| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] | CPD (Continuing Professional Development) question Thread poster: Pascal Zotto
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 23:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Kay Denney wrote: Lieven Malaise wrote: Samuel Murray wrote:
No, the opposite is true. It is very easy for a translator to fall into a comfortable rut where he learns nothing new. ... Unfortunately, as a former PM, I can assure you that Samuel is right. There were way more translators on our "do not use" list than in our database of reliable translators.
Thanks for coming to my defense (-: but I did not mean bad translators. I meant good translators who simply get comfortable at what they're doing.
And no, the fact that the translator regularly encounters new terminology (that he has to research) does not mean that he is learning new skills. All jobs (not just translation) have an element of learning new things as a normal part of the job -- that by itself is not "continued professional development". Learning new skills and deliberately acquiring specific new knowledge isn't something that happens automatically as part of a translator's job, no matter how interesting and challenging the texts that he deals with.
Suppose you're a horticulture translator. You encounter 20 new terms in a text, and you look up half of them in dictionaries and find/create new terms for the other half after consulting books and/or the internet and/or chatting with local horticulturalists. That's different from buying a new book about something related to horticulture and reading the entire book. The former is just your job. The latter is CPD.
(Of course, it could be CPD if you deliberately accept a job that you know is going to require much, much more research than you normally do.)
[Edited at 2023-01-18 13:21 GMT]
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 00:07
Member
English to Turkish
| Apparently there are | Jan 18, 2023 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
I doubt there are many agencies out there that provide that 'service' to their translators. Unless, perhaps, they know more or less for sure their translator will be available.
I hear that they dutifully wait for their translators in Australia to wake up and check for their emails instead of going to the next man after 2 or 3 hours... either way I've been told on numerous occasions that they (boutique agencies) are 'loyal'.
| | | | Kaspars Melkis
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:07
English to Latvian
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| more thoughts | Jan 18, 2023 |
The source text revision is not translator's job and if required should be paid extra. Many clients explicitly forbid making such changes in the source text and are considered out of scope. At most, you can leave a comment if you notice something strange and clearly incorrect in the source text. Obviously, if you see a typo in some name, you correct it. In my case, if the medical institution's name needs to be translated then the typo should not appear but those words that are not translated, su... See more The source text revision is not translator's job and if required should be paid extra. Many clients explicitly forbid making such changes in the source text and are considered out of scope. At most, you can leave a comment if you notice something strange and clearly incorrect in the source text. Obviously, if you see a typo in some name, you correct it. In my case, if the medical institution's name needs to be translated then the typo should not appear but those words that are not translated, such as company names or addresses most likely will remain unchanged. If however, I need to do a deep research to ensure that some person's name is spelled correctly, then that's extra because the assumption is that I receive texts that are well written. I am not able to do full fact check in the time that is allocated for translation.
When the source text gets corrected, the client will request corrections in translation, all paid of course. It seems a little bit wasteful but is better from management's point of view because otherwise the source and translation can get out of sync and can cause more problems. ▲ Collapse
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Samuel Murray wrote:
Suppose you're a horticulture translator. You encounter 20 new terms in a text, and you look up half of them in dictionaries and find/create new terms for the other half after consulting books and/or the internet and/or chatting with local horticulturalists. That's different from buying a new book about something related to horticulture and reading the entire book. The former is just your job. The latter is CPD.
The former is guaranteed to be useful. The latter may never be useful. So CPD is ... academic?
Reminds me of my Master's course. There was the useful bit (learning how to translate stuff right) and the useless bit (analysing why it's right).
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Baran Keki wrote:
You were a former PM of a 'boutique translation agency', right? You know, those that pay more than 12 cents per word, provide more than generous deadlines, and wait for hours for their translators to reply to their emails? This really puts things into perspective for me. Why the f.ck am I wasting my time Googling every single word, trying to find the best and most natural sounding phrases and wordings for multinationals when the translators of boutique agencies don't give a shit? I think I'll increase my capacity going forward. Thanks Kay.
"But I'm not bitter"
| | | | Kaspars Melkis
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:07
English to Latvian
+ ...
Ice Scream wrote: So how come that the linguist working for the medicines regulator didn't know that? Because they're a translator who doesn't know enough about the area and shouldn't be doing that translation (or is having a bad day). It doesn't mean everyone without a degree in medicine is going to make a hash of that translation. There are bad translators who do formal CPD and good translators who don't. Everyone is different.
Sorry, I wasn't specific enough. The linguist who suggested that signs and symptoms should be translated with the same word, is an employee of the medicines regulator, not a translator. He doesn't have a degree in medicine though.
In legal field two similar words are often translated with a single word in Latvian. See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet
Translators who have experience in legal field will often try to apply the same principle to this pair. The fact that the regulator recommends to translate with a single word, confuses them even more. If they read specialist literature, then they will see the use of both terms but will they understand why they are used in this way or will just assume that it is a poor translation? I am not entirely convinced about the former.
[Edited at 2023-01-18 14:46 GMT]
| | | | | I just have to disagree on "CPD = new skills" | Jan 18, 2023 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
And no, the fact that the translator regularly encounters new terminology (that he has to research) does not mean that he is learning new skills. All jobs (not just translation) have an element of learning new things as a normal part of the job -- that by itself is not "continued professional development". Learning new skills and deliberately acquiring specific new knowledge isn't something that happens automatically as part of a translator's job, no matter how interesting and challenging the texts that he deals with.
Suppose you're a horticulture translator. You encounter 20 new terms in a text, and you look up half of them in dictionaries and find/create new terms for the other half after consulting books and/or the internet and/or chatting with local horticulturalists. That's different from buying a new book about something related to horticulture and reading the entire book. The former is just your job. The latter is CPD
The difference it too vague. The amount of research that goes into certain translation projects is immense: what if you have to open a couple of dozen tabs with books, articles, and standards to find out how people talk about the subject-matter in the languages concerned, how their ways of talking about it are different, and how you can link those ways together? And you're still only doing your job; it wouldn't be doable otherwise. So, I claim that the ordeal of reading an entire book about horticulture still doesn't constitute any amount of CPD in translation. Can I earn CPD points for reading (in fact, thoroughly studying) an entire book on roadmaking on account of the fact that I was translating it? And if I've only read half a book (plus a few articles and lots of other stuff) when working on a project and found that any more reading would be superfluous, I'll rake in zero CPD points. On the other hand, I'd get a bunch of them for completing a course on legal translation (my company offered one to me for free, knowing that I'd been doing legal translation for years), out of which I technically only learned one thing (about a linker word I didn't know I was supposed to avoid in legal translations for reasons hidden from me). What if CPD is not such a big deal, after all? What if I already have all the skills a translator needs, complete with enough intuition to avoid projects that are beyond my capabilities? If I can follow a 2 hour-long lecture on how the Poincare-Perelman theorem was proved right until the beginning of the last 10 minutes where I have to exclaim, "Wait, he did WHAT? Okay, I give up, I'm no longer following," can I say I'm qualified to translate a text that heavily relies on math to prove its point? Well, a university course in math won't fill that void: most of the world's mathematicians still don't understand WHAT he did there
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 23:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Liviu-Lee Roth
United States
Local time: 17:07
Romanian to English
+ ...
| I agree, for translators, no so for interpreters | Feb 9, 2023 |
jyuan_us wrote:
A professional translator learns every day by translating, and their professional development happens naturally that way. They shouldn't be imposed to spend time in something they don't really need just for the sake of CPD credits.
As a professional interpreter, in order to keep my name on the Roster of court interpreters (not certified), I must get 16 CEU (Cont.Edu.Units) every 2 years.
ATA certified translators need to get a certain number of CEU as well; therefore, the request is not outlandish.
Lee
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