Rush job. IT>EN. Due tomorrow (23-Sep) at 10am CET. Topic: contracts.

Legal translators with a spare capacity of at least 2,000 words please contact us at info@intrawelt.it.

Fred Brooks’ book, “The Mythical Man Month” (buy it now at Amazon), so famous within the software engineering world that it makes your eyes sting, is applicable to almost every field of human endeavour.

I read the book over 25 years ago so you might think that the fundamentals of software engineering haven’t changed all that much. Well, I’m not sure about that, but I do think that our fundamental approach to projects (whatever project in whatever field) hasn’t changed.

We received a call on Tuesday: 150,000 words had to be translated from Italian into English by Friday morning.  To be precise, the call was on Tuesday afternoon and delivery was required Friday morning first thing.

72 hours (not even) to translate 150,000 words is roughly 2,000 words an hour (most translators do 2,000 words a day and don’t tend to work 24 hours a day). And that’s not counting any revision or quality checks. In order to hit the delivery, a veritable troupe of translators was created and set to work. [Not sure if there is a collective noun for translators but although the alliteration is ok, maybe a "symposium of translators" would be better...thoughts on a postcard to...]

Even with the best will in the world, a rush job is a rush job. Quality kinda goes out the window. And with so many translators involved, consistency kinda goes out the window. The only positive, I suppose, is that the price kinda goes out the window too – the client will pay whatever it takes.

If our translation were a piece of software it would be so horribly bug-ridden that it would be unusable; in fact it probably wouldn’t even run. But bugs in software are easy to see. “Bugs” in a translation are quite different – that’s why we do proof-reading and quality checks. That’s why simply applying more resources, as Mr Brooks says, isn’t the answer.

Whichever way I look at this job, I cannot see how we don’t end up snookered. If we had turned the job down, the client would simply have found another translation agency to say “yes”. And we might have lost the client forever. It’s certainly a risk. But in doing the job, despite every caveat, the client might still complain about the translation quality and might decide to choose another agency anyway.

But what really keeps me awake at night is the client. It must have taken weeks if not months to produce the original document. 150,000 words is a pretty chunky print job. If I had been the author of that document, I wonder how I’d feel if my company valued the translation at three days’ worth.

Now before you start replying with “yes but” -  sometimes emergencies happen, someone can make a mistake – let’s think about the consequences. What if the document is a company prospectus and is being used to seek investments for millions of pounds. How much would you invest, knowing that the 200-page English document you’re reading was translated in three days by 30 different translators?

Fortunately, this wasn’t this case, but it makes you wonder, doesn’t it…exactly where will that translation go? and exactly how will it be used?

I like peanut butter. Do you know how many different brands and types of peanut butter there are? (I stopped counting at 74). But I like just peanuts in my peanut butter – no added sugar nor salt – and I feel better buying the organically grown stuff too. Know how big my choice is now? A lot smaller.

When it comes to translation services, you’ve got another massive choice. And if you don’t speak German how can you judge the translation? How can you “filter out” translation agencies or freelance translators?

It’s not easy but consider an average UK-based freelance professional translator (sources/assumptions are listed at the end). A careful and thorough experienced professional can translate about 2,000 words a day or 10,000 words a week. If the translator works 48 weeks a year (well, they must take a holiday sometime!), they translate 480,000 words a year.

The entry-level translator salary is £22,000 a year: 4.5p per word.
Experienced translators can earn £35,000 a year: 7p per word.
And senior translators could reach £50,000 a year: 10p per word.

But just as every author has their work reviewed, so every translation should be checked. “Proof-reading” really means “copy-editing and proof-reading” because we compare the translated text with the original and check the translation. Rates tend to range from a third to a half of the translation cost (although many charge by the hour).

So the next time you need a translation done, consider a senior translator will charge 10p word, then the reviewer will charge 3p-5p per word.

And if you have a large project, or many language combinations, factor in the Project Management costs too.

If you’ve just Googled “English German translation” and agreed 3p a word, are you buying peanut butter made from just organic peanuts or are you buying peanut butter made with added dextrose, palm oil, sugar, salt, colouring, flavouring and preservative?

Which would you rather put into your system?

To translate or to interprete: that’s the real question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind of the client to correct their mistake or to take a guess and deliver the wrong service.

“Exactly what is this nonsense?”, I hear you ask.

Let me explain. A client called us recently and asked whether we could provide a translator. Our conversation went like this:

client: “I need a translator.”
intrawelt: “Of course! No problem. What do you need translated?”
c: “I don’t know. The meeting’s next week.”
i: “The meeting? So you want the minutes translated?”
c: “What? No, I need a translator to tell me what the Japanese are saying.”
i: “Oh…..so you need an interpreter.”
c: “No. I need a translator.”

So you can see our dilemma. Technically, an interpreter works with the spoken word and a translator will work with the written word. But some clients use the terms interchangeably. To us, it makes a huge different because the skills required are quite different (although there is some overlap, admittedly). But to the client, it’s all the same.

And I can see the client’s point of view – they need someone to help them communicate with their Japanese colleagues. Really, the client doesn’t care if we call them Interpreters, Translators, or Mary or Mark. What they care about is what’s “inside the box” – the service – rather than the label. Our trick, as a business, is to establish what that service is and to deliver it. Fortunately, we do have an interpreter called Mary.