turktrans blog

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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Today, I modified my index page adding some paragraphs as an excuse for this long delay in official launch of my homepage for Turkish language translation services, Turktrans, and stated that I need to allow myself a little more time for thinking over some new possibilities. I can be called “obsessive” with respect to my attention to details, or more correctly, my obsession to learn and analyze in minute details any topic that happens to attract my attention for the time being.

Almost one and a half year since the first crawl of Turktrans, and I am yet to launch it! Of course, I was really busy with translation projects during this period. But whenever I found an opportunity, I delved into the endless possibilities of Internet in search of a “nice” design layout for my website, of documents explaining this or that aspect of online business, of PHP scripts, code snippets, web images, specialized dictionaries, glossaries, etc. And since a great bulk of new materials is added to the information mass of Internet each day, it seems that this search would never end.

Is it practical? Absolutely not! It distracts me, takes all my spare time, and yields almost nothing practical. It is something like a novel that is continuously rewritten and finishes at infinitum. Each day, the novelist adds some new episodes, deletes some others, modifies this or that scene, and simply cannot manage to put an “end” to his novel.

Of course, someone can call it “a search for perfection.” Yes, this is true in a sense. Perfection is the ultimate goal that we all should strive for. Nevertheless, it is not something that we achieve for once and all. Like learning, it is a gradual process, an endless succession of little accomplishments. But the necessities of life requires practical imperfection. By “practical imperfection,” I mean a level of imperfection that would be acceptable and allow day-to-day functioning. Otherwise, waiting, or more correctly, postponing till an absolute perfection is achieved may turn out to be a waiting forever.

Usually, people start with whatever they have at hand for the time being, and try to improve afterwards through the process. I admire this in others as a virtue, since I often find it difficult to start away anything with only just available means, and instead find myself driven into an endless search for “a better one.”

At this point, I remember one of my all-time favorite books by Gail Sheehy: Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. In my opinion, she is one of the most influential writers of our time. Mentored by Margaret Mead (an eminent anthropologist), she casts vivid insight into the turmoil of inherent crises in human life like going to school, changing careers, getting married, being a parent, etc.

There is a comic in the book depicting the “I am not ready” attitude of a man at different stages of life.

When it comes to going to school, he cries: “But I am not ready!”

After school, he starts working, and cries: “But I am not ready!”

When he is summoned to military service, he cries: “But I am not ready!”

Then he gets married, again crying: “But I am not ready!”

Becomes a father himself and cries louder: “But I am not ready!”

At last, he becomes a grandfather, runs away from home, finds himself a dark hideout, and cries out:
“I am not ready, and will not come out until I am ready!”

I wish I had translated the Passages into Turkish. It should already be translated into Turkish. I remember offering it to some publishers during 90s. But unfortunately I failed to find a publisher to publish its Turkish translation.

Anyway, and not infrequently, the “not ready” attitude is in fact an inner resistance against the thing that the person says or thinks that s/he is not ready. For whatever reasons. And now, I am becoming more and more aware of my inner resistance against launching Turktrans fully, and hiding this resistance behind the veil of a strive for perfection. And I have to work over it to overcome this resistance.

By the way, any productive work is possible only against resistance which is the cause of procrastination that impoverishes both the quality and quantity of any work be it writing a novel, starting a new job, or doing day-to-day translation assignments. I will try to elaborate later on resistance and procrastination from the perspective of a freelance translator. For now, I should focus on trying to overcome my own resistance, and launch Turktrans with whatever I have at hand with all the practical imperfections.

If you found this page while searching a translator, please visit my Turkish translation homepage.

Sometimes, we receive translation bloopers from our foreign colleagues. A Spanish translator at an international support forum asked us if we can help her understand an English expression translated from Turkish. She was probably required to translate an English document to Spanish that in turn previously translated from Turkish.

The sentence read:

The expert is sworn in, his stimulation is done.

The asker said that ’stimulation’ does not make sense to her. And she was right. But she provided no further clues as to the type of document, so we are required to play a “hit and miss” game. And since swearing by an expert is concerned, I suggested that it should be a document related to some legal proceedings.

In certain lawsuits, the Court appoints an expert, or a board of experts in complicated cases, for examining some technicalities of the case. The expert, after conducting a study, submits an Expert Opinion to the Court. But before this submission, the Expert swears before the court, and the Judge forewarns him about his legal responsibilities.

“Uyarmak” or “uyarılmak” in Turkish means, inter alia, “to stimulate, warn,” or “to be stimulated or warned.” It is used in contemporary Turkish as a synonym for “İkaz” or “tahrik.” The former (ikaz) can be translated as “alarm or warning,” and latter can be translated as “drive, stimulation, provocation, arousal” etc. Unfortunately, the two words merged into a single word in contemporary Turkish language (“uyarım, uyarı”) that easily leads to such mistranslations.

It seems that our fellow translator took a dictionary, found the verb “uyarmak,” and picked up its first meaning in English (to stimulate). Hence, the expert’s stimulation is done!

Poor Expert! Or should we say, The Lucky Expert?

If you reached this blooper while searching a Turkish translator, please go to my Translation homepage.

Yesterday, a colleague at a professional support forum asked fellow colleagues to suggest English translations for some medical terms in Turkish. He was translating some text on a certain herbal (Valeriana officinalis). He said that he is sure about the translation of certain terms to English, and listed them. Among others, he was sure that “spazm çözücü” is “spasm solvent” in English.

All of his suggestions were far from being correct, but this one was a good candidate for a medical blooper, and also a good support for my contention that back translation is not a measure of quality of the original translation, even for the technical documents!

The correct English term is “antispasmodic.” And “spasm solvent” is utterly meaningless. But, to my surprise, I noticed that there are others who also translated “spazm çözücü” as “spasm solvent.” A Turkish herbal site selling herbal products contains more than one instance of “spasm solvent.” Unfortunately, their English page has gone, as it seems, but its cache is still there, at least as of today. www.isikbaharat.com/inglzurunlerimiz.htm

I found cache of another site that mentions “spasm solvent,” but it too seems unavailable: www.abailac.net/en/ms1.asp

By the way, when we back translate our blooper into Turkish, we get the perfectly meaningful Turkish version: “spazm çözücü.” This is just one example supporting the assertion that back translation is not a good measure of the original translation. A translation can be utterly meaningless, and yet yield a perfectly matched original when back translated.

If you find this page while searching for a Turkish language translator, please go to my English Turkish translation homepage.

Recently, I was reviewing a manual (Instructions for Use) for a certain medical device translated from English to Turkish. There were many mistranslations that can be considered as bloopers. But one of them was especially a good blooper indeed.

There was a subsection titled “IV Administration” translated to Turkish as “IV Yönetimi.” It struck me since “iv yönetimi” is totally nonsense within the particular context. I checked it against English version, and smiled. Perhaps, a machine translation would be better!
“Administration” can be translated into Turkish, among others, as “yönetim” (management). But within medical context, it simply means “introduction of fluids (medications, nutrients, etc.) directly into a vein.” 
Our blooper backtranslates into English as “intravenous management.” More sensible than its Turkish version!
Medical translation is a rich source of bloopers, and I am sure that I will add more medical bloopers in my “Hot Bloopers” section.
If you reached this page while searching a Turkish translator, please go to my Turkish Language Translation homepage.