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Are you a “Prime” AAA translator? What's your rating?
If you are involved in the financial translation industry, you know what I’m talking about. Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (known as S&P), and Fitch are credit rating agencies that use letter designations representing the quality of a bond. The ratings are assigned to companies or countries indicating how trustworthy their economic standing is.
In the US, only three companies have AAA bragging rights (as of February 3, 2016): Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, and Exxon. However, Exxon is really close to being kicked out of this group after oil prices started to plunge (19% in the past 12 months!).
According to The Guardian, Germany and Luxembourg are the only two AAA countries in the Eurozone, and although the three agencies have divergent opinions, it’s unanimous that seven more countries around the world are triple A: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland. As of last year, Finland became the latest country to be stripped of its AAA rating. S&P gives the three A’s to the UK and, even if S&P downgraded the US in 2011, Moody’s and Fitch still keep the trust and rate them as AAA. The six countries at the bottom are Greece, Bolivia, Belize, Cuba, Cyprus, and Ecuador.
So I think we can use the same rating to classify our profession in terms of quality of translators (and translations). S&P and Fitch share similar rating denominations while Moody’s varies it slightly (Aaa instead of AAA). AAA is considered “Prime”, then, going down in the rating scale, AA+, AA, AA- are “High grade”, A+, A, A- are “Upper Medium Grade”, and it goes on all the way to a very humiliating “D” for “In default” (“C”, in Fitch’s rating scale), meaning the company or country is unable to meet its financial obligations and not worthy of credit.
I think we could follow this classification to rate ourselves. How do you see yourself in that scale? Are you doing everything in your power to become a triple A translator? What new skills do you need to acquire? How can you become a “Prime” translator and offer triple A services? How can you kick it up a notch? If you are already a “Prime” translator, how can you keep your rating and avoid getting stripped of it?
What do you think?
Otávio Banffy 
Olesya Zaytseva 
Pieter Beens 
The question is, “who are the judges”? I’d definitely *not* give myself an AAA (yet, he-he), but how many? I don’t know…
That’s true. I wouldn’t give it to myself…yet 🙂
Hola Patricia: sure I’m…………my brain is powered by 4 AAA size batteries 🙂 and I keep myself updated thanks to my curiosity, reading and sometimes putting into practice what I learned or translated. I remember when I was studying at Scuola Interpreti e Traduttori professors told me that there was not a perfect translation in any case the vote of my technical translation exam was 30 cum laude and the diploma was 100/100……..after that 40 years of experience. Sure there are very good translators and there will be more and more but what it counts is that I enjoyed my path. BTW do not trust rating agencies 😉 Saludos
Hola Maurizio. You are making me jealous. That’s an impressive background. Loved the analogy with the batteries. And, yes, beware of those agencies! LOL
Really interesting idea! But the questions are “who’s going to be the judge” as, as far as I know, it doesn’t exist such institution or private agency who rates professionals, and then “which characteristics may I be judged for”: some could be correctness, knowledge, experience, work approaches and so on, but for sure each translator has his/her own method and it doesn’t really exist in my opinion a “standard” way. What’s your idea of rating?
Well, if you want to take that into a more formal rating it would be a whole different story. My analogy was mostly food for thought to think about where we stand. But I agree with you and that would be a whole new post!Thanks for your comment.