Multilingualism and cultural identity have attracted much attention in recent years, but there has been little research into how these relate to professional translators and interpreters. Translation tends to be viewed as an adhoc, routine activity carried out by a multilingual child, for example, as opposed to a professional activity.

This session really struck a cord as I’ve found myself in the process of a bit of an identity spring-clean since my move earlier this year. Suffice to say, these are the kinds of questions I’ve been asking myself as I work out exactly what it means to be my particular mix of multilingual, and more significantly, multicultural, in a society where I perceive my position has shifted in relation to the norm, compared to where it was among my European friends and colleagues. Which elements of my identity am I prepared to adapt, and which are non-negotiable? How important is it to me that I fit? Do I hold these views out of habit, or because they really mean something to me? I’m starting to sound like an angsty teenager all over again, only hopefully minus the bad hair and dodgy clothes.

Badalotti’s words soothed my soul. Apparently, there is a line of study that views language as a mere aspect of social identity, in line with the psychological theory of social identity. In other words, a language is just one of the ways an individual may seek membership of a particular social group, as part of their normal everyday course of interactions. This means too that an individual’s multilingual state is dynamic and interrelated with their experiences of identity and language in general. The icing on the cake is that, according to Badalotti, professional translators and interpreters in particular are more likely to identify with a blend of cultures referred to as an “interculture”, rather than any one of the cultures associated with their languages. (Anthony Pym has an interesting paper on this and the role of allegiances to a profession here: PDF.)

I think there are many different ways of being multilingual, and certainly more than the literature currently identifies. Without a doubt, this approach more closely represents my experiences of multilingualism than anything else I’ve read to date. It certainly sounds more holistic than the widely-quoted assumption that multilingual individuals construct different identities for each of their languages, and that these multiple identities are somehow in a constant state of conflict. More Zen-like, somehow, and definitely saner.

With any luck, Badalotti’s research will go some way towards raising the status of professional translation in the multilingual sphere from a routine by-product of a split personality to a fully-fledged professional activity, carried out by trained (and balanced) individuals. As for me, I can be relieved that my shifting allegiance to languages is a normal part of adjusting to a different set of social groups. Now that really does sound like adolescence all over again.

More than that though, her post contains some really useful nuggets of inspiration. Try this on for size:

Jost Zetzsche, of Toolkit fame, spoke about our age-old idealisation of the patron saint of translators, St. Jerome. We risk being constrained by this idealisation of a translator who, let’s face it, innovative as he was at the time, was born c. 347. Instead, we need to roll with the times and think about the true purpose of our texts…

Great write-up, Philippa!

Thankfully last weekend’s 2008 AUSIT Biennial National Conference in Brisbane delivered just the shot of enthusiasm I needed to top up my motivation levels. My one and only aim in attending was to gain an overview of translation in Australia. What I got was a lesson on how the oldest profession in the world is forging its place in country with needs far different to those I’d ever considered before.

Yes, this is where I live now. And yes, this is the frankly breathtaking mode of transport I used to commute to the AUSIT conference last weekend

A tale of two associations: general impressions

So far I get the impression that Australia’s AUSIT represents a more ‘generalist’ and broader spectrum of T&I practitioners, whereas the UK’s ITI in comparison seems to represent a more tightly focussed practitioner profile. For me, one of the benefits of the former is that I’m getting a wider view of the field of T&I and learning more about where I fit within it. (It’s also making me think about the labels or categories we use to identify ourselves within T&I - but I’m a long way off being close to formulating a post on that). As a relatively established translator with a good educative base, a strong sense of professionalism and several years’ experience under my belt, this is a refreshing change of perspective and has opened my eyes to many new possibilities and ideas. However, notwithstanding the different market demands, I think I would have found it much harder to get established if I had started my translation career here.

I also got some really interesting insights into the way the different interplay between factors common to both countries has had an impact on their respective translation landscapes: the needs of those requiring translation and interpreting (T&I) services, the environments in which T&I is practiced, the demands of the ‘client’, the status of the languages in question and the varying education levels of current practitioners. In terms of translator training, in particular, this conference really brought home to me just how far apart Europe, and more specifically the UK, and Australia are in this area.

More observations: TBC

Here are some more general observations, taking AUSIT and the ITI as being generally representative of the profession in their respective countries:

1. Interpreters are more strongly represented in AUSIT.
2. Many AUSIT practitioners seem to be both translators and interpreters. In the ITI, there is less of an overlap.
3. In common with members of professional associations across much of Europe, many AUSIT translators work both into and out of their native tongue. This has always been a bit of a contentious issue in professional circles in the UK, with the ITI code of conduct stipulating members work only into their native language while the CIOL leaves things much more open. (Personally I think there’s room for all sorts, but don’t denying using my native-language policy as a USP)
4. Community-language* interpreting seems to be the mainstay of T&I in Australia
5. Aboriginal languages and related issues were well represented at this year’s AUSIT conference and this was a real eye-opener for me. It would be interesting to see the degree to which the role of indigenous languages was dealt with in professional associations in other countries where applicable, e.g. the USA.
6. Auslan also had a stronger presence than I’ve noticed at previous ITI conferences.
7. Government bodies in various guises seem to have a huge influence on the profession in Australia. In the UK the lack of regulation is sometimes thought to hinder efforts to raise the status and standards of translation practitioners, but there’s a very fine line between pencil-pushing meddling and thoughtful, well-informed normalisation. I’m still open to changing my mind on this, but so far I’m not convinced that what’s happening here is really benefitting the profession.

I know these comparisons are far from scientific, and it probably seems like I’m comparing apples and pears. I know too that I’ve neglected to look fully into the historical, geographical or political realities around either association. But our profession by its very nature is rooted in the regional, yet mobile and global. Whether or not we realise, translators do have a choice as to which associations they join. So if we can’t stand up to a little international comparison, we’re asking ourselves the wrong questions.

More posts on specific sessions to follow. Image via Wikipedia

* I believe the term ‘heritage languages‘ is more commonly used in the USA, although is possibly not exactly the same ‘community languages’ does not tend to include indigenous languages.

I’ve decided to divert our house-deposit fund towards this instead - a steal at US$129,000. Can’t you just see me translating away in the front passenger seat?!

HT to Bridgette over at Unclutterer for the link.

• Proofing, revision, editing or checking: whatever you call it, find 3 steps to help navigate these murky waters here. (Nov 2007)
• Want to know how to be a true professional? This conference session I attended discussed the transition from translation student to freelance professional, but the part about professionalism is relevant to translators at any stage of their careers. (Nov 2007)
• Read my thoughts on applying occupational standards to my translation practice, with a link to more information on the CEN 15038 quality standard for translation service providers. (Apr 2007)
• Get more letters after your name. Read about the UK’s CIOL chartered linguist status and some tips gleaned from a specially organised information session I attended, along with a rundown of the requirements for qualified member status of the ITI. (Be aware these may have changed in the intervening months. Link through to the relevant website for the most up-to-date requirements.) (Feb 2008)
• Think about expanding the language-related services you offer (Dec 2007), or read some tips I picked up from a session on building sustainable customer relationships. (Mar 2007)
• If tech’s your cup of tea, you might be interested in my write-up of an ITI Conference session on corpora (May 2007) or on building a website. (Mar 2007)
• Finally, read how throwing your career path out the window could be the best thing you’ve ever done. (Apr 2007)

And thank you to everyone who took the time to do a write-up on the recent ATA Conference. Sounds like it was a great event!

Personally, I think working for direct clients has the biggest potential impact on earnings for freelance translators, and her point about being a businessperson/translator is spot on. Direct clients certainly make the world of difference for newly established and mid-career translators as they work towards a high degree of specialisation (very likely in a completely unrelated field) and try not to starve in the process. Finding these direct clients is of course another story (and one Chris Durban is eminently able to tell, in my opinion).

On another note, I do love posts like Corinne’s that acknowledge the diversity of a group, weigh up a couple of factors from a range of sources, add some personal insights and then draw something useful from it all. Excellent stuff!

(I know it’s a lengthy quote, but have a look at the length of the original post and all will become clear.)

…I can no more change my language and the sum of its discourses than I can add a cubit to my height or, sadly it seems, take a pound from my weight. Well, perhaps that’s going a little far. I can attempt to disguise my language, I can dress it up into even more elaborate and grandiose orotundity, prolixity and self-consciousness, Will Self-consciousness you might say, or I could dress it down into something stripped. Stark. Bare. Simple. It would be hard to dress it down into something raggedly demotic without it being a patronising pastiche of a street argot to which I quite evidently have no access and in whose mazy slang avenues I would soon get lost, innit? In a sense I am typecast linguistically and although I can for fun try on all kinds of brogues and dialect clothes, my voice, my style, my language is as distinctive as my fingerprints.

My language (as the sum of my discourses, as linguistic strata that betray my history, as geology or archaeology betrays history) is my language and it is a piece of who I am, perhaps even the defining piece. In my case it is in part a classical ruin, inherited boulders of Tacitus and Cicero bleaching in the sun along with grass-overrun elements of Thucydides and Aeschylus … not because I was a classical scholar, but because I was taught by classical scholars and grew up on poets, dramatists and novelists who knew the classics as intimately as most people of my generation know the Beatles and the Stones. Without knowing it therefore, heroic Ciceronian clausulae and elaborate Tacitan litotes can always be found in the English of people like me. In part classical ruin, then, my language in particular has also mixed in it elements of my three Ws, my particular world wide web, my w.w.w, Wodehouse, Waugh and Wilde, three writers who greatly excited my imagination and stimulated my language glands like no other. I would add Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett as others of whom I am consciously aware. But the language of British movies, classic novels, sixties and seventies broadcasters like Malcolm Muggeridge, James Cameron, Alistair Cooke, John Ebden, Anthony Quinton, Robert Robinson, they all played their part in informing my spoken and written utterance too, not to mention the elemental styles which in turn informed their language. As Henry Higgins reminds us in Pygmalion, English is for all of us the language of Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible. We unconsciously use the tropes, tricks and figures of our great writers, just as we might without knowing it use a tierce de Picardie or a diminished seventh when humming in the shower. And to our native English today we have added the language of American sitcom and drama, American movies and Australian soap operas…

The blog is still fairly new but it’s been interesting to watch how quickly they’ve evolved and developed their voice. Some of my favourite posts include one on foreign quotation marks,  a short piece on whistled languages, an inspired flight of poetic fancy and a light-hearted opinion piece on the current state of subtitling.

If I were to predict how blogging might evolve in the future, I’d say we’ll see more blogs run under a company banner in this way. The benefits of a group, as opposed to individual, blog are clear - a regular stream of interesting and relevant content from a range of different perspectives, views that might otherwise not get an airing. These are the voices of the often faceless project managers that many of us deal with every day. Definitely one to watch!

Speaking of Translation is hosted by Eve Bodeux and Corinne McKay, and their first 7 minute episode is available for download here. This episode should carry a warning as it may induce severe fits of frustration in any translator *not* attending the upcoming annual conference of the American Translators Association (surely I’m not the only one?!), but I’m already looking forward to a thorough debrief in next month’s episode

Well done on trying something new guys, and keep ‘em coming!

Naked Translator: You’ve worked in localisation for many years, and in many different roles. How do you see the role of the translator changing within the industry? What kinds of new tasks or jobs are they taking on?

Renato: The role of the translator is the pillar of an important production chain. Nothing happens without the translator. Good translators do not grow in trees. Good translators are scarce and becoming scarcer. Research from storage companies shows that content grows at a rate of more than 50% per year. If you assume – like we at Common Sense Advisory do – that the demand for translation grows at a lower rate of 15% to 20% per year, you would need tens of thousands of translators to come into the market every year, which is not the case.

That brings me to what is changing within the industry. Productivity. LSPs are searching for ways to deal with the dearth of good translators, and therefore investing in technology. Translators will have to find ways to produce 10 thousand words a day, even if that requires them to work with more advanced translation memories and machine translation.

Notice that I always say “good” translators. You can compare translators to wine: There are thousands of varieties of wine, but only a few of them are really good, mostly those that age well and get better as time goes by.

As to what tasks they are taking on, my answer would be that it is irrelevant. Translators are in the service business and they should provide the tasks that their clients request. The mistake is to accept to do tasks for free. If the task or job that you take on reduces your productivity, charge for it. If it increases your productivity, celebrate it. As for  the new jobs in the translation business, I would say that telephone interpreting and post-editing of machine translation are up and coming requirements. However, I would avoid asking good translators to do post-editing. That’s something that can be done by non-linguists more efficiently and with less frustration.

NT: I heard you speak at an ATC conference in London once where you said that, when it comes to selling translation, quality doesn’t matter. Can you tell us what this means for translators?

R: Quality is a given. That’s why I don’t like to talk about it. In my seminars I propose a new paradigm for the translation industry in which everybody is responsible for perfect quality at every stage of the process. It is hard to explain a two hour workshop in a couple of sentences, but in a nutshell today’s model is based on catching errors and on translators expecting that someone is going to review their work and correct mistakes. This is counterproductive, costly, and inefficient. Good translators deliver excellent quality, always. Issues are solved before the job is delivered and the review phase becomes unnecessary. As soon as people understand this, they can start charging more.

NT: What are some other typical business mistakes that you see being made by language service providers in general?

R: The most typical mistake made by LSPs is to talk too much about themselves. Once LSPs understand that selling is not telling clients about TM, about cents per word or about the translation process, but asking questions about how the client is going to use the translation and how much value the translated version is going to add to the company’s bottom line, then they will see conversations switch from price to value.

NT: Any tips on how owners of ‘micro’ translation businesses could differentiate themselves from their larger counterparts?

R: One of my favorite comeback stories is from the salesperson from a small LSP with 12 employees that was confronted with the fact that the large LSP that they were competing against had thousands of employees. “How many project managers are you going to work with in the large LSP?” the salesperson asked. “One,” said the client. “Well, that is the same number of project managers you are going to work with at our company.”

This story falls into the sales principle that says that you have to make yourself equal before you make yourself different. Think of that.

NT: Finally, what one piece of advice would you give to freelance translators interested in growing their business?

R: Value your product and mentor your colleagues. In line with the saying that the rising tide lifts all the boats, if the quality of work of all the players in the market is improved, the image of the market as a whole is improved. One of the characteristics of a good translation is that it is invisible. If the translation is bad, however, everybody notices and talks about it. So, protect your work by educating your peers.

A really interesting perspective on things, Renato – thank you!