Translation Business in Shanghai
By David Tan
A good simultaneous interpreter in Shanghai can earn up to RMB500 an hour. I teased a friend of mine (who was one) that she was having a dream job, and shouldn’t be quitting. She would take on 1 to 2 assignments a month,lasting 5 days max, and earn between 7,000 to 10,000 RMB a month. By the average local standards, 10,000RMB a month is more than enough to live comfortably. The remainder of the 25 days in a month, she spends it doing the things she likes. She finally calls in quits one day citing the “pressure”.
Pressure? What pressure? What’s so difficult in repeating what someone just said. Shouldn’t be too difficult if you are fluent in both languages? Right?
NO!
I got my first taste of the interpretation/translation business recently. A friend of mine was overwhelmed with her work and asked me to translate a small part of a powerpoint presentation for her (from Chinese to English). I took a quick look. It was about 16 pages with a few sentences on each slide. Seems easy enough….or so I thought…She asked me how much time I need. I confidently replied that it shouldnt take more than 30 mins. 60 mins later, I am still struggling to complete the last few slides.
Sabrina was right earlier. Without a proper glossary, knowing the background / objective, who the recipients of the information are, it is impossible to churn out any quality translation fast. Its like writing a letter and not knowing who you writing for. 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
July 24th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I do understand the importance of a good interpretor/translator. Without his/her effort in the business process, how could we expect a smooth negotiation. Especially the technical interpretor, it is really hard to find one.