| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13] > | From bad to worse... An advice? Native vs Non-native issue Thread poster: Inga Petkelyte
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Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:59
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Lincoln Hui wrote: Most people claiming to be "native speakers" are probably just suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. As are all people claiming to be able to distinguish a native speaker from a non-native in moments.
There may be something in what you say, but surely you will agree that with many speakers it very quickly becomes obvious that they are non-native. For some it takes longer to work it out and for a very select few, well, they are indistinguishable.
Length of exposure counts for a lot. The longer you talk or write, the more likely it is that a mistake that raises a non-native speaker flag will creep in.
During a short telephone call, without the visual cue of my very caucasian face, I could usually pass for a native Japanese speaker. On the other hand, during an hour-long meeting many of my interviewees no doubt became aware of minor oddities in my speech that no educated native speaker would perpetrate.
Patrick Porter wrote:
But perhaps increased cost pressure and shorter deadlines are having the opposite effect on quality. I mean, there is so much content out there now...just mountains of it. Some content just needs to get the point across and not necessarily have perfect grammar or even spelling.
Completely agree. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Excess quality is just a cost. Translation is not a monolithic market - quite the opposite.
Regards
Dan
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 06:29
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | The better agencies take their time over translator selection | Aug 15, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
No quality agency assumes natives do not err. That's why proofreading exists.
There you surely are wrong. Many agencies go for native translators precisely because they want to save on proofing and editing expenses, as the native provides them a false assurance that there won't be any errors in his output. This helps them to quote rock bottom prices to their clients. No wonder they pay pittances to their translators too. And if they do get into trouble over the translation, they can always claim that it was done by a native.
This clearly shows that agencies are more interested in saving their backs than in achieving the best translation.
Dan Lucas wrote: As for these "exceptions", how much effort does it take the client to find them? Given that they are, as you admit, "rare" (and I would argue that they are very rare indeed) what is the point in clients spending time looking for them? In an ideal world there would be a kind of Turing test such that if the evaluator cannot distinguish the output of a non-native translator from that of a competent native translator in a blind test, the non-native is to all intends and purposes equal to a competent native. But the automatic use of such a test would be wildly inappropriate in the real commercial world of cost pressure and short deadlines. From a business perspective it makes far more sense to add a "native speakers only" filter for jobs that require very high standards of written output in the target language. Sure, you will miss a few extraordinary (and I mean that in the literal sense) individuals, but in 99.9% of cases you will find what they have in a competent native translator. And you'll find it more quickly.
I don't think lack of time and pressure of deadline is behind the agencies' obdurate preference for native translators. The better agencies take considerable time in selecting translators. They send you forms to fill, ask for references, make you go through tests, and evaluate translation samples. It is no big deal for them to keep aside their native filter and open the selection process for all, so that even the rarest of the rare non-native competent translator has a chance. But they don't do it because of set beliefs and dogmas. And they only harm themselves in the process by missing out the ideal translator for the job and having to make do with a less qualified native.
And we all know this. That is why Jose is right when he says this discussion should actually be aimed at agencies, to motivate them to adopt more reasonable selection practices.
For example, I have gone through such selection processes for countless agencies. Not a single agency that I know of has ever tested my competence or comprehension of my source language (English). I am sure that that has been the experience of other translators too. It should not have been too difficult for agencies to devise a test to evaluate the proficiency of the translator in his source language. That they don't do it, simply indicates that these agencies base the running of their businesses on outdated and unscientific process and don't really understand how translation is done. Had they included this simple source language testing, many natives would have been found inadequate for translation jobs due to their poor skills with the source language. In the absence of such a test, many natives with poor source language competence get selected over nonnatives with a more balanced skill set of the two languages. Whose loss it in the end? Clearly it is the agencies' and the end clients'.
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 08:59
Chinese to English
| It's 2012 all over again | Aug 15, 2015 |
Lincoln Hui wrote:
Hence from a business perspective it makes far more sense for competent non-natives to market themselves as natives, and challenge the agency/client to prove otherwise.
God, this harks back to the summer 2012 thread on this subject. Now that was a monster, getting on for 200 pages long, and it started on this very issue: people who are obviously not native speakers of X (usually but not only English) claiming to be native speakers of X on their Proz profiles.
So, it happens. Yes, clearly some translators have decided that that is a good business strategy. There's really only one argument against it, and I think it's a pretty powerful argument: it's not good business practice to lie.
You cannot ask the most competent individuals to willingly and unilaterally sacrifice themselves as victims, so as to satisfy the sensibilities of the more incompetent.
Of course you can. It doesn't matter how competent you are, or how much better at translating than better-educated people you are, if you don't have a degree, you shouldn't claim that you do.
Your sentence here conflates two different groups. One is translators, the other is clients. It may be that some translators think that you shouldn't translate into a foreign language. But when clients make that requirement, it's generally not because of some philosophy they hold. It is a business practice designed to make them more profitable. So there are two separate arguments to be made here:
1) As a professional practice, should a translator work into an L2? (The philosophical argument)
2) For this particular client, why should they break their (presumably effective for them) policy and allow you to work for them into L2? (an economic argument)
I think (2) is a difficult proposition, because just by making the argument, you are asking their PM to spend more time thinking about you - i.e. adding to their costs. Obviously some people manage it, but it's hard to see the point for most. As I said above, given that there is tremendous diversity in the industry, for the most part, the better option is just to move on to other clients.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:59
Hebrew to English
| Did you miss the word "quality" Bala? | Aug 15, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote: Dan Lucas wrote:
No quality agency assumes natives do not err. That's why proofreading exists.
There you surely are wrong. Many agencies go for native translators precisely because they want to save on proofing and editing expenses, as the native provides them a false assurance that there won't be any errors in his output. This helps them to quote rock bottom prices to their clients. No wonder they pay pittances to their translators too. And if they do get into trouble over the translation, they can always claim that it was done by a native.
Dan's talking about quality agencies, you are describing cowboys.
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Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 06:29
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Doesn't hold water | Aug 15, 2015 |
The new argument in this thread seems to be that it adds to the burden of PMs if they have to sift through both natives as well as non-natives while selecting a suitable translator. This clearly does not hold water.
Dan and Ty's "quality" agencies in fact spend enormous amount of time in translator selection. It has been my experience that the time lag between the start of the process and the actual materializing of a translation job can be months. So PMs don't have time or are too ... See more The new argument in this thread seems to be that it adds to the burden of PMs if they have to sift through both natives as well as non-natives while selecting a suitable translator. This clearly does not hold water.
Dan and Ty's "quality" agencies in fact spend enormous amount of time in translator selection. It has been my experience that the time lag between the start of the process and the actual materializing of a translation job can be months. So PMs don't have time or are too harried is not true. They have plenty of time to do it if they want to do it. The problem is dogma and superstition comes in the way.
Also, agencies and PMs don't go through the selection process for every job, instead they do it for every translator and once they have a good translator they stick with him for years. The time spent in selecting the best translator, therefore, is a one time investment which will repay them over and over again for as long as they continue to work with the translator. I have worked for decades with certain agencies for whom I have gone through the selection process just once.
And why are we so concerned about the burden on the PMs? Do they show any consideration on us when they impose on us a mountain of paperwork and red tape? Here is a thread started by Heinrich Pesch that many here will find instructive in this context:
http://www.proz.com/forum/money_matters/289484-all_those_invoicing_schemes.html
If you want to improve our profession agencies will have to overcome the inertia of precedent and set practices. Every other profession constantly scrutinises and improves its working practices to fine tune them in the best interests of its members. Why should translation be an exception? And why should translators be more worried about the inconveniences imposed on agencies than about the injustices done to their fellow translators?
[Edited at 2015-08-15 09:18 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Peter Zhuang
Germany
Local time: 02:59
German to English
+ ...
| Giving my own opinion on growing up multilingual | Aug 15, 2015 |
Patrick Porter wrote: Maria S. Loose, LL.M. wrote:
...First of all, there are lots of immigrants in Europe who speak one language at home and another one in school. Then there are so many mixed couples. Also, there are numerous officially bilingual countries and even bilingual regions, such as the region of Brussels, Belgium, which has two official languages. Finally, teenagers spend whole years abroad, study abroad etc. All this is due to globalization. There are loads of people here in Europe who have two native languages.... And by the way, I too agree that living in Europe with the geographical proximity of such a multitude of languages is a big difference from here in the U.S. (despite the significant multilingual and multicultural population...what? you didn't know that existed here?). Although I don't have any evidence (other than straw-men and anecdotes) to back it up, but it would seem to necessarily lead to a difference in attitudes, approaches, and competency in second and third languages...Advantage: Europeans.
Hello Patrick, Maria had the discussion about multilingualism probably because some people do not sufficiently understand what growing up multilingual entails.
I get the impression (from people here and everyday encounters) that some people think growing up multilingual means only taking foreign language lessons at school for a few years. ("So what? I took six years of French in school and can still hardly order coffee in French")
To me, growing up multilingual means something more than that (In my case, English one of the languages. I know, boring, boo!); it also means consuming media in different languages and, more importantly, learning how to code switch according to circumstances. When at home, speak in a dialect; when needed, speak in Chinese; when with friends, speak in creole English; when at work, use standard English (*groan* just as an example).
Given, not everyone who grew up multilingual would become equally good at speaking all their languages. But then again, that is not what it means to be a native speaker of those languages.
In the end, we are living in the internet age. It is no longer contemporary to think that someone can't be native in a certain language without ever setting foot in countries where standard version of the language is more commonly (but not always) spoken.
[Edited at 2015-08-15 11:28 GMT]
| | | | Lincoln Hui
Hong Kong
Local time: 08:59
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
| Clients' interests over the translator's? Wow. | Aug 15, 2015 |
But when clients make that requirement, it's generally not because of some philosophy they hold. It is a business practice designed to make them more profitable.
As is the natural response to such requirements, non? Why not argue that these clients and agencies are promoting what you perceive to be dishonest behavior?
So, it happens. Yes, clearly some translators have decided that that is a good business strategy. There's really only one argument against it, and I think it's a pretty powerful argument: it's not good business practice to lie.
I will simply answer that until the polemicists can actually agree on a single definition for native, they can hardly expect to be taken seriously. And this is frankly my chief beef with those imbeciles.
With an ever-so-slight change of wording in the reply email it stops being a lie, a change that only a highly perceptive reader can detect. Consider it a competency test - if you cannot tell the difference, you are not in a position to judge another's language skill.
Unfortunately for you, most people - native or otherwise - are none too persistent in the use of accurate wording.
2) For this particular client, why should they break their (presumably effective for them) policy and allow you to work for them into L2? (an economic argument)
I think (2) is a difficult proposition, because just by making the argument, you are asking their PM to spend more time thinking about you - i.e. adding to their costs.
You see, they don't need to know. You are the one who wants them to go through such extra effort.
If you are able to pass for one in practice, no one can prove you false. The client does not ever have the right to access that information, unlike the government clearance scenario that some nincompoop used as analogy.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:59
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| It's a numbers game | Aug 15, 2015 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
Dan and Ty's "quality" agencies in fact spend enormous amount of time in translator selection. It has been my experience that the time lag between the start of the process and the actual materializing of a translation job can be months.
My experience is more like days, but that's beside the point.
The point is that agencies want to spend as little time (i.e. cost) as possible on finding talent. Any reduction in time spent recruiting translators - an effort that seems to be ongoing for most agencies - means more time for marketing to or dealing directly with clients. Time, in that sense, really is money.
It would be illogical for a high-quality agency to sift through 100 non-native speaker translators if experience tells them that, say, only 5 such non-natives will have target language skills of a high enough quality to meet the PM's standards. That's a hit ratio of 5%. (Note that the argument is not that such highly skilled people don't exist, simply that they make up a tiny percentage of the total.)
The PM could instead look at 100 native speaker translators and instead find (let's say) 25 translators that meet the agency's target language standards. That dramatically improved hit ratio of 25% implies a far better return on time invested. All other things being equal, it means that the agency will be able to recoup the cost of finding that talent five times more quickly if it restricts its search to native speakers.
Your argument would only make sense if the hit ratio for non-native speakers and native speakers were similar. Experience and common sense should tell us that the hit ratios are not remotely comparable.
Regards
Dan
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Phil Hand
China
Local time: 08:59
Chinese to English
| Linguistic science redux | Aug 15, 2015 |
Lincoln Hui wrote:
Why not argue that these clients and agencies are promoting what you perceive to be dishonest behavior?
Because it's not dishonest behaviour. You might disagree with it, but it's not dishonest. There is a very reasonable argument to be made that nativeness is an important criterion, and the agencies are trying to apply it in an open, honest way.
This is pretty important: you can't go slinging that accusation of dishonesty around just because you disagree. It is, of course, possible that they're wrong. But they are not being dishonest or prejudiced.
I will simply answer that until the polemicists can actually agree on a single definition for native...
This is pretty standard claptrap. No, it is not necessary for those with whom you disagree to define their terms to your satisfaction. That's true in every intellectual disagreement. The fact that no-one really knows where human life should be said to begin is not an argument for anti-abortionists; the fact that no-one knows why the big bang happened is not an argument for creationists.
Of course there are a range of different definitions for native language. That does not stop it from being a useful, even important, concept.
You see, they don't need to know. You are the one who wants them to go through such extra effort.
Indeed I am not. If the client doesn't want to know, that's fine. If they ask, and you say: "That's not relevant information. I translate at a professional level into X, and my childhood is irrelevant," and they accept it, then that's fine. And those who can get themselves certified can use ATA or whatever status as evidence that they work as a professional level - I'm all in favour of all this good stuff.
But pretending that native isn't a thing is just rubbish. So we get ridiculous circumlocutions like the one that Annamaria quoted earlier in the thread: ""should be able to read for a long while before suspecting the translator is not a native speaker". Native is the standard against which we measure (because there aren't any other standards!). Given that, it is reasonable and normal to consider it in the translation procedure.
Incidentally, it's worth mentioning personal interests here. Peter and others have suggested more than once that the native "bias" only works against them. That I or other English natives are immune from it. I don't know if you know this, but there is plenty of money to be made translating into Chinese. I've been asked by more than one racist client to work into Chinese because that would obviously be a bit more trustworthy. Now, I'm not suffering. I have plenty of work in my chosen pair. But it is not the case that I'm not forgoing potentially lucrative business by restricting myself to this pair, nor that I've never been excluded from jobs on the basis of my native language.
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 08:59
Chinese to English
| Pair-specific? | Aug 15, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
Your argument would only make sense if the hit ratio for non-native speakers and native speakers were similar. Experience and common sense should tell us that the hit ratios are not remotely comparable.
Interestingly, this is where the directionality might come in. In my pair - and yours too, I expect - the number of non-Chinese/Japanese people who would even consider working into the language from English must be miniscule. And it might be highly self-selecting. If some American rocked up claiming to be able to translate into Chinese, it might actually be worth giving her a go, just on the basis that she probably wouldn't make the claim unless she was absolutely stellar.
Dunno how well this holds up, though... for the most part, non-natives speaking Chinese remains an embarrassing thing...
| | | | Peter Zhuang
Germany
Local time: 02:59
German to English
+ ...
| Just to make it clear(er) | Aug 15, 2015 |
Phil Hand wrote:
Peter and others have suggested more than once that the native "bias" only works against them.
I define English as my one of my native languages and, perhaps more importantly, my first language.
You can of course disagree with my assessment or regard my country's standard English variant as a lesser one.
My gripe was that even though I've made it clear which is my first language, some people and agencies insisted otherwise, much to my annoyance. It's like asking an outfield player to play as a goalkeeper - I am sure you don't get the best out of people that way.
That said, there are still very reasonable people out there.
[Edited at 2015-08-15 16:37 GMT]
| | | | Lincoln Hui
Hong Kong
Local time: 08:59
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
| Why don't you reread what I wrote | Aug 15, 2015 |
Because it's not dishonest behaviour. You might disagree with it, but it's not dishonest. There is a very reasonable argument to be made that nativeness is an important criterion, and the agencies are trying to apply it in an open, honest way.
If you failed to understand properly what I wrote, I am not going to waste my breath explaining it.
This is pretty important: you can't go slinging that accusation of dishonesty around just because you disagree. It is, of course, possible that they're wrong. But they are not being dishonest or prejudiced.
You are the one who is calling stuff lies, not me.
No, it is not necessary for those with whom you disagree to define their terms to your satisfaction.
Actually, there will be no disagreement at all, because you can't even establish what to disagree about.
One says that exposure must occur during adolescence, another says that it must occur during infancy, yet another says only the first language that you encounter counts. Some of these definitions are more absurd than others, including one moron on record as saying "you can't have two mother tongues unless you have two mothers".
It is absurd to even entertain a discussion on the nature of biddlegabok when no two person agree on what a biddlegabok is. If you do not believe that definitions of biddlegabok have to line up, then everyone can honestly claim to be a biddlegabok based on their own arbitrary definitions.
I don't know if you know this, but there is plenty of money to be made translating into Chinese. I've been asked by more than one racist client to work into Chinese because that would obviously be a bit more trustworthy. Now, I'm not suffering. I have plenty of work in my chosen pair. But it is not the case that I'm not forgoing potentially lucrative business by restricting myself to this pair, nor that I've never been excluded from jobs on the basis of my native language.
Phil, I don't give the slightest figglebutt about your own situation. I am saying that one's situation is one's own, as is everyone else's, and that one should keep your nose out of other people's situations.
This is hardly about personal situation - I claim both Chinese and English in equal standing as native languages on my profile, and if anybody has an issue with that I stick a big fat middle finger in their eye and walk away.
This is more about not suffering fools easily and just happening to have the free time right now to call out nitwits as such, and about the fact that I don't take kindly to being labeled liar and unprofessional by these nitwits.
[Edited at 2015-08-15 16:53 GMT]
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| be fair, girls | Aug 15, 2015 |
Annamaria Amik wrote: Diana Coada, PGDip DPSI NRPSI wrote:
Monolinguals should simply stop dictating how the rest of the world should translate. I've seen the KudoZ horrors posted by English native translators who translate from Romanian and the lack of understanding of the source text is shocking. But hey, who cares this native English translator doesn't understand simple prepositions such as "at" (Romanian: "la") even a ten-year old Romanian would understand and posts it as a Pro question, as long as the target text has a native sound to it?  In the native vs non-native debate, nativeness seems to outweigh accuracy.
What about the atrocities posted all the time by Romanian natives who translate into English? There are far more examples of this kind.
And for that one English native translator whose Romanian is clearly poor, there is at least one English native whose Romanian is exceptionally good...
| | | | Michele Fauble
United States
Local time: 17:59
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
+ ...
| Collateral damage | Aug 15, 2015 |
Peter Zhuang wrote:
My gripe was that even though I've made it clear which is my first language, some people and agencies insisted otherwise, much to my annoyance.
But isn't their skepticism due to the fact that some translators misrepresent their native language? Maybe your gripe is really with them.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 01:59
Hebrew to English
| I guess you forgot site rule no 2 | Aug 15, 2015 |
Lincoln Hui wrote:
my chief beef with those imbeciles....unlike the government clearance scenario that some nincompoop used as analogy.
Remind me, which charm school did you go to? *Ahem*
http://www.proz.com/siterules/general/2#2
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