference.

Question: is writing a commodity ? Answer: no. There are of course differences in quality in writing. And translation is writing.

So what price might your brand, your company, and your image pay for sub-par translation ?

There is a wide range of starting salaries for translators in the UK and freelance rates are usually calculated according to the word count. Translation of highly specialised texts, from or into unusual languages, demands higher rates than general translation.

The European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) are the best paying employers of senior translators. Entry level translators for the EU start on around £3,800 - £4,300 a month. Senior translators can earn between £14,800 - £16,000 a month (European Commission , September 2011).
Translators’ average daily output is 2,000 - 3,000 words.
Working hours for in-house translators are usually 9am to 5pm.
In-house roles are usually office based with translators working mostly alone. Sometimes they work as part of a small team in translation agencies or companies in large cities. Contact with clients is limited and mostly by email, phone or post.
The majority of translators are self-employed. Freelance translators work from home and enjoy flexible hours, although their work flow may be unpredictable. It can be helpful to build up experience and client contacts by working as an in-house translator before going freelance.
More regular interaction with clients is usually helpful in the case of freelance and literary translators, particularly if they are running their own business and seeking commissions for work.

GWENT Police spent more than £700,000 on translators over the past six years.

The force needed to employ translators for dozens of different languages in this time, including Welsh, and spent a total of £717,493.

Translators are brought in to talk to suspects in crimes, as well as witnesses and victims.

In 2006/07, the force spent £75,225 on translators; this more than doubled the following year to £160,899 and peaked in 2008/09 at £172,247.

In November 2009, the Wales Interpretation and Translation Service (WITS) was set up, supported by the Welsh Government, other Welsh police forces and councils.

WITS finds bilingual people close to where they are needed, carries out security checks, language assessments and training and helped reduce costs to the police.

Languages translated in this time were Polish, Lithuanian, Bengali, Urdu, Romanian, Punjabi Indian, Czech, British Sign Language, Vietnamese, Kurdish Sorani, Punjabi Pakistani, Turkish, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Slovak, Albanian, Spanish, Sylheti, Pashto, Latvian, Cantonese, Farsi, French, Hungarian, Nepalese, Swaheli, Algerian, Dari, German, Gujerati, Hindi, Italian, Krio, Malayalam, Portuguese, Somali, Tagalog, Tamil, Tigrinyan and Welsh

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In 2009/10, the amount spent fell to £127,796, £83,529 before the introduction of WITS and £44,267 after, this fell to £95,348 in 2010/11 and £85,978 in 2011/12.

Between 2009 and 2011, Gwent Police paid a fixed rate of £36 an hour to translators.

How to Slash Your Translation Costs
We are living through tough times. The EU is in permanent crisis, and America is in debt, and in a deep recession. Many companies understandably want to save cost on translation.

Here is my 7-step plan to help you reduce your costs and save money on translation, no matter what:

1. Treat language as a commodity. Remember, there is no real quality difference in words on a page, between one translator and another. They all write it the same. So, words are just like raw materials, commodities. Why pay more when the product is always the same and there is no difference in quality ?

2. Get a cheap into-foreign-language translator (L2). L2 means into the foreign language. Riding on the above basic paradigm that translation is a commodity, why pay more ? Why pay an American in Paris with an MA in translation to translate your text into English, when you can get someone dirt cheap in the developing world ? That is what the Internet is for. You don't need to know your translator, meet her, or even know who they are ! Just dump the project off to a big translation company and they will figure that all out. That is not your job.

When requesting a translation quote the result we get can be a total mind field. Translation quotes can be quoted per word, per hour, per character, per page, translation rates differ from language to language and translation company to translation company, some companies use translation memories and within this we get differing metrics for matching and repetitions, some rates include revision by a third party, rates differ from subject matter to subject while some companies charge project management rates. The list goes on and on and can often leave the client in a very confusing predicament. However in this article we hope to clarify some of the issues of translation quotes especially in the area of translation metrics.

¿Eres un mono? ¿No? Pues entonces no aceptes cacahuetes Estamos en pleno verano y resulta difícil hablar de según que asuntos.

Le magnifique Journey - un des jeux cultes du PlayStation Network - aura le droit à son édition collector en version boite aux Etats-Unis.

Celle-ci ne devrait normalement pas sortir en Europe pour des raisons de coûts de traduction, de production et de mise en ventes trop importants.

L'histoire aurait pu en rester là si le studio thatgamecompany n'avait pas posté sur Twitter un commentaire pour le moins ambigu : A European release for the #JourneyPS3 Collector's Edition hasn't been announced yet, but that doesn't mean it won't come out.

JUDGE MARY Devins, who apologised for a second time yesterday for remarks she made last week about Polish migrants, questioned in 2010 why the State had to pay for interpreters for Polish defendants when “the country was on its knees”.

ICanLocalize ofrece trabajos excelentes a precios accesibles. Las tarifas dependen del tipo de proyecto que disponga para traducir. En cuanto a la revisión, siempre se cobra un 50% más sobre el costo total de la traducción.

Infórmese más sobre la importancia de la revisión.

Localización de software

Hay un precio fijo para los proyectos de localización de software. Si desea traducir una aplicación para iPhone, iPad o Android, o un archivo PO, pagará 0,09 USD por palabra para localización, o 0,135 USD por palabra para localización y revisión.

Traducción de sitios web

La traducción de sitios web podría requerir de cierta especialización o conocimiento en un área específica, por lo que las tarifas deben ser flexibles. Una vez creado el proyecto de traducción del sitio web, ya sea Drupal, WordPress o un sitio estático, y seleccionados los idiomas, tiene dos opciones: publicarlo para todos los traductores o invitar a un traductor en particular de su preferencia. Cualquiera sea el caso, el traductor realizará una oferta. Algunos idiomas cuestan más que otros, como los idiomas asiáticos.

Las tarifas varían de 0,09 a 0,14 USD por palabra para traducción, y un 50% más si solicita revisores.

En en este tipo de trabajos, el cliente puede negociar la tarifa directamente con el traductor —en caso de que sea necesario— en el chat del proyecto.

CINCINNATI, Jul 31, 2012 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- After a bidding process conducted by Hamilton County, Ohio, on behalf of the Municipal Court, Affordable Language Services ( www.AffordableLanguageServices.com ) was awarded a contract to provide interpreting and translation services to help judges, lawyers and legal professionals communicate with people who cannot speak English.

The company was awarded a one-year contract with an annual renewal clause over a five-year period 2012-17.

"We are delighted that Hamilton County selected our company based on our high quality interpreting and translation capabilities," said Lynn Elfers, CEO at Affordable Language Services. "We have extensive experience providing language services for law firms and legal departments in the Tristate, and we look forward to working with the Municipal Court to help people who cannot speak for themselves at critical times in their lives."

For more information on capabilities in legal interpreting, visit www.AffordableLanguageServices.com . The website features a blog article titled "What Lawyers Need to Understand about Legal Interpreters," with practical tips on legal interpreting and translations: http://www.affordablelanguageservices.com/legal-interpreters-what-lawyers-need-to-understand-about-them/ .

Translation rates: a modest proposal
This morning as I negotiated my guest office space and tied my dog to a beam supporting the roof, I hit my head, and as it cracked open, the Light of Revelation poured in. I realized that we translators have been going about setting our rates in an entirely inappropriate and negative way. And the True Path for translation rates lay clear and straight before me, its engraved paving stones making clear that if customers want discounts, they may henceforth receive them in abundance*.
* special rules apply

First off, my base rates have been reformed. My word price will be 2 euros per source word in German. A bit on the high side perhaps, but not after all the discounts that may be relevant. Those who insist on paying by the English target word will receive a 10% discount.

If the job contains no handwritten text, there will be a 10% discount. If the job files are not in PDF format or some sort of bitmap or other format which cannot be overwritten electronically and they import cleanly into translation environment tools, there will be a further 10% discount.

La traduction est souvent la dernière étape d'un processus de rédaction / publication parfois long et complexe. Il reste donc (parfois) (bon, souvent) peu de budget pour la traduction, qui intervient fatalement en dernier lieu, une fois le budget entièrement consommé le texte source entièrement finalisé.

La course à l'échalote visant à mettre en concurrence et tirer vers le bas les tarifs des prestataires est une option couramment pratiquée, même si pourtant toutes les agences de traduction ne se valent pas (comment bien choisir son agence de traduction fera l'objet d'un prochain billet, mais en attendant vous pouvez à nouveau parcourir notre panorama des types de prestataires) ! Et une bonne agence (comme Trad Online bien sûr) peut vous proposer des pistes pour diminuer les coûts de traduction, via quelques bonnes pratiques très simples.

DO – Faire du tri !

Ceci vaut notamment pour les projets multilingues : tous les contenus ont-ils vocation à être traduits dans TOUTES les langues ? Si vous organisez un événement à Paris, êtes-vous sûrs de vouloir en informer vos lecteurs japonais en plus des belges et des britanniques ? Le règlement de votre jeu-concours valable en France uniquement doit-il être traduit ? Il est très possible de diminuer de manière drastique le nombre de mots à traduire (qui est l'unité de facturation).

Here in Brighton, sign language interpreter services are under attack. Various NHS services have decided to pool interpreter contracts into a ‘single agency’, to cover all languages including British Sign Language. They (the agencies I was in communication with) have stated their terms: £30 ph, minimum call out charge of 2 hours, no travel expenses, no travel time, and cancellation charges only allowed within 24 hours.

In response, I made an immediate investigation into the impact of these diminished terms and conditions and discovered that 17/20 interpreters consider this terms to be ‘adversely different’ from their own whereas the remaining 3/20 consider the terms to be just ‘different’. This means that 6 interpreters out of 7 may need to consider a different stream of income because they just can not afford to work as an interpreter in this setting, if these imposed rates persist.

The simplistic argument is £30 per hour is a fair salary and no one gets paid for travel from home to work anyway – why should interpreters get special treatment? The answer may lie in some crucial points:

......

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ChcwN

HAMPSHIRE police say they have no plans to save money by switching to a cheaper translation firm which has come under fire nationally because their staff are not up to the job.

The new era of professional language services is upon us
We all remember the time when translators and interpreters were abundant and the rates were outrageously high. As technology advances, it is clear to us that those time are long gone. Kurzweilian artificial intelligence has put a firm grip on translation services, especially in the technical areas with Google Translate being a prime example. As a result mediocrity and lack of basic quality, as well as over-billing has largely given way to efficient ways of the new era when it comes to linguistic needs. The machine-assisted translation is here to stay, but the cost of such services will inevitable go down with the advancing free Google Translate army. The days when a CAT software company could charge their clients exuberant amounts of money, literally thousands of dollars for proprietary software (in reality they are all the same) are almost over.

Attention, il y a des arnaques à la traduction sur le net ! Vous êtes traducteur ou traductrice et vous recevez une offre de travail alléchante — trop alléchante — d’un parfait inconnu ?
Méfiance, il s’agit sans doute d’une arnaque au chèque.
Un inconnu vous contacte pour vous confier un travail sans vous demander ni essai ni référence ? Il vous promet un paiement rapide et conforme aux tarifs préconisés par l’ATLF ? N’acceptez surtout pas ce travail !
Si vous l’acceptez (le plus souvent un texte très général et « emprunté » sur un site du net), vous recevrez très rapidement un chèque infiniment supérieur au montant préalablement prévu. On vous demande d’encaisser ce chèque très vite et de rembourser la différence, car il y a eu… erreur.

The Government has admitted a controversial scheme to provide interpreters to the courts and West Midlands Police is unlikely to save £12 million.