Jianjun's Blog

I have been in this business for over eight years. A couple of years ago, my business focused on domestic market (China), now I established long-term collaborative relationships with international clients.

There are many things different between the two markets. Back in China, the translation market is still a mess (on general terms). Translation agencies, big and small, are sprouting, booming and disappearing everywhere, every minute. Part-time freelancers are paid (or not paid at all) at ridiculous rates to churn out buggy translations.

This is no exaggeration. If you can read Chinese, just go to some translation forums in China (like this one: http://www.fane.cn/) to see. They even had a section where translators and agencies can expose (no objective evidence required) all evils of one another with strongest verbal attacks.

Personally, I don’t work for domestic translation agencies, foreign-invested ones included. Those companies pay a little higher, but still pay too low to ensure quality. Why?

Some of the reasons:

1. A full-time translator (self-employed) has to pay various insurances, which is not at all low in China. He/she has to earn enough to cover these expenses.
2. Genuine software, good computers, fast internet connection, overseas (why overseas? I leave this question open.) ftp server for client downloads and uploads all cost lots of money.
3. Backup system – UPS, external disk, networked laptops. Some colleagues I know have three to five networked PCs each assigned with DTP, etc different tasks.
4. Translating and editing – there are closed networks of professional translators in China. Project collaboration and teamwork is possible when required. I myself usually outsource the translated work for editing by a trusted colleague, unless the client thinks no editing is necessary (internal use, in-house editor, draft, etc.).

Part-time translators don’t have these. And what about professionalism? There is an interesting thread in the above-mentioned website where translators are discussing how to increase character count by using double-byte punctuations to earn extra money!

The international market provides better opportunities. Clients usually pay much more attention to quality than quantity (some guys told me they can translate 8,000-10,000 words/day) and low rates.

Of course, not every client in the international market is trustworthy. There are indecent companies. My friend has lost 3,000 USD in five years due to unpaid invoices, etc. He told me a client in the UK still owes him 30 some Pounds (for an invoice more than a year ago), but continues to assign him small projects. An Australian trading company (a two people Pty) selling gelato machines to China owes me 368 USD and cut all their telephone/fax lines.

These unlucky things do happen. But responsibly speaking, the overall international translation market is better than its Chinese counterpart.

In the international arena, networked Chinese translators in different countries united and keep in touch with one another through IMs, E-mails and VoIP phones, providing mutual help and information exchange. To some extent, this network helps prevent financial losses. From time to time, our clients also ask us to recommend translators for some language pairs we don’t handle. Personal recommendations are commonly stronger than CVs received from strangers.

According to a poll on a large translation community website, many freelance translators don’t have a QA procedure for their assignments. 

Of a total of 650 voters, 34.8% voted they didn’t have such a procedure and wouldn’t consider it; 23.5% voted they didn’t know what it meant; 17.4% voted they didn’t have one but would like to consider in future and only 24.3% voted they had QA in place.

While the poll itself is in no way scientific, it sheds some light on the translators’ attitudes toward Quality Assurance. 

What does Quality Assurance mean? One definition is as follows:

Quality assurance (Q.A.) is defined as a set of activities whose purpose is to demonstrate that an entity meets all quality requirements. Q.A. activities are carried out in order to inspire the confidence of both customers and managers, confidence that all quality requirements are being met.

A serious and responsible translator should certainly ensure their services to be of top-notch quality. Yeasir Translations recommends translators take the following steps:

• Never accept assignments out of capacity (area of specialty and workload)
• Read and understand thoroughly the original text before starting translation
• Make a standard glossary database for large files to ensure consistency 
• Review the whole translation before submitting finished files to clients (paper-based review is preferable)
• Adopt Computer Aided Translation (CAT) tools such as TRADOS, WordFast, etc. to ensure consistency (Translation without CAT tools is possible only for small projects.)

To ensure better service experience, translators may also consider:

• A reliable commercial E-mail account and two other backup accounts
• A good backup policy (networked second PC backup, ftp backup, external storage backup – memory stick, harddisk, etc.)
• UPS system and a notebook PC to ensure continuance of work in case of unexpected power failure.

I have been working as a freelance translator for more than eight years. 5.5 years working for the domestic market (China), and 2.5 years international. Now I still work for my old clients in China, all of whom are direct ones. Since their assignments only consitute about 2-3% of my annual workload, I keep on putting more emphasis expanding in the international market. Some friends ask me why I don’t explore the domestic market instead. There are several considerations, but two most important ones are:

• Quality vs. Price
• Code of Business Conduct

To be frank, I believe domestic translation market is running in a wrong business mode. First, it seems everybody who learned some years of English consider themselves translators. The “competition” is horrible. Quality gives away to low prices and fake documents (overseas degrees, overseas working experience, PhDs, Award-winning translator from China, etc.); decent code of business is a rarity.

It is common to see “non-paying” translation agencies being cursed using the strongest verbal terms in many big translation job board forums. Yesterday I even saw a username: “日今日公司”, which literally means “FXXX Today Translation” (redboxed below).

As a translator, my goal is to improve myself professionally. Translation is my job. Yes. But it is also my profession and career, not just a way to get some money so I won’t get starved. However, the domestic market probably can’t provide me a good working environment that helps to achieve such a goal.

My direct clients in China never go to another translator or translation agency in China for translation needs, although my prices are several times higher. Because they know how I do business and how I can guarantee a better quality and they believe better services are worth the money they pay.