Poll: What is/would be the biggest disadvantage of translating in the tech industry? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "What is/would be the biggest disadvantage of translating in the tech industry?".
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| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 11:06
Spanish to English
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The main drawback for me is when translating software strings, due to the piecemeal nature of the things, as there is often no useful context to help decide which is the Goldilocks option. There will be other disadvantages, but that's the one that rears its head on a daily basis.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:06
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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| No disadvantage | Feb 20, 2023 |
A lot of what I translate is engineering-related, but I work for agencies so I don't really see this as 'translating in the tech industry'.
I've always seen translation as jigsaw puzzling, something I really love doing. So I don't think in terms of 'boring' and 'not boring'. I always like the jigsaw puzzle, whether it's a 1000-pieces blue sea with a dark sky above or a 500-pieces colourful puzzle with funny figures and situations. So I don't care if it's a machine manual or a more c... See more A lot of what I translate is engineering-related, but I work for agencies so I don't really see this as 'translating in the tech industry'.
I've always seen translation as jigsaw puzzling, something I really love doing. So I don't think in terms of 'boring' and 'not boring'. I always like the jigsaw puzzle, whether it's a 1000-pieces blue sea with a dark sky above or a 500-pieces colourful puzzle with funny figures and situations. So I don't care if it's a machine manual or a more creative text: I love them both.
[Edited at 2023-02-20 08:25 GMT]
[Edited at 2023-02-20 08:28 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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I don't translate technical stuff...
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Susanna Martoni 
Italy
Local time: 11:06
Member (2009)
Spanish to Italian
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Sometimes machine translation can do it (but not better) and human translation jobs requests are decreasing.
Or anyway, the tech translation demand is very different.
The result is well known: some translations are less paid because there is a translating machine which eats words and returns wrong and right sentences. And the translator becomes very often a reviewer. (The explained puzzle)
But I like it, as long as I can maintain my rates at a reasonable level.
| | | | Ventnai
Spain
Local time: 11:06
German to English
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| Not much difference | Feb 20, 2023 |
I don't think there is much difference between translating for the tech industry and other areas of specialisation in general terms. I also find that when I work for a tech enterprise as an end client, I tend to do all their translation work, which includes marketing and general business documents too, so there is a chance to be creative.
| | | | | Having to edit tech translations done by humanities majors | Feb 20, 2023 |
Today, a humanities major (at least in Russia where we have a single word for this) is not someone who knows five languages and has read the Iliad in the original, but someone who can't do basic math or fix a broken chair. And some seasoned proz here will probably be surprised by the sheer randomness of what those people often produce when translating anything technical. Here's a simple sentence from a standard: "The studs are stressed by applying a bending moment below the elastic limit." What ... See more Today, a humanities major (at least in Russia where we have a single word for this) is not someone who knows five languages and has read the Iliad in the original, but someone who can't do basic math or fix a broken chair. And some seasoned proz here will probably be surprised by the sheer randomness of what those people often produce when translating anything technical. Here's a simple sentence from a standard: "The studs are stressed by applying a bending moment below the elastic limit." What could go wrong? But here's what I get by translating it back from Russian: "The studs are in a stressed state when the bending moment reaches a value below the elastic limit." Wait, but zero is also below the elastic limit... It would be fun to get into the translation space in those people's heads to figure out how it works. If I cared to keep a record of those translation curiosities, I'd have tons of them by now, but they wouldn't be exclusively technical. Besides the difficult to become a specialist and terminology is constantly expanding points, tech translation has another disadvantage, i. e. that engineers are usually no good at writing. Just imagine what you're likely to get when you take something written by an engineer (or even a tech writer) and ask a humie (and I mean a humanities major rather than a human) to translate it. Maybe it's all down to the bad luck I've had with other people's translations ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:06
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Same as in any other field | Feb 20, 2023 |
Ian Keith Jones Williams wrote:
I don't think there is much difference between translating for the tech industry and other areas of specialisation
I agree. You will find that your work is just as under-appreciated and underpaid as in other fields of specialist translation.
That's because if you do a good job, people will not even realise that what they're reading is a translation. You'll be invisible. Not noticed. Nobody will care who you are or how good your work is.
[Edited at 2023-02-20 10:47 GMT]
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Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 11:07
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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| Tech as in IT? | Feb 20, 2023 |
In IT field, they tend to send isolated words and terms as strings in Excel, thus reducing the number of words as much as possible. Not my favorite projects.
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Tech as opposed to what? ...prose?
'Technical' can mean many things in English, and I don't see myself as a technical person e.g. don't do engineering, contruction, automobile, finance etc.
But I do law and medicine and IT. Is that technical? My daughter, who is an IT software engineer, thinks that her job is quite linguistic.
I don't really understand what's behind this question of disadvantage of translating in the tech industry.
Are they thinking o... See more Tech as opposed to what? ...prose?
'Technical' can mean many things in English, and I don't see myself as a technical person e.g. don't do engineering, contruction, automobile, finance etc.
But I do law and medicine and IT. Is that technical? My daughter, who is an IT software engineer, thinks that her job is quite linguistic.
I don't really understand what's behind this question of disadvantage of translating in the tech industry.
Are they thinking of MT and robots?
[Edited at 2023-02-20 12:16 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jo Macdonald
Spain
Local time: 11:07
Member (2005)
Italian to English
+ ...
| The biggest disadvantage in the tech industry | Feb 20, 2023 |
is agencies selling cheap PEMT as "good enough" when workers' health and safety is at stake.
| | | | finnword1
United States
Local time: 05:07
English to Finnish
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I once had a problem with a term used by a major manufacturer of yellow earth-moving machines. I contacted them, and they referred me to their distributor in the target language country. That company did not know the answer either, as the accessory was made for them by yet another company. It turned out to be "shop talk", unknown to outsiders.
[Edited at 2023-02-20 22:37 GMT]
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Tom in London wrote:
That's because if you do a good job, people will not even realise that what they're reading is a translation. You'll be invisible. Not noticed. Nobody will care who you are or how good your work is.
I'm sure the same is true in many other areas. It certainly applies to computer programming. Everybody takes your work for granted until it goes wrong.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 11:07
French to English
Tom in London wrote:
Ian Keith Jones Williams wrote:
I don't think there is much difference between translating for the tech industry and other areas of specialisation
I agree. You will find that your work is just as under-appreciated and underpaid as in other fields of specialist translation.
That's because if you do a good job, people will not even realise that what they're reading is a translation. You'll be invisible. Not noticed. Nobody will care who you are or how good your work is. [Edited at 2023-02-20 10:47 GMT]
I agree totally. I think of it as being like housework, nobody notices unless it hasn't been done properly.
I recently decided to stop doing technical translations except in the fields I'm specialised in, where I already have a decent handle on the tech terminology. I find tech texts dull and I probably misunderstand stuff, simply because I'm not interested enough to get completely to the bottom of it. Like I was in the top class in maths at school, but it just bored me to tears. I'm lucky in that I have enough creative work to not have to do stuff I'm really not interested in.
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