| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6] > | Keep Getting Ghosted By Agencies After I Submit My Test. Should I Keep Trying to Be a Translator? Thread poster: David McAlpine
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Gerard Barry wrote:
Even on a job task, excessive pedantry infuriates me. I've been at the receiving end of it too many times as an inhouse translator:)
What level of pedantry is acceptable then? Where does one draw the line?
For example, if I were to point out that a “job task” is surely just a “job”, or a “task”, would that count as excessive?
Anyway I’m not sure pointing out the misuse of “allot” and “its”/“their” falls under excessive pedantry in the context of producing flawless English.
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Often times I saw things like “its/it’s” ... being marked as a major error
But that is a major error. Says the writer is sloppy or doesn’t know the grammar. Makes you wonder what else they’ve got wrong. It’s not the kind of impression the end-customer wants to make. Could actually make some texts misleading.
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Gerard Barry wrote:
The only time I go through other people's verbiage and grammar with a fine tooth comb is when I a have a proofreading job at work. Otherwise, I couldn't give two hoots. Honestly, I'm shocked at how pedantic many translators are.
So, pray tell me: as a translator (or, indeed, as an interpreter) how do you go about understanding what your source-text authors are trying to say if you don't 'go through their verbiage and grammar'? It is, after all, that 'verbiage and grammar' that conveys their ideas - those same ideas you are supposed to convey accurately in your target language.
JL
| | | | | Bad grammar was definitely a factor | Sep 20, 2022 |
Ice Scream wrote:
It’s not a question of being pedantic. The guy wanted to know why he isn’t getting work after taking tests. Now, in all probability, he has the answer.
Agreed. There are all kinds of reasons why a translator might be ghosted/rejected after taking a test, and bad grammar/spelling is one of the major ones. Just a quick reading of his posts showed that Mr. McAlpine repeatedly used "your" instead of "you're," "its" instead of "it's" and "to" instead of "too." One or two occurrences might be carelessness or a spellcheck failure. Several is a red flag and would absolutely disqualify you in a translation test. I don't think it's mean or pedantic or "bullying" behavior to point that out (in a nice way).
[Edited at 2022-09-20 04:06 GMT]
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Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 22:28
French to English
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei wrote:
Just a quick reading of his posts
And even more importantly, Samuel took the trouble of looking at OP's profile here, and found language of a similar standard.
It is indeed pedantic to point out typos and errors in forum posts, and it's highly unlikely that clients will spend any time here looking at how we write. I mean, nobody's paying me to write this, so I'm not going to spend ages crafting and honing each sentence here and thinking about the most logical order in which to present information.
Our profiles, however, should be flawless because that's where we're actually marketing our services.
(I remember ages ago, when I was posting anonymously here, someone pointing out that there was a mistake in my profile, as a "gotcha" moment. I had a great laugh, because I wasn't freelancing and I wasn't looking for a job, so my profile was just a bare minimum so that people could get an idea of who I was)
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Ice Scream wrote: Gerard Barry wrote:
The only time I go through other people's verbiage and grammar with a fine tooth comb is when I a have a proofreading job at work. Otherwise, I couldn't give two hoots. Honestly, I'm shocked at how pedantic many translators are. It’s not a question of being pedantic. The guy wanted to know why he isn’t getting work after taking tests. Now, in all probability, he has the answer.
Not at all. I'm sure when he was doing the tests, he was more careful with his grammar than he was on this forum. One situation is work-related, the other is more casual.
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Jennifer Levey wrote: Gerard Barry wrote:
The only time I go through other people's verbiage and grammar with a fine tooth comb is when I a have a proofreading job at work. Otherwise, I couldn't give two hoots. Honestly, I'm shocked at how pedantic many translators are. So, pray tell me: as a translator (or, indeed, as an interpreter) how do you go about understanding what your source-text authors are trying to say if you don't 'go through their verbiage and grammar'? It is, after all, that 'verbiage and grammar' that conveys their ideas - those same ideas you are supposed to convey accurately in your target language. JL
We're talking here about criticisng someone's grammar in forum posts, not in a work situation.
| | | | Metin Demirel
Türkiye
Local time: 23:28
Member (2018)
Italian to Turkish
+ ...
Gerard Barry wrote:
The only time I go through other people's verbiage and grammar with a fine tooth comb is when I a have a proofreading job at work. Otherwise, I couldn't give two hoots. Honestly, I'm shocked at how pedantic many translators are.
I think the pedantic remarks have helped the original poster's seeking of advice. I can't say I care much about the spelling errors when I write on the forum, but some errors like "Your right" indicated that he could use some help with such advices. As long as they are kind, there's nothing wrong with such corrections.
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:28
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| The bacon sandwich fallacy | Sep 20, 2022 |
Gerard Barry wrote:
We're talking here about criticisng someone's grammar in forum posts, not in a work situation.
I don't understand this logic. If you're aware that "your" is incorrect in the context in which you use it, why would you ever use it?
Take the daily chore of cooking dinner. You might say "Oh, I've had a long day and I'm a bit tired tonight, so instead of spending several hours making a three-course meal I'm going to take the easy route and spend ten minutes throwing together a bacon sandwich." Fair enough. You'd get a lot of sympathetic nods.
This isn't like that. I can't believe that you're ever so busy or tired that you can't afford the time and energy to insert an apostrophe in the right place. Is there some underlying punctuation calculation here, some arcane hierarchy dictating that some symbols are more tiring than others? Do you sit there thinking "Gosh, if I write one more apostrophe I'm going to collapse from exhaustion, but I think I can still manage a few commas and potentially a full stop without slumping to the floor in a dead faint."?
We are what we repeatedly do. If we allow ourselves to write English containing obvious errors when we're "off duty" that is going to bleed through to the work situation sooner or later. Typing is largely muscle memory and muscle memory doesn't take context into account.
Dan
[Edited at 2022-09-20 16:37 GMT]
| | | | | @Gerard Barry | Sep 20, 2022 |
Gerard Barry wrote:
We're talking here about criticisng (sic) someone's grammar in forum posts, not in a work situation.
Actually, if you look back through this thread (or, better still, if you go back to the beginning and look though it in the order in which various ideas have been expressed) you will realize that those who have criticized David's spelling and grammar have been more concerned about the sample translations posted in his profile, than about stuff he has written here in the forum.
Also, given that he came here seeking professional advice on a forum dedicated to the professions of translation and interpretation, it might be argued that he was writing in 'a work situation'. As are we all...
JL
| | | | | You really think so? | Sep 20, 2022 |
Gerard Barry wrote:
Not at all. I'm sure when he was doing the tests, he was more careful with his grammar than he was on this forum. One situation is work-related, the other is more casual.
Hm, I am not convinced. Writing "your" instead of "you're" once is one thing; writing it all the time means you are not aware that it is wrong. You can't be "careful" about something when you can't even see there's a problem.
Incidentally, his final response may be why some agencies just ghost translators or return with a "Fail/Pass" instead of giving concrete feedback.
"You made a mistake here."
"Wah, you're bullying me!"
"......"
It's not polite, but I see where they're coming from.
| | | | | It could be just luck. | Nov 15, 2022 |
David McAlpine wrote:
Hey guys thanks for taking the time to read this. I'm a new translator -as in I haven't had a paid gig yet- and I'm kind of struggling with my confidence as I have been getting ghosted a bunch; let me explain. I've been trying to be a translator for about 5 months now and I've been building my portfolio by translating articles, and through Proz I've been getting contacted by agencies. They will be very receptive at first, responding very quickly, then the moment I submit the test they send me they immediately stop responding. They don't say I failed, they just stop responding. This has happened the past 3 times in a row and I've taken it to heart as I'm not quite sure what to expect as I am newbie. I'm also still largely unaware of the industry standards, causing me to second guess all my actions down to weather the emails I write sounding professional enough.
My language pair is Chinese to English. I've been studying the language for 10 years and went to university in China. I've been feeling disheartened because even though I've devoted much of my adult life to this skill yet I feel like its still not good enough and I'm never going to be as good as a native Chinese speaker no matter how hard I try. I was under the mistaken assumption that native English speakers who learned Chinese would be in demand, but as time has been going on I can't help but worry I've thrown my life away.
So I wanted to reach out and ask if any of you had some advice? Should I keep trying to be a translator? Or is my language pair too hard? Is it too hard to get started in 2022? Also are there any other Chinese to English translators on this forum? What was your experience becoming a translator?
Thanks in advance for your response.
I don't like posting in forums often because they're full of "bright stars" that want to belittle people by contrasting their "amazing" skills with your poor skills. "Shame on you, I'm so much better!"
This is especially prevalent on Proz.
The ghosting may simply be because Chinese – English is a competitive pair. Even if you are good, they have 50-100 tests to choose from that are equally as good as yours. So, they're not bothering. I'm not saying you're a good or bad translator. It may just be that you haven't been selected out of luck.
[Edited at 2022-11-15 00:00 GMT]
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Hayley Wakenshaw
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:28
Member (2018)
Dutch to English
| To be a language professional, you need to take a professional approach | Nov 25, 2022 |
Rachel Waddington wrote:
I had a brief glance at the translation samples you have posted on your profile. There are multiple errors in them, any one of which would fail you a translation test. Not mistranslations (I don't read Chinese so I can't judge that), but punctuation errors and generally clunky/incorrect English.
Anyone who seriously wants to work with words should spend time studying grammar and punctuation, IMO. There are plenty of resources out there that you can access for free. There's always something to learn – there are entire books written about the comma!
In the short term, though, to instantly look more professional, subscribe to a spelling and grammar checker like Grammarly or ProWritingAid. They go beyond what Word's built-in editor does. You can integrate them into your email client, browser and word-processing software, and they will fix most of your errors. They will even help you structure your sentences in a more readable way. I use more than one checker because I find that they each catch mistakes that the others miss. But start with the free version of Grammarly. It's the friendliest checker and easiest to use. You might be amazed by the difference it makes and by how many mistakes you were making that you were unaware of.
You can go a step further and get an AI-powered rewriter that works in the same way and will help you smooth out clunky English. I also find it useful when my brain grabs onto the literal translation of a sentence and will not let go. The Hemingway text checker (hemingwayapp.com) is another good tool for making sure your writing is readable, and it's totally free.
Get into the habit of checking and rechecking your work manually, even after you've run it through an automated checker. Not just for spelling, grammar and punctuation, but for formatting too. Read up on how to proofread your own work in a way that goes beyond SPAG by looking at things like headings, bullet points, margins, quotes style, and line breaks. These are things that a spelling checker won't pick up on. (Although PerfectIt will catch some.) There are bad line breaks in your profile bio, and there are no paragraphs, which makes it hard to read.
If you want to be a professional translator, you really need professional tools, and I would recommend that anyone wanting to get into translation explore what's out there in terms of translation software, dictionaries, and writing help.
And read a book on marketing for translators to find out how to approach clients in an effective way. They tend to be short and packed with useful information. That could vastly improve your response rate.
(This is all stuff it's taken me a good while to figure out, by the way. And you’ll figure out how to do this too. We all start out knowing nothing and having to find our way, especially those of us who didn't do translation degrees.)
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 22:28
French to English
Carlos A R de Souza wrote:
I don't like posting in forums often because they're full of "bright stars" that want to belittle people by contrasting their "amazing" skills with your poor skills. "Shame on you, I'm so much better!"
This is especially prevalent on Proz.
The ghosting may simply be because Chinese – English is a competitive pair.
From what I've read here about Mandarin-to-English, there are millions of Chinese people working into English, who can English just well enough to produce something that looks half-way authentic, that may be better than machine translation (but don't look too closely!).
And then there are a handful of native English speakers who speak Mandarin.
The gold standard in the profession has always been that one translates into one's native language, because it's the language that comes most naturally. The native Mandarin speakers understand the source language better of course, but comprehension is much easier to improve than expression.
So any native English speaker who wants to stand out against the sea of Englishing Mandarin speakers, has to do so precisely by producing flawless, relentlessly natural-sounding prose.
We're not saying this just to say that we're better than OP. There is no boasting on this thread, just a handful of professionals explaining to someone who hasn't managed to land a job yet, how they might yet manage to earn plenty of money. We're sharing our tricks of the trade out of pure altruism, so I find it especially galling that yet again, someone is attempting to twist our words and insult us with toxic remarks.
Signed Bright Boomer Star
| | | | jyuan_us
United States
Local time: 16:28
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
+ ...
| Competitive? | Nov 27, 2022 |
Carlos A R de Souza wrote:
The ghosting may simply be because Chinese – English is a competitive pair. Even if you are good, they have 50-100 tests to choose from that are equally as good as yours.
I'm afraid Chinese – English is not a pair in which supply surpasses demand. In fact, there is a severe shortage of qualified Chinese to English translators.
[Edited at 2022-11-27 12:52 GMT]
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