turktrans blog

This post would well be categorized under the “hot bloopers.” But the point to be covered here has more to do with marketing than with bloopers.

Successful promotion is the key to success in any business, and first impression is the critical element in it. And a well-written message (be it an email reply or a short promotional message posted at forums, mailing lists, etc.) is the most critical factors of all in translation business, since the text is the only measuring rod against which our target audience measures the quality of our service. That is why I am posting this message under the “Business” category.

For the last couple of weeks I am receiving a promotional message from one of the Yahoo translation groups to which I am also a subscriber. The message originates from an Istanbul based agency that claims to have decades of experience, professional staff, and the like. But reading the first line of the message, you would probably think that it is the last one to whom you would trust your translation projects. I am including the whole message here:

Our company which is giving translation services and written and orally translations (simultaneous, concecutive) for any subject in whole world languages for five years, has all sorts of knowledge, aggregation and technological supplies.

Each of our written and orally translator staffs approximately near to 1500 in all over the world are formed by expert persons who have at least 5-10-15 years knowledge, aggregation and experince and are at the world standards.

Our translators are orientated through the translation projects which are classified one by one about their subjects, such as technical, medical, law, engineering etc..

Our translators’ professionalism and our coordinatos’s efforts are effective on submitting the translation businesses on time.

For all of your written and orally translation projects, you can get into contact with us by contentmently through the following addresses…

This is really a terrible first impression for a translator claiming experience and expertise. Anyone reading this message would hardly consider assigning a translation job to its originator. They would simply ignore it.

For freelance translators, self-promotion (bidding for a particular translation project, writing personalized emails, submitting CVs and references, counting relevant experiences, or designing a profile page) is the only marketing tool available. If used effectively, it may help us to attain a high level of “conversion.” And if not used properly, it can forestall our efforts to win new clients. Using this tool effectively means nothing more than using the language effectively (fluent, grammatically correct, focused, succinct: neither too long to be boring, nor too short).

We can theorize about the stages of winning a new client in freelance business such as: plausibility (first impression), capability (relevant experience, having required qualifications, credentials, etc.), affordability (cost), and the like.

As in any other human interaction, here too first impression plays a determining role in establishing or failing to establish a relationship of any duration (short-term or long-term). It is necessary but not a sufficient condition for winning clients. Necessary, because without a good first impression, the potential client simply turns away to other alternatives. Not sufficient, because we have to meet a couple of other criteria set by the potential clients. And since the words are all that we have for yielding a positive impression enough to have potential clients consider using our services, we should be extremely careful in our first attempt at contact.

Mostly, outsourcers have an initial, but mostly accurate judgment as to the quality level of your services simply through your first email. (I said “mostly,” because there may be cases where the outsourcer himself may not be good at the communication language, and therefore may fail to form a sound judgment on the language skills of the translator. But this is the exception, and not the rule.) Therefore, writing a good email, or a message is essential in yielding a favorable first impression.

Then, how can we learn to write a good message? We can study messages written by native-language speakers: How they introduce themselves, how they address the issue, and how they conclude the message. Sooner or later, we would notice a discernible pattern: A proper greeting, stating the reason why the message is written, elaborating on it, concluding about it, and closing the message with a thanks and regards phrase.

After all, this pattern is easy to learn. What is difficult is to convince the outsourcer that we are capable of delivering quality services, and meeting their requirements. To this end, text of our message should give the impression that we know the language in question well, that we are capable of expressing ourselves well in that language. Failing to give this initial impression amounts to a lost client!

In summary, writing a good initial message may draw the line between success and failure. Therefore, a non-native speaker should check every single line of his message, every phrase and term he uses against reliable resources to ensure that the text of his message is grammatically correct, the phrases are appropriate, and the terms are used properly. Never write a message like the one mentioned above. It would be better not to write it at all!

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Although English is not my Native language, I do frequently translate Turkish texts to English. And translating to a foreign language has its own difficulties, since understanding a foreign language is one thing, expressing “into” it is another. One can understand a foreign language well, but may find it really difficult to express himself in that language. That is why most of the translators (including myself) prefer translating into their own Native language rather than the other way around. The same holds true for the outsourcers: They too prefer native language service providers for the target language.

But often, I encounter added difficulties, since I receive poorly written documents in my native language for which I am expected to provide an exceptionally good English translation. Borrowing a saying from the moving pictures, a good script does not guarantee an excellent movie. But not too infrequently, we are provided with a very bad script, and supposed to make a superb film out of it!

Currently, I am translating some contract documents from Turkish to English. The contract covers clinical trials of a certain drug used in the treatment of some psychiatric disturbances. Being a sponsored research project, it has a well-defined format, and I think a substantial budget. And the contract is supposedly drafted by some university staff. It is so poorly written that I almost lost confidence in my ability to understand my native language, let alone English as a foreign language. And since it is a contract, you have to be as accurate as possible in reflecting whatever involved in the original text. That is to say, you have almost no room for playing with the words, or suggesting alternative expressions. A though task indeed! I struggled for hours to translate certain paragraphs, and after completed and returned the job, I exchanged a couple of e-mails with the outsourcer who happens to be a native English (UK) speaker to clarify the issues for him.

Such poorly written source texts have some real payoff for the translator: They tend to erode our credibility in the eyes of readers of the target language. Having no idea as to the low narrative quality of original text, they tend to think that the poor quality results from the translator’s inadequacy. Because, they probably presume that the original text has a perfect quality, since it is written by someone who is the native speaker of the source language. But our experiences as translators evidence that such presumptions are not always true. Quite to the contrary, in many cases translated versions are more fluent, more smooth to read, and more easy to understand than the source text. For example, I had to rewrite many sentences in Turkish version before translating them to English to make the text more readable.

As I said, a good script does not guarantee a superb film. But we translators do sometimes produce much better translations than original texts. Because this is our art, and because this is what we are supposed to do, and we are paid for!

As in any other business, nasty surprises do happen to freelance translators. Working against tight deadlines is already stressful. And such nasty surprises are an added bonus! They range from temporary power failures to catastrophic system crashes and loss of data, from receiving unexpected visitors to accidents, or serious health conditions requiring immediate and prolonged attention.

Last week, I was to return two assignments on the same day, one was a public tender announcement for the sale of the second largest GSM Operator in Turkey translated from Turkish to English to be delivered by noon, and the other was a promotional leaflet of the lubricants range of a leading oil company translated from English to Turkish to be delivered by EOB. I worked late night till 04:30am, slept a few hours, and waked up to face with a nasty surprise that appeared at first sight a power failure that occurs not infrequently in Turkey.

Background note: Recently, I moved to a newly constructed flat. The building was powered by a temporary mains connection called here in Turkey as “şantiye elektriği” —“construction site power,” a temporary power connection supplying electricity for the construction works. After the construction is over and an “iskan ruhsatı” is obtained (a compliance certificate issued by local municipalities confirming compliance with regulations governing health and safety requirements to be met by newly constructed buildings), this temporary connection is removed and the building is connected to the grid.

I waited for a while, and then went out to check the main breaker located outside the building, as I usually did nowadays, since the capacity of cables was insufficient to carry the load requirements of the building and we did experience frequent failures arising from breaks due to overload.
And alas! The breaker had gone. The thick cables running externally into the building had gone! They (the local public utility) simply removed the power connection, and dismounted the breaker panel. Without warning. Without even a hint!

Panicked, I run and knocked the Janitor’s door. “Yes,” he said with an indifferent face, “they did it.” I grumbled. “This is Turkey,” he added. “This is Turkey” is a motto to explain away all such nasty surprises, especially those arising from the ignorance, indifference, unjust treatment, illogical procedures, incomprehensible requirements, etc. that an ordinary individual has to endure.

Feeling helpless and indignant, I gulped a cup of instant coffee while thinking over the to find a way out to meet the deadlines. I could not dare to remove my hard disk, so I took the whole computer case and run into the nearest internet café. But failed to get a connection, since my system does not have the correct driver for their modem. “Do you have an install disk or CD for the modem? “No!” My stomach started aching, my nerves getting tenser making it difficult for me to think calmly as the deadline was approaching. I went to another Internet café, this time managing to get a connection. By noon, I finished translation and returned it on time, luckily. Around 17:00pm my spouse called and said that the public utility made the grid connection to the building. Happy news! By 17:30pm I finished and returned second assignment.

I went through a similar experience two weeks before while trying to meet another tight deadline, this time with a larger project. I had to take my 71 yr old mother to the emergency with acute stomach pain. Upon some tests and examination, she was diagnosed as having gallstones and a stomach hernia. The condition of the gallbladder was very critical, we were told, and required immediate surgery. After some consultation, we decided in favor of an open surgery since both conditions required correction, and they did it: cholecystectomy for the stones, herniorrhaphy for the hernia. And some sleepless nights for me to meet the deadline.

Things to Consider in Meeting Deadlines
Asking for an extension is not an easy thing, at least psychologically. Outsourcers do not like to hear your excuses. Understandably, they like to hear that you will keep your promise by returning the job on time. Imagine that a client fails to appear at a public auction sale of a multi-billion dollar worth company simply because the translator failed to return the translation of tender announcement on time due to a power failure!

I related some personal experiences not because they are exceptional, but because they are typical. If asked, every one of us can count a dozen of such misfortunes at once. In some occasions, it seems as if all such nasty surprises act in accord to fail you. And sometimes, you do fail despite all your best efforts in good faith. But given that such events are a common occurrence many of which are unavoidable, what should /can we do, if possible at all, to avoid from their negative effect on our performance or on our ability to meet the deadlines?

Deadlines can be a good incentive driving us to work steadily, or they can easily turn out to be a nightmare depending on our attitude towards work. First of all, we should not overestimate our own capacity and should take the deterring effect of unforeseen events into account. We should underestimate our capacity while working against a deadline, and take such events into account when proposing a deadline thus proactively avoiding from any such deterring effects.

Let me illustrate this point by a practical example. Let us assume that you have assignment, say, of some 40,000 source words to be returned within 20 days. With a rough calculation, you estimate that you need to translate only 2,000 words a day. Being a fast translator with an average daily output of some 4,000 – 5,000 words, you think that you have plenty of time to complete the project. And you do not start working on it until the last 10 days. Or, you start working right away, but do only 2,000 words a day.

In both cases, any unforeseen event is bound to cause a delay as much as the duration of such event. As I said, a wise translator would underestimate his capacity and start working right away and work with full capacity instead of doing only the daily requirement or postponing the work. Returning to our example above, a sensible translator will start working immediately, and will translate more than daily minimum requirements, say 3,000 words a day. If we assume that he translates 3,000 words a day on the average, this means that he would gain 1 day for every 2 days he works. If any unforeseen event occurs at any point, he does not need to panic as long as such event do not cause a delay over 5 days. If no such event occurs, then he finishes his job within 15 days, thus ensuring an early delivery of 5 days, which is a plus in terms of credibility and dependability in the eyes of the outsourcer in question.

The same approach holds true for proposing a deadline. Using our above example, our sensible translator will underestimate his capacity here too. Assuming that his daily work capacity is well over 4,000 source words, he will not propose 10 days for the deadline, but try instead to get a longer deadline to have a room for any unforeseeable event.

Undoubtedly, the urgency of the work in question is a crucial factor here. The outsourcer may insist to get it even within a shorter period of time, or the work may have some urgency. In such cases, the translator should have other measures to be mentioned shortly in place, and explicitly state that this is a very tight deadline, and any unforeseen event may lead to delays.

As I said above, some of the unforeseen events are unavoidable. But there are some obvious ones, which can easily be avoided with simple measures such as:

• Underestimate your capacity while proposing a deadline.
• Underestimate your capacity while working.
• Have alternative email accounts, and let your outsourcer know them. Also, ask your outsourcer let you know their alternative emails (ftp servers). Sometimes, they do fail.
• Have at least one alternative Internet Service Provider. For example, if you have an ADSL or Cable connection, get also a popup account from a different ISP, since, although not frequent, the ISPs do fail too.

Have a reliable UPS with sufficient capacity in place, and ensure that it is functioning properly.

• Backup regularly, especially in case of large projects.

When observed, such simple measures will help us to avoid from many nasty surprises that happen to us while trying to meet a deadline.

But if it becomes evident that a delay is unavoidable, always let your outsourcer know it, and your estimation of the amount of delay ahead of time. And, never inform the outsourcer at the last moment when they expect the work returned. Allow enough time so that they can adjust themselves to the delay.

(To be continued)

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