Translators and instructions - hit or miss

What do you do when it seems that the translator is ignoring your instructions?

I have boundless respect for translators. I couldn't do their job as intensely as they do. But sometimes the intensity creeps into artistic license, and we worker bees get burned.

We had a high-pressure rush job last week. The Taipei office had a 30-page report translated from English into Chinese for Taiwan, and wanted a sanity check on the translation. The document was ready after close of business Friday in Taipei, and the reviewed version had to arrive before start of business Monday in Taipei.

We scoped the work as follows: The translator's job would be to "review the Chinese document for grammar, usage, punctuation, and to ensure that the English meaning is preserved in the Chinese version. All modifications should appear as tracked changes to make them easy to find." That seemed as clear as I could be about what we expected, and the translator's manager acknowledged the request.

The translator returned the document on Saturday, one day early, having modified almost every sentence in the entire document. As I looked through it, only a few possibilities occurred to me:

• The original translation had been a train wreck, and the reviewer had to clean up text everywhere.
• Something had gone wrong with change tracking in the document.
  
• The translator had not received my instructions and had introduced stylistic changes.
• The translator had ignored my instructions and had introduced stylistic changes.
  

Somewhat tentatively, we delivered the reviewed Chinese document to Taipei on time, mentioning the extensive changes proposed by the translator. Meanwhile, I told the translator's manager that I felt he had ignored the instructions. The translator replied, "There was a room to improve the readability of original translation. Although some mistranslation existed, the translation generally was still good."

The translation generally was still good?

Now, I appreciate a thorough job as much as the next person - even if I can't read Chinese - but this was not the time for it, and my instructions had been quite specific. Nobody in Taipei had the time to go through and accept or reject each change. That's part of the "rush" in "rush job." There's no easy way to go through 30 pages of changes and separate the instances of mistranslation and loss of original meaning from stylistic changes intended to make the document a better read.

How do you get your instructions across to translators?

If you enjoyed this post, have a look at this related article: Instructions to In-country Reviewers