Measuring translation quality

Quality in translation is something that good translators have an instinctive feel for. But how do you measure translation quality? How do you define it? The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation evaluates the translations provided by its contractors using the criteria set out below. First, some simple Yes/No quality criteria:

  • Compliance with technical requirements? (Y/N)
  • Right language? (Y/N)[!]
  • Assignment complete? (Y/N)
  • Specific instructions complied with?(Y/N)

Then, the following error types, marked by “Low” to “High” relevance (a “high relevance” error being “one which seriously compromises the translation’s usability”):

  • Mistranslation
  • Omission
  • Wrong or inconsistent EU usage or terminology
  • Reference documents/material not used
  • Clarity and/or register
  • Grammar
  • Punctuation
  • Spelling

These are pretty self-evident; for those of you not familiar with the term in a language context, “register” is the variety of a language considered to be appropriate to a specific purpose, situation or social setting. So for EU documents the register will most likely be formal, institutional or technical.

What makes a quality translation?

What do you think of these translation quality criteria? Are there any gaps (bearing in mind that we’re dealing here with European Union material, so creativity and imaginative flair aren’t likely to be key requirements)? And what about translation quality more generally – for example for marketing or literary texts? If you’re a translator, do you have any personal quality criteria that you work to? And if you’re a translation client, or potential client, what do you look for in a translation?

How do you judge translation quality?

By Marian Dougan

The translators’ poet laureate (and rapper!)

Did you know that we translators have our own poet laureate – who’s also a pretty mean rapper?

Here’s a sample:

The deadline

Ten thousand words for Friday
OK that should be fine

Two thousand words a day
A good steady pace I must say

Day one and all is going fine
It’s telly tonight with a glass of wine

Day two and a favourite client asks
Would I have time for a couple of tasks?

They’re not too long so I say ‘yes’
I set to work and hope for the best

Did our translator make the deadline? Find out at Chatter and Verse, the new blog by Alison Hughes devoted to “‘poems’ about situations we translators, indeed freelancers in general, often face”.

And here’s The Translator’s Rap, again by Alison. Watch your back, Carol Anne Duffy!

By Marian Dougan

A spring-time revamp for Words to good effect

We’ve had a makeover! The blog is now self-hosted (I got round to it at last). It uses the same theme as before (Unsleepable, by Ben Gray), revamped by the wonderful – and very patient – Zoë Shuttleworth of Rude Goose. With help from her new assistant, the beautiful Erica, who at 6½ months gives new meaning to the theme name and has kept Zoë awake and working on the revamp at all hours of the day and night. So thank you, Erica: Zoë’s lost sleep has been Words to good effect’s gain.

The new theme colour is a softer variant of Pantone’s “Tangerine Tango“, which was their colour of the year for 2012. According to Pantone:

Tangerine Tango, a spirited reddish orange, continues to provide the energy boost we need to recharge and move forward.

“Sophisticated but at the same time dramatic and seductive, Tangerine Tango is an orange with a lot of depth to it […] Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy.”

Wow! That’s a lot from a colour. I chose the shade because I love it, but if it gives us all an energy boost to recharge and move forward, so much the better!

If you’re interested in colour combinations, check out Jessica Colaluca’s Design Seeds colour palette site and Fresh Hues blog – they’re gorgeous! But be careful – you could end up spending a lot of time in there.

What’s your favourite colour? Does it have special connotations for you? Let us know in the comments!

Apologies, by the way, to subscribers to Words to good effect: I published a post yesterday while the domain was mid-transfer (doh!), meaning you received a message with a bad link. It should be OK now.

By Marian Dougan

 

Singing in Occitan. Beautifully.

A week or two ago I heard a recording on Radio Scotland of Dawn Upshaw singing ‪Baïlèro, one of the Songs from the Auvergne:

a collection of folk songs from the Auvergne region of France arranged for soprano voice and orchestra or piano by Joseph Canteloube between 1923 and 1930 […] in the local language, Occitan.

The song itself is beautiful, and Dawn Upshaw’s version gave me goose-bumps, it was so lovely. I couldn’t find it on YouTube, but I did find this version by Netania Davrath, which is just as exquisite.

Here’s a comment on her voice from Wikipedia, by music critic Rob Barnett

Her early recording of Joseph Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne is considered by many to be unsurpassed […] Her voice is tender, strong, nasal, arch, shy, abandoned, free from vibrato, pure and clean and distinctly un-operatic. […] Davrath’s facility in eight languages undoubtedly aids her interpretations which are always intelligent and which do not give the impression of being phonetically acquired.—Rob Barnett, music critic[2]

For language lovers (yes, there’s a language slant to this post!), the added bonus of this YouTube recording is that it shows the words of the song, in Occitan. I hope you enjoy it and that it brings a touch of springtime to this chilly Easter.

By Marian Dougan

Getting paid. On time. With the EU’s help: the Late Payments Directive

If you run a business, cash flow is vital. Delays with payments have a pernicious effect: if you don’t get paid, you can’t pay your bills or your suppliers, and the chain-reaction can have a crippling effect on business, not to mention the wider economy.
In the words of the European Commission’s Enterprise and Industry Directorate:

Companies go bankrupt waiting to be paid. Jobs are lost. Dreams die. Across the European Union, paying suppliers late is common. It costs little and is considered acceptable. But it does great harm. Every year, hundreds of thousands of European businesses have closed waiting for late payments. Small and medium-sized enterprises are particularly exposed to late payment, and business selling across borders are especially vulnerable. The late payment culture has to change, and the European Union is equipping business with the tools to make this change happen.

Continue reading “Getting paid. On time. With the EU’s help: the Late Payments Directive”

EU resources for translators, interpreters, writers, researchers…

A really useful message has just popped into my inbox from the Terminology Coordination Unit (TermCoord) at the European Parliament. Very timely, as I’ve just been up-dating my own resources page.

Here’s what TermCoord’s message contained:

Glossary Links. A glossary search tool with a database of almost 1,400 glossaries available online. All the links in the glossary search tool are regularly checked and updated by TermCoord in terms of relevancy and reliability. You can now find glossaries according to topics and by language.

DocHound – Reference found! A one-stop shop of links to useful document resources of the EU Institutions all gathered at one single place.

More direct and easier access to IATE:

Widgets you can upload to your websites or blogs to give visitors of your sites direct access to IATE and enable them to search for terms directly from your site.

Browser extensions/add-ons giving direct access to IATE through your web browsers.

I reckon DocHound in particular will be invaluable, certainly in my subject areas. What do you think, folks – useful material?

By Marian Dougan

And on the subject of “horses for courses” (meat or otherwise)…

…the phrase means:

A person suited for one job may not be suited for another job.

The practice of choosing the best person for a particular job.

Once again, the Wikipedia family (in this case Wiktionary) refers to the translation profession to illustrate usage:

The term is widely used in the foreign-language translation industry, where a translator is selected for a job not solely based on his or her fluency in the language, but also based on knowledge of the subject matter.

We hope.

Related post: From GIGO to QIQO: the quest for quality

By Marian Dougan

Horses for (meat) courses: database of national food-safety laws and regulations

A resource for anyone who, given the rapidly expanding horse-meat scandal, is working on food safety issues right now and needs to consult the relevant legislation. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has compiled a database called FAOLEX, which lists food safety laws and regulations from just about everywhere.

FAOLEX is a comprehensive and up-to-date computerized legislative database, one of the world’s largest electronic collection of national laws and regulations on food, agriculture and renewable natural resources.

Users of FAOLEX have direct access to the abstracts and indexing information about each text, as well as to the full text of most legislation contained in the database.

FAOLEX doesn’t provide translated versions, but if you’re looking for the original text then it’s a handy reference tool. There’s also a FAOLEX help page.

By Marian Dougan

“Dreich”: Scots, the Scots… or Scottish weather?

The Scottish Government has just published the results of a poll to identify the nation’s favourite Scots word. The winner was “dreich”, which means “wet”, “cold” and/or “gloomy”. I’m not sure if that describes the Scottish weather, or just our character.

Respondents were asked to choose their favourite from a list of 8 Scots language words that, along with dreich, included:

crabbit bad-tempered, grumpy

blether to chat, often at great length; can be used as a noun referring to the person doing the blethering and may also involve a lot of haivering…

haiver to talk nonsense

beastie an insect, or the diminutive of beast, as in “sleekit, cowrin, timorous beastie”

sleekit smooth or glossy, as in “sleek”. Also means, much less attractively, cunning, crafty, sly, ingratiating, unctuous and generally untrustworthy

braw good, great, good-looking (as in “a braw lass”)

glaikit slow-witted or foolish, often used in the phrase “glaikit-looking”.

Apart from “braw”, it’s an unprepossessing list. Or maybe that, too, is a reflection of the Scottish character?

I wish they’d included “fankle” — a really useful word meaning a tangle, muddle or state of confusion. And what about the wonderful “sonsie” (attractive, especially if pleasingly plump too) as in “a right sonsie lassie”?

Are any of your favourites missing from the list?

Related articles

By Marian Dougan

 

The UK and Europe: in or out? Take our poll on EU membership

Time for a poll, I think, what with David Cameron throwing the gatto among the piccioni with his planned referendum on membership of the European Union.

For some of us, EU membership is a business/market access issue, for some it’s all about annoying rules and regulations, and for others it’s emotional — we feel European.

A couple of business issues that would affect translators (and other UK business owners) if Britain left the EU:

would we be able to bid in public-sector tenders in EU countries?

would we be able to register a country-level domain name in EU countries? (in Italy, the answer is “no”)

would English continue to be the (unofficial) working language of the EU, and would we see a decline in the amount of EU-related documents being translated into English? Ireland and Malta have English as one of their official languages, but they’re relatively small. Maybe France would (re)claim linguistic sovereignty.

So have your say here first (and feel free to comment!).

With thanks, for the question on English as an EU language, to the students at the MSc in Translation Studies at the University of Glasgow, where I taught a Master Class last week.

By Marian Dougan