| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Will translating, as a job, survive ? Thread poster: kistengeist224
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| Will translating, as a job surive? | Nov 10, 2015 |
I don't have a cristall ball, but I wouldn't worry too much, unless the Star Trek computer becomes reality, which is the end for all of us translators.:-)
| | | | | Yes, and not only in literary translation | Nov 11, 2015 |
When asked about the capabilities of machine translation, advocates of this technology always admit that a machine will never be able to translate Shakespeare correctly and that, therefore, there will always be a need of translators.
While a lot of work written in a controlled language (another recent trend) will definitely go to machine translation and never come back to human translators (not even for a review), there is a vast amount of specialised texts (technical, scientific, l... See more When asked about the capabilities of machine translation, advocates of this technology always admit that a machine will never be able to translate Shakespeare correctly and that, therefore, there will always be a need of translators.
While a lot of work written in a controlled language (another recent trend) will definitely go to machine translation and never come back to human translators (not even for a review), there is a vast amount of specialised texts (technical, scientific, legal, philosophical, social, political, advertising, and many others) that are highly specific and written by humans for a one-time purpose, and will need translation by specialised humans for a very long time indeed.
Make sure you prepare properly to produce high level translations in one or more of these fields, and you will definitely have plenty of work. Preparing properly also means learning to market your services and communicate/negotiate effectively, doing a degree in translation if you have a chance or at least reserve part of your income for continuous training, and keeping up with IT and its developments. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Off-topic: Tax advisers on the way out? | Nov 11, 2015 |
Sheila Wilson wrote: Great to see some of the others that are on the way out: cold callers, accountants, tax advisers, local government paper-pushers... Bye, bye!!
Tax advisers on the way out? Never... At least not in Spain, where tax regulation is so crazy that you cannot reasonably take care of it yourself without becoming an expert and leaving your profession behind.
| | | | Roy OConnor (X)
Local time: 18:37
German to English
| A question of creativity | Nov 11, 2015 |
The link to the BBC website posted by Gabriele Demuth is interesting, but it is flawed as it lumps translators in with authors and writers. I find writing far more creative than translating. Ok I know that those us who are translating Shakespeare & Co are more creative than those translating operating instructions, but it is all a question of degree. Shakespeare has still done most of the creative work, his translators are only going the last mile.
My point is this: robots have difficulty when it comes to creative ideas. To put translators in the same bag as authors/writers is incorrect. Robots can translate a lot easier than writing novels and poetry. So the future for translators generally is not as rosy as the BBC link suggests.
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Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:37
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| The idea and the word | Nov 11, 2015 |
Roy OConnor wrote:
The link to the BBC website posted by Gabriele Demuth is interesting, but it is flawed as it lumps translators in with authors and writers. I find writing far more creative than translating.
Agreed, although I think the two disciplines are very different.
I would argue that writers primarily express ideas and the ideas are at least as important as the expression. Writing beautifully about trivia means you're a competent stylist, nothing more. Writing badly about important thoughts means that you're unlikely to affect people's lives.
The best writers express important ideas in ways that leave a deep impression on their audience.
Dan
| | | | | Yes, its a toy, but | Nov 11, 2015 |
Roy OConnor wrote: The link to the BBC website posted by Gabriele Demuth is interesting, but it is flawed as it lumps translators in with authors and writers. I find writing far more creative than translating. Ok I know that those us who are translating Shakespeare & Co are more creative than those translating operating instructions, but it is all a question of degree. Shakespeare has still done most of the creative work, his translators are only going the last mile. My point is this: robots have difficulty when it comes to creative ideas. To put translators in the same bag as authors/writers is incorrect. Robots can translate a lot easier than writing novels and poetry. So the future for translators generally is not as rosy as the BBC link suggests.
It depends on how you view translation, as I see it, translation is not too far removed from writing as you have to bear in mind why the client wants a text translated in the first place, what is the client trying to achieve and who is going to read the text.
A lot of my work is ultimately connected with marketing and trying to reach a certain audience, so some creativity is always required as you have to think about how to best reach the client's goal. In my experience, if the client wants an article or blog for their website translated then they do not want the most faithful rendering, they want a good article that their audience will want to read and find engaging. Therefore, I think creativity in translation is part of most translators' daily routine and not something that is only valid for literature and poetry.
Although I think in some areas MT and PEMT is a valid time saver, eg. simple statements, lists ... but on the whole?
[Edited at 2015-11-11 09:45 GMT]
| | | | Roy OConnor (X)
Local time: 18:37
German to English
| The juicy creative bit is already done | Nov 11, 2015 |
@Gabriele, of course I agree that the scope for creativity in translation varies a lot. Nevertheless, the ideas, opinions, beliefs, prejudices and conclusions etc. are the author's creative work. He/she may have started off with a completely blank piece of paper. The translator on the other hand has the whole article to work on.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 18:37
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Not on the way out, Sheila... | Nov 11, 2015 |
Sheila Wilson wrote: Great to see some of the others that are on the way out: cold callers, accountants, tax advisers, local government paper-pushers... Bye, bye!!
Those are not "on the way out" -- they're simply on the way to be replaced by machines doing the same thing, i.e. cold callers will still exist but will be smart computers programmed with human voices.
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Roy OConnor wrote:
@Gabriele, of course I agree that the scope for creativity in translation varies a lot. Nevertheless, the ideas, opinions, beliefs, prejudices and conclusions etc. are the author's creative work. He/she may have started off with a completely blank piece of paper. The translator on the other hand has the whole article to work on.
If you are talking about novelists, poets etc, they may start from a blank piece of paper, but making a living is however often not their first priority either...
On the other hand, although a bit more creativity is involved, many journalists, editors or anyone who writes for their website do not start with a blank piece of paper, they have source material rules to follow ...
Maybe we will just have to disagree
| | | | Roy OConnor (X)
Local time: 18:37
German to English
| A question of perception | Nov 11, 2015 |
Gabriele Demuth wrote: Roy OConnor wrote:
@Gabriele, of course I agree that the scope for creativity in translation varies a lot. Nevertheless, the ideas, opinions, beliefs, prejudices and conclusions etc. are the author's creative work. He/she may have started off with a completely blank piece of paper. The translator on the other hand has the whole article to work on. If you are talking about novelists, poets etc, they may start from a blank piece of paper, but making a living is however often not their first priority either... On the other hand, although a bit more creativity is involved, many journalists, editors or anyone who writes for their website do not start with a blank piece of paper, they have source material rules to follow ... Maybe we will just have to disagree
As an example, take my own experience in writing technical articles. This might involve interviewing an engineer. A few bullet points would be defined, a data sheet or specification could change hands and a few photographs supplied.
Back at the office I write the article based on the information given. The idea is to provide an interesting article which tells a story and is interesting to other engineers in the same field. Hopefully, they will be able to relate the described application or project to their own work.
The creative aspect of the work appears to me to be more when writing the article myself than when translating an article written by a German engineer.
In the end it's probably just a question of my own perception.
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:37
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Gabriele Demuth wrote:
,,,,,,,as I see it, translation is not too far removed from writing as you have to bear in mind why the client wants a text translated in the first place, what is the client trying to achieve and who is going to read the text.
A lot of my work is ultimately connected with marketing and trying to reach a certain audience, so some creativity is always required as you have to think about how to best reach the client's goal. In my experience, if the client wants an article or blog for their website translated then they do not want the most faithful rendering, they want a good article that their audience will want to read and find engaging. Therefore, I think creativity in translation is part of most translators' daily routine and not something that is only valid for literature and poetry.
Although I think in some areas MT and PEMT is a valid time saver, eg. simple statements, lists ... but on the whole?
Thank you Gabriele. Your comment exactly describes my experience too.
Sometimes I hear other people talking about "transcreation", and I wonder what kind of non-creative translation they usually do !
Even in a technical document, e.g. a surveyor's report on the condition of an existing building, the surveyor may write with professional "flourish" and may wish to write with a certain tone that communicates probity and credibility, by using a particular phraseology and tone. So even in such cases, a high degree of creativity is required.
[Edited at 2015-11-11 12:36 GMT]
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 17:37
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| @ Tomás and Samuel | Nov 11, 2015 |
Sheila Wilson wrote: Great to see some of the others that are on the way out: cold callers, accountants, tax advisers, local government paper-pushers... Bye, bye!!
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Tax advisers on the way out? Never... At least not in Spain, where tax regulation is so crazy that you cannot reasonably take care of it yourself without becoming an expert and leaving your profession behind.
True, Tomás, I certainly don't understand the taxation over here. But I'm not sure the "advisers" aren't complicating it to suit their own purposes. I've recently paid three of them for some very important advice involving large numbers (for me, anyway). Guess how many different answers I received? There's "creative accountancy" going on out there where maybe we'd all be better off having a bit of machine logic injected into the mix.
Hang on, that sounds a bit like the reverse of our situation. The last thing a translation needs is machine logic.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Those are not "on the way out" -- they're simply on the way to be replaced by machines doing the same thing, i.e. cold callers will still exist but will be smart computers programmed with human voices.
Oh but that makes all the difference, Samuel. I was taught never to be rude to anyone; but they never said I couldn't tell a machine exactly what I thought of it/him/her (delete as appropriate).
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Jan Truper
Germany
Local time: 18:37
Member (2016)
English to German
| I'm not worried | Nov 12, 2015 |
kistengeist224 wrote:
Will translating, as a job, survive ?
Machine translating becomes better and better each day, what do you think will happen to translating in 5,10,15 years ?
For any translation worth its salt, a machine would have to be capable of true AI. We're far away from that.
Here's an interesting article on Machine translation:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/dec/19/google-translate-computers-languages
| | | | | As long as there are source texts as PDF-files, translators will be needed... | Nov 13, 2015 |
At a completely different level, as long as there are paper documents to be translated, and they are scanned as PDFs, I reckon humans will be needed.
I have seen two documents this week where PDF and converters have made a complete dog's dinner of the texts because they can't cope with the three extra letters in the Danish alphabet. (Æ æ, Ø ø and Å å) I did not have the slightest problem - the original in Danish was fine.
I can't imagine that Polish and Czech just... See more At a completely different level, as long as there are paper documents to be translated, and they are scanned as PDFs, I reckon humans will be needed.
I have seen two documents this week where PDF and converters have made a complete dog's dinner of the texts because they can't cope with the three extra letters in the Danish alphabet. (Æ æ, Ø ø and Å å) I did not have the slightest problem - the original in Danish was fine.
I can't imagine that Polish and Czech just breeze through the converters, or that OCR never has trouble with tildes, umlauts and diacritics in other languages. They must have problems all the way through with different alphabets. Arabic is beautiful for humans, but don't tell me computers always get it right.
MT has enough trouble with homonyms as it is, without confusing vowels and simply misspelling large numbers of words.
Humans can usually read and understand these documents correctly - they compensate for enormous numbers of errors. If computers can't even read the source correctly, and so far they don't, then you can forget all about translating it accurately.
Not all texts are available in electronically readable form.
For that reason alone, humans are going to be needed for a while.
[Edited at 2015-11-13 10:11 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Hm, what about a typist correcting the errors or typing it into Word?
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