ARE TRANSLATORS, THE BIGGEST FACTOR DOOMING THE TRANSLATION SECTOR?
Just like all world countries, latest developments in technology reflect on developing foreign relations and consequently the translation sector where demand has increased quiet. Rapidly and continuously increasing need for translation is tried to be fulfilled by translation offices, firms and freelance translators to work with public and private entities.
Quality of translations which must be carefully done in every sector such as marketing is extremely important for firms in international markets and need for transfer of information in following technological developments. In order to get successful translations, translation offices and their translators must be preferred by considering professionalism in their works, their references and customer satisfaction. At this point, what translators must do is to avoid issues decreasing translation efficiency and completing translation by considering them. We compile 5 points for you where translators can improve themselves, which might be useful in developing translation sector.
1. DELUSION THAT TRANSLATION CAN BE DONE BY ANYONE
Rapidly growing need for translation consequently increases the tendency to the sector. Everyone with a little language knowledge trying to do translations due to increasing translation projects in the sector which must only be carried out by experienced and professional translators reduces quality of translation. In consequence of decreasing quality of translation, employers feel insecurity against firms and persons doing their translations.
2. TRANSLATORS USING MACHINE TRANSLATION
As a result of the growth and development in translation sector, translators and firms undertaking high workloads have begun doing translations directly through machines without completing them personally and subjecting them any control process. These machine translations present results far from professionalism such as incoherencies, inconsistencies and etc. on documents. Clients applying firms and persons due to translation needs experience dissatisfaction due to setbacks, errors and potential huge problems.
3. TRANSLATORS CHOOSING WHAT TO TRANSLATE
In addition to intensive workload of the market, we can say that decreasing quality in translation is also caused by translators who choose what to translate. The results of translators who chooses the easiest ones among proposed projects, chooses them based on their length and volume and do not show the necessary care, are questionable with respect to quality.
4. WEAK CUSTOMER RELATIONS
Interrupted communication can cause disconnection between clients and translation firms, overlooked important issues and consequently decreasing efficiency. Having an ongoing communication with customers after translation projects, responding potential questions related with translated files, clarifying them where you can guide them and providing necessary information are significantly important. Increasing translation demands have been causing a weakened relation between translators and customers due to superficial translations. The phase following delivery of translated files must be contacting customers, providing necessary details if any and ensure customer satisfaction.
5. PROJECT DELIVERY WITHOUT PROOFREADING
Translation projects must be delivered upon a comprehensive proofreading process in order to have faultless translations. Proofreading of a file to be delivered by translators is an important phase to eliminate significant problems such as incoherencies, misspellings, punctuation errors and terminology, which can be experienced in translations. Proofreaders to approve the quality control process must indicate that projects are ready for delivery by evaluating their final state as a whole. As, thousands of firms and people in translation sector underestimate this phase, translations may be delivered without even correcting misspellings and punctuation errors. As a result, translations far from content integrity, against professional ethics are done.
It must be checked whether all characteristics of the content and the language of source texts are properly and appropriately applied on target texts. For example, it must be aimed for a legal document that all legal issues in it are paid attention, all details in the source text are translated exactly on the target text and the translation process appropriate with legal parlance is done. This service is significantly important as it guarantees your texts to be delivered without any error and ready for printing.
Lack of care of translators and translation firms, applying methods where it is not possible to get proper results such as machine translation, working far from professionalism by choosing projects based on their levels of difficulty and doing translations without using necessary translation techniques and knowledge cause a great deformation in the sector. As a result of the deficient and unsuccessful service, clients feel lack of confidence in translators and translators and firms doing high-quality jobs are misjudged.
