Ten common myths about translation quality

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:

what the pro-non-natives seem to be saying is the following:

non-natives in certain cases can produce work of higher standard than natives, especially when an International language like English is involved or in very minor language pairs.

But in other main languages (let's say FIGS), this is less likely.

Correct?

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
non-natives in certain cases can produce work of higher standard than natives, especially when an International language like English is involved or in very minor language pairs.

But in other main languages (let's say FIGS), this is less likely.

Correct?

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:

Now that there is a more or less consensus that non-natives producing quality translation is not such an exotic thing, we need to see what requires to be done at various levels in the translation sector to make this new understanding of translation to reflect in business processes adopted by the various stakeholders - which are translators, agencies and this site. The end clients too should ideally be included, but since in a sense they include the entire humanity, it would be too big a task for us.

Let us see what each of these three stakeholders would now need to do.

Translators have the easiest burden - they only need to outgrow the myth that only natives can produce quality translation and internalize the more nuanced understanding of what translation is and how high level proficiency is acquired by different people in their working languages. They can also contribute to quietly burying the myth by not doing anything to further animate it.

Agencies will have a slightly heavier burden, especially those that have in place systems that consciously exclude non-native translators, which all would have to be redesigned. They would also have to work out new metricies for identifying qualified translators as they can now no longer rely on the single-factor metric of "only native translators". Much of their legacy database accumulated using the native-only criterion will now become unusable and they would have to begin all over again to collect a new database of translators. They would also have to embark upon a massive retraining exercise for their PMs, especially the older ones with entrenched views about native is best.

And finally, this site would have to retire the native button and redesign the site around more inclusive principles that give equal opportunities to all proficient translators.

On the face of it, these can appear difficult, but most industries and businesses are continuously redefining themselves in the light of new knowledge and this exercise will only strengthen all the parties concerned in the long run.

[Edited at 2013-07-28 13:16 GMT]

Charlotte Farrell wrote:

My conclusion on the matter of translators translating into a language that is not their native is as follows: if you have an exceptional command of the target language, then this is more than acceptable and in fact can result in a more faithful rendering of the source text; if your command of the target language is lacking in any way, then you shouldn't translate into it.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:

Now that there is a more or less consensus that non-natives producing quality translation is not such an exotic thing

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



but all the "non-natives" in this thread claim to be very good at it. Which is not the problem. The problem is that most non-natives are not good at it, and also quite a few of natives. I'm trying to explain that a non-native being exceptionally good is the exception, and that in general you will find a lot of very competent natives doing the job pretty well, which makes the need of non-natives redundant. My guess is that most non-natives looking for work in their passive language do so because there isn't a great demand for their active language, hence "let's all translate into English too" business...

Very minor languages is a different matter, though.

Balasubramaniam L. wrote:

Now that there is a more or less consensus that non-natives producing quality translation is not such an exotic thing, we need to see what requires to be done at various levels in the translation sector to make this new understanding of translation to reflect in business processes adopted by the various stakeholders - which are translators, agencies and this site. The end clients too should ideally be included, but since in a sense they include the entire humanity, it would be too big a task for us.

Let us see what each of these three stakeholders would now need to do.

Translators have the easiest burden - they only need to outgrow the myth that only natives can produce quality translation and internalize the more nuanced understanding of what translation is and how high level proficiency is acquired by different people in their working languages. They can also contribute to quietly burying the myth by not doing anything to further animate it.

Agencies will have a slightly heavier burden, especially those that have in place systems that consciously exclude non-native translators, which all would have to be redesigned. They would also have to work out new metricies for identifying qualified translators as they can now no longer rely on the single-factor metric of "only native translators". Much of their legacy database accumulated using the native-only criterion will now become unusable and they would have to begin all over again to collect a new database of translators. They would also have to embark upon a massive retraining exercise for their PMs, especially the older ones with entrenched views about native is best.

And finally, this site would have to retire the native button and redesign the site around more inclusive principles that give equal opportunities to all proficient translators.

On the face of it, these can appear difficult, but most industries and businesses are continuously redefining themselves in the light of new knowledge and this exercise will only strengthen all the parties concerned in the long run.

[Edited at 2013-07-28 13:16 GMT]

Charlotte Farrell wrote:
My conclusion on the matter of translators translating into a language that is not their native is as follows: if you have an exceptional command of the target language, then this is more than acceptable and in fact can result in a more faithful rendering of the source text; if your command of the target language is lacking in any way, then you shouldn't translate into it.