By Nicole van den Wittenboer –
Translation Rates and Inflation / CAT Tools and Discounts / AI, Machine Translation and Post-Editing / Changing Our Working Methods / Full and Light Editing / Light Editing Into or Out of Our Mother Tongue / Offering Multiple Languages or Specialising in One Language Combination Only
Translation Rates and Inflation
What do you think our industry will bring for 2024? Judging by numerous posts I’ve read on the various social media platforms and many conversations I’ve had with colleagues over recent weeks, 2023 was probably the most challenging year in terms of turnover to date for many of us. This year, in 2024, I’ll be celebrating 30 years in business as a Dutch<>English translator, and although I’m very proud of my achievements over the past three decades, it’s quite depressing to think that my income has steadily decreased since entering the 21st century! Comparing my source word rate for agency clients in Europe between the 2000s and the past few years, my base rate has seen a net drop of as high as 17%, i.e. invoice amounts have decreased by a staggering 17% in euros since 20 years ago. This doesn’t even take into account inflation or the rise in the cost of living, investments in technology and CPD commitments.
CAT Tools and Discounts
At the start of the 21st century, productivity gains and time savings could still be achieved through the use of CAT tools and we were free to choose our preferred CAT tool and the way we organised our work. In recent years, many agencies have started to dictate which CAT tool we should use or they have moved their translation operations to online platforms for us to work on in real-time using their terminological databases on their systems. More and more of our translation work is pre-translated by CAT tool leverage so, where in the past we used to be paid for both the easy and the difficult parts of a text, we are now only dealing with the harder parts of the text. Our time spent on research is the same, but our earnings have considerably decreased. Plus, client databases often contain many errors and inconsistencies as they do not appear to be properly maintained by knowledgeable translators or revisors, yet these incorrect segments are still included as fuzzy matches leading to discounted rates, with us translators having to spend a lot more time on delivering quality translations for much less pay.
AI, Machine Translation and Post-Editing
Over the past few years, the focus of many discussions in our industry has been on AI, Machine Translation and Post-Editing taking over our profession. Initially, translators may have been of the opinion that we had nothing to fear, as the quality of MT output used to be rather poor, and editing poor translations was always more time-consuming than doing the translation ourselves in the first place. However, is this still the case now that technology and database input are constantly improving? I first subscribed to DeepL about two years ago now and I must say that for translations between Dutch and English, I have found the quality of MT output to be astonishingly good. I generally use DeepL alongside my own work and often prefer the translations suggested by DeepL to what I came up with myself.
So we’d better get used to it! AI, Machine Translation and Post-Editing are real contenders and here to stay, but rather than posing a threat to our profession, I think we need to embrace all this new technology and make it work for us. These are exciting times for our industry!
Changing Our Working Methods
Having said that, changing the way we work can be painful and will require changes in our attitude and our way of thinking so we can learn new skills. This applies not just to us, but to agency owners and their PMs too. Take post-editing for example. One agency prescribes the process for post-editing as follows:
a) Read the target segment;
b) Read the source segment;
c) Check that the meaning conveyed is the same;
d) Does the MT definitely need changing or are these preferential changes?;
e) Change the MT accordingly.
However, according to the RWS Post-Editing Certificate training material, the steps to follow are:
a) Always read the source segment first and identify anything you’re unsure about;
b) Look at the MT output and see how close it is to the translation you had in mind;
c) Make the necessary corrections to the translation using the MT output as a basis;
d) Reread the target segment and compare it against the source segment and make any final changes if necessary.
Full and Light Editing
And then there is the distinction between the different levels of editing, i.e. Full or Light Editing and their respective rates of pay. I would equate Full Editing with what we used to call Translating for Publication Purposes, and Light Editing with Translating for Information Purposes.
Again, the RWS Post-Editing Certificate training material prescribes the following for Light Editing:
a) Only correct critical or major errors for mistranslations, omissions/additions;
b) Check client-preferred terms against the client glossary at the end;
c) Do not correct mistakes in grammar and spelling unless they affect the meaning;
d) Do not correct errors in consistency, style, country standards, register or tone.
For most translators, Light Editing will be a shock to the system as it goes completely against our instincts and what we have always been told to do.
Light Editing Into or Out of Our Mother Tongue
So, what does Light Editing mean for translators and agency owners and their PMs? If mistakes in grammar, spelling, consistency, style, country standards, register and tone are supposed to be left untouched and only critical and major errors and client-preferred terminology need correcting, who will be the best professional to do this: someone who is a native speaker of the source language or of the target language? In my opinion, this will bring a shift of emphasis in favour of the importance of the source language. The editor should have a perfect command of the source language to understand all the specific nuances. Whereas agencies in the UK have always insisted that translators should translate into their mother tongue only, I feel that, for light editing, editors should be working out of their mother tongue to be able to pick out all critical and major errors.
Offering Multiple Languages or Specialising in One Language Combination Only
What this means for translators is that rather than having multiple languages to work out of into our mother tongue, I believe we will be better off specialising in one language combination to reach native or near native language competence in the one foreign language and our own. So, someone who completed a degree in one or two foreign languages, where they studied another language from scratch for a year, may have been translating from all their foreign languages into their mother tongue for years. However, is their command of the language they learned from scratch for a year going to be sufficient to carry out light editing, i.e. will they be able to pick out all the critical and major errors? For Dutch into English translations, the Dutch will generally have little faith in English native speakers having a thorough enough understanding of the Dutch language to be able to do a light editing job and they will insist on having a Dutch person carry out these jobs. Will the same apply to the languages you work with? What will this mean to you and your future in the industry? How can you prepare for this? Should you specialise in your strongest language combination to futureproof yourself? Hopefully, this has given us all some food for thought. If you have any comments to add to this debate, it will be great to hear from you!
Nicole van den Wittenboer, Interpreter, Translator, Dutch<>English
