| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Off topic: This translation is killing me Thread poster: Edward Potter
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Edward Potter 
Spain
Local time: 15:59
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
I am correcting a big Excel file translated from Spanish to English by, apparently, some Spanish dude who didn't pay attention in English class when he was in high school. I am going from incredulity to anger to incomprehension to insanity, and then back again.
I will paste in some typical "sentences" below. If you don't want to puke, stop reading now.
THE PRICE IS ALWAYS IMPOTANT FOR ANY ASPECT, IT IS SOMETHING THAT IT HAS TO MAKE FOR OBLIGATION IF YOU WANT THE... See more I am correcting a big Excel file translated from Spanish to English by, apparently, some Spanish dude who didn't pay attention in English class when he was in high school. I am going from incredulity to anger to incomprehension to insanity, and then back again.
I will paste in some typical "sentences" below. If you don't want to puke, stop reading now.
THE PRICE IS ALWAYS IMPOTANT FOR ANY ASPECT, IT IS SOMETHING THAT IT HAS TO MAKE FOR OBLIGATION IF YOU WANT THE VEHICLE DOESN´T GIVE ANY PROBLEM MORE SERIOUS
I USED TO EXHAUST MY VANS UNTIL YOU CAN´T USE ANYMORE, FOR ME IS INDIFERENT BECAUSE I TAKE ALL THE BETTER AND I DON´T THINK IN THE NEXT TIME
(SUELO AGOTAR MIS CAMIONES HASTA QUE YA NO SE LES PUEDE DAR MÁS USO POR LO QUE ME ES INDIFERENTE YA QUE LES SACO EL MÁXIMO PARTIDO Y NO PIENSO EN CÓMO QUEDARÁ PARA EL SIGUIENTE)
I DON´T NEED TO EXTEND WEIGHT WITH THE CURRENTLY JOB THAT I HAVE EVERYDAY IS DECREASING
BECAUSE FOR THE JOB I NEED THE HIGHER FUNCTIONALITY TO THE TIME LOAD AND UNLOAD MATERIALS
(PORQUE PARA EL TRABAJO NECESITO LA MÁXIMA FUNCIONALIDAD A LA HORA DE CARGAR Y DESCARGAR MATERIALES)
I,M NOT INTERESTED TO BE DEPENDEING OF ONE THAT GIVE IN SUBSTITUTION AND MAKE REMOVAL OF MY OWN VEHICLE, THE IMPORTANT IS NOT TO FAIL.
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE GOOD STOCK OF PART AVAILABLE, IF NOT, YOU CAN STAY HANGING WITHOUT VEHICLE AND WITHOUT CAN GO TO WORK IN CASE OF BREAKDOWN
MY INSURANCE COVER TO ME ▲ Collapse
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Edward Potter wrote:
I am correcting a big Excel file translated from Spanish to English by, apparently, some Spanish dude who didn't pay attention in English class when he was in high school.
MT?
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I'm proofreading a history book translated from Korean to German by some Korean professor who has lived in Germany for 15 years and is "well known to be a great translator Korean-German".
Yeah, right! His sentences are a little better than what you posted, but he gets articles wrong, tenses, leaves out words... He is not consistent in anything... Some time he will write 700.000 and the next time he'll write "7 hundred thousand"... Also, he makes up new words.
Ah, and a... See more I'm proofreading a history book translated from Korean to German by some Korean professor who has lived in Germany for 15 years and is "well known to be a great translator Korean-German".
Yeah, right! His sentences are a little better than what you posted, but he gets articles wrong, tenses, leaves out words... He is not consistent in anything... Some time he will write 700.000 and the next time he'll write "7 hundred thousand"... Also, he makes up new words.
Ah, and after I told the agency that he needs to do the spell check on Word, he said, he is using Korean Word which doesn't have a German spell check, and after I told him to download it, he said he couldn't and that he also doesn't have the time to check the spelling in chapter 1 and 2 again, because he is too busy translating chapter 3.
Seriously, what do you do with people like that? And the agency in between is really not helping either... ▲ Collapse
| | | | Paula Borges
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:59
Member (2010)
English to Portuguese
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are you sure that's not machine translation?
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Yulian Wang
China
Local time: 21:59
Member
English to Chinese
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| Your correcting process is harder than translating | Jul 6, 2010 |
Dear Edward,
It is really an awful experience to correct poor translations. Ask the agency to require the translator do the job again or stop to work with him/her. Or you should be paid on the translation price other than proofreading rates.
| | | | Daniel Mtz
Mexico
Local time: 07:59
English to Spanish
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| I agree, you should charge more | Jul 6, 2010 |
I agree with Yulian Wang, you should charge more or stop doing it. Proofreading should be just a "review" of what a previous "professional" did, not about decrypting what he translated. Translating is already a challenging job as it is, as to have somebody making it even harder for you.
| | | | | Typical MT/@Edward | Jul 6, 2010 |
Evonymus (Ewa Kazmierczak) wrote: Edward Potter wrote:
I am correcting a big Excel file translated from Spanish to English by, apparently, some Spanish dude who didn't pay attention in English class when he was in high school.
MT?
Why don't you try translating a few sentences using all the available MT and find out which one is the culprit?
P.S. I should have listened to your advice. I almost lost my lunch...
[Edited at 2010-07-06 04:17 GMT]
| | | | 3ADE shadab
Local time: 19:29
Member (2008)
Hindi to English
+ ...
Daniel Mtz wrote:
I agree with Yulian Wang, you should charge more or stop doing it. Proofreading should be just a "review" of what a previous "professional" did, not about decrypting what he translated. Translating is already a challenging job as it is, as to have somebody making it even harder for you.
I agree with Daniel ..
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| Telltale signs of MT? | Jul 6, 2010 |
I agree that this can only be an MT.
Does anyone know a good way to prove that a translation is an MT besides searching for the machine translator and getting identical results? There must be typical features that distinguish horrible human translations from horrible ("unusually good" might be more accurate) MTs.
If there is some way to get out of the agreement or if the agreement somehow indicates that you were to revise a professional translation, I would demand more ... See more I agree that this can only be an MT.
Does anyone know a good way to prove that a translation is an MT besides searching for the machine translator and getting identical results? There must be typical features that distinguish horrible human translations from horrible ("unusually good" might be more accurate) MTs.
If there is some way to get out of the agreement or if the agreement somehow indicates that you were to revise a professional translation, I would demand more money and then happily back out as soon as they refuse to grant this request.
The agency may not know what is going on, so I would inform them neutrally about the situation before getting (justifiably) rude. The translator ought to be the one to receive the blame, because it is basically a scam to sell an uncorrected MT as a translation.
Michael ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:59
Russian to English
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In memoriam | This guy is worse than MT | Jul 6, 2010 |
I put the only Spanish sentence in the original through babelfish and it came out as "Because for the work I need the maxima functionality at the time of loading and unloading materials", which is by no means perfect, but it's better than the translation you are checking.
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Maybe he ran it through funny tranlsator or has a really old version of some MT software, or possibly let is cat walk over his keyboard.
| | | | | "To the time of reviewing..." | Jul 6, 2010 |
...I wish you luck and lots of patience!
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Vibeke Degn-P
Norway
Local time: 15:59
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian
+ ...
Last week something similar happened to me: A translation to be proofread was clearly a machine translation. I called the agency, gave them three examples of completely wild sentences (not possible to understand) , and said I couldn't do a job like this. What they said: "Oh, dear... Oh, dear! OK, do you have the time to do this properly? What's your price?" Guess what agency I really love now!
This story just to say some agencies really care about end results.
| | | | pcovs
Denmark
Local time: 15:59
English to Danish
| Refuse to do this as a proofreading | Jul 6, 2010 |
This company, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is trying to make you turn this into a decent translation at a fraction of the price of a real translation.
Whenever I come across something like this I tell the client straight away that (in your case) this is clearly a machine translation or at least a translation done by someone having no clue whatsoever about the target language but perhaps in possession of a dictionary. Also, I make it absolutely clear that this job is not a proof... See more This company, whether knowingly or unknowingly, is trying to make you turn this into a decent translation at a fraction of the price of a real translation.
Whenever I come across something like this I tell the client straight away that (in your case) this is clearly a machine translation or at least a translation done by someone having no clue whatsoever about the target language but perhaps in possession of a dictionary. Also, I make it absolutely clear that this job is not a proofreading job as advertised since it takes a complete rewrite/retranslation to fix it and as such I refuse to go on proofreading.
I believe I have never yet had a client who didn't subsequently ask me if I could then please take on the translation instead. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jalapeno
Local time: 15:59
English to German
... why I've stopped taking proofreading jobs. "Proofreading" something like this is a lot more time-consuming than just translating it from scratch - and it's definitely worse for your mental health.
Didn't you look at the text before agreeing to take the job? I would have told the client right away that I won't take the job as a proofreading job, but that I'd be happy to translate the original at my usual rates for translation.
[Edited at 2010-07-06 12:29 GMT]
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