Deadlines and other challenges

As a translator, you attempt to deliver quality. One of the biggest challenges consists of delivering a good translation in very little time. When a translation agency calls with an urgent job, you always have to read between the lines. When you are busy with another job, you do not always pay sufficient attention.


"I have a legal job of about 6,000 new words and the total job is about 11,000 words." This means two things: there are 5,000 words, about half the assignment, in a translation memory (TM) and these are partly 100% matches - some sentences may have been translated previously by another translator and before seeing the actual matches you do not know if you agree with the terminology used in the previous translation. The remaining matches are partial matches. In a legal translation a partial match is a bit of a joke, as it is often quicker to re-translate the sentence than play a game of "spot the differences", even without considering terminology issues.

Last week I realised I had to re-check and double-check the jobs I am offered, as I found myself doing a legal translation without being able to change the 100% matches. This often happens in technical translation work and as long as the reviewer checks the matches it is just a bit of a pain, as you still have to read them through to see where the story goes. In legal translation this is of course 100 times more so!

To make a long story short, this translation into British English concerned a company's Articles of Association. Previously, this had been translated as Articles of Incorporation, which is the term generally used in the US. The result was that the draft translation contained a mix of the terms Articles of Association and Articles of Incorporation. To make matters worse, the proofreader could not work with the translation software, and thus would not know which parts of the text had been pre-translated. I added my comments on a separate sheet, so she would know which terms to watch for, but it must be quite frustrating to see such an inconsistent translation - about as frustrating as having to submit a translation that is not finished.

That is about as bad as it can get, you would think. Well, not quite. The client actually needed the translation before the weekend - they always do, no matter how big the translation is. So he coaxed the project manager from the agency to send him the draft translation - including the inconsistencies....