Subjects Matter

The practice of hiring translators located in their native countries may not be the best way to get the job done.

Before anyone gets offended by that statement, please let me make it perfectly clear that I'm not proposing to use non-native speakers to translate.  Nor am I suggesting that only expats are qualified translators.  It's just that some subjects are better handled by translators who have actually lived a long time in the environment where the source language is used.

Yes, subjects do matter.  And it's a project manager's job to know who should handle what assignment.  For a project manager that works in a big company, hopefully his or her account manager knows that distinction as well.  It's always a sad situation when there's not enough budget to work with because a decision maker underestimated the tasks involved.

Let's take U.S. English > Simplified Chinese translation as an example.  For most cases, hiring a translator in China is an obvious choice: their rates are much lower than what we find in the U.S., and they're native Chinese speakers that use Simplified Chinese on a daily basis.  So why not use someone in China to translate everything?

The biggest reason, I would say, is because there are things you can't learn thousands of miles away.  Translations about computers, software, patents, medicine, science, etc. may be done by someone in China with no ill effect.  But daily topics and life subjects in general are a different level of tricky.

I've seen translations where "the weave" (for one's hair) was translated as "织物" (knitted or woven things) and "spotting for someone" (as in workout) became "从背后偷窥" (peeking at someone behind their back).  And when a speaker in a film talks about "the Michigan State" as in the state penitentiary system, it was translated as "密歇根州" (the state of Michigan).  These distinctions are trivial for a native English speaker to pick up on, but to a non-native speaker who doesn't live the language, it may as well be Greek.  For subject matters like these, if you must use someone in China for budgetary reasons, the very least you should do is hire a good reviewer located in the U.S. to QA the translation before it gets handed off to desktop publishing or voice over work.

A stitch in time saves nine.  You don't want to have to re-do the voice over or printing, do you?


 
Please translate responsibly.