On International Translators Day on 30th September, I had a very brief cameo role on a video. I joined colleagues from the European Central Bank’s DG Translation, central banks, and supervisory authorities for a special purpose. The video was used to launch the Languages at the European Central Bank LinkedIn page.
September has quite a tools focus for me: many translation events have a focus on the use of tools. Given the relevance of tools in assisting human translators, the subject is frequently on the agenda.
At the start of September I presented at the XXIII FIT World Congress in Geneva – on the need for professional translators to remain “Experts in the Lead” in the human-machine translation era.
I also joined a panel at the European Language Data Space country workshop for Austria here in Vienna to weigh up the pros and cons. My view related to the use of language data in public administration.
In late September I attended the European Trados User Group conference: ETUG 2025. The event takes place every other year and is intended for power users of RWS Trados products. The write-up of the conference is available on the ETUG website here.
I presented a summary of Trados use cases presented at ETUG 2025 to the ECCO Working Group on Translation & Production. Their meeting focused on translation technology. I have been the FMA member of ECCO WG T&P since 2014 and attend remotely.
I’ve just powered down my work laptop ahead of my summer holiday. Before turning off, I finished my timesheets and backed up files that needed to be. It’s a good routine to come down a cognitive notch after a final working day with various translations and revision jobs to finish and turn around.
Part of the packing routine is also sorting out my reading material for the trip. With not being sure whether we might need to share rooms with the children en route, I have taken to ensuring that I have some books to read on my Kindle (as well as also trying to read a physical book). The following are the books that I am taking with me for the next fortnight. Some I might only dip into if I wake up early, or am not quite ready to fall asleep.
I used to ingest first time, digest second time.
It’s a mixed bag – although with certain thematic groupings. Some books I am starting for the first time, others I am going back to, and others are re-reading. As I commented to a former tutor of mine from university, who remarked about rereading books, “I used to ingest first time, digest second time.” His attention was piqued by my re-reading a book that had been part of my primary reading during first year at university (28 years ago!).
I’ve deliberately left out any books about translation and languages, There are plenty of books I want to read, but for restorative purposes, I need to give my ever-curious brain some down time from language and law and to read something unrelated.
There are some self-improvement titles – a couple of which are recommendations from the coach I had sessions with earlier in the year. The sessions with him really paid off. I’m sure I will return to the “wordface” in September relaxed and reinvigorated.
Summer Holiday Reading List
Diccon Bewes, Swisswatching
Urs Birchler, Das Einmaleins des Geldes
Bill Browder, Freezing Order and Red Notice
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Gunter de Bruyn, Märkische Forschungen
Katja Hoyer, Beyond the Wall
Cal Newport, Deep Work
David Omand, How spies think
Fiona Rintoul, The Leipzig Affair
Rebecca Seal, Solo: how to work alone
John Sillitoe, The loneliness of the long distance runner
Today’s tale starts back in late 2015, when I addressed an OeNB/JVI seminar in Vienna for translators from Central and South Eastern Europe. My presentation was about my first year of life translating at the FMA. I also spoke about the role of translation in the SSM, and being directly embedded in a supervisory division. I recounted my experiences as a “party of one” in establishing language services at the FMA. In my slide deck that day, I alluded to John Donne’s “No man is an Island”. Hugh Grant’s character in the 2002 film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s “About a Boy”, Will Freeman, however attributed “No Man is an Island” to Jon Bon Jovi.
Fast forward to 2024, and John Donne’s poem celebrates its quatercentenary. Recently I talked to my development coach, about how well my job title reflects what I do and my professional aspirations. I explained how, if asked, I often answered that I was a “rock star” rather than a “translator”. Or occasionally a “rock star translator”. I had cultivated the image of being unconventional (e.g. by being directly embedded in banking supervision) and working directly at the “Wordface”. In translation circles, in the last three years “SPLSU” (pronounced: Spool-soo”) has become my go to term. It gets people interested and generates greater interest than replying “translator”.
Rockstar Stadium Tour: Cancelled? Postponed?
After a while of the “rock star translator” moniker, I decided that it didn’t fit. Why? It didn’t seem appropriate any more. I didn’t want to be in danger of becoming the “washed-up” rock star. Translators are resourceful types and grow and reinvent themselves: this approach is key to longevity as a translator. Offering premium services involves constantly learning and adapting. Rock star thrash out old favourites ad nauseam – sometimes until they are far too long in the tooth. Mind you, that doesn’t stop adoring fans from attending every farewell tour due to the fear of missing out.
Turn that noise down…
Similarly, daily tinnitus management efforts render me the antithesis of the rock star. Gone are the crashing electric guitar solos and amps turned up to eleven that go with the territory. Translation and its intellectual challenge continues to drive me. This is why I have sessions with a development coach, talk with premium translators, and why I attended an inspiring conference in Spiez. Self-improvement steps are necessary for skirting the doldrums about the state of the profession at the hands of the industry.
Or getting sucked into the whirlpool of gloom and doom. I’ve charted my course – I’m the “Expert in the Lead”, rather than a mere cog in a “Machine in the Loop” or “Human in the Loop”. This approach keeps me upbeat about the profession vs industry situation. If anything, being that “one-man show” plays to my advantage, in that I am incumbent and difficult to dislodge – like a barnacle, whereas amid larger teams headcount is a more frequent issue – particular when a retirement wave rolls into view. Now is the time to seize upon and consolidate my position of linguistic leadership – rather that resting on my laurels.
The elephant in the room
I am realistic that Machine Translation will impact my workflows at some stage, but made my peace with this eventuality by settling on an expert in the lead strategy. The situation would be vastly different, if I were to resign myself to being a mere Human in the Loop. When recently appraising a proposed MT solution, I actively choose to be realistic and objective, rather than protectionist and defensive. That being said, I was cautious in my appraisal of the solution, voicing concerns about it should be used properly, and with due care. My appraisal of the situation was far less binary than a simple yes/no view that a non-linguist might take.
Not the only inhabitant on the island
My work is a complex blend of new and repeat translations. Different areas of supervision result in different translation tasks. As a supervisory authority’s remit constantly expands, borders blur and fray, while new areas emerge. By working for different “customers” you are not nearly as “cut off” and remote as you think. In terms of knowledge and skillset, I might live on in a secluded part of the main island, away from the main settlement (those of a legal background), but the Wordface is not a multi-day trek from civilisation, food and water. Similarly, my customers can find me too, and most importantly, I don’t need a helicopter in a storm or rowing boat amidst choppy seas to get off the island.
It is easy to take stable island life for granted – it provides me with everything I need: shelter, food and water (and hopefully interesting wildlife!) However, it is important not to stop exploring or to allow the grass to grow under your feet. But it is reassuring to have a spot marked as your home. However, the moment you stop exploring you become complacent, and maybe even miss out on exciting new projects.
It is good to consider my island as not being miles from anywhere or out of sight over the horizon. It is probably more sensible to think of it as an archipelago, where I enjoy distinctly warm relations with the neighbouring islands. My lighthouse might not be the tallest, or have the brightest light, in an archipelago of language technology expertise. The neighbouring islands are frequently larger and more densely populated – the working groups, professional associations, freelance translators, fellow governmental translators and terminologists, the growing gaggle of language technologists.
And then there are the contacts through blogs and social media whose “despatches” I tune into and regularly interact with. They might be a long way over the horizon, but whose message comes through loud and clear. And sometimes it is very useful to be use similar outlets to broadcast – even just to raise your flag to find out which way the wind is blowing.
Despite having a sheltered island life, it is essential to be actively involved in different communities – based on other (less) neighbouring islands. The communities on other islands help in my continuing professional development. A brief sortie can provide me with intensive training. They also provide much-needed “time off the island” in terms of working groups and speaking engagements. And of course you also have a view back to your island, rather than just the view from your island. These communities provide me with insights for understanding the sentiment of the profession and the industry. Professional alliances are essential for discussing issues of professional importance with kindred souls. They also bring together those who choose to excel, rather than subsist and stew in their own juices.
It’s good to explore…
In Spiez, Chris Durban gave an inspiring presentation. It was the first time I had heard her speak “live” after many Translating Europe Forum events online. She addressed the need for translators to visit “Clientland”. For me, Clientland involves trips away from my part of the island – and talking to the other islanders. Some work may materialise like a “message in a bottle” on the shore, but many projects need a spark. In Clientland, I push that translation should not be an “afterthought”, as it might be if outsourced. When I started out at the FMA, I highlighted a need to be agile, and move quickly between projects. Helping customers realise how, when, and why to use you is time well spent. It also prevents misunderstandings.
A man, a plan…
I returned from Spiez with a full reading list. On the flight back from Zurich, I also sketched a five point plan about getting into Clientland, based on Chris’ presentation. Here were some “quick fixes” I came up with.
Translation to a brief. I looked through my Language Services Handbook after I returned to the office. I saw that there was very little about translation briefs. I put together a non-exhaustive questions based on jobs from the last year from infrequent customers. This allowed me to compile a decent brief – especially about who you are really translating for. (It’s not Herr Schmidt or Frau Braun who e-mailed you that attachment!)
Spell out how you can best be used. In-house translation isn’t just about massive projects, but also “quick and dirty” projects – a page here or two paragraphs there. Your customers might not be fully aware of all the possibilities.
Highlight the premium nature of your service. Customers may use your services for low impact or low importance work – try to nudge them gently towards more substantial or higher impact work.
Look forward not back. There is a temptation to try to look at an Annual Report to establish emerging territories. An Annual Report is frequently quite retrospective publication. It might highlight existing areas that are thematic blind spots. However, you should also explore reliable sources regarding forthcoming developments (e.g. legal policy blogs).
Cut out the doom-scrolling. Rather than doom-scrolling through the “woe is me” content from LinkedIn or elsewhere, fill your commutes with content that enlightens, educates and informs.
In March, another tinnitus flare-up meant I had to resort to additional tinnitus management mechanisms. This allowed me to keep going, and to take back control of the issue. Hybrid work and remit creep have meant increases in virtual meetings – both recurring or very densely scheduled ones. At some point, it gets too much for me with either headphones or a conference spider. Cutting meetings is the realistic measure.
At home, the noise level from my three happy, excitable and energetic young children can also get too much. With tinnitus, the impact on me of non-stop noise exposure is draining and I often retreat for a snooze. On some occasions, the snooze lasts for 2 hours. A more frequent need for one (i.e. particularly during the working week) is an indication of noise overload.
There are a few stealth tricks that I use to prevent things from getting out of control. I am able to turn down all the speakers around the house from my phone. And the maximum volume on the children’s Tonie Boxes is lower than the default value.
Verterminierung – the scourge of hybrid work
German has a concept of Verterminierung, meaning calendar gridlock and a continuous cycle of meetings. How people manage wall-to-wall calls and meetings throughout the day, every day of the week eludes me. Some corporate cultures conflate being in meetings with success. Sadly, Verterminierung has spilt over into private life: organising a child’s birthday party now needs 4-6 weeks’ lead time. In a work environment full of meetings there is too much “work about work” rather than “working”.
I struggle with densely packed meetings, and using wear various earplugs to reduce the noise overload. Adjacent appointments also mean a constant rush from one to the next, and invariably they over-run. This is less of an issue between virtual meetings than physical ones. But there is also no opportunity to stretch legs between meetings. In addition to the noise overload, a steady stream of meetings breaks my concentration and flow. This was picked up on in comments on my Translation vs Tetris blogpost). That post was given a re-airing in light of Liz Truss’ new book.
However, the typically hybrid setting means that meetings also place additional load on ears. Four years on from the Covid-enforced change, I regularly have uncomfortable meeting experiences. If I am alone in a meeting room and predominantly in “listen only” mode, I return to my office to escape empty room echoes.
Banishing sales calls
Spring seems to be a peak season for sales calls. Not unsolicited, because I clearly opted-in at some stage to be allowed to be contacted by phone. I frequently find their machine-gun pace and loud volume of such calls very painful. Usually when they first draw breath, I stop them and disarm them. I instruct them to speak slowly, clearly and at a lower volume and explain that the latter also helps them to speak in a more comfortable tone. If call centre operatives speed up again, I request an e-mail instead, and information about why it is financially in my interests.
I used to perform a lot of customer service related matters by phone (this is still commonplace in Austria). I now steadfastly contact banks, utilities and mobile providers by Internet chat. My bank, phone provider and electricity and gas providers have proven contactable using their customer service chat. I no longer take sales calls by phone from all of them. Meter readings can now be communicated using the chatbot, phone contracts changed or extended via their app and the like. I also resolved the double charging of my ORF Beitrag this way. Occasionally I have to check whether I am dealing with a human or request to chat to a human operator.
Applying private needs to shorten work meetings – a productivity hack
With how easy it was to apply this for private matters, I thought I would apply it to work meetings. A few mails worked wonders to reduce the frequency or length of meetings. Many meetings are now 30 minute slots rather than 1 hour. I’m going a step further: if I set up a meeting, I use 25 minute slots. Or 50 minutes rather than an hour. This also allows breaks between calls and meetings, and time keeping is tighter. 30 and 60 minute slots have a tendency to “fill the slot” rather than good time-keeping.
Shorter meetings allow me to have larger blocks for focussed work – for translations, terminology and editing. I use wafer-thin gaps to set up and run machine translation tests (a subject of another forthcoming blog post) or terminology entry work.
I discovered another hack by accident. Every Wednesday and Thursday I collect my son from school with alarms at 14:37 or 15:22. I now accept 2pm meetings, scheduled for 1 hour, but will say I have to leave at 14:35. It often means meetings that are shorter, quicker and more focused. If I need a 10-15 minute meeting, I schedule for 15:00 ahead of pick-up at 15:30. For bilateral meetings, the meeting planner can shoehorn in meetings to not break up longer meeting-free blocks.
In case people are wondering whether there is a way to enforce this in Outlook by default – there is.
Changing meeting lengths in Outlook
In the Outlook Options for the Calendar, meetings can be selected to “start late” or “finish early”, and in my case have been set to be shortened by an five minutes by meetings of less than one hour or 10 minutes for meetings of one hour or longer. There is of course another reason why I have chosen these particular lengths – they tie in with pomodoro lengths.
Could that meeting be an e-mail, a Teams chat, or even a form?
We’ve all left meetings with the feeling that “it ought to have been an e-mail, or a Team chat.” With an M365 roll-out there’ll also be “that e-mail could have been a chat”. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly we move from an e-mail to a chat-based corporate culture. Naturally, I’ll adjust my translation workflows (in terms of status updates, translator’s questions and comments, and terminology issues.
Many meetings don’t have to be meetings. The following flow diagram is one I put together from a number of different sources to reduce meetings, meeting-related dead time and to help regain part of my working day.
A post on LinkedIn recently addressed the issue of expectations for delivery of a translation project. The suggested timeframe provided for a single translator to translate a website of approximately 25,000 words was approximately 1 week. The responses of other linguists generally fell into two distinct camps: firstly, the that’s-no-way-near-enough-time camp, and secondly, the it’s-no-wonder-translators-are-losing-out-to-MT-if-they-are-that-slow camp. Fence-sitters would probably fall into a how-long’s-a-piece-of-string camp – which is a justified argument – as the subject matter was unclear.
Currently there are more “famine” than “feast” posts from freelancers. (N)MT and LLM-based translation form a two-pronged attack that are affecting human translators. Industry-side evangelisers sometimes claim that MT more content translation than human translators can translate. Even if this is the case, there is still a diminishing wedge for human translators.
Since 2022, I have regularly seen posts about translators being reduced to post-editors of Machine Translation. The rates do not reflect the true amount of effort required to bring translations up to standard. Which in turn leads to a drop in motivation. It isn’t realistic to expect the same service for a living rate as a dumping rate.
100% productivity is corporate settings: an illusion
In the modern data-driven world, we are incredibly IT-dependent. Updates need to be done, and they don’t always happen overnight, during lunchbreaks etc. I’ve previously covered why I schedule my return to work to allow me to start with a home office day: with a “soft logon” the night before. Unless you user blocker appointments, you are bombarded with mails, calls, Teams chats etc. And all this eats into your productivity – particularly if you consider your day like a game of Tetris.
As I pointed out to one comment about the 25,000 words in a week, which suggested 100% productivity in the corporate world, this is a fallacy. Time and activity tracking frequently sanitises out “Tür-und-Angel-Gespräche” with colleagues, lunchbreaks that overrun, online calls that start and end late. Full calendars are seldom a sign of productivity in their own right. There are also “meetings that could have been a mail” and continuous calls are draining. I now maintain better call discipline – sticking rigidly to the intended call length, and excusing myself from over-running calls.
Is human productivity the issue?
Returning to the how-long’s-a-piece-of-string issue, about productivity and its effect on translation output, it is clear that there are unreasonably high expectations on productivity. As a translator, you might have a “straightline top speed”, but for how long can you maintain it for? And does the ride remain comfortable, or do things straight to rattle or get uncomfortable. When I went in house, to try to gauge my output, I set myself an original 1,500 words a notional daily output. A 1,500 word document to translate from scratch can reasonably be expected to be sent back by the end of the day,
Would I start translating the second I got into the office? Rarely. Unless an item has come in the previous evening and I had set up the project the previous evening. It might be necessary to perform some alignments, concordance-based terminology work, or (re)read the legislation. Sharing an office means inevitable phone calls and distractions. I often work with noise cancelling headphones when the office is fully occupied. When I have a lot of short tasks I use desktop timers to keep moving between the tasks.
6 out of 8, or 8 out of 10?
If I am lucky, I get about 6 hours (out of 8 hours) undisturbed translation time a day, and would have to go at a steady 250 words an hour to do 1,500 words in that 6 hours. As translation memories and termbases grew, “plain vanilla” translations became a lot quicker. Filler tasks like translating investment warnings are now practically automated. The translation task mainly involves locking a few segments and a quick check of the output and a bit of formatting.
Consequently, I have been able to increase my notional daily output to 2,000 words, but the added 500 words a day reflect a number of factors:
I do considerably less terminology work. Now it is frequently ad hoc rather than in dedicated terminology sessions.
I also have read-only translation memories containing bilingual alignments of European law at my finger tips, allowing me to spend more time in Trados Studio than I previously did.
Better screen setup means reference materials open on a second screen, a glance away.
I have a very narrow subject focus – at its broadest, my subject matter is financial market supervision, but predominantly focussed on banking supervision. There are very few supervisory procedures that are genuinely new. I have occasional forays into insurance and Pensionskassen supervision, securities supervision or banking resolution.
Regular expressions for QA have helped reduce cognitive (over)load.
Despite such “efficiency” improvements, achieving 8 hours’ pure translation productivity still requires working for over eight hours. Changes in daylight conditions also need considering. However, mature TMs also have drawbacks – which is why I have looked into better use of segment penalties, and terminology can also change over the years.
Explained simply, it goes like this. You want a high quality translation? You’ll either have to pay a premium rate (i.e. price is high), or allow more time for the translation. You want a quick translation? You’ll either have to pay a premium rate (i.e. price is high due to needing translators to work extra hours, or in a team) or sacrifice quality. You want a cheap translation? You either sacrifice quality (e.g. review processes, terminology checks, coherence checks) or have to wait on delivery.
The AI hype and the genuine advances in machine translation have pitted the industry against the professionals. There is a different playing field in the age of NMT and generative AI. There has certainly been a big leap since statistic MT was in its heyday. You have to therefore manage your customer’s expectations (explain what you do – e.g. explain that you use CAT and not (N)MT), and what the expected delivery time is.
Managing expectations.
I’ve always believed in expectation management (a skill you learn as a parent). Back in 2016, along with recurring daily work, we had most substantial relaunch of my employer’s website to date. Eight years on, there are still regularly new pages and posts, and the workflow has proven itself. I had to work to a fixed deadline for go live, at the end of an intense month (including work trips to London, Zagreb and Nuremberg).
The project allowed me to also educate colleagues/customers about realistic expectations, while also changing the translation workflow for publishing directly to the website. Now, with backend CMS access. I extract texts from the source view in the CMS and open the files in Trados Studio. I could translate pages as they successively went live in the testing environment. That approach eliminated dealing with multiple versions of the same page or post as Word files. Agreeing on a top-down approach allows prioritisation of certain content for translation. This ensured handling top level content child pages/posts first, and steadily working through subpages.
For multi-day projects, I explain how to involve me before a final version of the document exists. This approach is particularly useful for multiple iterations of a text. It also helps to allow more translation time – PerfectMatch helps to overcome document iteration issues. Naturally, I do also make sure that I allow a slight buffer, and early delivery is easier than having tight deadlines.
Ultimately good customer communication is key – keep they updated about progress – maybe check in with them partway through the project – possibly the earlier the better. Try to group questions about terminology or wording suggestions together rather than a constant trickle of questions.
When you say that you are an in-house translator, it seems like a conversation stopper. Seemingly, everyone assumes they know exactly what you do for your entire working week. People’s perception of your activities are that you are a “one-trick pony”. However, the fact is that many in-house translator jobs are not full-time translation positions. Fortuitously, this provides such translators with a possibility for “job crafting” a blend of translation-based and non-translation-based activities into their working hours.
To the uninitiated, an in-house translator sits or stands at their desk (hurray for the modern workplace!) and translates documents all day/week/year long, with revision and terminology tasks along the way. But even for someone with a job title as simple as “translator”, there are other tasks to perform, and a degree of wiggle room for “job crafting”, even as a SPLSU.
From my in-house experience, demand for translation has always depended on proximity and visibility to colleagues in active supervision. Whereas freelancers market themselves and dedicate time to marketing (as shown frequently in the #litranslators community on LinkedIn), physical presence has been an essential factor for me – the need to be seen.
With the disruption from the pandemic and the advent of “new work” with versatile and flexible working arrangements, the tasks picked up through job crafting have helped to reinforce my presence. This has proven particularly important as I don’t necessarily see my colleagues in person, even though I share an open plan shared office. And “cold calling” colleagues over MS Teams is not an option for translation marketing in the in-house setting.
Seize the day! Subconscious marketing works.
Fortunately, there are a lot of “recurring” jobs that allow a gentle trickle of osmosis marketing opportunities to colleagues. Intriguingly, the example below proves how the actual translation job that triggers the marketing doesn’t need to be massive. Take a recent case in hand. There was a micro-sized amendment to the Austrian Banking Act (BWG; Bankwesengesetz). We’re talking about a law that affects everyone in Banking Supervision at my employer.
The amendment in question in translation terms was at most a 10-15 minute job (with most of that time spent generating the 250 page accessible PDF file in Word4Axes), and consisted of:
the appending of a single point/subparagraph at the end of a single Article in the BWG,
an inserted reference to the transposition of a single point in an EU Regulation into Austrian law, and
the insertion of a single sentence stating when this amendment would enter into force.
Of course, I didn’t draw attention to the size of the amendment addressed, or that it only becomes relevant from the start of 2024. The mail that went out told a story that I could use to connect with colleagues, and I told them:
The English translation of the Austrian Banking Act has been updated to include the latest amendments. The full translation can be downloaded directly at …
All English language versions of supervisory laws, as available, can be downloaded from the website from the page …
Extract of a mail to colleagues
Tell me you are looking for translation work, without saying you are looking for translation work.
That simple two sentence mail connected me with 100+ colleagues. It reminded them that I was potentially available for their translation needs, without saying I am looking for work. The mail flicked the thought switch about translation needs: two pages for one colleague here, one from another there. Checking presentation slides from a third, gist translation of a draft amendment to another law for a fourth. It also planted seeds in colleagues’ minds. Do I translate secondary legislation? Is there a working translation of some frequently cited provisions of the Commercial Code (GewO; Gewerbeordnung)? The list goes on.
This is what a simple e-mail in the depths of the traditional “Sommerloch” can achieve. Its impact means that I am aware that I have to be careful not to get the timing “too right”. Especially as the mail also triggered some enquiries about whether I have time next month for a couple of jobs.
My job crafting also focuses on “seeing the bigger picture”. Part of this revolves around ensuring that translation is not only an afterthought in colleagues’ perceptions. By teasing out a number of non-translation tasks over the years, I have found ways to ensure a steady interaction with colleagues. In turn, this also helps to ensure a constant flow of translation work.
Leveraging a few (relatively) small, but nevertheless important, non-translation-based tasks ensures a strong flow of translation. These tasks include:
Content and document management for our website and departmental Intranet.
Accessibility (Barrierefreiheit) for web content and publications in both German and English
Handling the public consultation of national soft law instruments
Handling the comply/explain process for EBA soft law instruments
Coordinating periodic reviews of internal banking supervision processes
Monitoring of covered bond issuances under the new Pfandbrief Act
Member of the Sounding Board of a subproject in my employer’s digital transformation programme.
Tranlation expertise regarding workflows and processes flows into many of these tasks. A number of them also have synergy effects in relation to my translation work. By handling monitoring tasks, it gives me access to policy experts, who provide me with follow-up translation work. Other monitoring activities allow me to talk to colleagues, in particular recent arrivals, who become translation customers. In turn, I can approach them about meanings and interpretations of tricky concepts.
Keeping a watchful eye over a list of standardised processes provides me with an opportunity to contact colleagues. In turn it helps to ensure a steady flow of translation work, Experience from translation workflows proves useful in understanding the interfaces between banking supervision processes. Similarly, it also helps in understanding how they shape content updates to our website.
Much of the synergies revolve around multi-hatting – dealing with colleagues in a number of capacities.
Take this anonymised example about how I multi-hat, The points below are not in strict chronological order (e.g. Guidelines may already have entered into force, while the national transposition is still delayed…)
A proposal from the European Commission focussing on an amendment to a Regulation of relevance for a specific topic within banking supervision pops up. The policy expert has a couple of days to respond with comments and suggestions in English. They request that I carry out a quick language check for their submission about the proposal. (translator/reviewer hat).
After many rounds the proposal eventually clears Parliament and is duly published in the Official Journal of the European Union. Member States start transposition into national law. Once the national legislation is enacted, I translate the amendment (translator hat)
EBA draws up Guidelines about a specific aspect of the Regulation (and by extension its transposition into national law). I check the German translator with the policy experts (reviewer and national editor hat). Once the Guidelines are published into all languages, I set up the comply/explain process for the policy expert to then appraise. (compliance monitoring hat)
New Guidelines often require updates to our national soft law publications, including a public consultation and/or changes to our banking supervision processes (process management/reviewer hat/consultation hat).
Publication and translation of published soft law instrument and assorted changes needed to our website (web editor and translator hat) as well as for accessibility (accessibility hat).
Three out of the five tasks come about from job crafting, although three tasks also involve me directly based on my “original” role as a translator. In the long-term, it is also possible to ensure that job crafting elements are included in goals and performance metrics for appraisal/review cycles.
In a larger, i.e. non-SPLSU in-house setting, job crafting can allow team members to focus on the areas they prefer, and to collectively cover more bases. While onlookers continue to see a certain number of full-time equivalent translators, within the team there are a far greater array of specialists.
One downside to being the only linguist in your setting and with the knock-on of limited exposure to your target language is a lack of opportunities to discuss intricacies of usage. This issue can of course lead to an inadvertent usage, or use of a non-inclusive term. The scenario was this: I was engaging on a post on LinkedIn about why it is good for translators to be able to talk to one another in projects where multiple translators work on the project.
The isolation as a translator means that you can often become blinkered in your vision (and thinking!). As wonderful as stable customers are – and they are increasingly rare in the cut-throat “first-finger-first” world of getting translation work. Established translators have interesting ideas: translation slams, retreats, networking events and the like. All aimed at talking. Collaboration can be a very rewarding experience – this is why I appreciate the opportunity of reviewing EBA Guidelines – I get to ask questions, look at the translation through a different prism or lens.
Regarding collaboration and communication in the post in question, my well-intentioned comment was:
[…] collaboration thrives on direct communication between translators – sometimes agencies throw up unnecessary Chinese walls between translators working on the same project (I remember once working on a large project where we were all only allowed to “chat” through a moderated anonymous portal – such was the fear of the agency that we might build a team that would compete against the agency we were working for!) In another crazy situation years ago, where a large project was carved up between two agencies, I discovered that I was providing terminology support for the same project I was translating part of for the other agency.
Bang. And then it was. A careless choice of words, although one I knew from a professional context.
Even Homer Nods…
The poster responded by pointing out that “Chinese walls” was an outdated and offensive term for some. I chose to own my mistake, accepted their insight and replied that I would refrain from using it in the future. A hollow promise? No. I immediately acted on it. How did I act?
I immediately accepted the mistake – and said that I would refrain for using it in the future. With reflection, and hindsight too, I realise that the analogy is also incorrect/lazy – both in terms of my usage and in a financial context. The Great Wall of China (and walled cities throughout history) served for protecting territory, but not to prevent citizens from leaving. Suitably chastened, the next goal was to find a more accurate term for the required context.
I asked the original poster whether they can suggest “a suitable, succinct and more inclusive replacement for its use in the sense of “a barrier to avoid potential conflicts of interest” e.g. between advisory and trading divisions (as used in investment banking)?” The OP promptly offered terms like “firewall” and “screen”. My own research also yielded “ethics walls” and “ethical walls” – as mentioned by Judge Low in Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. v. Superior Court (1988). Low’s suggestion also works particularly well for preserving the concept of “hiring over the wall”. This is an internal staffing move of hiring someone from the other side of the ethics wall.
I amended the terminology entry for Chinese wall(s) in my MultiTerm termbases. It now appears as non-inclusive (an additional field at term level used in conjunction with a QA tool for inclusive language). This means that in the event of any German term translated as “Chinese wall(s)”, I receive a warning that the term is to be avoided, to allow me to then correct it as I go. This is particularly useful in terms of fuzzy matches. In addition I have a MultiTerm export routine that allows an export of non-inclusive terms. Its purpose is to increase awareness by circulating this list regularly, to help non-L1-colleagues.
Checking existing usage in publications. For the website, I ran a google search for site:fma.gv.at “Chinese wall”. Hits appeared mainly in downloads from external sources, or from historic documents – on both the German and English versions of the site. These I can’t change, because they are the words of other stakeholders. When we used SiteImprove, I used reports (e.g. about the use of Chinese *AND* wall). Using reports in SiteImprove frequently identified obsolete terminology for correcting it. I contended with a lot of “inherited” translations from numerous translation sources, prior to becoming our English web editor. I discussed any mentions found in the German version with post/page authors.
Checking existing usage in translation memories. I check both the source and target texts of segments for usage of “Chinese wall(s)” and how it was translated. For example, the English source spoke of “Chinese walls” but the German target spoke of “Informationssperren (sog. “Chinese walls”)” In some cases, I remove the translation unit from the Translation Memory. In other cases I add a quality penalty (I use a numerical quality field from aligned texts that I used to build up my initial translation memories, based on their quality (e.g. 95-100 for aligned texts of legal acts from Eur-Lex (with penalties for age), 85-90 for aligned texts of publications where the emphasis of the translation was not such a strict word-for-word rendering, (with penalties for age)). I delete translation units “past their sell by date”. (I’ll deal with TM housekeeping in a future post).
However, I didn’t beat myself up over it. Instead, I used it as a way to test my processes and workflows, which work well. I also used it as a way to think of several initiatives for informal networking events to could draw positively from the experience. And I took it on board as a shortcoming of living outside of my L1-target language culture. All of which show the importance of collaboration and talking.
It’s Good to Talk…
Reverting to the original post that I commented on, I remarked about my first physical meeting of my Working Group in Athens after the pandemic that “It’s good to talk!” In this regard as a lone in-house existence is similar to that of many freelancers in that it is a relatively isolated one. However, only if I choose it to be. This is why I try to exploit opportunities to talk to my colleagues in my department about their policy areas. This is how I remain alert to new policy information, legal acts, soft law instruments, issues encountered in operative supervision. These are important for my improved understanding of operative banking supervision.
Some pearls of wisdom yield new aligned texts (e.g. new guidance on aspects of banking supervision). Part of my non-translation remit is also keeping a watchful eye over our banking supervision processes. This is a quality assurance and quality management process, and provides useful insights for translation purposes about legal developments. Translators talking and collaborating helps them to discover new opportunities, gather different perspectives and bounce different approaches off one another.
When I outsource a piece to someone, I believe they should receive as much information as necessary. I believe in being approachable where they have questions and to discuss terminology issues. Otherwise I ensure that they can directly access the author of the piece to translate. After all the author knows best what they mean to say. In my response about translators being able to communicate, even someone pointing out my error confirms the value of communication.
The final word…
Dialogue is a two-way street – the more you give/contribute, the more your receive. In addition, this episode resulted in connecting with the OP, whose content I have read for a number of months, coming up with a creative idea for the future, and a blog post.
One of the most memorable questions I have been asked about being a translator was “Which computer game does translation resemble?” I strongly suspect the person asking the question hoped I would be stumped by such a fiendish question. I welcome leftfield questions when speaking, as I believe the point of presenting or evangelising about your profession is to be able to respond to any question your audience chooses to ask.
Fortunately, I had an answer up my sleeve, and could respond without delay. I even had a slide in my deck that supported my answer. The answer was Tetris. However, my response required a decent explanation. Where are the similarities between translating and Tetris? Both in terms of translation as well as in my work as an in-house translator.
As a child growing up in the late 1980s and a teenager in the early 1990s, I cut my teeth playing Tetris on the demonstration Nintendo Gameboy in Dixons in Taunton. A trip into town wasn’t complete without a game, an almost elicit treat as I have never had a handheld console of my own. Much of the finesse went past me back then, since I only had very few opportunities to play the game.
Familiar to gamers and non-gamers
A further point about a similarity between translation and Tetris is that both enjoy enough familiarity across a wide age range of the population. Those of us who got into Tetris in the late 80s are now middle-aged, and probably anyone of working age will have a rough idea of what Tetris is – in a similar way that they will know what a translator does (even if they might not understand the difference between the respective jobs of an interpreter and a translator).
Tetris is fairly unrivalled in turns of familiarity of it among gamers and non-gamers. However, in case you have somehow managed to avoid its significance, there is a wonderful programme from the BBC from around 2004 called Tetris: From Russia with Love.
Tetris: From Russia with Love – originally shown on BBC.
And now, in 2023, Apple TV is telling the story its way – the trailer of the forthcoming film dropped last month, which reminded me about this post, which has been a long time in the making, the first draft having been created during a pandemic lockdown.
And now on the bigger screen?
So is the comparison between translation and Tetris a valid one?
One point where the comparison stands up well is that fact that Tetris has been so widely ported – according to its Wikipedia entry, to 65 different formats. This in itself is an impressive exercise in translation. In terms of the genre of the game, it is a puzzle and tile-matching game, with a strategy element to it. There is a similar strategy to translation projects. For users of CAT tools, each segment you complete is like completing a line in Tetris. With every completed segment, new uncompleted ones pop up ahead of you. And of course, in the case of a 100% match, segments further on are also propagated accordingly, in the way that non-consecutive lines disappear in Tetris.
Focusing on the tile-matching aspect, part of translation and the rendering of every individual segment/translation unit is ensuring the individual pieces fit into the correct position. Where translation of course varies is that the “pieces” are not restricted to 7 different tetronimoes, and the pieces can be far more complex. Similarly, target text rendering does not necessarily observe all the key features of the source. A classic example from my experience of German > English translation is the way that a passive construction common in the source language may seem out of place in the target text. Similarly, tenses don’t map 1:1 – the use of continuous tenses in English being a classic example when translating from German.
For those who use CAT tools, there is another similarity. In Tetris, you see all the pieces that have been played before the current one (which provides you with the context for the current piece and how to play it, i.e. whether to let it drop, or whether you need to move it around or rotate it. Machine translation has a tendency to stick quite rigidly to a word order close to that of the source text, whereas in translation inversions can often improve the flow of the document. And of course, you usually have a sneak peek at the next piece that is due to drop.
Translation Tetris – it’s about time/timing.
My work as a Single Person Language Services Unit (SPLSU) is definitely another type of Tetris. Other analogies could be to compare it to either juggling or plate spinning – in terms of keeping all the balls in the air, or stopping the plates from crashing to the ground. In terms of the working day/week, my work is very much a Tetris puzzle. The various activities are certainly very similar to the individual pieces in a game of Tetris, as is time management. Dovetailing various routine tasks, e.g. alignment, translation, revision, terminology work, training as well as on the fly developments (e.g. ad hoc rush jobs) is a prime example of tile-matching. The way the tiles rapidly fall means that the strategy changes frequently and rapidly. Not everything teselates perfectly.
In the earlier and easier levels of Tetris, you can power through them with a flurry of Tetrises (clearing four lines at a time), although as the pieces drop in quicker, that approach has to be quickly abandoned and individual lines cleared to ensure that there is still space on the screen (or calendar!). Naturally there is also the issue of the way the game can speed up, necessitating quick action to avoid being swamped.
In terms of time management, it is also the case that not all blocks are equal. In some office cultures relentless wall-to-wall meetings are still considered sign of success. I’m certainly in the school of thinking that some meetings could have been resolved as mails. This may lie in the fact that as a translator I know that I am happiest when translating – rather than any of the ancillary jobs that go with the task (e.g. tagging up content destined for the web for accessibility purposes), although the final production stages (e.g. creating an accessible PDF or post/page for a website) are the ones with the most visibility. In this regard there is also the comparison of working as a translator being like a taxi driver – you don’t earn sitting at the cab rank waiting for a fare, but instead you earn while the wheels are turning (or in some cases also when you have a fare and are stuck in traffic).
You could stretch the Tetris analogy to its maximum by breaking down an eight hour working day (after breaks) down into individual 12 minute units, it’d give me 40 blocks in a day. Hmm. Think of those blocks as Tetris pieces and you have 10 Tetris pieces – and where they fit perfectly together you have a Tetris. Sadly the average working day isn’t as straightforward as ten consecutive 4 x 1 blocks. After all, you can’t rotate your time blocks! So yes 40 blocks worth of bricks will often take up more than those four lines!
Where a translation day is similar to Tetris is the fact that it boils down to rhythm and flow – especially avoiding getting bogged down and spending too long on tasks. Hybrid working means I have more phone calls and online meetings, which can really disrupt my translation flow. The more densely packed the meetings, the greater the loss in productive time. In terms of your calendar you find yourself struggling to complete a “four block” task between a meeting that overruns and another hastily convened one, and then you get interrupted by another unexpected phone call.
How does a large translation project resemble Tetris?
I’d like to use the example of translating national primary legislation (i.e. an Austrian Gesetz) that itself is a transposition of European law (e.g. a Directive or a Regulation). On occasions, it can be relatively straightforward, in that it might be a simple amendment of existing legislation – e.g. an amendment to the Austrian Banking Act to reflect the latest amendments to CRD/CRR, so some steps have already been accomplished previously, which is akin to clearing several lines at once.
It might, however, be closer to one of the variant games of Tetris: you don’t start with a clear screen, but have to clear various incomplete lines before you can start clear your “own” lines (and scoring those big points for Tetrises). Indeed, you might have already aligned the bilingual texts from Eur-Lex that are the basis of the source text that you will translate, but it might not be instantly apparent which provisions are being transposed where. The explanatory notes from the consultation draft (Gesetzesentwurf / Regierungsvorlage) will help to explain this. From here you can start to map the provisions against one another (a Tetris-like puzzle-matching exercise). The mapping might not be 1:1 as there might be more stringent national provisions enacted in transposition, national terminology might also not be identical to the European terminology needed.
Such translations also involve puzzle-matching to identify patterns how national law renders the patterns of the European law. On a terminology level, patterns do emerge, although differences often exist between the German terminology in European law and Austrian national law, that are full synonyms. For example, Zulassung (authorisation) in European law corresponds to Austrian law’s Konzessionierung (more licensing / being granted a licence).
However, where a large project most resembles Tetris, is in the completion of it. I still get a buzz at various stages of the project, such as finishing the first draft of a big piece, at the end of the checking and doing the final formatting check and then the accessibility and then uploading the indexed PDF to my employer’s website. From my involvement in complicated supervisory procedures over the years at various stages that there is also a buzz for the conclusion and successful outcome of the procedure. Mentally, Buran launches.
Elsewhere, there are issues like dealing with out and out Austrianisms, which simply “do not translate”. In particular as vestiges of legislation that was enacted in the 19th century, but remaining in force to this day. Classic examples exist in the likes of the Genossenschaftsgesetz, with some provisions unchanged (e.g. §§19-20), even in terms of spelling reforms, for almost 150 years. Arcane provisions of such laws can really throw even an experienced translator.
And so to conclude…
So the Buran has taken off, and you have completed the game or your translation. You’ve got square eyes (you can tell I grew up in the 1980s!) and you might have RSI or carpal tunnel problems (look after your hands and wrists, dear translators!) And you bask in the reflected glow of a successfully conquered translation delivered with minutes or hours to spare. And the feeling feels great – so much better than a Machine Translation, or dare I suggest it, the output from ChatGPT. And that deserves a reward: the tl:dr for you created by ChatGPT.
Bonus: What does ChatGPT make of my Translation/Tetris analogy?
Unless you have been off grid for most of 2023 so far, you’ve probably been caught up in the maelstrom of content about ChatGPT. Maybe the answer below, by ChatGPT, could be a nice tl:dr version of the post above.
How can translation be compared to Tetris?
Translation and Tetris may seem like very different activities, but there are some interesting similarities between the two:
Both require strategic thinking: In Tetris, players need to think ahead and plan their moves in order to create the most efficient stack of falling shapes. Similarly, translators need to think strategically about how to convey the meaning of the source text in the most accurate and effective way possible.
Both involve fitting pieces together: Tetris is all about fitting different shaped blocks together to create complete lines, while translation involves piecing together individual words and phrases to create a cohesive whole.
Both require skill and practice: Becoming good at Tetris requires a lot of practice and skill, as players need to learn how to quickly react and make decisions under pressure. Similarly, translation requires a lot of practice and skill in order to accurately and efficiently convey meaning from one language to another.
Both can be challenging and rewarding: Tetris can be frustrating when blocks don’t fit together, but it can also be incredibly satisfying when players successfully clear multiple lines at once. Similarly, translation can be challenging when trying to find the perfect word or phrase to convey meaning, but it can also be incredibly rewarding when a translation is accurate and effective.
Overall, translation and Tetris both require strategic thinking, fitting pieces together, skill and practice, and can be challenging yet rewarding activities.
At the end of the calendar year I sign off my time/activity sheets to say that they represent an accurate record of the work that I have done during the course of the year. There are two elements here: time physically clocked in, and the activity performed. Perhaps it is a good comparison to think of how London taxis charge: by time when stood still, and by distance covered when the wheels are turning. Translation is the wheels turning, the other jobs are the cab being stationary.
Freelancers probably consider it slightly differently. Time is more important where they provide added value services (e.g. revision, transcreation, terminology, database maintenance). In contrast activity/performance is more important when providing a basic translation service (whether charging by characters, words, lines, pages etc.). That said, the latter has a time element in terms of whether a certain job is worth the hassle. The taxi comparison also breaks down as added value services are also productive, and not just idling in traffic. In particularly, database maintenance ensures a leaner translation memory rather than an out and out larger quantity of translation units.
My annual breakdowns of timesheets since 2014 have shown that I spend around 2% of working time on translation on database-related activities including terminology. This can be in the form of dedicated terminology hours, alignments or TM maintenance.
How has my time and activity logging changed?
I physically sit in the banking supervision department, but also have responsibility for outsourcing for other supervisory departments. After a couple of years’ experience of outsourcing, it became apparent that small jobs cost more in terms of the procurement process. In terms of time, they often take longer than had I just got on and translated them. I used historic timesheets to show the hidden cost of procurement instead of me logging to a different cost centre. Doing so reduced the number of items translated externally. The time saving for the procurement of such translations in turn freed up time to handle short pieces. By doing so, I proved that some translations, e.g. press releases were “too small to outsource”.
A further simplification was possible once I had multiple years’ of data. Initially, activity logging for translation was broken down into three sub-activities (translation/revision/other) in an extra level of detail in the activity booking. In some jobs this resulted in triple the number of bookings. After a number of years I proved that the level of the individual sub-activities remained pretty constant. Broken down by different sub-activities I consistently posted approx. 80% for translation, 17% for revision, and 2-3% for database maintenance and terminology work each year. The consistent level was instrumental in reducing three booking codes to one and reducing the number of activity logging bookings by 75%. It was also possible to bundle jobs that were otherwise realistically almost “too small to log”.
But what happens if the goalposts move?
When my employer changed website CMS, I developed a way to handle translations of pages through the code view. This meant that jobs weren’t broken down into translation, revision and then layout, in my web editor guise. However, when the site changed editing system with the CMS, this did affect my workflow. Fortunately, I was able to then book the layout/CMS work as external communications (web editing).
This also meant that I could see how the change affected my activity. The extra layouting step’s impact has diluted my percentage of translation bookings out of total bookings. The consequence has also been an increase in overtime hours. I’ve tried numerous work-arounds, but they haven’t been effective handling Unicode code bindings. I am able to show the effects of the workflow change impact my activity logging.
Does terminology work get marginalised?
A mere 2% of translation activity being specifically devoted to terminology is a very low amount. I concede that this is one of the shortcomings of being a SPLSU. Considered over a working year, (for sake of argument 220 working days), it accounts for only one working week. However, this amount doesn’t fully reflect any ad hoc terminology work on the fly during a translation job. I add a lot of barebones items (i.e. source and target terms, reliability score, supervisory area, and whether a term is inclusive).
Termbase items quickly add up, but revision and completion (e.g. phraseology, synonyms, context, definitions) only happen after delivering the translation. I would love more time for terminology, but am realistic that added detail is something that only I benefit from. Customers are naturally happy that I use the correct terminology, but have little interest in the research behind it. Terminology work can become hard to rationalise. For them translation is like a swan gliding effortlessly across a lake – they don’t see below the waterline.
Perfect efficiency: exploding the myth
When I deliver my time and activity logging, total translation hours do not tie up 1:1 with my total working hours. It would be a myth/illusion if they did! Time and activity logging also reflects non-translation related activities (e.g. attending courses, working groups, internal/external communications tasks). A translator would need to work up to a 10 hour day to have 8 hours of pure translation productivity. This confirms that your mileage may vary even if benchmarks about daily translation output apply (see for example this blogpost).
In my early days at my current job, a common question was about how much translation was possible each day. I took a simplistic approach: of sustained output of 2,000 words a day. With an 8 hour working day, that meant the output was a steady 250 words an hour, right? Jein. 250 words an hour might be the average, but output could fluctuate between 100 and 800 words per hour. Text complexity, TM maturity and subject familiarity all affect output rates.
As a freelancer, customers and agencies set the deadlines and I worked long hours. I became all too well aware of burst and steady translation output rates. I learned how to work on extensive multi-day/week/month projects and how to set deadlines. The secret was to have enough of a buffer to deliver slightly ahead of schedule. Lengthy projects were vastly preferable to very short pieces (“snippets”). Agency “ticking clock deadlines” were never a favourite. For long jobs there was also due warning about their arrival.
Managing workplace wellbeing: handling peaks and troughs
Time and activity logging provides an added dimension of understanding to recognise peaks and troughs. Having experienced fast-moving black swan events, I now know what effect they have in terms of shockwaves. Typical black swan events include insolvency of a bank, national lockdowns and events impacting financial market stability. Years of bookings also show when to take extended periods of annual leave. How? The type of projects I have to handle provide tell-tale signs of how busy the office is. Past time and activity logging shows that August is usually filled with low urgency projects. This makes it easier to take annual leave. Time logging shows that it is easier to leave the office earlier during the summer. However, it also confirms that I do not often adopt the POETS approach.
Following on from the Python courses that I recently completed, I wrote a little bit of code that generates the URLs for finding bilingual versions of EU Directives and Regulations in Eur-Lex. This can be useful for allowing a translator to access to a bilingual version for then aligning the output in Trados using Bilingual Excel.
How does it work?
It asks you to specify the language versions you with to use, and you specify one language to appear on the left-hand side, and one on the right-hand side. This can be useful for the order of the columns for alignment using the Bilingual Excel filetype in Trados.
You are asked to specific the year number and the item number (e.g. CRR which is Regulation (EU) 575/2013 (note the old order) or the IFD: Directive (EU) 2019/2034), and whether you are dealing with a Directive or Regulation. Future iterations will handle Decisions etc. The itemtype ensures the correct “filler” letter in the URL.
In case the item number (e.g. 575 or 36) is not four digits in length, item.zfill(4) pads it to four digits (i.e. 0575 or 0036).
If you want the original version as it first appeared in the Official Journal then you select Original (O). Consolidated versions are chosen using (C). In the latter case you are asked for the date of the consolidated version (note this date is when in enters into force, not the data of the OJ publication). This also needs either a 3 (for legislation) or 0 (consolidated legislation) to be entered into the URL.
The Code:
#filename bits
urlstart = "https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/"
urlcelex = "/TXT/?uri=CELEX:"
exportfiletype = ".txt"
sep = "-"
# input language, year number, item number and whether Directive or Regulation
sourcelang = input("Enter left language (EN = English, DE = German):")
targetlang = input("Enter right language (EN = English, DE = German):")
year = input("Enter year:")
fileyear = year + "_"
item = input("Enter item:")
paditem = item.zfill(4)
fileitem = paditem
rlvo = input("Enter type (D for Directive, R for Regulation):")
if rlvo == "D":
itemtype = "L"
elif rlvo == "R":
itemtype = "R"
# consolidated
consolidated = input("Consolidated version (C) or Original version (O):")
if consolidated == "O":
legislation = 3
unconsurl = urlstart + sourcelang + sep + targetlang + urlcelex + str(legislation) + str(year) + itemtype + str(paditem)
print(unconsurl)
elif consolidated == "C":
legislation = 0
consolyear = input("Enter year of consolidated version as YYYY:")
consolmonth = input("Enter month of consolidated version:")
padconsolmonth = consolmonth.zfill(2)
consolday = input("Enter day of consolidated version:")
padconsolday = consolday.zfill(2)
consurl = urlstart + sourcelang + sep + targetlang + urlcelex + str(legislation) + str(year) + itemtype + str(paditem) + sep + consolyear + padconsolmonth + padconsolday
print(consurl)
The non-breaking hyphen is a useful device. It is a special character that ensures that “Greco-Roman” in “Greco-Roman wrestling” never splits across two lines. Similarly, it helps avoid “gemischte EU-Mutterfinanzholdinggesellschaften” splitting as gemischte EU- / Mutterfinanzholdinggesellschaften (see e.g. Article 1, para. 1 no. 4 BaSAG for a typical usage!) or similar compound nouns in legal translations. In the latter case, if hyphenation is turned on in narrow columns, you end up with some strange-looking lines.
However, for translators using CAT tools, it can be annoying, with non-breaking hyphens rendered as tags in the source text. This can cause problems in the CAT tool as it will flag the target text as missing a tag. Fortunately there is a simple way in Word to search and replace all non-breaking hyphens, to get around this problem. Once you have mastered this for non-breaking hyphens there are other use cases for other special characters.
What to do in Word
There is a wildcard (similar to a regular expression) in Word for finding non-breaking hyphens – which is ^~. To use it, extend the Search/replace dialogue (Ctrl + H) by clicking on “More > >” and then select the wildcards option. Alternatively you can add this wildcard character through the “Special” button at the bottom of this dialogue. Then do a search/replace for all instances.
Naturally, going through a lot of documents can become a time-consuming process. Help is at hand in the form of a macro. If you use it a bit, it definitely warrants having a Word Macro for this, which appears below.
Sub ChangeNonBreakHyphen()
'
' ChangeNonBreakHyphen Makro
' Converts non-breaking hyphens into a normal hyphen.
'
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
.Text = "^~"
.Replacement.Text = "-"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchCase = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchWildcards = True
End With
Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End Sub
Add it to your macros in Word through the Developer tab. I even have it added to my ribbon tab containing all my translation macros. You may find other special characters that can be treated in a similar manner.
If you discover a slew of non-breaking hyphens in the middle of your source text in Trados, there is an easy solution. You can clean up the Word document, add it to your translation project again, and run a Perfect Match. afterwards.
A translator’s life can often seem to be a lonely existence. Many aspects about the profession fuel the isolation. I have ploughed a sometimes lone furrow for two decades. In times of plenty I remember being “too busy” to take a break. For self-employed/freelance translators in particular, the initial stage is filled with worry about what happens when e-mails or phone calls dry up.
Another major issue is the asynchronous nature of feedback also plays a role: feedback is frequently sparing when positive, yet abundant when negative. And there is seldom meaningful feedback to help translators to improve. Translation is a mentally demanding profession with tight deadlines and an impossible battle to achieve perfection.
Translators strive for this elusive perfection in the translation they deliver, while also contending with running a business. A job as a translator entails much more than merely translating. Translators have a reputation, possibly due to the precision the profession requires, of being overcautious and introverted. Overcautiousness is often fed by the constant need to set yourself apart from your competitors.
Translators are also secretive creatures – they dare not give away anything more than is absolutely necessary. NDAs often bind them to secrecy that prevent them from discussing their work. This also has an effect of increasing the silo mentality, as does viewing other translators as “the competition”. Translators rarely publish details about customers and rates, due to a fear of “being too expensive”, or providing information to allow others to undercut them. And then, playing on the fear of not having enough work, unscrupulous agencies squeeze freelancers’ rates.
Others contribute with throwaway remarks and questions like “Anyone can translate!”, “How come you can’t translate everything”, or even “How can you survive on one language combination?”. Others humblebrag by saying how they “just translated something”. Occasionally translating short texts is a world away from delivering long and complex quality translations to a tight schedule day-in-day-out. Others neglect the fact that translation is an added value service, with providers best selected using the best bidder principle, rather than the cheapest bidder principle. All these factors contribute to imposter syndrome among translators, particularly those at the start of their career.
How perfectionism makes things worse…
Translators’ tendencies towards seeking perfectionism compounds the issue of being an imposter. With hindsight, this is as ridiculous as the notion of a “perfect translation” is absurd. After all, apparently “faithful translations are not beautiful, while beautiful translations are not faithful”.
Translators nevertheless tend to strive for perfection, when possibly there is a need for a translation that is fit-for-purpose. This can make translators their own worst enemy, particularly until they have sufficient experience to know what is needed. Experience brings with it a degree of acceptance about the necessity of occasional (linguistic) sacrifices.
Literary settings lend themselves to being able to stylistically offset and compensate between source and target texts. Stylistic devices used in the source text may also appear in the target text, albeit not necessarily 1:1 at sentence level. But when it comes to say commercial contracts, it is worth remembering that they aren’t ripped up over a missed alliteration in an arcane clause, but are ripped up if not being fit for purpose.
When is a translation fit-for-purpose?
Fit-for-purpose translation refers to producing a translation of an appropriate quality for the purpose and audience specified by a client. I usually establish the intended use (e.g. discussion at a meeting, or for presentation or publication) at the start. Time constraints can have a bearing – for example, whether to translate the entire text or only certain sections, with possible gisted summaries between those sections.
Feeling like an imposter
In the early stages of my career as a freelancer, imposter syndrome plagued me in a particular form: the form of a dream/nightmare. It took a number of years to overcome and banish the self-doubts instilled by the dream. Even acquiring a batch of stable direct clients, and learning to decline work without guilt didn’t help. Even though I knew my worth, and stuck steadfastly to my rates, with as much work as I could manage, the recurring dream plagued me for three years.
Looking back, it doesn’t surprise me that imposter syndrome is quite common, particularly among freelance translators. Translators are constantly under scrutiny and always having to perform: ultimately many translators feel as though they are judged solely on their most recent translation. When starting out, before you find and settle into your niche(s), you feel compelled to take jobs in a wide range of matters. It was no different in my case. My earliest projects covered a wide range of subject areas – from software manuals through to telecoms equipment, and even the odd military procurement contract.
I remember the relentless pressure on me to deliver. Often it would be in subject areas where I had a very limited degree of knowledge and negligible advance warning or briefing. The only “knowns” would be the broad subject matter, number of pages and the deadline. It lead on occasions to swearing never to touch a specific subject matter again, even after successfully delivering jobs to customers. Panic, fear and dread often only subsided after the money hit my bank account.
I had a dream…
For three years at the start of my career as a translator, I had a recurring imposter syndrome dream. I suspect readers who have had imposter syndrome might even have had the same dream/nightmare. Alternatively, it may have been a similar dream around the same underlying theme. In my case, the core theme of the dream was that I achieved my university degree by mistake or accident.
The dream manifested itself in a number of forms:
failing to satisfy a formal requirement about the modules I chose.
failing to complete coursework for a module.
failure to turn up for an examination.
The common thread of the dreams is “failure”. If the “failure” in the dream was left unchecked, it began to also dominate my thoughts while working. This in turn led to anxiety and affected my ability to think clearly. Since 2004, the dream has only “resurfaced” very occasionally, but never as a frequently recurring nightmare. Any subsequent minor “relapse” was at times of greater stress, when I was facing tight deadlines to deliver high volume translations.
Deconstructing the dream – dismissing its validity
In order to consign the dream to the past, I had to look at the facts in a rational manner. By deconstructing it, it allowed me to reject the dream’s validity.
The advising appointments for each academic session never identified any issues about formal requirements.
I graduated. At latest, any issue would have come to light before graduation.
Banishing the dream
Recurrences were only on an isolated basis in subsequent years. I confronted recurrence head on at times where I felt vulnerable to a relapse. For a while I struggled with panic attacks from overwork, but didn’t suffer from a relapse of the nightmare. At that time, I visited St. Andrews with friends. On both occasions, I never felt like an imposter or a charlatan. I looked back on my time studying there with pride.
On my second visit, I met up with my former Professor for a drink. He was delighted that I had a career as a translator. I mentioned my (then) specialisations of ionising smoke detectors, nurse-call communications, and banking law. He responded with a broad smile, “I can’t imagine you became an expert in those subjects while at university!” I quipped, “I did manage to set off a fire alarm cooking a fry-up!”.
In 2013, I started to forge plans to bring my divergent career strands together, and decided to purchase an academic transcript. It confirmed the satisfactory completion of all necessary modules to allow me to graduate. It gave me greater confirmation than looking at my degree certificate in the early days had.
In 2021, during seemingly endless pandemic lockdowns, I exchanged messages with my former tutor, with whom I also had played cricket, and tackled my only unresolved thought. I had scraped a low 2.ii in the module on War Fiction that he had taught. After the exam, I realised that I’d made an unmitigated hash of an essay question.
My former tutor was quick to dismiss the issue. He consigned the hiccough, a case of “missing the straight one” in cricketing parlance, as being “water under the bridge”. Despatched like a loose delivery to the boundary. Had I not mentioned the issue, I don’t imagine it would have even registered with him. The elephant was only in my room, if it even existed.
Fear of failure?
A comparatively poor pass result had weighed more heavily on my mind than having failed a module and passing a resit in my second year. Passing a module at the second attempt had been like polishing out a scratch. A poor pass was like a still visible scratch – an unsettled score.
Polishing out a scratch…
The unsettled score perhaps weighed far more heavily than it should. After all, it had had no bearing on my final degree classification. Put into perspective against accumulated professional experience it barely even registers now. At the start of a career, your degree classification is a massive benchmark, and still carries a disproportionate weight for a few years. Its significance fades towards obscurity over your professional life. The presence of post-nominals are the only significant reference to my degree. My experience, professional standing, reputation and specialisations carry far greater weight.
How do perceived failures impact translators?
When I started out as a freelancer, I reached a point after 2-3 years to be in a position to pick and choose customers. However, just as I reached this position, I lost a seemingly stable customer. At the time, it seemed like a catastrophic failure and one I took as a failure on my part. A few years later it became clear than translation was only one area to fall foul of cost-cutting measures. Shortly afterwards, another customer chose to pursue cheaper options for their translations. This still felt like a failure in that my service was not good enough value for money. “Failure” as a translator, in terms of customer retention, however, is frequently due to external factors rather than a lack of quality of the actual translation.
Alternatively, the “failure” dream may rest on a sense of under-preparation. As traditionally risk-averse people, translators understandably fear flying by the seat of their pants and need to feel to be in absolute control. The feeling of failure may be even more exaggerated when starting out, as you don’t have the positive past experience to reassure you. Not being in control may be equated with failure. This is unsurprising in a mentally demanding and meticulous profession.
In contrast, in-house translators (at companies or agencies/LSPs) often cover substantially narrower fields of specialisation or a single language combination. Nevertheless they can still feel like imposters. Internal hierarchies can exist in teams, with some translators getting the juiciest cherries, and others having to be content with the pulp. In this case it can become a challenge to keep the whole team happy, as well as how to harmonise the level of knowledge and expertise. There is often scope to acquire different areas of expertise.
Going in-house…
When I changed from being a freelancer to an in-house translator, I did not experience a feeling of being an imposter, due to the fact that I was the team (or as I now define it, a SPLSU (single person language services unit)). Having gained esteem and a good reputation as a freelancer, I knew that acceptance was key in this position and ensuring that I was treated on an equal footing. Fortunately, my employer helped in this regard as I followed the same training courses as desk officers (usually holding law degrees and postgraduate qualifications) in my department.
I also actively sought to establish the place of translation in workflows by showing how to integrate the translator from an early stage, rather than as an afterthought or a final step before publication. For example, I explained the workflows that should what a translator can already handle before the final document is available. This approach helps to minimise the impact of delays in previous stages, thus maximising the time available for translation.
Die eierlegende Wollmilchsau
Barnes’ iron triangle of expectations has existed for decades, yet translators still constantly fight the unachievable due to customer expectations. Customers still expect high quality translations quickly and cheaply – a combination as illusory as the eierlegende Wollmilchsau (the egg-laying, sheep-fleeced, milkable sow). To get a large translation delivered quickly, higher rates and larger teams are used. The result is not cheap.
However, there is another new reality that has come to pass. In the search for greater productivity, shorter turnaround times and keeping apace with greater demand, agencies are now downgrading translators to machine translation post-editors (MTPEs). I will be the first to say that embracing technology as a translator in many areas is essential. However, it is also essential to acknowledge the need for a human in the loop.
Why buy a CAT tool?
Investing in a CAT system definitely helped extend my competitive edge nearly two decades ago. It also gave me a greater feeling of control – in terms of times required for projects. It has helped with knowledge management. To this day, in my in-house position, it allows me to recall any job that I have done. It could be mere coincidence, but my imposter dream disappeared around the time I became a CAT user.
CAT and MT do not provide a human translator with the level of meaningful feedback that a human colleague can. QA tools can leverage your terminology to hint at unexpected terminology choices. For example detailed termbase entries can indicate the usage of a non-standard or obsolete term (helpful if your TM contains TUs spanning a large period of time!). Limitations depend on how Termbases have been set up, maintained and also the completeness of entries.
Dedicated terminologists or translators will provide more constructive feedback than a QA tool. Fellow professionals can point out why something may be a correct rendering of a term in a certain context, but doesn’t fit in another. It is what makes adequate feedback so important.
Improving feedback cycles
Both in-house and freelance translators suffer from lopsided feedback – an acceptable translation frequently yields little feedback. This makes it difficult to gain any constructive feedback, other than responses to questions during the translation process. I have come up with some ways to improve the amount of feedback, by normalising it.
For large translation jobs, I usually request a “fatal flaw check” of my translation – especially if it is intended for publication. I also offer to do a final consistency check before publication – which also allows me to amend TUs accordingly. This way I obtain more meaningful feedback.
For new translation customers, I slip in a feedback form (questions on overall satisfaction, a positive highlight, and suggested improvements). It is kept very short, but jogging them for feedback proves far more beneficial than just an “OK”.
For revision jobs that I do, I point out something that the customer can take away and apply. This often elicits feedback from them. Sometimes, my role is little more than a reassuring second pair of eyes. On other occasions, my role is to ensure that the correct message goes out, in an appropriate correct tone.
In outsourced translations, I add constructive feedback to the thank-you note I send out to the agency. I point out constructive corrections made, from checking the received document. After all, this kind of feedback is the only way to improve texts, or provide impulses for terminology work.
I firmly believe that you never stop learning. From 2023, I intend to take part in translation sparring slams with other translators. I have been reading up about them a lot recently. Sparring slams can be discussed virtually or while at conferences. Getting a fresh perspective is a good tool for staving off “Betriebsblindheit”. It helps you to freshen up your own language (your everyday situation may expose you unwittingly to source language interference, or to language attrition) as well as having a chance to gain knowledge from others and impart your own – this is particularly useful for those who work alone.
More thoughts on imposter syndrome/perfectionism/quiet spells as a translator or interpreter
As a bonus and reward for reading this post all the way to the end, a word of explanation about the chosen title. The play on words deliberately relates to one of the set texts in the German War Fiction course I took in my final semester at St Andrews. Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues was a text I initially studied in my first year at St Andrews, as well as part of the German War Fiction course.
Right translation, wrong cover!
I am about to re-read the book again, with the greater hindsight of a further 22 years of living in the German-speaking world, and also reading it for pleasure, rather than as a set text. I choose to do so in preparation for watching the new Netflix film version, which has just come out. See below for the trailer.
Trailer of the Netflix film version of All Quiet on the Western Front
I recently moderated a session on incorporating the European Commission’s eTranslation MT solution into Trados workflows at ETUG 2022. ETUG 2022 is annual meeting of the European Trados Users Group. It brings together translators, language technologists from corporate language services and representatives from RWS to talk about all aspects Trados. RWS unveil roadmaps for their products and there are use case presentations, like in my session.
Catherine Lane and Daniel García-Magariños from the Language Technology and Innovation Unit within DG Translation at the European Central Bank demonstrated how they have approached incorporating eTranslation into Trados workflows.
For me, as a banking supervision translator, it made moderating the session simpler, but interventions from the floor from the automotive industry also provided valuable inputs on some of the considerations for use of MT in workflows.
The ECB Experience
The presentation was split into two parts. Catherine addressed setting up the Finance engine, including the QA of imported data, and language combinations and available engines. Daniel demonstrated the tool developed by the ECB for importing machine translations TMX files.
Catherine dealt with how the ECB has applies rules about the level of confidentiality of documents that can be sent to eTranslation. Mitigations are in place (e.g. files downloaded from eTranslation, not by e-mail, and deleted immediately from the system after download). These measures are necessary for ensuring that the files do not remain in the system for any longer than is necessary.
Catherine also addressed issues about onboarding of translators – they had used an eLearning module to handle some of the training. Currently it is still an additional aid to complement existing server-based human translation TMs, and not a direct replacement, and serving more as a starting point where existing TMs did not include good fuzzy matches for sentences.
Currently translations are only delivered for one engine at a time. However, it is possible to have translations into multiple languages. I meant to ask about pivot languages for exotic combinations – e.g. for Finnish-Maltese does MT output involve an intermediate step through English?
MT’s Top Model
Another consideration is about which engines to use. For my area of work, I would probably use 2-3 engines (e.g. Bundesbank Neural, Finance, Formal). This would require running the process three times at the moment. Depending on the text type, however, the Formal engine (e.g. for legal texts) might prove the most useful. The Finance engine would prove more useful for financial texts.
As Daniel explained, processing power also means that there is currently not direct way to access eTranslation from inside Trados. Instead, eTranslation translates the document and the output made available to download. Downloaded files are imported into a separate Translation Memory for MT results. In the translation project a 20% penalty applies. The TM settings are “lookup” and “concordance” enabled, but “update” disabled. This essentially means it is a read-only translation memory.
The ECB’s “eTranslator importer” helps ensure that the files land in the right place and domain-specific fields appended to each TU. This includes extra field content about the engine used. The Translation Memory is cleared regularly.
Averse – Ambivalent – Evangelist
Three attitudes towards MT emerged in the discussion about the uptake among translators. I called them “averse”, i.e. those who opposed the use of MT, “ambivalent” i.e. nice to have but not a deal-breaker, and “evangelist”. There has been some move away from “averse” towards “ambivalent”. Possibly this is due to the emergence of NMT, thereby overcoming the aversity displayed towards statistical Machine Translation.
A similar project from the automotive industry mentioned that their own project had only given access to more experienced translators. Less-experienced translators might lack the depth of knowledge to identify that a fluent sounding TU was in fact incorrect.
I am in the “ambivalent” camp. The potential uses for eTranslation in my setting in banking supervision are evident. I am aware of the fact that there is still a considerable post-editing of the MT required. My direct concern is needing to pseudonymise all mentions of the entities in question. Similarly for any placeable values (e.g. about total assets etc.), but doing so negates the productivity gain.
I find MT output is very rigid in its word order, whereas I like to invert sentences to in turn negate the use for a passive in English
However, I can understand and appreciate that texts carefully prepared for translation (check out search results for “writing for translation” to get an idea), mean a greater productivity gain. This might in turn improve unnecessary verbosity and lead to clearer writing.
Takeaways from the session
A few take-aways from the break-out session on integrating eTranslation into the translation workflow of the European Central Bank
Any institution, agency and authority with access to eTranslation can use this approach.
There are a number of domain-specific engines. Currently eTranslation only uses a single engine per request. Different engines seem better suited to different text types.
eTranslation works for all EU official languages, and there are also some other non-EU languages (e.g. Ukrainian, Chinese, Arabic)
ECB used language data from central banks and supervisory authorities to build the Finance engine.
A 20% penalty to MT output means that eTranslation output only comes into play where there are no human-translated and verified TUs.
From an assessment of translation quality for pure MT out, language combinations with the largest number of TUs achieve the best results.
Translators fall into three camps “averse”, “ambivalent”, “evangelist”. Some sceptics (averse) are becoming more enthusiastic, partially due to the advent of NMT.
Future developments include tools for anonymization or pseudonymisation – essential when using names of entities etc.
Translator experience level may contribute to gains from these workflows.
