Jianjun’s Blog

Some people told me if you search certain keywords using Google toolbar, Google will show up some funny results. I just tried a few, nothing happened. But my last try ‘Microsoft’ did give me the following:

This is an ad for Microsoft Forefront on the top of the result page. The funny thing is it attracted my attention not because it was in that salient position, but because it looked like a hoax! (Of course, I was expecting something funny to appear.)

Both the language used and the formatting of the tag line looked unprofessional. What is 官网? Is it something from the Mars or Microsoft-invented rubbish? To me, if there does exist such a 官网 (literally, a web site for officials), it must be another privileged (virtue) venue for those corrupt public officials. But the stupid thing hasn’t started yet.

Clicking on that link took me to an orange-colored flash web site with a PC-game-style music playing in the background. The line at the bottom says this:

‘Building this web site won’t hurt assassins, aliens or secret agents.’

What a stupid idea to put such a line here! This is totally irrelevant.

Then a few seconds later, a guy in shirt and tie appeared , constantly shivering, waiting for you to choose an opponent to fight with…

I chose an assassin and this guy conquered him by tickling him to death!

Localization is not supposed to be like this, especially when two cultures are inherently different. What in one culture produces eye-popping or jaw-dropping effects may in another culture make people feel disgusted. Besides this, irresponsible localization not only wastes a lot of efforts and money, but also turns a promotional campaign into a total failure, thus resulting in more revenue loss.

Further resources:

The ad’s English version is much better: Succinct and to the point.

English version displays this line at the bottom of the page:

The Chinese translation changed it to ‘Building this web site won’t hurt assassins, aliens or secret agents.’ If the original meaning were accurately conveyed, Chinese readers may understand it better.

To compare:

English site
Chinese site

This blog entry was planned yesterday when I accidentally found some web sites violated my copyright, using text from my personal site http://yeasir.com to piece together their ‘own’ ones.

These guys are based in China - Beijing, Shanghai, etc. They claim themselves to be translation companies or translators translating from/to English. But they don’t seem to know how to write English! Otherwise, they would write their own copy.

To make things easier, I list search results from Google here, so you can see for yourselves (observe carefully, certain sites appear repeatedly in the results with text from different web sites!):

Search results as on March 06, 2008 (new window):

*UPDATE* Sytra.cn has recently removed some copyright material from its site and Google’s search results won’t show them as more than two months ago. Please refer to the screenshots below.

Search Result 1 (Showing Sytra.cn has the same text with TongliUSA.com)
Search Result 2 (Showing clutchbrake.blogspot.com and chineseenglishtranslation.blogspot.com copied text from my site Yeasir.com)
Search Result 3 (Showing orangelike.com, clutchbrake.blogspot.com and www.chinese-translation-service.com have the same text with Wintranslation.com)
Search Result 4 (Showing Sytra.cn has the same text with Appella.net)
Search Result 5 (Showing Sytra.cn has the same text with AppliedLanguage.com)

Screenshots (as on March 06, 2008, click to see big images):

How do you know who are the copyright violators and who are not?

I only know my web site copyright has been violated. For other sites, they have to do their own work to fight against any violation.

But I can introduce the following web sites to you:

www.yeasir.com (My own site, online since 2004 using the domains itranslate.cn and yeasir.com)
www.wintranslations.com (A Canadian translation company since 1998. Registered at ProZ in 2002)
www.appliedlanguage.com (A British translation company. They have offices in England, Bulgaria, the States and India. I work for them too.)
www.tongliusa.com (I personally know the owner, who’s a moderator at ProZ.com. And we cooperated on a number of projects)
www.appella.net (A naming company, site online since 2004)

From my observation:

1. Violating web sites copy from more than one site to ‘make’ their own.
2. Violating sites are newly registered, e.g. as new as 2007, while sites being violated are much older.
3. Use Archive.org and check their records!!! Now who’s copying whom?

As I said, the biggest harm of these copycats is they will one day destroy the professional image and reputation of translators (in this case, Chinese translators) by churning out bad translations (how do we expect somebody who can’t even write English to translate to/from English?).

If this is not stopped, in one or two years’ time, no potential client would trust any online profile from China. I’m very concerned because plagiarism among Chinese translators has become a trend (The first copycat emerged in 2005, copying my friend Donglai’s ProZ profile. But in 2007 they started copying web sites!)! If this continues, clients would have great difficulty finding reliable translators or getting reliable translation services online.

I wrote about the messy Chinese market in 2006. Now I see the International Chinese translation market is going to face the same challenges.

I always love Spring! The weather is warm, and the sky is clearer and bluer. Everything is growing and the earth is full of life. It’s the best part of a year in my town - less fossil-fuel-caused smog, greener city, more apt for outdoor activities.

It’s afternoon again, time for me to sip my cup of Mocha and start blogging. I’m feeling very grateful deep inside that I have what I have today. There are so many people in the world living in terror, being bombed, shot and killed, struggling every day to live - a most basic right! There are so many people living in property, agonized by diseases and sufferings.

I have been thinking about a question: By translating, am I able to change this world even a little bit for the better? And today I may have the answer. Somebody says a translator, by way of translation, facilitates communication. Better communication in turn prevents misunderstanding and, ultimately, confrontations. However, I doubt this. Today’s world is probably equipped with the best communication in history. But confrontations are still everywhere.

So I guess, like it or not, a translator is just a medium. If he/she doesn’t make things worse (by mistranslation), then the more important thing is what is being translated, not the translator him/herself!

I feel myself more like a tool now. Cool!

By the way, tomorrow I am going to write about copycat translation web sites. I will teach you a fun way to find out if somebody is copying your web site and, by taking advantage of the text, trying to edge you out.

But what these fake ‘translator/translation companies’ do most harm to is the whole market. They are going to spoil the Internet market by cheating and churning out bad quality translations. They will also defame the professional translator society as a whole. I believe in just a few years, if these guys are not revealed and stopped, no potential client will trust any online profile.

Yesterday afternoon a friend called me asking for urgent help with an interpretation project. He’s running a small translation and business consulting firm, and often outsources projects. He told me he’d been traveling out of town, so hoped that I could lend a hand.

The assignment is a one-day interpretation job at a car factory. Well, I used to do interpretation, but that’s a long long time ago (1991-1997) when I was still with Long Shun Rong Pharmaceuticals. And I’d never had any experience with automobiles. I had no choice but to decline.

My friend sounded anxious over the phone. I knew he needed help since he promised his client that he would send somebody over - somebody qualified for the work! He cornered himself by creating this difficult situation. Now the only wise thing to do is to apologize to his client and cancel the job.

Sometimes I’m appalled by what some colleagues dare to offer. All my business courses told me to “meet and exceed customer expectations”, not “to jump on every opportunity and shock your client”. When you are not sure if you can do the task well, leave it to someone else.

Well, this must be a crazy idea. But if you know how to lose your client, probably you already knew how to win and retain them

The following list may not be exhaustive. If you think there are more, please let me know. I’d be glad to add them to the list.

1. Never decline any assignment, even if you know you can’t do it or can’t deliver on time;
2. Translate as fast as possible, without wasting your time on style/original meaning or any possible typos;
3. Always assume there will be an editor;
4. Try to translate as many words as possible, say 8,000 -10,000 words a day;
5. Use machine translation tools where possible, such as Google or Altavista Babelfish;
6. Never check your translation;
7. Always assume your client can NOT read your translation;
8. Never let your client know in advance you are missing deadlines;
9. When you delayed delivery or there is a problem, disappear from radar;
10. Shock your client with unprofessional behavior;

If you follow the above ten points, I’m sure you will lose your client. By the way, these things do happen in real life!