| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Should you warn clients if you notice during translation that they really screwed up in the source? Thread poster: Adieu
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Adieu 
Ukrainian to English
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Is it your ethical obligation or just a pointless way of aggravating them?
I'm talking about applications, contracts, etc. where key errors, wrong copypasted text, and so on should theoretically invalidate them entirely (or make them something other than what was intended).
[Edited at 2021-10-28 17:37 GMT]
| | | | Jean Lachaud
United States
Local time: 10:21
English to French
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| I do it. All the time | Oct 28, 2021 |
I encounter such errors more and more frequently; not so much in legal document (in those, instances of truncated sentences are more common), but all the time in technical documents, errors in which parts of a manual for one or more different products have been pasted without model number or name being unified. Or text contradicting itself from one page to the next (a current project has two contradictory sentences in the same paragraph).
I always notify the customer.
U... See more I encounter such errors more and more frequently; not so much in legal document (in those, instances of truncated sentences are more common), but all the time in technical documents, errors in which parts of a manual for one or more different products have been pasted without model number or name being unified. Or text contradicting itself from one page to the next (a current project has two contradictory sentences in the same paragraph).
I always notify the customer.
Usually, they thank me. Once, I was told that what was a blatant error, in a tender to an RFP, was correct. That client bid failed. But that was a very rare exception.
J L ▲ Collapse
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Mine are somewhat different | Oct 28, 2021 |
One office assistant regularly writes letters to big shots looking like this:
Attn: Robert Stevens, MD
Dear Dr. Steven Roberts,
...which although harmless will surely eventually tick off said regulatory big shot (not his name).
Another constantly makes clinical trial applications and notifications looking like this:
Protocol No. VIAGRA1
Protocol title "A study of Prozac"
I sincerely hope that they have no access ... See more One office assistant regularly writes letters to big shots looking like this:
Attn: Robert Stevens, MD
Dear Dr. Steven Roberts,
...which although harmless will surely eventually tick off said regulatory big shot (not his name).
Another constantly makes clinical trial applications and notifications looking like this:
Protocol No. VIAGRA1
Protocol title "A study of Prozac"
I sincerely hope that they have no access to any non-bureaucratic documents that can actually kill anybody, but even the potential for project derailment and liability alone is pretty stunning.
[Edited at 2021-10-28 18:26 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | AnnaSCHTR
United States
Local time: 09:21
English to Czech
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You never know what might happen (I live in the U.S. where everyone sues everyone all the time). If I see what I am certain is a potentially serious error, I point it out (tactfully, if possible) and keep a record of it for myself. 10 years. Call me paranoid but better safe than sorry.
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| More than just "yes" | Oct 28, 2021 |
In my book, it's not even a choice, it's a duty of a professional to inform the client of such problems. In some cases, being able to spot a problem in the source text and save the client's bacon may even justify a higher rate on your part. On one occasion, I was negotiating a big project, several hundred pages of a flight operations manual for a large Russian airline (now defunct, so my story won't harm anyone). They sent a sample chapter and asked me to translate a couple of passages. T... See more In my book, it's not even a choice, it's a duty of a professional to inform the client of such problems. In some cases, being able to spot a problem in the source text and save the client's bacon may even justify a higher rate on your part. On one occasion, I was negotiating a big project, several hundred pages of a flight operations manual for a large Russian airline (now defunct, so my story won't harm anyone). They sent a sample chapter and asked me to translate a couple of passages. The manual was written in Russian and was to be translated into English for the foreign pilots to be shortly hired. However, the authors had evidently crafted the Russian text from international guidelines published in English. Within a few minutes, I found a few Russian phrases that made hardly any sense, and one with an outright dangerous confusion in terms. I took the trouble of tracing the bad text back to ICAO regulations and presented a comparison to the client. No more questions were asked about my high rates. (The project ultimately failed to materialise, but that's another story - the airline went out of business shortly after that). ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Always, if you take a pride in what you deliver to the client | Oct 29, 2021 |
Being a perfectionist, I always point out any serious errors in the source document. 99.9% of my clients appreciate this, and they keep coming back to me (some of them date back to the mid-2000s).
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:21
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| What if you discover that the source text is plagiarised? | Oct 29, 2021 |
A couple of years ago I translated a very long PhD thesis from Italian to English.
In the course of doing this I came across strange differences in the writing style, and investigated further. This led me to the discovery that entire sections - pages and pages, at least 5-10% of the thesis - had been plagiarised from English-language sources and rewritten in Italian.
My job was simple: find the originals and copy/paste them into my translation.
Should I ha... See more A couple of years ago I translated a very long PhD thesis from Italian to English.
In the course of doing this I came across strange differences in the writing style, and investigated further. This led me to the discovery that entire sections - pages and pages, at least 5-10% of the thesis - had been plagiarised from English-language sources and rewritten in Italian.
My job was simple: find the originals and copy/paste them into my translation.
Should I have told the author that I knew she had plagiarised these parts of her thesis? I think not.
I suspect that even more of her text had been stolen from other people's work although I didn't investigate. I simply had to finish the job (which was enormous and took months).
On that back of that PhD she is now a tenured professor at a very important Italian university.
[Edited at 2021-10-29 07:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Impacts the translator | Oct 29, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
Is it your ethical obligation or just a pointless way of aggravating them?
I think telling them is nice and shows you are a professional to the client.
Bu that raises the question about clients that don't care at all about how they write since they'll be paying someone to go over their documents, in this case: you, the translator. This poor attitude ends up being expensive for the translator: you will take a lot longer to work on such documents, you automated processes won't work as they should (i.e. glossary terms not being recognized, no TM matches etc.) and if you work with the mistakes in the source, you'll have an unusable polluted TM. Hence, it would make sense to fix the source entirely before using your CAT.
In such situations I would advise them of the situation and give them the choice: either they fix it themselves extending the deadline or pay me x amount of time I evaluate fixing the source will require (along with deadline extension where applicable).
Be well.
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When I find one or more errors in the source document I always contact my client. Depending on the error I either correct it (if it is obvious) or I’ll ask for an explanation or instructions on what to do (I cannot translate what I don’t understand). The only exception regards sworn or certified translations where it should be translated as it is and marked with [sic]. As an error rarely comes alone, if and when I spot one I read the whole document to the end in order to submit everything to... See more When I find one or more errors in the source document I always contact my client. Depending on the error I either correct it (if it is obvious) or I’ll ask for an explanation or instructions on what to do (I cannot translate what I don’t understand). The only exception regards sworn or certified translations where it should be translated as it is and marked with [sic]. As an error rarely comes alone, if and when I spot one I read the whole document to the end in order to submit everything to the client in just one go. Another thing: I will remain tactful and diplomatic in all circumstances (I would never say something like “they really screwed up in the source”…). ▲ Collapse
| | | | Titus Haennni
Switzerland
Local time: 16:21
English to French
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| How is that even a question? | Oct 29, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
Is it your ethical obligation or just a pointless way of aggravating them?
I'm talking about applications, contracts, etc. where key errors, wrong copypasted text, and so on should theoretically invalidate them entirely (or make them something other than what was intended).
[Edited at 2021-10-28 17:37 GMT]
Of course, even if you're working through an agency, even if the end client seems to not give a fig about the text, you flag potential source errors, that's simply part of the job.
Also you get to feel smug.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 16:21
French to English
A client who's aggravated when you point out an error? I can imagine a stressed-out PM at an agency groaning when they receive a 2-page document from me with all my questions and remarks, but I take care to write as if to the end client so they can just forward it.
But unless you couldn't care less about producing good work, you need to deal with such stuff. And I'm not interested in working with someone who doesn't care about producing good work.
I actually told a client thi... See more A client who's aggravated when you point out an error? I can imagine a stressed-out PM at an agency groaning when they receive a 2-page document from me with all my questions and remarks, but I take care to write as if to the end client so they can just forward it.
But unless you couldn't care less about producing good work, you need to deal with such stuff. And I'm not interested in working with someone who doesn't care about producing good work.
I actually told a client this. I was to revise his book written directly in English. There was one term he kept using, which happened to be the same in French (his native language), but it didn't seem to crop up anywhere in any of the English-language websites I consulted. I hunted down the term that's used in English and told him I'd be using that. He was upset at the idea that he'd been making such a mistake (the book was on a subject that he'd been teaching in English for years). He then pointed to a website where they used his term, I pointed out that even if it was in English, the text had been translated from Italian. He started muttering about Globish, and I told him that if he wanted his book written in Globish, then I was not the right person to revise it. There was a very pointed silence, then he asked me to show me some links where the term I was suggesting was being used. I immediately sent him the links to the websites I'd consulted, all either British or American, and he finally grudgingly decided I must be right. In the end he was so pleased with my work he took me to a very swank restaurant to thank me! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Why it could come back to bite you | Oct 29, 2021 |
The people you can actually reach are typically PMs, who will then have to reach what are often the actual people who wrote the nonsense... or, in case of direct clients, you might be dealing with the actual author of the nonsense.
Meanwhile, the "interested party" when it comes to catching errors is whoever is funding this chaos.
PMs don't want the hassle. Authors of crap work generally hope no one ever reads it at all.
Ultimately, your financial interests... See more The people you can actually reach are typically PMs, who will then have to reach what are often the actual people who wrote the nonsense... or, in case of direct clients, you might be dealing with the actual author of the nonsense.
Meanwhile, the "interested party" when it comes to catching errors is whoever is funding this chaos.
PMs don't want the hassle. Authors of crap work generally hope no one ever reads it at all.
Ultimately, your financial interests are rarely on the same page with the entity paying for it all. Instead, you want the middlemen happy, and really could care less about the true interests of the end customer.
PS that's for low visibility documents. If it is prominently consumer-facing, then definitely, nobody wants mass embarrassment.
[Edited at 2021-10-29 13:48 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Zolboo Batbold
Italy
Local time: 16:21
Member (2021)
English to Mongolian
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SITE LOCALIZER | Yes, here's an example | Oct 30, 2021 |
I'm in the process of reviewing 16-module learning materials for KFC restaurant managers. In one module, the person responsible for creating these slides left their personal comment and somehow it ended up in the finalized version.
And the translator actually translated those comments.
[Edited at 2021-10-30 09:27 GMT]
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 16:21
French to English
Zolboo Batbold wrote:
I'm in the process of reviewing 16-module learning materials for restaurant managers. In one module, the person responsible for creating these slides left their personal comment and somehow it ended up in the finalized version.
And the translator actually translated those comments.
[Edited at 2021-10-30 09:27 GMT]
I'm not sure your clients will appreciate you splashing all this over the Net. Your message as edited above is still a perfectly valid contribution to the thread...
| | | | Edward Potter
Spain
Local time: 16:21
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
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Tom in London wrote:
...entire sections - pages and pages...had been plagiarised...On that back of that PhD she is now a tenured professor at a very important Italian university.
[Edited at 2021-10-29 07:42 GMT]
It seems to happen a lot. Certain people in Washington started off their careers with plagiarism and ended up in an extremely powerful position.
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