Ten common myths about translation quality

LilianBNekipelo wrote:


Do you actually believe, Giovanni, there are 600 Italian people, born and raised in Italy, who speak Polish well? I would love to meet some of them. I have actually never met anyone, in my life, perhaps one person, who spoke good Polish and was not raised in Poland, including some members of my own family. I have gone to many language seminars in my life, studied in various places, yet, I have not met too many people like that -- what are the odds that they really exist somewhere?

[Edited at 2013-07-27 14:39 GMT]

Lincoln Hui wrote:

If you are not a competent writer in the target language, I see no reason why I should believe that you are a competent reader in it.

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



Let's abandon the statistics thingy for a moment (statistics are a complicated science)...

as far as the above is concerned, my answer is no. In fact. I've already said a couple of times in this thread that I agree with you. You should be free to translate into Mongolian, if you wish to do so. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

My point was: how are you going to convince your prospective clients to pick you ahead of a native? Why should clients/agencies risk it?

LilianBNekipelo wrote:

at the age of 11-15, let's say, and got most of their education there a native translator, Mark, or someone raised in Sweden who has been living for 30 years somewhere else a native speaker of Swedish? I don't think the native category is too clear, in multilingual societies.

Most translators come from multilingual environments where the native, non-native distinction is slightly blurred -- translation is usually not a profession a person from a monolingual environment would choose, although there are exceptions, of course.

[Edited at 2013-07-27 14:29 GMT]

Mark Benson wrote:



I mean, that's exactly what I was implying about your argument. Unfortunately, there was nothing you could do about it.

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



Just because you never met one, they don't exist?

Mark Benson wrote:
Translation is not a human right

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:


This site can help by deemphasizing the native-only condition in its job postings and translator databases by withdrawing the native-only button. Encouragingly, there is consensus on this matter among both parties of this debate, and proz.com should consider implementing this forthwith.

Of course proz.com is only a small microcosm in the vast world of translation, but we need to begin somewhere, and we can as well start here.

LilianBNekipelo wrote:

Have you met anyone like that? Where would they have learned the language? I am not saying they don't exist, I am just wondering where they are, and how they managed to mastered this one of the hardest languages in the world.

Mark Benson wrote:



It's a profession.

Without going into details about particular cases that might be possible, I would just like to say that there are many other professions that might be a better choice for such people.

Having a multilingual background, as it were, is something I'm not so sure I will agree with is common among translators. Out of the translators I know, I can only think of one. Multilingual and multinational experience is common though, but that's something else. So I disagree with you.

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



Of course there are many incompetent native translators, but you will agree that there are far more competent native translators in a language pair than non-natives? Why should a client pick a non-native when they are thousands of linguistically competent native translators?

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



But I thought that selecting that button was up to the job poster? Don't you think that the job poster has the right to choose a native, if they wish to do so?

Lincoln Hui wrote:


Unless there is legitimate scientific research demonstrating that, I see no reason why it should be so. It reeks of something that people believe is true because it sounds plausible, which is pretty much the definition of a myth. A myth, after all, could hardly be called one unless it has been perpetuated to some degree, usually by people who simply pass on what they have read elsewhere without trying to verify it or apply critical thinking to it.

The elephant in the room is that you have yet to define what makes a person native in a language. You give me one and I'm pretty sure that I can give you a counterexample that occurs too frequently to be dismissed as an exception. And I am quite certain that most people who insist on using a "native speaker" or "mother tongue" are using the most stringent definition possible. I have already demonstrated that this definition simply does not work for Chinese-English pairs.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:



Of course it is not. It is the personal fiefdom of native translators.

[Edited at 2013-07-27 14:56 GMT]

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:

Job posters click on it because it is there. Were it were not there, do you think many clients would demand native translators? I don't think clients have that much of an understanding of translation to know what makes a good translator or a translation. If this thread is any evidence, even translators don't seem to have any clue of this.

It is like going into a supermarket where all these unwanted goodies are tantalizingly displayed. Ninety-nine times of out hundred, you come way your shopping bags bulging with things you hardly needed and which have burned a big hole in your pocket. You bought them not because you needed them, but because you can see them before you.

Same is the case with the native-only button. It is tantalizingly displayed on the job form and job posters unthinkingly click on it, just as they click on the Trados Only button even for jobs involving the translation of scanned images, or subtitles.

[Edited at 2013-07-27 15:05 GMT]