Translation price guide added

To help those interested in contracting translations via the French Linguistics translation service, a translation price guide has now been added. It should be noted that the prices given are to serve purely as a guide, and that (as mentioned in the document) each text is priced individually, depending on the particular nature of that text, the purpose of the translation etc.

I am also currently working on some other material to aid those looking to contract this and other translation services, including information on the process involved as well as a guide as to when and when not to use machine translation (with a look at some of the specific and most dangerous types of translation error that can occur when using machine translation).

Translation survey results

A few days ago, I invited users of the French Linguistics site to respond to a survey about their perception of translation services. I was interested in finding out how much people generally expected to pay for the translation of documents, and what their perception of translation services was generally. I also conducted a similar survey among professional translators.

A common theme among various discussion boards and forums for professional translators is how alarmed many are about an increasingly negative public perception of translation work. Translators express concern not only about a continual drop in the rates that clients are prepared to budget for for translation services (the No Peanuts! for Translators blog perhaps being among the clearest testimonies to this), but also of a more general underestimation of the amount of work and skill involved in translation work. In my survey, I was therefore keen to try and quantify this perception.

I'll be the first to admit that this survey isn't hugely scientific: little control was placed on which clients/members of the "general public" responded to the survey or whether the clients vs translators responding where involved in the same types of translation or language pairs ("clients" answering the survey are likely to be primarily interested in French, whereas only 19% of translators responding worked with the French<>English pair, for example). The sample sizes are also not terribly large or homogeneous: 95 "clients" vs 42 translators. But I think the figures that I'll present do nontheless give a "general feeling" for how grave the situation may have become.

Translators and clients were asked to give a rough "per page" estimate of how much they would expect to pay for translation. (In reality, translation is usually charged for by word count, but my own experience tells me that many translation clients tend to "think" in pages and may not be familiar with what, say, 1,000 words actually represents in real terms.) The graph above shows the somewhat telling results of this question. Of those who were able to give an estimate, 60% of clients/general public indicated that they would expect to pay $10 or less for the translation of a single page. In a typical document, this would equate to $20-$40 to translate 1,000 words of source text. Conversely, none of the professional translators responding indicated that they would expect clients to pay such a low rate, with most expecting clients to pay $50+ per page. There is a general downward trend in the percentage of "client" repsondents willing to pay prices between $20 and $50, although 15% of "client" respondents able to give a figure did indicate that they would expect to pay $50+. (Perhaps these 15% are the more "educated" clients who frequently contract translation and know what realistically to expect for their money?)

In my next post, I will give some a summary of responses to client perception of translation more generally. But I think the figures above are in themselves telling and give concrete evidence for the general perception of being undervalued that is expressed in translators' blogs and forums.

New translation survey

Eagle-eyed views (well actually, you don't need to be that eagle-eyed) will have noticed that I'm running another translation opinion survey on the French dictionary home page. I'm essentially interested in finding out what companies and individuals think of translation services from the point of view of pricing and quality.

I've written on the subject of translation processes and budgets in the past, and it's generally a hot topic among translation communities. But I'm interested in sounding the ground from translation "users" on the latest situation and know that many users of the site's French dictionary will also use translation services.

The survey is of course completely anonymous.

Many thanks to those who have already replied, and I look forward to writing on the trends that it reveals in due course once more have had change to respond.

Reaction: "High cost of interpreters hits local courts"

There has been predictably negative reaction among the linguistic community in response to an article published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporting on how some councils in the US are apparently bemoaning the cost of court interpreters. One councilman is quoted to have reacted to interpreters' pay by saying: "I need to get a Rosetta Stone [CD]. That's not a bad gig." Nobody on the other hand is reported to have commented on councillors' or lawyers' pay (or are people saying they really get paid less than interpreters?) by saying "I need to get myself a few law books."

The reaction from the translation and interpreting community echoes a longfelt feeling that clients and the public at large severely underestimate the high level of skill and training required to carry out this type of language work. Taking written translation first (and I should say that most of my own work involves this type of translation rather than spoken interpreting), it is worth reminding ourselves of what the task entails: one is generally expecting the translator to have a perfect understanding of the source text, to be able to convey the content of that source text in the target language not only extremely accurately, but with a quality of writing that disguises the fact that the new text is even a translation at all. The translator must be continually questioning their translation with issues such as, "what ambiguities am I potentially introducing into my translation that weren't there in the original?", or "in what way does my translation need cultural adaptation?". These can sometimes involve subtle nuances that take a great deal of linguistic experience and aptitude to spot and resolve.

When it comes to interpreting, the interpreter is generally expected to carry out much of this process on the fly, and in a courtroom, the potential implications of an accidental misunderstanding, omission or ambiguity may be all the more serious. As our learned friend embarks upon his "teach yourself Spanish in X weeks" course, I and many other linguists suspect he will discover that translating "anything thrown at him" to a standard admissible as court evidence is a bit more involved than ordering a coffee and asking directions to the station.

Surveys extended

Many thanks to all of those users who have filled in the three surveys currently running on the site:

- the French learner's survey is gathering some interesting, and in some cases surprising, trends on what aspects of language learning users find difficult, and will point the way for new material added to the French Linguistics site over the coming months;
- the iPad survey is also gathering feedback on how users would like to use their iPhones and/or iPads to help them with their linguistic pursuits, and will provide valuable input into future software offered for these two devices;
- in a slightly different vein, the translation survey is providing an insight into the expectations and requirements of those using the site's translation service.

I'd like to extend my thanks to all those users who have participated in the surveys so far. If you haven't yet taken part and have a couple of minutes to spare, then your feedback is greately appreciated. The surveys will be running for a little while longer, to give as many people as possible chance to take part.

Updates to the French dictionary and translation examples search

The site's French dictionary has been updated today. As usual, the update includes various corrections and expansions to entries, plus various new words. Many of the corrections have been made on the basis of users' feedback, and you are reminded that feedback on individual entries is always available via the feedback link that appears next to each one.

Users of the dictionary may also wish to know about an update to the translation examples search engine that was made earlier this week. You may now search for complete phrases as well as individual words. The phrase search is still a little primitive in that only exact matches will be found. However, it is hoped that this new feature will still be useful in getting ideas on how to translate a particular phrase or combination of words, and is expected to be improved in the future. It is still recommended that, when searching, you enter the word or phrase in question without accents.

New URL for translation newsletter

The URL for signing up for the translation mailing list has changed. For those interested in signing up, please go to the following address:

http://www.french-linguistics.co.uk/translation-service/translation_offers.html

Those signing up will receive e-mail notifications of free and reduced-price translation offers in the future. Providing accurate details will help to make sure that you are informed of offers most appropriate to your needs. When signing up, please take care to enter a correct e-mail address!

French dictionay update

As usual, today's update to the French dictionary adds various new entries and improvements to various English-French entries.

A question I've been asked a couple of times is whether I would like to be notified of missing entries. So I'd like to take this opportunity to ensure users that the dictionary system automatically notifies me of this and various other issues (including, for example, frequently consulted entries that contain few examples and are thus prime candidates for being expanded).

If you do find that the dictionary doesn't provide enough examples of a particular word, then remember that another useful resource is the translation examples site, which allows you to search a public domain database of translations between French and English (and various other language pairs).

Article on translation of advertising material

Readers interested in translation are invited to read a new article I have written on the translation of advertising material. The article examines some of the issues involved in translating on-line advertising material and how this differs from the translation of ordinary material.

As explored in the article, one of the challenges with translating on-line adverts comes in translating the associated keywords which you may be bidding on in your campaigns, showing some of the considerations which a good translator must take into account.

Automatic translation tool undergoing maintenance

The automatic translation tool is currently undergoing maintance and will be off line for a few days. Meanwhile, you may use:

• the site's French dictionary for looking up individual French words;
• the French language forum, where you may ask questions about the French language or get help with your French homework; for small, informal sentences for non-commercial use, people will often be happy to help you translate your sentence free of charge;
  
• the site's professional translation service for getting documents translated (please note that this is a paid service, whereby your document is translated by professional translators; it is not a free service, and is not available for very short texts).

This week on the forum

As usual, we've seen various interesting discussions this week on the French language forum. It's interesting to see how on various occasions, a simple, innocent query about the meaning of a word or phrase can spiral into a discussion of various grammar and vocabulary points.

Some threads not to miss:

• a discussion around expressing obligation in French, which ends up touching on the somewhat quirky behaviour of the French verb obliger, and some aspects of the use of à and de before verbs in French;
• an overview of the curious form l'on in French: a variant of on which occurs under certain circumstances, but not others;
• a look at the French negative with 'de': the general use of the determiner de instead of other indefinite determiners when the entire sentence is negated.

Various entries also centre on choices between sentences produced by machine translation systems. If you use such a system, it's important to understand some of the implications. Among other reading, I'd recommend an article I wrote recently on Machine Translation.

Getting the best translation results

As part of running the French Linguistics site, I provide various translation services, notably translations into and out of French and Spanish, where necessary in collaboration with a network of other freelance translators in order to bring the best experts together on a given job. I thought it would be worth clarifying a couple of points here about how to make translation services work best for you, and to help you find the right service.

If you want to get the best translation results, the first thing to consider is making sure your text is well-written in the first place. Are there any parts that would be open to misinterpretation by another reader knowledgeable in the field?

In general, you should then always provide the doument to be translated in your initial contact. You'd never call your plumber and say "I've got this job for you to do and I want to know how much it'll cost, but I'm not going to tell you what it is that I want you to do". But it's amazing how many people contact translators expecting to get a quote on a "miscellaneous document". As a general rule of thumb, no reputable translator will agree to a price without first seeing the document that you need translated. Unless you've really made special arrnagements otherwise, then as a rule of thumb, if you are ever given a quote without having supplied the document, alarm bells should probably be ringing.

The same is true of deadlines. Translators can give a rough words-per-day estimate, but no reputable translator will commit to a given deadline without having seen the document. A thousand words of one document may require much more time than a thousand words of another.

The next thing that can help speed up the process is to be specific about which parts of the document need to be translated and in what format you require the translation. It may be obvious to you that you only need columns one and two of the three-column PDF you sent, but unless you explicitly state that, you may risk waiting for and getting billed for a translation you don't need. For similar reasons, if you send additional files "for reference" that don't need translating, be very specific about this. A reputable translator will always query in case of doubt, but it is good to be specific from the outset.

If you need to translate business documents, try and see the translation as an important part of the process, whose results will affect the impression that readers of the document have about your company. Properly budget for the time required to get a quality translation (ideally, at least a day or more per 2,000 words on average); don't just go for a cheap "rush job".

If quality is important to you, then don't engage in cowboy practices. Reputable translators should generally not engage in practices such as discounting repeated words (the translation may depend on context) or discounting names (names may also require translation, choice of spelling alternatives, and the choice of surrounding words may depend on the name-- in short, names are part of the translatin too!). If a translator or translation company agrees to such practices, it is likely that the quality of your translation will be compromised.

Finally, as mentioned in the section on book translation, you may need to adjust the layout of your document to accommodate the extra length (or diminished length, depending on direction) of the translation. As rough guide, English text translated into French typically has 20-30% more words compared to the original. (This increase is generally due to certain company grammatical structures that English has, but other languages such as French do not.)

For a good translation, you should expect to pay around 50-60 Euros per 1000 words at the very least, and more for specific circumstances such as an unusual language pair or for extra reviewing time. Sometimes translators can quote less than this if it's a document they know they can translate quickly and accurately, e.g. because it's very similar to one they've translated before. But in general, if you are ever given a quote for much less than this-- especially by an agency-- then that is probably a sign that cowboy practices are being employed, such as using a machine translation or not having the text translated or properly reviewed by a native speaker of the target language.

French Dictionary update

As usual, today's update to the French dictionary adds various new words and translations.

One interesting word that was missing, and is still missing from various of the large paper dictionaries, is étasunien, a neologism derived from États-Unis, and becoming increasingly common in journalistic writing. It came to my attention particularly this week as I was working on some translations for a UK newspaper. As rightly pointed out by my collaborator, although a slightly ugly word, it covers cases where a degree of "neutrality" is required: although the term américain is commonly used in French (as indeed the word American in English) to imply "from the US", there are various countries that consider themselves to be part of "America", but not part of the US. We were then faced with an interesting translation problem: where to draw the line between not wishing to express political or cultural bias, and avoiding a slightly awkward neologism where such a word was not present in the original text. When making a decision between, say, troupes américaines and troupes étasuniennes, there's some balance to strike between how well the text "reads" and politcal correctness. I hope in this case that we struck the right balance.

Translation examples: searching for accented words

A couple of minor improvements have been made to the Translation Examples service to allow more reliabe searching of words with accented characters (or charcters not from the "standard" Roman alphabet, such as the German ß).

In general, you can simply search for a word without including the accents. (If a version of the word you enter exists both with and without accent(s), then examples of both words will be returned.) This includes the c cedilla used in French and Portuguese. In German, to search for a word with ß, replace this with ss (in any case, the choice between ß and ss is arbitrary and subject to variation, not helped by the recent Rechtschreibreform).

At present, when you look up conjugated or delcined forms (e.g. different tense forms of verbs), these will be treated as separate words. For example, looking up the French form trouverai (afuture tense form of trouver) will list example translations including specifically the form trouverai (and not, say, trouver, trouveras etc).

This has advantages and disadvantages, and is something that will be thought about more as the site matures. On the one hand, the translation often isn't dependent per se on the particular person form, and a change in tense form often results in an uninteresting, predictable change in the translation. On the other hand, there are times when a change in one of these factors can bring about a less obvious change in the translation.

As always, feedback on the example translation search is welcome, and can be left as a comment on this blog entry, or on the French Language forum.

Translation examples now available from English

Users of the French Linguistics site may be interested to know that the Translation Examples search engine now supports searching for translations of English words. You can now search English-French, English-Spanish, English-Portuguese, English-Dutch and English-German (as well as the reverse of these pairs).

Translation examples

The first version of an additional tool is now available for advanced language students and professional translators. At translationexamples.com, you'll now find a translation example search engine that lets you search for examples of translations between various languages and English. At the moment, you can search for translations from French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Dutch.

When you look up a word, you are presented with a list of sentences containing that word, plus English translations of those sentences. At present, the example translations are drawn from a bank of around 1,000,000 translated sentences from the Europarl corpus (a set of proceedings from the Euopean Parliament that, along with their corresponding translations, have been placed in the public-domain). It is likely that other corpora will be added in the near future.

Note that this example translations database should be seen as a complement to, rather than replacement for, the regular French dictionary.

DGT Glossary terms incorporated into text translator

When you use the French translator tool, appropriate results will now be displayed from the DGT glossaries. The DGT glossaries contain terms of translations from various technical fields.

French-English text translation tool

An initial version of this site's automatic French/English translation tool is available. The tool is designed to complement the site's dictionary as follows:

• The dictionary is intended for use by students, learners, translators etc who basically understand some French but need to find out about the translation or uses of an isolated word or phrase;
• The translation tool is aimed more at English speakers who need to get the gist of an entire French text (or vice versa for French speakers with an English text), typically when they understand very little of the target language.

In practice, initial tests show that learners and users of the language are also finding it useful to look up phrases using the translation tool. You should just be aware of limitations of the automatic translation, and may like to take a look at the accompanying tips on using machine translation.

About the translation system

Many of the text translations are produced by Google Translate, a statistical machine translation system developed by Google which allows sites such as this to query and build on the translation system. However, this site's tool also builds some additional features on top of the Google system:

• it is assumed that the language pair you are working with is French/English; the site will detect which of these two languages is being entered and translate to the other language;
• some orthographic corrections are made to the input text which help to get a better result from Google;
• in some cases, alternative inputs will be run simultaneously through the Google system when such inputs are known to improve the translation results (such alternatives and their translations are always listed alongside the original query);
• in some cases, instead of using the Google system, a translation is pulled directly from this site's dictionary data. Note that the source of the translation is always clearly indicated.

The above features are being actively improved on the basis of the typical use to which users are putting the system.

Known limitations

The system works best on texts that are similar to the types of text that the system has been trained on. Google Translate is a statistical system, trained on sets of existing translations. In practice, this means the system works well on "the types of text that people tend to translate". For example, whole sentences or passages from commercial or technical texts work quite well. Isolated words and phrases, particularly when they have a "dangling" word such as a preposition, sometimes don't work as well. You may also find what you consider to be quite a "basic" phrase or question doesn't translate so well, because a phrase used in everyday speech didn't crop up in the material that the translation system was trained on.

Dictionary update: DGT glossary beta

Along with its sister Spanish dictionary and language site, entries in this site's on-line French dictionary have now been augmented with terms from the EU DGT Multilingual Translation Memory. The latter is a set of translated terms, phrases and sentences extracted from translations of EU documents. It thus covers translation of various legal and technical domains. At present, approximately 30,000 terms and phrases are included on this site. (Some long or repetitious entries have been filtered out.)

The terms from the DGT glossary currently appear in a table below the regular dictionary entries. At present, they are included for French-English lookups only, but it is planned that terms for English-French lookups will be added over the next few days.