The picture may not be so bleak
Posted by jeff on 27 Nov 2007 at 11:20 am | Tagged as: Translation
Props to ESWN for this great translation of a Phoenix article on the dismal state of literary translation in China. Basically, the article describes a cycle of low pay and poor quality translation that rewards quantity over quality. Kenneth Tan at Shanghaiist continues the discussion here with his personal accounts of working with translating companies in China. While he is right to some extent that many of the bargain basement tranlsation ‘companies’ are little more than poorly run offices that crank out low quality translations, I think that for business-oriented translating companies, the picture is much more complex.
I have had contact with a few different translating companies in Beijing, and each was different. One of them who I worked with invited me to their ‘office’ for an interview. From the office it was immediately evident what kind of place it was. The name on the door was different from their official name, the only staff in the office consisted of a manager and his assistant, and there was a line of eager college students waiting in the hallway to interview for jobs. I had done a translation test for them 6 months prior, but they had changed staff, and didn’t know where it was anymore. Needless to say, I wasn’t optimistic, but in the end I did a medium size job for them, and they actually paid decently and on-time.
A big telecom I worked for had one company who pretty much did all the outsourced translating for them. On reviewing their work, it was evident they did not have native speakers doing final revisions, but their specialization meant that they could nail all the obscure technical terminology. This seemed to have been good enough for management, and after all, almost all of the people reading the translations were Chinese, so who would be able to tell, anyway?
The translating company that I most enjoyed working with was very professional, with international offices throughout the world, and standard procedures for dealing with the translating process. They always used native speakers to at least do the editing, if not translating, and from their clientele it was obvious that companies in Beijing were willing to pay the extra yuan for the quality work they produced.
Accounting firms and probably legal firms as well also recognize the need for quality translation, and this, combined with the confidential nature of the work, means that they have whole translation departments with teams of translators and editors, who are treated like professionals.
So, it’s not all dirt-cheap labor by college students desperate for some sort of work experience, and a lot of companies already know the difference to some extent.
Even though the amount of poor quality work being cranked out is depressing, I find Kenneth Tan’s attitude condescending in saying that the Chinese translators would need ten years to figure out international culture and come up with a decent translation. With decent pay, or enough interest they will do just fine. Just look at the group of translators who create the Chinese subtitles for American TV shows that are shared via BitTorrent. They make great translations, and are able to catch obscure references to 80s culture and do it all for free. (See Howard French’s article in the IHT.) These subtitled shows are hugely popular on the internet, and we have these translators to thank for introducing the complexities of foreign culture to China.
Thanks for the balanced commentary and the links!! (I loved the IHT article by French).
I have in some ways become the “expert” on recruiting legal translators in China on behalf of a client of mine who has the biggest in house legal translation team in all of China (most of whom I recruited). There is an incredible imbalance in supply and demand in this highly specialized area (not even the best regular translators are qualified to do legal) and hence salaries for legal translators often far exceed those for local non partner lawyers to the tune of RMB25,000 even per month.
Just a confirmation to you about the professional in house translation capabilities that do exist out there… for a price!!
I agree: pay Chinese translators a decent living wage and they will more than rise to the challenge. There is so much translation talent here in China, so many brilliant individuals who have – often, after years of disappointment – forsaken literary or film translation for better-paying jobs in other fields…
One of the things that keeps me up nights:
If the absurdly low salary scale for Chinese translators persists, new graduates will avoid literary translation like the plague. Imagine trying to explain to your parents why you’re making 30,000 yuan per year translating poems and novels when you could be making 4-5 times that amount interpreting corporate flatulence (this in a country whose average urban income has nearly quadrupled in the last decade).
9 out of 10 parents are going to vote for the more lucrative farts.
I heard a while ago that the State Council is thinking of introducing an accreditation systems to regulate the practice of legal translators and interpreters in China. Are you in favour of this idea?
Interesting to note that as we move from one anecdote to another, we run the risk of comparing apples with oranges.
To wit: English-to-Chinese translation operates in a totally different economic environment than Chinese-to-English, and literary translation and legal translation are hardly the same kettle of fish!
My own interest lies in literary translation. Personally, during the next few years I predict better wages and a higher profile for translators who translate foreign literary works into Chinese, for these reasons:
*** Strong and rising interest in foreign literature among Chinese between 20-35 years of age. They want to be global citizens and enjoy learning about “the world outside” through highly readable translations in their own language.
*** Many young, educated Chinese find most contemporary literature written by their own authors as unimaginative, even downright inferior to what’s available from writers in countries like the US, France, Germany and Japan.
*** Foreign publishers are becoming aware of the potential market in China, and are more likely to charge higher fees for the right to publish world-class writers in Chinese. This will push Chinese publishers to search harder for good translators, and put pressure on them to pay them better for what they do.
*** There are Chinese translators who realize they are professionals and must make good business decisions. An example: Lin Shao-Hua, who translates all of Murakami Haruki’s works from Japanese into Chinese. Lin Shao-Hua regularly writes and lectures about Murakami, helping to position himself as the “expert” on this writer and contemporary Japanese literature in general. Making a name for yourself as a literary translator — and promoting yourself and the authors you represent in Chinese — should gradually become a trend.
*** I predict that foreign authors and publishers will increasingly insist that Chinese translators work from the original language, which is not always English! This is the case with Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize winning Turkish author of “My name is Red.” His earlier works published in Taiwan were translated from the English, and he was very unhappy about this (see my article at http://www.thatsprd.com, “Dusting off the Silk Road”). Many of the second-rate translations on the market in now in China were translated from a “translation” — i.e., an English version of a book first written in Czech, Turkish, French, etc. Translators in China who can handle original writing in non-English languages will be able to demand a higher wage.
Bruce Humes
Shenzhen, China
Xumushi@yahoo.com