| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Do certain clients need low-quality translations? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Emin Arı 
Türkiye
Local time: 08:30
English to Turkish
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| Yes, definitely | Dec 16, 2015 |
You can easily distinguish those agencies. The key words they commonly use is "your best price". Usually Indian based agencies or same kind.
| | | | | They may need it to be cheap. They don't actually need low quality | Dec 16, 2015 |
Alexander Kondorsky wrote:
International projects are required to maintain bilingual workflow, which is often only a bureacratic requirements. They order all their documents translated, but these translations only need to be "present" and are never read or checked.
Here they could probably use machine translation from dedicated, advanced machines. The trouble is that these are often a pain to read. At least it is possible to find keywords and select the sections that really need to be translated properly if anyone is actually going to use them.
Julian Holmes wrote:
Will you lower your rates to deliberately do a lower quality translation if asked for?
Definitely not.
In fact it would be difficult. I would simply have to stop myself and go through a completely different workflow.
I try to get it right first time, and I spend more time dithering and guessing when I am not sure than I would looking up and checking. (I know this from trying to work offline, when I don't have all the facilities available to check - I rarely do it, because it is so unsatisfactory.)
Occasionally, for a rushed job, I send the first pass after a quick spelling check and read-through, and tell the client that I have not proofread the translation as thoroughly as usual. For a couple of hundred words, the standard is often acceptable in the circumstances, but if the text is longer, I am not at all happy with it.
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Christine Andersen wrote:
They may need it to be cheap. They don't actually need low quality
They don't actually NEED low quality, but they don't need high quality either, they just need it to be cheap, and this is true for many clients and different situations.
Of course, this doesn't mean we should lower our rates and offer a low quality product, but we must be aware of this reality. There is a market for low quality translations, as there is a market for a wide range of other low quality products.
| | | | | The cheaper market | Dec 16, 2015 |
Laura Bissio CT wrote:
They don't actually NEED low quality, but they don't need high quality either, they just need it to be cheap, and this is true for many clients and different situations.
Of course, this doesn't mean we should lower our rates and offer a low quality product, but we must be aware of this reality. There is a market for low quality translations, as there is a market for a wide range of other low quality products.
I can't deliberately lower my quality to offer the same job at a lower price. In fact, if I were to willingly degrade my usual quality, perhaps to pretend that it was done by a cheaper translator, I'd have to charge more for the additional effort, which would thwart the intent of getting a cheaper translation from me.
However I'd expect these "any cheap thing will do, as long as it's done" customers to help themselves from free online machine translation, like anyone thirsty would drink from a tap or fountain, instead of seeking cheaper bottled mineral water.
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Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 01:30
English to Spanish
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| Define low quality | Dec 16, 2015 |
Low quality: shoddy, sloppily done, made with inadequate or flimsy materials, substandard, mediocre build.
I don't understand the question or its intent. Please rephrase it or clarify it for us. Thank you.
| | | | Jan Kovačič
Slovenia
Local time: 07:30
Member (2020)
English to Slovenian
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| Yes, they do | Dec 16, 2015 |
Of course they do. Offering low rates is like asking for the low-quality translations.
| | | | Georgia Morg (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:30
Portuguese to English
| The benefits of summarising | Dec 16, 2015 |
What surprises me is that so few agencies ask for the information to be summarised, rather than translated. I have only been asked to do this once and it was a hugely satisfying job. I would love to be asked to do this more often. Sometimes, surely, the gist is all that is needed, not a word-by-word account. They could ask you to write a 300 word summary, for example, of a 2,000 word text, maybe in bullet points, maybe as a paragraph, whatever. I find this interesting and intellectually challeng... See more What surprises me is that so few agencies ask for the information to be summarised, rather than translated. I have only been asked to do this once and it was a hugely satisfying job. I would love to be asked to do this more often. Sometimes, surely, the gist is all that is needed, not a word-by-word account. They could ask you to write a 300 word summary, for example, of a 2,000 word text, maybe in bullet points, maybe as a paragraph, whatever. I find this interesting and intellectually challenging. Summarising is a skill that is taught in academic English classes at University. Why isn't it used more? ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kristina Cosumano (X)
Germany
Local time: 07:30
German to English
| One instance I can think of | Dec 16, 2015 |
would be the time I was sent several 10-word comments left for some large internet company, involving game software, which needed to be translated into English. The comments themselves however were in bad, slangy German, probably written by bored teenagers. It would not have done them justice to formulate them any other way.
[Edited at 2015-12-16 17:41 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-12-16 17:41 GMT]
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| Needing and wanting | Dec 16, 2015 |
Need? No. Want? Yes.
| | | | Mario Freitas
Brazil
Local time: 02:30
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| Need, no! Want, no! Accept, yes! | Dec 16, 2015 |
Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:
Need? No. Want? Yes.
Nobody needs or wants low quality. However, according to the price they are willing to pay, they have to accept low-quality translations. And they do so naturally. That's where people who shouldn't be translators survive as such, and spoil our market.
[Edited at 2015-12-16 20:26 GMT]
| | | | | Regardless of such a "need" | Dec 16, 2015 |
I will not produce low quality. Both professional ethics and reputation are at stake. I would not want a translation of mine to pop up somewhere, and try to explain "Well, the quality is iffy because they client needed only low quality". Very recently I did have one of these "will never be read" pro forma jobs. In that case I was to proofread an existing translation and put my "read and approved" along with certification number on it. It was explained that it would be filed away and never l... See more I will not produce low quality. Both professional ethics and reputation are at stake. I would not want a translation of mine to pop up somewhere, and try to explain "Well, the quality is iffy because they client needed only low quality". Very recently I did have one of these "will never be read" pro forma jobs. In that case I was to proofread an existing translation and put my "read and approved" along with certification number on it. It was explained that it would be filed away and never looked at. Nonetheless I looked at it as carefully as any other work, and actually did find a rather major mistake - a person's last name - which I corrected. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mario Freitas
Brazil
Local time: 02:30
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| Just remembered... | Dec 17, 2015 |
[This is MY OPINION. There is nothing unanimous or 99% about this]
Subtitle and dubbing companies always use the low quality available, at least in my country. It is very clear around here that the mentality is "everyone will watch the movie for its quality, the actors, the theme, the fame, etc. Nobody will ever say they won't watch a movie because of the quality of the subtitles or dubbing."
Of course there are people who will. But judging from the quality of the subti... See more [This is MY OPINION. There is nothing unanimous or 99% about this]
Subtitle and dubbing companies always use the low quality available, at least in my country. It is very clear around here that the mentality is "everyone will watch the movie for its quality, the actors, the theme, the fame, etc. Nobody will ever say they won't watch a movie because of the quality of the subtitles or dubbing."
Of course there are people who will. But judging from the quality of the subtitles and dubbing we see around here, they don't have many experienced translators working for them. If I didn't speak English, I would have lost a great deal of information, jokes, etc. in the movies I've watched so far.
And this is only one segment of the market I remembered, aside from all the cheap agencies all over the world. So, yes, there is a big market for low quality.
[Edited at 2015-12-17 04:11 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-12-17 16:56 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Mario Freitas wrote:
Subtitle and dubbing companies always use the low quality available, at least in my country. It is very clear around here that the mentality is "everyone will watch the movie for its quality, the actors, the theme, the fame, etc. Nobody will ever say they won't watch a movie because of the quality of the subtitles or dubbing."
Of course there are people who will. But judging from the quality of the subtitles and dubbing we see around here, they don't have many experienced translators working for them. If I didn't speak English, I would have lost a great deal of information, jokes, etc. in the movies I've watched so far.
And this is only one segment of the market I remembered, aside from all the cheap agencies all over the world. So, yes, there is a big market for low quality.
Mario, we should go to market together as a team, if anyone ever wants to create a debate over some point of view considered "unanimous". While I tend to agree with 99.9% of what Sheila Wilson posts on the Proz forums, I tend to DISagree with 99.9% of your views.
IMHO the Brazilian video dubbing industry has been outshining our soccer stars for several decades. Of course, as lately the cost crunch got globalized, the low end trespassed deeper into hell.
It is not low-quality, but merely low-cost! They'd love to have top quality, if video work were not so labor-intensive, and hence expensive.
Let's take one at a time.
DUBBING
Dubbers (and dubbing directors, technicians, etc.) in Brazil must be licensed performers (have the so-called 'DRT'), and their union is strong. If they go on strike, the TV network that announced, say, an award-winning movie on a certain day and a certain time, AND sold air time to sponsors for their commercials, simply won't have it ready to show. So that union gets what they want.
The only place where the dubbing supply chain can squeeze some costs is - deregulated, disunionized - translation. So, the cheaper it is, the more they like it.
I was 'raised' in the corporate video dubbing market. Bluntly, I define it as Disney-like uncompromising quality with business/technical lingo. No company will jeopardize its image by having its institutional, product launch, or training video dubbed under the standards adopted for many movies/TV series.
You may watch a few (degraded, for bandwidth) corporate videos on my web page, to compare with what you see on TV nowadays.
And why doesn't it improve?
Angry spectators - often translators - write to the TV networks complaining about badly translated movies they watch. The networks couldn't care less, as they get paid by the sponsors, not by spectators.
If these spectators wrote to the sponsors instead, they might see a change. Envision yourself as a sponsor, who paid through the nose to insert your commercials in a certain movie, getting a letter like this: "I tried to watch the award-winning movie *** on channel * last night. Both the translation and dubbing were so disparagingly bad, that I was unable to make heads or tails from the plot. So, at the first intermission I gave up! I saw half of your first advertisement, and switched to another channel. Therefore I missed the other 7 insertions of your ad there. Was this worth what you paid to have it aired, assuming that millions of other spectators might have done the same?"
Cable TV is worse, the chain of supply is one step longer. The cable provider merely relays what each subscription channel sends them to subscribers. In spite of spectators paying for that service, the real money still comes from the sponsors.
SUBTITLING
After the shift from analog to digital video, anyone can subtitle. Here you can see some evidence. The hardware required is no more than a plain PC, and there is plenty of excellent freeware to do it.
As I kept my clientele, I still do it with high quality and adequate market prices. A few subtitled samples are available on the same page as my dubbing samples above.
However some people do it for free, as a hobby, the so-called fansubbers. A couple of years ago, in the New Year holidays season I had the time to research on the value of 'fixing' amateur subtitles. My report - in BR Portuguese - is here.
Of course, TV stations won't use these free amateur subtitles, though Netflix was severely criticized for having done so when they started out. The TV supply chain needs someone getting paid, to blame them for bad quality. Blaming is enough; until the day sponsors apply some pressure, they won't raise the bar.
Finally, to give you an idea on how it works, many years ago a dubbing studio contacted me. They offered one-third of my regular corporate-video translation rate; in exchange, they promised to keep me busy 24/7 all year round, if I could endure that. My estimate was that I would starve in four weeks.
Bottom line is that they need it CHEAP; low-quality is merely a natural consequence.
| | | | Mario Freitas
Brazil
Local time: 02:30
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| Opinions are not intended to make other people's minds... | Dec 17, 2015 |
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
Mario, we should go to market together as a team, if anyone ever wants to create a debate over some point of view considered "unanimous". While I tend to agree with 99.9% of what Sheila Wilson posts on the Proz forums, I tend to DISagree with 99.9% of your views...
I'm quite used to that, José Henrique. People tend to use euphemisms and try to be politically correct, and when somebody' opinion differes from theirs, they tend to criticize and consider the others radical. I do not intend to convince anybody, to obtain "agrees" or to post unanimous opinions. I always post MY OWN opinion, an irrevocable right of mine. But there will always be people who will disagree, and that's ok. This is a democratic forum (I hope).
As to the dubbing and subtitling, the theory is beautiful. As soon as I see the results in the movie, I may agree with you. So far, I still thank God I speak English, so that I can watch the movies and get the intended message. So far, the quality I'm seeing in the movies in PT is still not satisfactory at all.
Now, going out to the market in Brazil? Are you kidding? Asking people to answer a questionnaire in Brazil is like giving them the chance to vote for president. What kind of result would you expect?
| | | | | You got me wrong | Dec 17, 2015 |
Mario Freitas wrote:
Now, going out to the market in Brazil? Are you kidding? Asking people to answer a questionnaire in Brazil is like giving them the chance to vote for president. What kind of result would you expect?
What I meant is that anyone asking me or Sheila will probably get a similar answer. No matter how interesting (or not) either may be, it will leave no food for thought; the mind will starve.
On the other hand, you and I usually have different viewpoints, supposedly both equally valid, which put together allow setting up an issue in 3D.
What seems to me as a peculiarly marketable 'thing' is to get our two opinions on anything to assemble that 3D image and then let the stakeholder navigate through the problem. Just a thought...
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