I woke up earlier this month to a deluge of alerts on my phone about the news that a milestone of the Trump 2.0 administration was the appointment of Elon Musk to the “Department of Government Efficiency”. Which will be abbreviated to DOGE. Nice one Space Karen. I am currently actively in the eXit process, after discontinuing my active involvement on Musk’s toXic platform in the summer. It was part of a bid to stop doom scrolling. Doom scrolling had resulted in me learning about the tragic circumstances and aftermath of a friend’s untimely death.
I therefore sought solace by retreating more to the pages of books, either as physical editions or Kindle editions. Reading books help you learn – both for and about yourself. They also make you think, whereas much of social media seems to serve little cognitively enriching purpose. Possibly social media remains my vice at the moment (after stopping drinking over a year ago). I’ve not yet extracted myself fully from its clutches, and I am present on bluesky post-eXit.
With my focus on reading, I am now compiling regular posts about my reading list for the respective season. This is my list for the autumn – the summer list is still available here.
And in addition to reading, I am starting journaling – there will be a future post about that too!
Autumn Reading List
Serghei Sadohin, Hiding in Plain Sight: what Language says about being Human
Chip Heath / Dan Heath, Switch (the German book was part of a goodie bag for involvement in a transformation programme)
I’ve just returned from a wonderful conference in Spiez, on the shores of Lake Thun, organised by ASTTI. The event – in reflection of Switzerland’s multilingual composition – had streams of the programme for German, French, Italian and English. I followed the English and German streams, as well as briefly attending the French into English Translation Slam (or traduell). I’m still digesting the rich programme, but have been posting on LinkedIn about the event. Over my morning coffee on the terrace yesterday, I came up with ten takeaways to communicate to my employer about what I have gained from my participation.
Being the consummate professional
The need to fight the translation profession’s corner. The conference focused on the translation profession, rather than the translation industry. There was also a presentation of a customised AI translation solution by Supertext x Textshuttle. I personally side strongly with the profession rather than the industry. I advocate an Expert in the Lead approach, championing professional expertise over Machine in the Loop or Human in the Loop approaches. In December 2023, I expressed my feelings on the matter here. While the conference might have been a “safe space” for the profession, it did remind me about who and what I am fighting for.
All translators – regardless of whether you are in-house or self-employed – need to visit Clientland. Chris Durban’s presentation at Spiez was inspirational in terms of seeing the big picture. This includes also what she calls “Visiting Clientland” – i.e. getting into the world of your clients/customers. This approach is useful for in-housers to make people aware of what a professional translator can do. I need to revise my own “Clientland” roadmap to ensure my newer colleagues know about the value I add. Currently it is the exception rather than the rule that I translate to a brief. I’ll add materials about translating to a brief into my in-house Language Services Handbook (LaSH). I will certainly revise further aspects about the business of translation itself. For freelancers the key takeaway was about running a professional business – and charging premium rather than low rates.
How can professionals steer clients about their added value
Professional translators need to heighten awareness about Barnes’ Iron Triangle regarding translation. One speaker talked about translation as “just translation“, so I engaged with her about its incompatibility with expert professional translation. Another presenter failed to land a point where they had intended to by recounting a personal translation experience. They considered browser-based machine translation coupled with a “language check” through a dumping rate to be a valid approach. Proof of how from another angle, delivering “good enough” translation is apparent all clients need. How does this takeaway apply to in-house translation? I need to ensure that people know about how best to use my services and the value I add. Unlike the stochastic parrot, I understand the figures, and scrutinise their fit – and catch mistakes/typos before a publication goes out. The approaches mentioned by the speakers above illustrate the continuing need for work on educating clients about Barnes’ Iron Triangle.
Specialise – and don’t be afraid to have very precise specialisations – or to say “No!”: From talking to other participants, it was clear that everyone has their own specialised area within financial translation. This is what makes people stand out from the crowd, and also command a premium rate. In this regard, there is also scope to say “I’m not who you need for job XYZ, but when it comes to job ABC – I’m exactly the translator you need“. Positioning yourself and selling yourself properly is far more likely to bring you success rather than “hoovering up” any job that comes your way. Part of the issue of dumping rates has also come about by poor translation – and so this makes it essential for premium translators to set themselves apart from the field by really offering a top notch service.
Build and revise your skills and habits
Reinvent your presentation technique: one presentation that worked particularly well used a Miro tableau rather than PowerPoint. The speaker “flew” around his presentation impressively – he always knew exactly where he needed to be. I’ll certainly look at Miro as a tool for future presentations. I have used it a bit as part of a Data Storytelling in the Public Sector course. I think it offers further possibilities to lift my presentations to the next level. CAMELS have a great seminar in Frankfurt in October that Christof will be speaking at.
Always be reading: receiving confirmation about a belief that you hold dear is always good. Reading about the subject matter is part of my “Always Be Curious” approach. Many presentations at the conference came with reading suggestions. They ranged from reliable websites of authorities and ministries, through to subject-specific book recommendations, and reference works. I also finally met Bettina Stoke-Borchert, the author of the Fachwörterbuch der Rechnungslegung nach IAS/IFRS und HGB, which I use regularly for accounting-related translations.
Mind your own business: while many of us connected over LinkedIn and networking is essential, one thing struck me from many of the participants, was that we “mind our own business” – in the sense that we do not try to be social media influencers. We understand LinkedIn as a tool to connect, share content, but not to the extent of it taking over our actual business: i.e. that of translating. It really shone through that I was among translators who live to translate, and turn out high quality translations – never “just translation”.
Go for the experience
Meet your heroes and heroines: I finally met Bettina Stoke-Borchert and Chris Durban in person. I have heard Chris speak multiple times online at the Translating Europe Forum. She had commented on a couple of my blogposts before now, but hadn’t expected her to remember my blog. During the conference I also got to talk to my counterpart as a German>English translator from the Swiss supervisor (FINMA). It was also pleasing that there were some younger and less experienced translators in attendance too. I also really enjoyed talking to them too – from talking about their posters, through to their starting out in-house. The boat trip and dinner on the Thunersee yielded two particularly interesting conversations.
Listen to bankers, insurers, finance professors: presenters included members of the upper echelons of banks and insurance companies – it is a privilege to be able to listen to speakers from this level of an organisation, and an opportunity that is a rare one. And being able to ask questions to speakers was a definite bonus. In addition, there were some prominent academic experts, who provided digestible overviews of various facets of finance. This was really refreshing – and I felt privileged to have this kind of access to such lectures.
Make your CPD special: The ASTTI Conference in Spiez is an institution and a tradition. The town is a place of beauty. Having been to Spiez privately as a child and an adult, it was still a very special feeling alighting from the training in the evening petrichor and walking down to my hotel. The combination of the lake view, the castle and the alpine backdrop add to it. The conference is a small and intimate one. It has a remarkably broad thematic focus spanning multiple languages for a professional audience. I enjoyed the friendly and welcoming atmosphere, and left feeling happy, tired, and with plenty of food for thought. “Klein, aber oho!” or “Small is beautiful!” could be two ways to describe it.
The wrap-up
Finally a word of thanks – to ASTTI, and its team of conference organisers, for laying on such an intensive, constructive and enjoyable three days, the participants for making this such a special event and Spiez for being a wonderful location for the event. The next edition is due to take place from 1-3 July 2026 in Spiez. I very much hope to be there!
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 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.
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.
