| Translation is not a single cohesive market or profession | Aug 11, 2015 |
Jeff Whittaker wrote:
takes common words like (the, and, or) and considers them as unpaid matches or repetitions? People have given in to the notion of discounts for sentence matches, so why not repetitions at the word level too? What happens when someone designs a computer system that times how long it takes you to translate each sentence and pays you accordingly? What happens when someone designs a computer system that compares your translation to a machine translation/TM and only pays you for the words that change? What happens when someone designs a computer system that chops a document up into 2000 pieces and sends each one to a different crowdsourced translator resulting in the instant translation of a 100,000 word project? What happens when someone designs a computer system that pays two-three translators pennies to verify a machine translation sentence by sentence and only kicks out the "bad" translations to be "post edited"?
All of this already exists.
The thing is, translation is not a cohesive market and profession. There are many market segments, and when one peels off the superficial label of "Translation", one find different groups, with different skills, different expertise, different approach, different circumstances, and generally very little in common.
Those groups are mostly ignorant about the other groups (especially those above them), and think of their little sliver of the world as the entire world.
Technology is just a tool and therefore is not to blame. One will find that in different market segments the exact same tools are used completely differently.
Some segments (let's call them the commotidizing market) are dominated by intermediaries (i.e. brokers in the most basic term of the word, as opposed to translation practices) whose business model is to sell high, buy low, and is based on driving large volumes. They are often served by second and third tier brokers, to form an industry-within-the-industry. An industry, by the way, that is know cannibalizing itself as the big players are trying to gain market share in preparation for the day in which they clients will switch to a single translation supplier, instead of multiple ones as per their risk management methodologies, while trying to abosrb the profession into their vision of an all-encompassing IT-based translation "industry". But I digress.
In this market technology is used only if it can "secure" discounts from translators. The best proof of that is that technologies that cannot be used for that purpose are completely ignored, even if they are really useful (in the hands of a professional). In other market segments this same technology is used to for a completely different purpose: to help professionals delivers better service and results for their clients. So the technology is not to blame, it is just a tool. The problem is the business model, perhaps, but this business model exists since the dawn of time, it is just the methods and details that change.
There is no point in trying to change this business model. It won't change, and skills or competence are not even a requirement or important for these people. This market also serves clients with large amount of content, but usually low-risk, low-importance, short shelf-life, so the clients are more concerned with the cost than quality. And yes, there are also those who will forever be price oriented no matter how important the content is, and will learn only through their mistakes, it at all. But there are others client as well.
So the solution is: acting like any professional who wants to advance their career and start conducting our affairs as business owners; or in other words -- move upmarket.
What seems to be the prevalent notion that the natural course of life is for translators to work mainly or exclusively with (i.e. be dependent on) agencies is just the self-serving agenda these brokers rely on, and are able to push because they control all the easily accessible gateways to the market (including most of the associations).
Try to break free of the market(s) dominated by this type of intermediaries as much as you can. Change specialty (or get specialized) if and as required, and get more proactive about one's career management.
Even "good agencies" (ones that run by translators and usually specialize in certain fields and language combinations) require different approach than just being "passive on the internet" and wasting time on bidding platforms. One needs to have the required skills, and put time and effort into becoming more specialized, but none of this will matter if one looks (or worse, wait) for clients in all the wrong places.
It is not necessarily easy, but there is an entire world out there and people should not lose sight of this.
There are PROs and CONs to everything, nothing is perfect, not even close. The trick is to be honest about what is one comfortable with and capable of. For example, some prefer to work in the commiditizing market because there is virtually no accountability. When no one cares about quality, there is very little that can go wrong and this is the winning PRO argument in their book. For some this works and they will be lost elsewhere, for others not so much. One should work to find his or her way to a situation in which the PROs outweigh the CONs.
| | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
