“la parole exportée”

This is not a tip. The question is: Who will be making the money, ultimately? And who is working for free, whatever the end-use of their translation?

Facebook has promised to launch localized versions in 2008.

It appears that over 800 translators were working on the Spanish translation, end of December 2007. Read a post by Rodney Rumford, of FacebookReviews, here. Rodney Rumford calls it ‘Crowdsourcing’. What a nice word!

The French tech press is now writing pieces on the subject.

Like this one here.

And this one published today, here.

I will add my own note, published on Facebook. Because my Profile is closed to outsiders, I’m publishing the text below:

Unpaid translation for Facebook

This is an article (unfortunately, in French - for those who don’t master the language) on how Facebook has invited its members to translate Facebook into their own languages.

http://www.infos-du-net.com/actualite/12632-facebook-traduction.html

I found the last paragraph (author’s opinion) particularly eye-catching. Let me translate it for you:

Our opinion: Facebook is turning into a community to the point that they are proposing their users a site made and translated by themselves. The idea is not new, Wikipedia is using a similar system for the translation of its articles. Now our hope is that the proposed translations are complete (sic) and of good quality…

[Source: Notre avis : Facebook devient communautaire au point même de proposer à ses utilisateurs un site fabriqué et traduit par eux-mêmes. L’idée n’est pas nouvelle, Wikipédia fonctionnant sur un système similaire pour la traduction de ses articles, il reste maintenant à espérer que les traductions proposées seront complètes et de qualité...]

As a professional translator, I willingly take unpaid work for CHARITIES, but I find it indecent that a site that handles millions of US$ would have its translation done free of charge by its own members, in order to appear to make them feel involved, when the aim is to attract more French speakers and more advertising money. I know that a lot of people will disagree with me, such is the spirit of Web 2.0. But this blogger’s own opinion is interesting, and not the only one I’ve read so far (this is a recurrent topic in French circles): What about the completeness of the translation, and its quality???

Both are prerequisites for people of different languages to understand each other properly. I researched ‘translation’ on Twitter recently, and found not a few instances of people complaining of poor-quality automatic and/or amateur translation.

End of note

I’ll add to my own note saying that I hope that Facebook will gracefully mention the individual names of all the people (non-Facebook staff) who are participating in the exercise. This is a marketing world, and the free translations are adding VALUE to Facebook.

So for those of you who know French colloquialisms, or would like to learn some, I have this question:

Qui est le dindon de la farce?

(a clue: if you try Systran, you are sure NOT to understand the true meaning, I’ve just checked…)

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France24, “the French CNN”, has reported on the recruitment of Chinese translators for the Olympic Games. French and English are now totally covered, but other languages are still in demand, for instance Farsi, and African and Scandinavian languages. There is even a young Chinese expert in the Czech language. A total of 4000 young volunteers are expected to help for translation.

More information on volunteers for the Beijing Olympics here or here.

After this first experience, I retreated from formal voluntary work for a long time. I don’t have the guts to work for Amnesty International, for example, and I feel a little guilty in that department.

Having thus lost myself in translation for many years, there came a point in my life when I wanted to make myself ‘useful’ again, and I started voluntary translation (written).

But, how do you reconcile a busy schedule with voluntary work?

Voluntary organizations, especially the smaller offices, need a commitment that makes your work meaningful. I assigned one day per week to one particular organization. One day can mean a lot of money for a translator, so it wasn’t a fixed day, I was able to move it in the week as I needed in order to cover an urgent deadline, or I couldn’t work around a paid project. And with modern technology, I was still able to receive notifications of projects offered by my clients on my mobile, so I wasn’t losing anything.

From my observations, I can list at least 3 good reasons for doing this kind of voluntary work during your working life, and I can tell that this was truly a win-win venture. It has broadened my expertise into the field of community development, where I can now work with confidence and get paid, it has broadened my social network, as I made a few friends through my voluntary work, and my personal perception is that you can assert yourself more as a professional than when you are just a student or a beginner. I phased out after the one-point-five-million-word mark, it was probably more because I didn’t start counting from Day 1. I wasn’t bored, but I needed more personal time for other pursuits.

I also do occasional unpaid work for friends, but also for young people (not homework, though!). There is a young lady out there in a US university, whose transcripts I translated so that she could get accepted. I was so proud for her when she did (she got in because of her brilliant ratings, not because of my translation)!

When young translators look for jobs to improve their practice, the first thing that comes to mind is ‘voluntary work’. A good idea, as it provides real-life practice, something that one is keen to get after a couple of years of learning how to translate.

When I started out as a translator, about 30 years ago, one of my first assignments was voluntary interpreting at a conference of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament held in Bradford, England. We were a small group from the same Paris university. Bradford seemed cold and grim, even in July, but the first evening, we ventured outside in search of a restaurant, only to find what seemed to us a crowd of Pakistani young men hanging out in the streets, just standing, not moving, looking very sad and idle and lonely… so -those were the days- we hurried back into the conference, into the comradeship of (unpaid) workers for a Good Cause. Our working conditions were very amateurish, probably violating every single rule ever devised by our international association, but this was offset by the warm, genial atmosphere.