Jianjun's Blog

Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing between a ‘language’ and a ‘dialect’, many local tongues have been the subject of much debate and disagreement regarding their true status.

The Scots language, for example, is one such vernacular that has had scholars hotly disputing whether it is in fact a language at all, or merely an ancient dialect of English.

It’s important to note that Scots – be it a language or a dialect – should not be confused with Scottish Gaelic, which is actually a language in its own right, spoken predominantly in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Scots, on the other hand, is an Anglic variety of an earlier form of English which is spoken chiefly in the southern parts of Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland.

The UK government accepts Scots as a regional language, but not as an official language, meaning there is no obligation to have official texts produced in Scots; unlike Scottish Gaelic, which is an official language and is therefore still taught in many schools in conjunction with English.

But whilst Scots is not ‘officially’ considered a language in its own right, there are many reasons to disagree with this assertion.

Firstly, there is a wealth of world-renowned literature that is written in Scots. Robert Burns is probably the most celebrated of all Scots poets and writers, and is perhaps most famous for writing Auld Lang Syne, which is still sung in many English-speaking countries today, usually to bring in the New Year.

And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has recently been translated into Scots, to mark the 60th anniversary of one of the most important documents of the 20th century.

The UDHR was already one of the most translated texts in the world and now that it can also be read in Scots; this is perhaps one more reason to consider it a language in its own right rather than a local dialect.

This article is contributed by © Lingo24 Translation Service.

When a global financial turmoil evolves and businesses get credit pinch and many of them even collapse, cash is once more the king and everyone is cutting costs and craving for liquidity, companies surely will cut back translation budgets. 

Besides that, I insist that the best time (by ‘best time’ I mean a period in which online outsourcers and suppliers have almost ready-made mutual trust) for online translation marketing is going away if not completely over. ProZ as such a portal has met its bottleneck and now is struggling to keep up the revenue by reducing premium member fees to less than 60 USD/year for China-based translators and creating self-issued certificates or badges for paying members to attract new clients. 

Despite of the efforts, however, online clients probably will soon no longer trust anyone simply because she/he has a nice-looking picture, a glamorous profile or a flashy website. In a cyber translation outsourcing market where even certificates can be self-made or even faked, they will need to grab something concrete about that person, something they can prove as reliable, before contacting the freelancer. More and more wise outsourcers now know a simple rule: Established translators never lack jobs. So these translators are unlikely to stay online everyday looking for new clients and new projects and pay this fee or that fee to get job opportunities.

On the other hand, if a freelancer started earlier like from 2001 to 2005 (when many online swindlers hadn’t even realized there was a market that they could also easily cheat in), and if she/he could keep her/his good quality and hence had retained a good client base, she/he should not feel much pain during this hard time. Having a large client base is like investment diversification (although this strategy is not doing very well at this time in the financial world as the global markets and sectors plunge indiscriminately ) – there are always long-term clients giving you enough jobs. 

If you work as a freelancer, lowering per unit rates won’t bring you out of the mire. Instead, it will kill your translation skills until one day your quality is ruined and you can never get any good clients. The theory behind this is quite simple: to earn enough with low rates, one has to overwork and for long hours, and this results in unavoidable lower quality. After a time, when it has become a habit, the translator can no longer provide quality services and never get good rates. This is a vicious circle. 

Therefore, don’t worry about other people’s low rates. Keep your rates and quality and the client will come back when those guys fail them time and again. And also don’t worry about those clients (agencies) that only accept low-cost offers without caring about any quality, they are swindlers themselves and will be kicked out of business after a while. 

Freelancers are individual business entities and all businesses need a sound development and risk management strategy. If one has knowledge about these and the necessary mechanism in place, she/he will regret less when financial disasters happen and it is a lifetime’s job to learn from these experiences.

Many translators would agree that academic curiosity and a willingness to learn new things are vital assets in the highly competitive translation market. While marketing skills and linguistic knowledge are essential for a successful career in freelance translation, translators must also know how to research new terms and understand what it is that they are translating. This is especially true of those translators who choose to specialise as they will need to be familiar with the relevant jargon and be familiar with their chosen area of specialisation. Medical translators are often expected to have at least a basic knowledge of biology and medical terms, while technical translators may find it useful to know how certain components of a machine function.

For those translators who choose to stick to ‘general’ translation, or who are considering moving into a certain area of specialisation, it’s important to know where to turn to when you come across an unfamiliar term or concept. Specialised dictionaries are a good start and the reference section of your local library can be a great help in times of need. Online encyclopaedias are a relatively new resource and there are several Chinese-language encyclopaedias that are worth bookmarking.

• Hoodong (互动在线) - China’s largest wiki site and online encyclopaedia. Its format is very similar to that of the well-known Wikipedia, it’s easy to browse and covers a wide range of subjects. With over 2 million articles, you should be able to find what you’re looking for.

• Baidu Baike (百度百科) - The second most popular online encyclopaedia with over 1 million articles and is pleasing to the eye. Its only drawback is that it’s quite hard to browse.

• Wikipedia ZH (维基百科) – Last but not least, there’s the Chinese-language edition of the world renowned Wikipedia encyclopaedia. Due to the popularity of the other two websites and internet restrictions in some parts of Mainland China, Wikipedia hasn’t had the same level of success amongst the Chinese-speaking community. It’s still a useful resource as its multilingual platform will allow you to cross-reference unknown terms with relative ease.

That’s all from me for now. The Beijing Olympics kicks off in a few days’ time so I would like to end this post with a resounding “中国加油!”