The occupational group of certified or chartered translators was hit hard by the clout of cloud with no chance of recovery evermore. In this Internet era, a cloud-source translation yields a by far better result than a professional translation done by any highly qualified translators, simply by the sheer force of unlimited resource of global involvement. In a translation agency having a vast pool of high-performing translators, only those translators survive who deliver the best translations in terms of editor and client feedback. This world of pool is a perfectly democratic world of equal opportunity where performance is the sole criterion for success and certificates or academic degrees are mere papers both in literal and figurative senses of the word.
Translating as a freelancer since I quit my last salaried position as a trilingual secretary and translator in 2010, the best year of my personal story and history in multiple ways by the way, I currently translate for an agency specialized in academic translation and editing services, whose winning recipe is a well-tuned translator-reviewer-editor procedure. Its reputation for publication-quality English enables it to pay its freelancers more than what many other agencies even take from their clients. Yet, its rate is equivalent to about half the minimum rate of a professional translator. This is a chilling reality of a translator's life shadowed by the cloud, and it's all the more so since professional translators used to belong to the high-income population. Ideally, insofar as not employed at a handsome salary, a translator should have a clientele comprising both translation agencies and private clients in equal parts. In my case, the ratio is 4:1 by workload and 1:1 by income.
Apart from such chilling effects of cloud power on the profession of translator, the general working conditions cannot be better for freelance translators in this Internet era. They can work anywhere in the world, they no longer need to have shelffuls of reference books or ring up friends and experts for tricky terms, nor do they have to limit their fields of expertise according to their education and interest. This Internet era we are living in can be indeed called a golden age especially for translators in terms of work satisfaction and performance upgrading. Their basic qualification is not a certificate or training, but the learning and research capacity. If a bilingual translator of above-average intelligence delivers a translation falling short of perfection both in linguistic and field-specific know-how, it is indicative of the lack of either research skills or zeal for perfection or of both. At any rate, it has to be targeted to deliver a translation without leaving even a single word in doubt, and this target is not too ambitious a one, but rather a minimum performance standard, because there is nothing hidden in the ocean of the Internet, translators' guru better than the best of all linguists and specialists together.
This said, and before I go on with concrete pointers and examples for Internet-aided translation from my next blog post onward, I would like to share my code of ethics with other translators:
1. Add value to society with your translation talent.
2. There are no bad source texts; there are only bad translators.
3. Be generous with time; achievement is a more valuable currency than money.
Translating as a freelancer since I quit my last salaried position as a trilingual secretary and translator in 2010, the best year of my personal story and history in multiple ways by the way, I currently translate for an agency specialized in academic translation and editing services, whose winning recipe is a well-tuned translator-reviewer-editor procedure. Its reputation for publication-quality English enables it to pay its freelancers more than what many other agencies even take from their clients. Yet, its rate is equivalent to about half the minimum rate of a professional translator. This is a chilling reality of a translator's life shadowed by the cloud, and it's all the more so since professional translators used to belong to the high-income population. Ideally, insofar as not employed at a handsome salary, a translator should have a clientele comprising both translation agencies and private clients in equal parts. In my case, the ratio is 4:1 by workload and 1:1 by income.
Apart from such chilling effects of cloud power on the profession of translator, the general working conditions cannot be better for freelance translators in this Internet era. They can work anywhere in the world, they no longer need to have shelffuls of reference books or ring up friends and experts for tricky terms, nor do they have to limit their fields of expertise according to their education and interest. This Internet era we are living in can be indeed called a golden age especially for translators in terms of work satisfaction and performance upgrading. Their basic qualification is not a certificate or training, but the learning and research capacity. If a bilingual translator of above-average intelligence delivers a translation falling short of perfection both in linguistic and field-specific know-how, it is indicative of the lack of either research skills or zeal for perfection or of both. At any rate, it has to be targeted to deliver a translation without leaving even a single word in doubt, and this target is not too ambitious a one, but rather a minimum performance standard, because there is nothing hidden in the ocean of the Internet, translators' guru better than the best of all linguists and specialists together.
This said, and before I go on with concrete pointers and examples for Internet-aided translation from my next blog post onward, I would like to share my code of ethics with other translators:
1. Add value to society with your translation talent.
2. There are no bad source texts; there are only bad translators.
3. Be generous with time; achievement is a more valuable currency than money.
