Jianjun's Blog

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!

Today, there seems to be a trend, especially on the web, that more and more translators are adopting a ‘time-saving’ but improper layout style for documents involving Chinese and English. I believe it’s necessary to write a note about this and clarify what ‘correct’ layout style is.

During translation from English to Chinese, it’s sometimes inevitable that certain English words are used along with the Chinese translation. This is not something new. Even before the Internet era, in the 1950s or even earlier, printed materials in China already adopted a style for it and the same style lasts until today in the print media. For translators using digital word processors, the style guide is as follows:

1. There is no space between two Chinese characters（中文字间无空格）;
2. There is a space between a Chinese character and an English word（中文字和 English 单词间空一格）;
3. There is a space between a Chinese character and a number（中文字和 18 数字间空一格） ;
4. Use Chinese parentheses if there is Chinese character inside（中文和 Enlgish）;
5. Use Western parentheses if there is only English/number inside (English and 12 numbers);
6. There is no space between a Chinese punctuation mark and Chinese character/English/numbers – a Chinese punctuation mark itself takes up two spaces（“No Space”，“没有空格”）。

This is a general style used by Microsoft, DELL and a number of other international companies in their localization. By adding a space between English, number and Chinese characters, the document is clearer to read and won’t cause discomfort to Chinese readers who are used to this format in the print media.

To illustrate, I wrote a sentence involving all these cases. Let’s place the proper style (1) and the improper style (2) side by side to see the differences:

1. 2008 年将在北京召开奥运会。北京（中国的首都）旧称“北平”(Peking) 是中国三大直辖市之一。
2. 2008年将在北京召开奥运会。北京(中国的首都)旧称“北平”(Peking)是中国三大直辖市之一。

By eliminating these spaces, the sentence looks too casual and informal and not as neat as the first one.

Most clients, who are not Chinese or can’t read Chinese, have no option but to depend on the Chinese translator to use whichever style they deem most correct. Instead of saving all those keystrokes, the translator has a responsibility to tell the client which style is correct and use the right style.