Negocio de la traducción en Shangai
Por David Tan
Un buen intérprete simultáneo en Shangai puede ganar hasta RMB500 a la hora. Embromé a amigo el mío (quién era uno) ese ella tenía un trabajo ideal, y no debo parar. Ella adquiriría 1 a 2 asignaciones al mes, máximo de 5 días que dura, y gana entre 7.000 a 10.000 RMB un mes. Por los estándares locales medios, 10,000RMB al mes es más que bastantes a vivir comfortablemente. El resto de los 25 días en un mes, ella lo pasa que hace las cosas que ella tiene gusto. Ella finalmente llama adentro para un día que cita la “presión”.
¿Presión? ¿Qué presión? Cuál es tan difícil en la repetición de lo que acaba de decir alguien. ¿No debe ser demasiado difícil si usted es fluido en ambas idiomas? ¿La derecha?
¡NO!
Conseguí mi primer gusto del negocio de la interpretación/de la traducción recientemente. Abrumaron con su trabajo y pidió a un amigo el mío que tradujera una parte pequeña de una presentación de PowerPoint para ella (de chino al inglés). Tomé una mirada rápida. Era cerca de 16 páginas con algunas oraciones en cada diapositiva. Se parece bastante fácil….o pensé tan que… ella me preguntó cuánto hora necesito. Contesté con confianza que no debe tomar más de 30 minutos. 60 minutos más adelante, todavía estoy luchando para terminar las últimas diapositivas.
Sabrina era anterior derecho. Sin un glosario apropiado, sabiendo el fondo/el objetivo, que los recipientes de la información son, es imposible batir hacia fuera cualquier traducción de la calidad rápida. Su escritura semejante una letra y no saber para quién usted escritura. I kept needing to backtrack and make corrections on previous slides to ensure the overall coherence of the presentations. Same words can conjure different meanings and connotations to different audiences. I kept having to ask her how these are linked to other parts of the documents. It was finally finished at a “record” time of 1 hr 20 mins.
So next time, if you ever have a translator working for you, be kind to them! Provide them with information of your target audience/recipient info, background, objective and glossary. In return, you get better quality of work out of them, in a lot less time.
David Tan, Mad About Shanghai
October 30th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
thanks for sharing. Please be nice to us translators. :)
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Like the pros of other fields, they wont feel any pressure if he/ she is a quality and efficient translator.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:21 am
When translating something, you must know the whole story and understand it thoroughly. Otherwise, like what you said, you won’t be able to translate anything decent.
Translation is not just about replacing the every words with the other language, but “replacing” the whole thing (meaning…) with another language!
November 17th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
As a professional interpreter I cannot but chip in my 2 cents (looks like a buck now though))
From the obvious undercurrent of the author’s words I gather that he is not a professional translator - then the feeling you got from translating is about right.
Like the famous saying - having two hands does not make you a piano player as much as knowing two languages does not make you a translator, - you can understand that it is a skill and it is learned and practiced. Of course translating is not an easy job - what professionally done job is easy after all? - but it is a pleasant difficulty. Like with anything - a person should have a calling for a profession, and developed skills, which outweigh the difficulty. Simultaneous interpreting is the top-notch level in the profession, the challenge and the adrenaline can give you that - je-ne-sais-quoi ‘high’, but yeah, it sure gives the brain a certain stress. Though 5 days a month - she got herself a gravy train ride:) It’s a shame she quit. On the downside though perhaps switching between Chinese and Western sets of mind while interpreting is sure more difficult than doing it between Western languages, maybe it is the reason. But yeah, it all burns down to what you are saying, you gotta understand how your interpreter works and provide all the necessary background info and all. After all, you need to have some respect for the one whom you expect to relay in real-time a report you spent weeks writing up in another language. Nice post.
November 17th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Agree. Translation not just repeat, but need to analysis. Few years ago, my foreign colleague asked me to be her translator in her lesson since there were quite a lot of hong kong people. However, the lesson content included so many techical terms. My english was not good enough, so, even the lesson ran smoothly lastly, i was not satisfy with what i did.
November 21st, 2007 at 1:22 am
Yes, it is not easy to be a good interpreter or translator. I am working as a freelance translator and interpreter in guangzhou. Last month I worked for a sluice gate manufacturer from Canada for their presentation meeting in China. I prepared 300pages of terminology in this industry and the meeting is only 2 hours. My daily translation is less than 3000 word a day as I need to find the exact meaning of the terms both in Chinese and in English.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:10 pm
When you do translation/interpretation, you have to be very familar with the industry that you work for and very familar with their products and services it is providing.
This will require time to prepare yourself.
I don’t mind do some translations. It could be pretty challenging