When attending trade expos and networking events, it is surprising how often we at AZ World get asked about Google Translate.  It comes up when we mention the translation software we use, or translation memories.  But it mostly comes up in the context of whether or not we use it, and whether or not it is eating away at our business.  The simple answer to those questions is no.  No, we never use Google Translate and no, Google Translate is not our main competitor.  AZ World is a high quality translation agency, so our main competitors are low quality translation agencies.

Businesses on the most part know that Google Translate is unacceptable for their needs.  But they don’t always know that some human translation can be just as bad.  Nowadays because of the internet it’s easy to outsource your translation needs.  Many websites offer quick human translation at very low rates.  But these translations are worth what you pay for them, little.  In fact, they often need to be fixed, and AZ World has, on more than one occasion had to repair such translations.

Google Translate isn’t a threat; cheap overseas translations are, for a while, until people learn that quality costs more, and is worth it.

The Lawyer is reporting on another mistrial in the UK that will reportedly cost £25,000, all due to errors in interpreting.  As we have mentioned numerous times here, the UK government has slashed spending for courtroom and police translators and interpreters and given a contract to Applied Language Solutions, a private agency.  Since then, many of the previous interpreters and translators have refused to work for the drastically lower wages ALS offers.  We warned of the possibility of miscarriages of justice and false economies, and it seems that they are both being realised.

This particular case involves an ALS interpreter misinterpreting a Romanian speaking witness as saying “bitten” when they in fact said “beaten.”  The mistake came to light after the defendant asked for evidence of any bite marks.  The interpreter then immediately admitted to the mistake, even saying that they knew of it at the time, but did not correct themselves.

The trial was suspended and the jury sent home.  It will cost at least £25,000 for the retrial, not to mention the emotional toll of assaulted defendants having to relive their abuses a third time in the witness box.

We’re getting tired of writing about these issues, but it is, as always, an important and consequential matter.

AZ World offers court interpreting services, request a quote at: http://www.a-zworld.ca/request-a-quote-translation.php

EVA QUINTANA JOINS THE AZ WORLD TEAM

May 1, 2012

Vancouver, BC – AZ World President Ana María Zúniga announced today that Eva Quintana will start working full time at AZ World.  EQ has worked as a contractor off and on for a few months now and President Ana María Zúniga has decided to bring her on full time to help out with the busy summer months.

EQ will bring her expertise in publishing and literary translation to the AZ World team.  EQ holds two masters degrees one in Literature from CIDHEM in Morelos, Mexico and one in Publishing from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.  Currently EQ is working on a third degree, also from Simon Fraser University.

EQ will join AZ World’s growing team of translators and interpreters.  AZ World currently employs over a database of over 2000 translators and interpreters all of which have been personally approved by AZ World President Ana María Zúniga.  This huge team of quality translators enables AZ World to offer professional language services in over 50 language combinations.

AZ World Translation and Interpretation Inc. is a full-service translation and interpretation agency and is largely recognized for helping businesses across the Americas to overcome cultural, linguistic and economic barriers at an international level. Services include translating documents and websites, transcribing to audio and video, as well as interpreting in person, on the phone, and via web conferencing.

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Contact

AZ World Translation and Interpretation Inc
Phone: 604.351.3615
Email: am@a-zworld.ca

We’ve reported before on the dangers of cutting back on interpreters in both courtrooms and hospitals and now it looks like there is some data to back up our logic.  A recent study out of the University of Texas says that mistakes are twice as likely to be made when there is no professional interpreter present.  Of errors made about twenty percent of them can have potential health risks to patients.

Two things jumped out from the Reuters article on it.  One was that “translator” and “interpreter” was used pretty much interchangeably.  Check out last week’s post on that confusion.  And two, that the researchers said that an “ad hoc” interpreter, like a friend or family member, can be just as risky as having no interpreter.  Which gives credence to the idea that we’ve argued before: that being bilingual does not make you a proper interpreter.

The main issue still to be resolved here is who should pay for interpreter costs, as we saw in the UK, people are reluctant to take on these costs. This reluctance may result from the pervasive idea that interpreters and translators are a great way to cut costs, which I think is caused by a lack of understanding of what exactly linguists do.

Check out the article here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/17/us-medical-er-idUSBRE83G15S20120417

The full name of our company is AZ World Translation and Interpretation Incorporated.  Translation and Interpretation, this indicates that there is a certain difference between the two.  Ask any linguists (which we will take to mean language communication professionals as there is a whole other discussion we could have about what a linguist is) what translation is, and they would probably say something along the lines of: the changing of one language text into another language text so as to establish the same meaning in both.  The key word in that definition is text; translation is written, or nowadays typed.

Interpretation on the other hand, is the facilitating of oral, or sign language, communication between two parties who lack a common language.  Here the key word is oral; interpretation is oral.

While in the industry the two are never confused, in the mainstream the terms are often confused.  The most glaring example is during a news report, when a non-English speaker will be being interviewed and someone is concurrently interpreting what they say, while the lower third will read “Voice of Translator.”  Translators can’t have a voice, that’s a contradiction.

This distinction has garnered more attention recently as the US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments over whether or not “interpretation” can be interpreted as “translation,” pun intended.  The matter has arisen due to a court case involving a Japanese citizen who fell through the deck of a hotel on Saipan, an island in the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.  The man sued the hotel for negligence, but lost the case, as such he was responsible for paying the hotel’s “interpreter” fees, which amounted to about $5,517.20, of which $5,257.20 was for document translation.  The Japanese man has appealed the case and it wound up at the Supreme Court because of a conflict between precedencies set by two lower courts.

While the court probably won’t rule until July, it seems that the court will likely agree with what most linguists think, interpretation and translation are different, and one does not imply the other.

AZ World offers both translation and interpretation services, to request a quote or get in contact with us please click here.

I was reading through Cicero’s “On the Nature of the Gods,” an ancient Roman text on philosophy and came across an interesting passage; “Epicurus’ researches were too penetrating, and his explanations too subtle, to be grasped by any Tom, Dick, or Harry…”  The use of this phrase “Tom, Dick, or Harry” certainly caught my eye.  I find it hard to believe that Cicero ever really used that phrase.  I think it is however a great example of the complexities of translation.  We’ve talked before about translating classical texts, and the nuances that accompany that sort of translation.

Translation is of course not a simple exercise of “find and replace.”  Otherwise Google Translate would work perfectly and lead to absolutely no embarrassments.  This “Tom, Dick, or Harry” phrase is a great example of it.  While Cicero was writing in Latin, he may have still been familiar with the following Greek phrase: “κάθε καρυδιάς καρύδι.”  Translated literally this means, “every walnut tree nut.”  But it is used in the same way as “Tom, Dick, or Harry.”  Google translate won’t detect that, our translators will.

Phrases like “Tom, Dick, or Harry” complicate things, but a solid translator can handle these issues.  A proper translation helps me understand Cicero, so I won’t be pondering what Cicero meant when he said “Epicurus’ researches were too penetrating, and his explanations too subtle, to be grasped by every walnut tree nut…”  Instead the translator, P.G. Walsh, uses “Tom, Dick, or Harry” and the reader instantly understands.

The audience for your translations is just like the audience for a book, and they want to easily understand your documents, on their terms.  A talented translator from AZ World can make that happen, request a quote today!

A month or so ago we wrote about new cuts to court interpreting and translating in the UK.  In that post we mentioned how dangerous this can be.  Well it appears that what we warned of has come to be.  A senior magistrate, Peter Beeke, is speaking out against the cuts.

Beeke reports that major delays due to no interpreters being available are occurring more frequently, when before they would be very rare.  Some trials have even been cancelled due to the lack of interpreters.

In addition to delays in the courtroom, Beeke claims that people have been kept in jail longer than proper because the idea of conditional bail could not be adequately explained to them.

While Applied Language Solutions is saying that these issues are “transitional,” it is hard to see how they can be resolved quickly without simply reinstating the original compensation to translators and interpreters.  It seems that the main issue is that people just aren’t as willing to work for ALS, and understandably so considering how much less they are being paid.

ALS is playing with fire here.  Delays are one thing, but out and out cancellation of trials is plain and simple obstruction of justice.  This is an easily solved problem and until it’s fixed, the UK government is not holding up their end of the legal bargain.

We’ve talked before about how blindly cutting back on translation and interpretation costs can yield false economies at best and obstructions of justice at worst.  Well as the United Kingdom continues to go through austerity measures in all public services, the NHS has come under fire for spending on translation and language services.

A health policy think tank, 2020health, has revealed that the NHS spends over £59 000 a day on language services.  This number can be staggering at first, but when one considers that the NHS has a legislated responsibility to provide proper care to non-English speakers.

2020health has also provided some recommendations of ways the NHS can cut costs related to language services.  While the suggestion that the NHS use free only translation software; i.e. Google Translate, is incredibly dangerous when it comes to matters of health, others are not as absurd.  The use of simpler language is a great one, as specialized translators and interpreters are more expensive.  In fact simpler language should really be used for all patients.

This video from kwintessential.co.uk provides some great recommendations for how to decrease expenses without leaving non-English speakers in the cold.  These suggestions are useful for any company looking to cut costs without falling prey to poor translation related gaffes.

At a recent non-translation related trade show I was occasionally asked the shocking question, “So, how often do you use Google Translate?”  The answer is of course, never, but it gets to a matter we’ve discussed a lot on the blog, the lack of understanding of how professional translation is actually done.

At AZ World we use Computer Aided Translation (CAT) software, now when I say “translation software” people immediately think Google Translate or machine translation.  That is simply wrong.  CAT software can have tools like glossaries, spell checkers, or translation memories.  They in no way translate for the translator, but just provide additional tools, like any modern word processor does.  The translation memory is the most powerful of the CAT tools, and the one that causes the most confusion.  It’s best explained with an example.

Say your company, Initech, releases weekly Human Resources bulletins that must be translated into Spanish so that employees in both New York and Madrid can read them.  Assuming Initech, uses a standard format for each of the bulletins, there are probably words repeated each week.  These can be things like company slogans or mottos.  For example, “Is This Good for the COMPANY?”  Instead of paying full rate for translating “Is This Good for the COMPANY?” every week, Initech would only have to pay full rate once, then that phrase would enter into Initech’s TM and every subsequent translation would charge that phrase at a significantly lower rate.

This system rewards customer loyalty by providing our clients with a lower rate the more they use AZ World, but it has another benefit for clients as well.  The TM is the property of the client and will be provided to them if they request it.  The client then still has a database of translated words they can take to a new translator should they choose to leave AZ World.

The way the TM actually works depends on the specifics of the translation software used, but it can be useful to think of it as a sort of find and replace function.  And this is where people become confused about translation memories and CAT and machine translation (Google Translate).

This is where it is important to point out the difference between using translation memories, TM’s, and using machine translation, MT.  MT uses a general database of words and simply replaces all entered words with their translated equivalent.  While MT software is getting better and better at detecting context and finding equivalent verb tenses, it is still nowhere near as good as professional translation.  While MT uses a general database, TM’s are client specific databases that contain the words that best fit that client’s needs and environment.  The TM also isn’t used for every single word in a project.  Large bodies of text cannot be properly translated with a TM, but technical and specialized words within a body of text can be.

Nowadays everyone from teachers to cabinet makers utilize specialized computer software to improve their work, translators are no difference.  These tools improve the quality and quantity of work, and in no way will replace the irreplaceable human element

A looser civet

It appears that the Malaysian Ministry of Defense used Google Translate to translate their website into English.  The internet was tipped off when the inevitably humorous translation began to pop up on Facebook and Twitter.  Since then the Ministry has removed the translations, there is no longer an English version available and admitted to using Google Translate.  The Ministry, which handles a $3.5 billion yearly budget, decided to go for the free translation service, and got exactly what it paid for.  They have since said that the translations in future will be done manually.

Here are some great examples of the inevitable shortcomings of machine translation:

“After the withdrawal of British army, the Malaysian Government take drastic measures to increase the level of any national security threat”

Women should avoid: “clothes that poke eye”

Men are permitted to wear a “tight Malay civet”