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[10 Август 2025, 05:57:03]

Новости, реклама:

[10 Август 2025, 05:57:03]

Новости, реклама:

[smarty pants]

Dealing with Malicious Proof-Readers

Sooner or later everyone comes across a situation where a piece of their work is proof-read by someone who takes great delight in finding every possible fault and changing every possible word
for a synonym (and half of them are usually wrongly applied!).

I remember the first time this happened to me. I'd been translating full-time for about 3 months and didn't have very many clients. In these circumstances I took nearly every job available (after all you have to eat!). So I worked all weekend on this translation job. The original was pretty badly written and difficult to understand. It also contained a lot of internal company jargon (never easy to translate without reference material) and as it was the weekend, there was nobody around that I could ask for help.

Not only this, but the subject was an audit report, which heavily criticised the people who were to receive the translation. To make matters worse, the report was written by a native Italian, in broken English, and was based on information he had obtained through an interpreter while visiting a Polish industrial plant.

Needless to say, they did not like his report, and what easier way to get back at the auditor than to attack the translation? I have never seen anything like it in my life! There were more than 100 "corrections" on every single page. They had changed every possible word for a synonym and had made all sorts of stupid
changes which were not true to the original English text. On first impression I was quite upset, but when I took a good look at the text alongside the original, I realised that these people clearly had not seen the English version and that this was "politics".

To make matters worse, I received this criticised document in the mail on a Saturday morning and consequently had to think about it all weekend before I could speak to my client - OUCH! I didn't
sleep too well that weekend! So on Monday morning I phoned my client - boy was I scared - and luckily for me he was quite experienced in the industry and did not assume that I had messed up. He just asked me what I thought of the "corrections" and I told him that I thought the problem here does not lie in the
translation itself, since 98% of the "corrections" are stylistic and synonyms, and changes not relating to the original English report. He asked me to confirm this in writing with a few examples, then investigated the situation and found out about the Italian etc.

This agency client of mine explained the situation to his client and we all got paid in full. More importantly though, we learned a valuable lesson or two:

* try to avoid political situations wherever possible
* if the original text is very badly written be careful about taking on the work

Now we've talked about malicious proof-readers, and everyone knows (if they didn't already) what it feels like to be on the receiving end. Let's all make sure we're not inflicting this kind of pain unnecessarily on other people! Not every commercial document needs to be a literary masterpiece (although accuracy,
spelling and grammar must be good). When checking other people's work, we should only be making those changes necessary so that the document is fit for its intended purpose. We should not feel that we have to make changes in order to justify our fee. If you say you worked 2 hours on the document and it was well-written and only required minor changes, why should the client not believe you?