What Don’t We Want!

 

If you a manager, a proofreader, a translator or something else in the translation world, then there is one thing we need to know:

No one actually wants a translation.

I means, when do you ever get up in the morning and ask: ‘I will have two pieces of engineering, four sheets of accountancy and half a dozen marriages, please.”?

Here in the translation industry it is a common belief that other people do want translations, even desire translations, and that anyone who wants translations must also want translators.

But look at it this way: any industry that makes its way from a cottage to the city divides its specialists by function. So we end up with design engineers, electrical engineers, development engineers, power engineers, powertrain engineers, system engineers… can you see the trend here? 

Instead we classify translators by the languages they have studied or any subject, with success based on a translation dictionary they have used without client complaints. 

What our industry believes is not always helpful to the client. Indeed, the client often does not think about the details.

Indeed, rather than competing for business, we compete against other translators and translation agencies, where each contract is a notch on our bedpost rather than an opportunity to further understand our client's needs. Every time we beat another translator or agency we earn less of not-much-money. 

This is not improving, as much translation work is spiralling into web portal click-and-quote job offers.

So, if no one wants a translation, then what do they want?

The same thing we all want every time we write a letter or a report: success through other people’s actions, even if that action is simply to make our mother smile.

By the time a client arrives with a text then they have already invested much time and effort in it. They have learned their skills, their industry, their clients’ needs and so forth. They now have a specific task that targets a group of similar people, some of whom happen to speak another language.

What we should offer them is a range of skills, spread over a number of people, with the aim of allowing those people who speak another language to feel like natural members of our group.

It is not about us - it is about them, our clients. Because it is their money, ultimately, that we earn.

Oinks

 

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