Twenty-Ninth
Edition - Lost in Translation?
Lost in Translation is the title of a recently released movie. The
movie is not about translation bloopers and neither is the subject of this
newsletter.
Translation bloopers abound; hundreds, if not thousands can be found in the
Internet and many of us, particularly those of us who work in this industry,
have an extensive repertoire at hand, ready to entertain the crowd at parties
and social gatherings. Usually, they begin with: Have you heard the one
about…? Have you heard the one about the sign posted in a hotel in an
Eastern European country announcing that hotel guests would be
unbearable until the repairs on the hotel elevator had been completed?
(Sorry, could not resist the temptation.)
The focus of this newsletter is of a more serious nature, it is about
translation quality, and how it affects our quality of life.
Translation and the quality of religious information
Translation is a very old profession. It has influenced our lives
at least since the time when Jewish scribes and monks began the work of
translating the text of the Old and New Testaments.
Recently, I was reminded of the story about the young, enterprising monk who
suggested to his superior that it would be more accurate to make copies of the
Bible from the original, rather than from copies. His superior agreed and sent
him to retrieve the original text from the archives. When the young monk failed
to return after a rather long period of time, his superior went to look for him,
and found him in the cellar hitting his head against the wall, while repeating:
“It says celebrate…”
This, of course, is only a fictional story, but it drives home the point: How
accurate, really, are the translations of biblical text, on which so many people
base their faith? Like the monk in the story, some people only trust the source.
The yet to be released Mel Gibson movie, The Passion, based on The
Crucifixion, that is stirring so much controversy already, was reportedly to be
produced in the original Aramaic, without subtitles. Allegedly, Gibson did not
want to distract viewers with the translation. Subsequent reports, however,
indicate that Gibson is reconsidering this decision.
More importantly, scholars interested in verifying the accuracy of biblical
translations have actually gone back to the original Greek and Hebrew texts;
although their primary concern was to render their meaning in modern
English. The New International Version (NIV) of 1978 is an example of the
results of the work of these scholars and a document that some people, who
believe that the only faithful rendering of the original text is the King James’
version (KJV), consider as controversial as Mel Gibson's movie. However, in the
course of their work, the scholars spotted hundreds of errors in the KJV, some
which have been classified as glaring and obvious, but reportedly none that
contradict a key point of doctrine. Some of the errors have been traced back to
the source text from which the KJV was translated. Notwithstanding, the
consensus is that “The Word of God comes through with stunning clarity”.
Reportedly, translations of the Old Testament, although not error-free, have
less problems, an outcome that is attributed to the meticulous work of Jewish
scribes.
Translations and the quality of national security
information
On July 13, 2003, the CBS program “60 Minutes” reported:
“Months before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, one of the
plotters of the attack was heard on tape having a discussion in Arabic that no
one at the time knew was about how to make explosives - and he had a manual that
no one at the time knew was about how to blow up buildings. None of it was
translated until well after the bombing, and while the FBI has hired more
translators since then, officials concede that problems in the language division
have hampered the country's efforts to battle terrorism.
According to congressional investigators, this may have played a role in the
inability to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. The General Accounting Office
reported that the FBI had expressed concern over the thousands of hours of
audiotapes and pages of written material that have not been reviewed or
translated because of a lack of qualified linguists.”
The report concluded that the lack of qualified translators continues to hamper
our ability to protect ourselves from further attacks:
“The FBI has conceded that some people in the language department are unable
to adequately speak English or the language they're supposed to be translating.
Kevin Taskasen was assigned to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to translate
interrogations of Turkish-speaking al-Qaeda members who had been captured after
Sept. 11. The FBI admits that he was not fully qualified to do the job. “
Everyday, world leaders and heads of state must rely on the accuracy of
translations to make decisions that could, potentially change the course of
history. Fortunately, they have access to highly qualified translators and
interpreters, who manage to interpret not only the speaker’s words, but also the
tone and nuances, which are so important for complete understanding. For
example, one has only to witness qualified UN interpreters at work to appreciate
the accuracy and speed with which speeches are translated to the languages that
their audiences understand.
Translation and the quality of medical care
Entrusting the task of translating medical information to inexperienced translators
can lead to a regrettable outcome. In June of 1998, the Canadian newspaper,
Toronto Star published the following article: “Cancer doctor's message
lost in the translation. Treatment turns into cure in words of interpreters.”
Reportedly, well-meaning, but inexperienced volunteer interpreters from the
Italian community had repeatedly assured anxious cancer patients and their
relatives that the doctor was discussing a cure for cancer, when in
reality he was proposing a controversial treatment. The Italian word for
treatment was erroneously translated into English as cure.
Translation and the quality of pediatric medical care
According to the results of a study published in Pediatrics (Vol. 111 No. 1
January 2003, pp. 6-14), after a study of the quality of interpreter services, a
hospital recommended that third-party reimbursement for trained interpreter
services should be considered for patients with limited English proficiency.
The study was based on 13 encounters (474 pages of transcripts). Professional
medical interpreters were used in 46% of these encounters and ad hoc
interpreters, including nurses, social workers and an 11-year-old-sibling in the
remaining 54%.
The result was 396 interpreter errors, with a mean of 36 per encounter.
The report classified the type and frequency of errors as follows:
Omission - 52%
False fluency -16%
Substitution -13%
Editorializing - 10%
Addition - 8%
Sixty-three percent of the errors (a mean of 19 per encounter) were found to
have potential clinical consequences. Ad hoc interpreters were found to commit a
significantly higher number of errors with potential clinical consequences than
hospital interpreters (77% vs. 53%). The study classified errors of clinical
consequence as follows:
- Omitting questions about drug allergies.
- Neglecting instructions about the dose, frequency and duration of
antibiotics and rehydration fluids.
- Adding that hydrocortisone cream must be applied to the entire body,
instead of only to facial rash.
- Instructing a mother not to answer personal questions.
- Omitting that a child was already swabbed for a stool culture.
- Instructing a mother to put amoxicillin in both ears for treatment of
otitis media.
Translation and the quality of information that is
accessible to physicians
The Lancet website includes the text of a message from a concerned reader about
the “Hazards of translation of non-English medical publications in Medline.”
The writer refers to a paper originally published in Deutsche Medizinische
Wochenzeitschrift, a German medical journal, under the title Diagnostik
systemischer Pilzinfektionen in der Hämatologie (Diagnosis of
systemic fungal infections in Hematology). A translation of this work was
published in Medline, under the title: Diagnosis of systemic mushroom
poisoning in hematology. As the concerned reader pointed out, the
translation of the subject line would have readers expecting to learn about the
effects of consuming poisonous mushrooms when, in fact, the text of the article
was about a different topic altogether.
Translation quality and its impact on your bottom line
The quality of translation impacts your bottom line. If you have any doubt
about this, consider the cost of the misinterpretation of a single term, Pilz.
It distorted information about investigative work that cost the
researchers time, effort and money to develop. It also led at least one, and
probably many more Medline subscribers who read the article, to question the
quality of the information published in this highly reputable medical site.
According to SixSigma (http://www.isixsigma.com) , a site dedicated to quality,
the cost of quality; i.e.losses incurred by a business due to non-conforming
products of services, amounts to approximately 15 to 30 percent of total cost
for most businesses. This includes the cost of fixing or servicing
malfunctioning products or badly rendered services, as well as the cost of
dealing with lawsuits that could result from the latter.
Based on the above examples, selecting a translation supplier using price as the
only criterion is not a wise business decision. Not only does the quality of
product and/or corporate information reflect on the image and reputation of your
company or business, but lack thereof increases your cost of doing business
significantly and detract from your ability to compete. To support your business
goals, the translations you procure must be accurate and delivered on-time to
support your goals of getting to market.
Selecting a supplier of translations
When selecting a translation supplier for your next product instruction
manual, website or software localization projects, be sure to assign
equal weight to cost, quality and timely delivery factors. Keep in mind that,
there is not a standard format for translation cost estimates, therefore
you could be comparing apples to oranges, unless you know what is included in
each cost item.
If your key decision factor is cost, be sure that the supplier is not
sacrificing quality to deliver a low cost product. Cost reductions should be
achieved through productivity improvements, effective use of technology and
continuous process improvements, not by cutting corners.
Why you should consider InterSol as your translation
supplier
At InterSol we take pride in the quality of our work. To ensure that we can
offer our clients competitive pricing, we strive to build quality into the
process, rather than inspecting quality into the end product. To achieve
this, we ensure that our translators and quality reviewers are excellent
linguists, who work in their mother tongue and have demonstrated expertise in
their field of specialization. We provide all our staff and resources with the
appropriate training and tools for each project. For every project, we develop a
localization kit that includes complete and clear instructions in
addition to glossaries and reference materials. Every aspect of our process is
designed to ensure that the translations we deliver render the meaning of the
source text accurately and completely, while adapting to the cultural and
linguistic requirements of the targeted locale.
Our solutions include the use of Translation Memory tools to develop terminology
databases. These are collections of previously translated text that can be
applied to future versions of the same or similar documents. Effective use of
this TM technology also helps us to ensure consistency of terminology within and
across publications and associated software while reducing maintenance cost.
Our quality checks
In addition to ensuring that the translation is a faithful representation
of the source text, without any omissions, our linguistic
check is designed to verify accuracy of grammar and spelling,
proper use of voice and tense of verbs and conversions of units of measure, and that the use of terminology is
consistent with the approved terms in the client’s glossary.
Our cosmetic check focuses on the visual
aspects, such as ensuring that all accented and double-byte and special
characters display and print correctly, text wraps, hyphenates and sorts
correctly, there are no breaks in corporate and product names, font selection is
appropriate, punctuation and capitalization follow the rules of the target
language, or client-provided guidelines, consistency of formats, etc.
On-time delivery
Adherence to the promised due date is a very important key success factor at
InterSol. We appreciate the importance that our clients place on receiving
timely information about how we are progressing toward the agreed-upon delivery
date. For large projects and those that include many files and/or steps, we
develop a Microsoft Project schedule with milestones and track our progress
towards each milestone. This provides us with the visibility that we need to
spot possible schedule delays and take the appropriate corrective measures.
Customer service
We place a very high value in providing services that keep our customers coming
back. Consequently, every customer is assigned a Project Manager, who
serves as a single point of contact on all project-related issues. The Project
Manager is responsible to ensure that projects are delivered on the targeted date
and within budget. To avoid run-away projects, should the client change
the scope of a project in progress, the Project Manager presents to the client a
revised quote and schedule for approval before incurring additional charges.
Therefore, the next time you are Lost in Translation, use the following
coordinates to find your way to a reliable source of quality translations:
