Difficulty understanding accents in an itnerview..What to do?

Jack Doughty wrote:

If it's a big enough job to make it worthwhile, ask a British translator to proofread (proof-hear?) it for you for a percentage or an hourly rate. I'm not offering to do this myself because my hearing is not really good enough for this sort of work nowadays, but I'm sure you could find someone who would cooperate with you. You could even post it here as a job.
When you say your "first project for an agency", is that for this particular agency or for any agency?
Also, is it between a Briton and an American, or is the whole thing in a British accent? And don't forget, there are many British accents, some more difficult to understand than others.

[Edited at 2008-09-18 16:11]

Widenmann wrote:

If the accents you are referring to are native British accents, it might be better for a speaker of UK English to do the transcription. In this case, what you are labeling as "unintelligible" are really just dialectial particularities. It is my understanding that within the UK, British English has plenty of regional differences as well. Depending on how far you are into the project, you may want to explain this to the client; e.g., you could explain that you would recommend that a native British English speaker perform the job for the sake of accurately understanding any nuances inherent to British English.

On the other hand, if the accents are foreign accents, it's possible a British translator would be in the same boat as you. In that case, you would probably just want to do the best you can, even if the end product becomes replete with "unintelligibles".

Obviously, the sooner you detect these problems and decide on a solution, the better.

Good luck.

Srta Sara wrote:

The project is fairly small....I would get paid less than 20 USD for it.
I'm close to outsourcing it to a Brit. Eighteen dollars is probably not worth all the hassle it's causing me.


Hi Sara,

Excuse me for asking a question that is outside the scope of your post but, how long is this interview when you are only going to get out US18.00. Hopefully 2 or 3 minutes only. I do transcriptions in a regular basis for one of the agencies that I work with, and I can tell you that the rate that I charge them comes to around US8.00 to US10.00 per minute of recording. So if in your case the recording is longer than 2, or let's say, 3 minutes, you are actually losing money and time here. I can only imagine how much time you have already lost only trying to understand the accents.

I wish you good look finding someone in England (or that comes from England) who would be willing to do it for you but sincerely I find it higly unlikely.

Srta Sara wrote:

I ended up posting the job here on ProZ.

Lawyer-Linguist wrote:



... did you post this job on Proz? Is the agency aware you've done this?

Not meaning to sound rude - and I realise you have limited experience - but this is highly unprofessional if you don't have the agency's authority, which in itself is unlikely as they can source their own people to do the job.

You say your main concern is building trust with the agency. Posting one of their assigned jobs on a public forum is not the way to gain it.

If you actually received their authority, I'd be sceptical about working for them. Project management is not what you're getting paid to do and they shouldn't leave it up to you.

Jack Doughty wrote:

Srta may answer this herself, but I understood her to mean not that she was posting the job on ProZ but that she was posting an appeal for a British proofreader on ProZ.