| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | Copywriting vs translating Thread poster: Wendy Lewin
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Wendy Lewin 
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:15
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you for your comments, much appreciated!
| | | | dropinka (X)
Italy
English to Italian
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| Let's see if I can make myself clearer this time | Nov 6, 2013 |
Hi Britta,
Britta Niggenaber wrote:
Please remember, this is a public forum, and it is open for potential clients, too. So even if you do not agree with what your colleages think, let's say, if someone thinks marketing translation, transcreating and copywriting are, even though similar, not quite the same thing and you think they are, try not to make them look like they are idiots who are not qualified to tie their own bootlaces, let alone translate a marketing text.
Where exactly have I said that?
I've only said that, the way I see it, transcreation is the only way to deliver a target text that is useful to the client, because most times a plain translation of a marketing/advertising text is just useless. If I've forgotten to add some more "to me", "in my opinion" etc. I will happily do so, if you see fit.
Why do you think the term "transcreation" as opposed to "marketing translation" needed to be coined in the first place? To make discussion about it more colorful? Probably not. It is the missing link between a (marketing) translation, that requires of course an approach specific to marketing texts and cannot be overly literal, but is still basically the same text as the source text, just in a differnt language, and true copywriting, which would be a completely new text based on the information contained in the source.
You are talking about labels -- "transcreation", "marketing translation", "copywriting" etc. I thought I had made it clear from the start that I was focusing on what in my opinion is useful to the client. As I said before, I personally start from the assumption that clients want a target-language text that is as snappy as the original source and behave accordingly (= do not provide a plain translation).
Also, if your clients alway send you a brief, if you have agency clients who have negotiated different prices for marketing translation/transcreation/copywriting with you, if your agency clients alway pass your questions on to the client and give you sensible and comprehensible answers to your questions and if you in fact never had a client who was dissatisfied because you translated a marketing text too literal or too freely for their liking, or used the wrong "wording" or did something else they would have done differently, great. You are really a lucky girl!
So now it's all down to luck?As self-employed professionals, we can decide with whom we want to collaborate, but anyway...
But quite frequently a translator, no matter how good and how qualified, does just get a request to translate a marketing text, without further info and instructions, queries are not passed on or the answers do not help one bit, and then they just have to do the best they can. An agency must be aware of that. And in case the agency fails to find out what their clients want, if they do not clarify questions or even answer them themselves, because they are afraid they will look stupid if they bother the client with questions from the translator (and this happens quite often, believe me, I know), then it is the agency who is at fault here, not the translator. The translator can damn well assume that a professional agency knows what to expect under the given circumstances. Also, the agency is responsible to check the translation and make sure it is what their client ordered, before they pass it on to them, just like any other vendor has to make sure the product they send out to their customers is what was ordered. If they don't, it is not the translator who did a bad job, and I really cannot think why you are implying they did. I mean, what happened to WML could happen to all of us, including you.
Again, when WML wrote "basically the customer wanted copywriting and not translating - the final text is nothing like the original", I assumed she had made a translation that was too literal within the context of a marketing text. I firmly believe that all such texts have to be adapted/transcreated/whatever you wanna call them. That's all, no hard feelings. As a professional who specialises in the field, I'm surprised to see that my view is not so popular. It's as if I translate a technical manual and don't care about terminology as long as I can get the message across -- anyone who regularly translates technical manuals would tell me that it is a fact that in technical manuals terminology is a key issue... just like punchiness, naturalcy etc. are when it comes to marketing and advertising texts.
I would really appreciate if all of my fellow translators would be a little bit more careful about how they make their colleagues look, because when we are always implying that if the (end-) client is always right and it is always the fault of the bad, lazy or just plain stupid translator if they aren't, we are weakening or position against the agencies. Admittedly, many of them are, in fact, just pushing files around and some even do not seem to comprehend what they are doing, but this should not be the case. They have responsibilities as well and we cannot always excuse them from not doing their jobs properly, because it is us translators who will have to pay the price in the long run, unless we pull ourselves together and start showing a little bit of solidarity.
And -- speaking in general now, after reading many different forums here on ProZ. -- I would personally love translators to think more about giving value added to their clients (and charging accordingly) rather than complaining about low rates and the like.
Claudia
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 22:15
French to English
Britta Niggenaber wrote:
Please remember, this is a public forum, and it is open for potential clients, too. So even if you do not agree with what your colleages think, let's say, if someone thinks marketing translation, transcreating and copywriting are, even though similar, not quite the same thing and you think they are, try not to make them look like they are idiots who are not qualified to tie their own bootlaces, let alone translate a marketing text.
...
I would really appreciate if all of my fellow translators would be a little bit more careful about how they make their colleagues look, because when we are always implying that if the (end-) client is always right and it is always the fault of the bad, lazy or just plain stupid translator if they aren't, we are weakening or position against the agencies. Admittedly, many of them are, in fact, just pushing files around and some even do not seem to comprehend what they are doing, but this should not be the case. They have responsibilities as well and we cannot always excuse them from not doing their jobs properly, because it is us translators who will have to pay the price in the long run, unless we pull ourselves together and start showing a little bit of solidarity.
Britta I'm sorry but I fail to get where you're coming from here. WML was upset because of a client rewriting her marketing translation and came here to sound out other translators' opinions. Translators specialising in marketing have given their opinion.
You berate a lack of solidarity. If I bother to answer questions like this, it is precisely out of a sense of solidarity with other translators, letting them know what I would have done (based on my 18 or so years' experience as a translator) or suggesting what I would do next. Otherwise I could just get on with my work. Like I do have upwards of 30,000 words to get under my belt by the end of the month, it's not like I'm twiddling my thumbs and looking to start trolling in order to watch some sparks fly.
I haven't seen any posts where anyone is insinuating that WML or indeed any other translators are "bad, lazy or just plain stupid". We all make mistakes and it's indeed the most effective way to learn and we've discussed the situation to help her avoid similar problems in the future. Several of us have said that the agency should have provided more information.
As for implying that the customer is always right: when it comes to what they want us to deliver, well yes they are always right. As service providers, we have to either agree to deliver what they want or we go our separate ways. We can try to persuade them to buy something else if we think they're making a mistake, but they know more about what they need and what they can afford than we do.
If we're not prepared to deliver what they want, that doesn't make them wrong. In the case under discussion in this thread, the customer didn't say exactly what they wanted. They perhaps thought it was obvious, or didn't realise that the translator would need to be given information. They might not have been prepared to pay a rate that would justify the extra work involved in transcreation. Nevertheless, they were still right about what they wanted.
| | | | | Agree with many things Britta said | Nov 7, 2013 |
Britta Niggenaber wrote:
...any translation of a marketing, tourism or similar requires a different approach from, let's say, a legal text or a technical manual. So when I get a marketing or PR text, I would of course translate it a lot more freely than e.g. an employment contract.
But when the client expects transcreation, or even copywriting, they have to provide information on the target audience, on the impression they want to create with this text, about the purpose they hope to fulfill with the target text etc. Otherwise, the translator just does not have the background knowledge to provide transcreation and copywriting services. It is not our job to guess freely or to read the minds of the clients.
...
The job came from an agency ... It is clearly the agency's responsibility to find out what their client wants and to communicate this to the translator. They also are responsible for checking the product before passing it on to their own client.
If they failed to do so, they have provided a very bad service to their client, but that is their problem. The translator can still have delivered exactly what was ordered with no defects at all.
(transcreation) ... is the missing link between a (marketing) translation, that requires of course an approach specific to marketing texts and cannot be overly literal, but is still basically the same text as the source text, just in a differnt language, and true copywriting, which would be a completely new text based on the information contained in the source.
...
But quite frequently a translator, no matter how good and how qualified, does just get a request to translate a marketing text, without further info and instructions, queries are not passed on or the answers do not help one bit, and then they just have to do the best they can. An agency must be aware of that. And in case the agency fails to find out what their clients want, if they do not clarify questions or even answer them themselves, because they are afraid they will look stupid if they bother the client with questions from the translator (and this happens quite often, believe me, I know), then it is the agency who is at fault here, not the translator.
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 22:15
French to English
Janet Rubin wrote: Britta Niggenaber wrote:
...any translation of a marketing, tourism or similar requires a different approach from, let's say, a legal text or a technical manual. So when I get a marketing or PR text, I would of course translate it a lot more freely than e.g. an employment contract.
But when the client expects transcreation, or even copywriting, they have to provide information on the target audience, on the impression they want to create with this text, about the purpose they hope to fulfill with the target text etc. Otherwise, the translator just does not have the background knowledge to provide transcreation and copywriting services. It is not our job to guess freely or to read the minds of the clients.
...
The job came from an agency ... It is clearly the agency's responsibility to find out what their client wants and to communicate this to the translator. They also are responsible for checking the product before passing it on to their own client.
If they failed to do so, they have provided a very bad service to their client, but that is their problem. The translator can still have delivered exactly what was ordered with no defects at all. (transcreation) ... is the missing link between a (marketing) translation, that requires of course an approach specific to marketing texts and cannot be overly literal, but is still basically the same text as the source text, just in a differnt language, and true copywriting, which would be a completely new text based on the information contained in the source.
...
But quite frequently a translator, no matter how good and how qualified, does just get a request to translate a marketing text, without further info and instructions, queries are not passed on or the answers do not help one bit, and then they just have to do the best they can. An agency must be aware of that. And in case the agency fails to find out what their clients want, if they do not clarify questions or even answer them themselves, because they are afraid they will look stupid if they bother the client with questions from the translator (and this happens quite often, believe me, I know), then it is the agency who is at fault here, not the translator.
I agree too.
And WML does say in her second post that she tried to clarify some things, without specifying exactly what.
Ultimately the agency is responsible to their client. In light of this problem, I certainly would consider asking just how much work should go into any marketing texts from this agency
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As for implying that the customer is always right: when it comes to what they want us to deliver, well yes they are always right. As service providers, we have to either agree to deliver what they want or we go our separate ways. We can try to persuade them to buy something else if we think they're making a mistake, but they know more about what they need and what they can afford than we do.
If we're not prepared to deliver what they want, that doesn't make them wrong. In the case ... See more As for implying that the customer is always right: when it comes to what they want us to deliver, well yes they are always right. As service providers, we have to either agree to deliver what they want or we go our separate ways. We can try to persuade them to buy something else if we think they're making a mistake, but they know more about what they need and what they can afford than we do.
If we're not prepared to deliver what they want, that doesn't make them wrong. In the case under discussion in this thread, the customer didn't say exactly what they wanted. They perhaps thought it was obvious, or didn't realise that the translator would need to be given information. They might not have been prepared to pay a rate that would justify the extra work involved in transcreation. Nevertheless, they were still right about what they wanted. [/quote]
Still, all I was saying, that if they want something, they have to give their service provider adequate instructions. In the case at hand, the WML's client is the agency, not the agency's client, so she has to follow their instructions and fulfill their demands. She simply cannot know what the end client wants unless the agency tells her.
The agency ordered a translation from WML. WML asked questions, tried to clarify things and, as far as I can tell, performed the job to the agency's (i.e. the client's!) satisfaction. At least they did accept the work and then took it an passed it on to their client. As far as I can tell, WML did not to anything wrong.
Now, the agency's client, who does not have any business relationship with WML whatsoever, nor did they have any contact with each other at any point of the process, has completely rewritten the translation, because it was not what they wanted/expected. And now the agency wants to hold WML fully responsible for this, even though it seems that the agency has not really communicated well here, neither with their client nor with their service provider. I do not see how WML could have prevented that.
The "lack of solidarity" I was complaining about is that many postings here seem to imply that WML, as a qualified marketing translator, should have known better, more or less just "because", and that it is somehow her fault that the client (or rather the client's client) is dissatisfied, just because a good marketing translator would have known that she was supposed to rewrite the text in exactly this way. That is simply not true in my opinion. It completely leaves out the fact that the agency has some responsibilty too. If we do not acknowledge that, and always publicly assume that it was the translator who made the mistake, we must not complain about agencies blaming their fault on the freelancers, because we more or less asked for it.
And running around claiming "I always ask questions", "I choose my clients carefully" "I alway assume that they want transcreation instead of translation" (actually, some don't, and for very valid reasons, but that is a different topic), seem to imply that WML did not do this (or me, for that matter, just because I said it is impossible for us to know what the end client wants when the agency fails to tell us), thus making it "the fault of the lazy, stupid translator".
Yes, we all make mistakes. And when we do, we have to assume responsibility for them. But sometimes it is not us who made the mistake, but someone else. And then that someone must assume responsibility, and not me, just because I happen to find myself at the end of the supply chain. And if it was the customer who made the mistake by giving inadequate or misleading instructions or by just ordering the wrong service... Sorry, but then the customer is not right. And it does not make anyone a bad service provider or a bad translator not to be able to fulfil those expectations. ▲ Collapse
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Hi,
I do believe that such hassle pops up simply because the client/translation agency is reluctant to state it bluntly that they want copywriting (to avoid extra fees), or maybe it is merely out of client’s ignorance of our work.
On the other hand, translator is reluctant to expense several hours unpaid!
Along years of experience in that practice, translators acquired the sense of what it takes to provide quality product. Accordingly, when we have a hun... See more Hi,
I do believe that such hassle pops up simply because the client/translation agency is reluctant to state it bluntly that they want copywriting (to avoid extra fees), or maybe it is merely out of client’s ignorance of our work.
On the other hand, translator is reluctant to expense several hours unpaid!
Along years of experience in that practice, translators acquired the sense of what it takes to provide quality product. Accordingly, when we have a hunch that such a product is mined and the effort will definitely exceed translation to eventually turn out to become transcreation, adaptation, copywriting…etc. we set a red flag to this job and send email to client setting out what it takes to deliver a product accepted by him/her.
Many clients are always under the assumption that translators will not mind to exert extra effort for free or maybe they just believe that translation fees cover what they want even without articulating what exactly they want!
Folks, we are magicians and supposed to know what clients need by ourselves!
This way, we safeguard our rights as translators and educate client, in case he/she is just unaware of the nature of our work.
However, I do not see that WML is to be blamed, as the client did not state ahead any special requirements!
Have a great day! ▲ Collapse
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