Greater than 10 minutes, my friend!
The Battle of Two Wolverines for Our Minds at BP16 in Prague
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two “wolves” inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed”.
An excerpt from: You Are Not Alone – by Frances Black
I am sorry I haven’t been posting much this month. But I have a good excuse – I just came back from BP (Business Practices) 16 Conference 2016 in Prague, Czech Republic.
Unlike during my trip to the last translators’ conference – IAPTI 3 Conference in Bordeaux IAPTI 3 (International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters), a Conference held in Bordeaux, France in May of 2015, there were no major harrowing, nearly fatal experiences during this trip to a city that I used to know so well when I lived there for over a decade more than 30 years ago.
This time I only missed the connecting flight from Frankfurt to Prague when Lufthansa sent a message about a gate change to my iPhone, which prompted me to run for about 20 minutes from one end of the Frankfurt airport to the other, only to be told by a smiling German girl at the information desk that the gate had been changed again and that now I had to traipse on my tired feet back again to the same end of the airport where I had started the long journey of a thousand gates to my final destination.
Final destination for the day, anyway, not like in the films Final Destination 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, the “Pentalogy Horror” where everybody dies in the end.
“Fortunately, you don’t have to hurry now, Mr. Vitek, your flight is leaving in an hour so you have plenty of time”, said the German girl when she saw how heavily the overweight old man in front of her was perspiring with a smile that seemed more than slightly sadistic to me.
Other than that, the trip went without a major glitch, especially considering that during my last trip to France a few months ago, my plane was diverted to another airport, which felt like a fiendish and terrifying hijacking. After that I had to spend the night in an overpriced hotel in hot, humid and dirty Atlanta, a young French guy who was sitting in the seat next to me then threw up on me after his second cognac (and instead of apologizing, he just sheepishly avoided looking at me during the rest of the flight), and for good measure I found that Air France lost my luggage when I finally made it to Bordeaux as you can read in this post.
But let’s get back to the topic of my post today, namely a few of my impressions from the Business Practices Conference BP 16 in Prague which ended only a few days ago. Because I tried to attend as many sessions at the conference as possible, sometime I would even visit half of two consecutive presentations if I could not make up my mind which one might be more interesting. Most were excellent and a few where kind of mediocre, I thought, although all were in my opinion worth listening to.
I will try to briefly compare, or contrast, two sessions in my silly post today. So as not to get sued, I will not name names, although it is possible that commenters will mention the names of the speakers later in the comment sections. Unlike the Democratic and Republican parties which see the need to prevent third parties from being able to participate in the political process as their main duty, I do believe in democracy and I do not prevent commenters on my blog from participating (unless they really piss me off for some reason).
One session was given by a young and relatively inexperienced translator who for the purposes of my silly post today will be representing one of the wolverines fighting for translators’ minds. Incidentally, I do not mean anything negative by the animal names inspired by the old Cherokee tale that is a favorite of motivational speakers and that inspired the title of my post today. Since I was also one of the speakers at the conference, I too was a grey wolf fighting for translators’ minds in my presentation about patent translation at BP16.
I believe that we, wise and experienced wolves and wolverines, can do important work … provided that we actually know what we are talking about and have something to say.
The main topic of the session of the first wolverine, a translator turned motivational coach, was how important it is for translators to understand and be accommodating to change, the only constant in our lives, as Heraclitus of Ephesus so eloquently put it 2500 years ago. The changes that she was talking about were mostly technological changes so cherished by “the translation industry”, such as fast computers, algorithms and machine translation, cloud computing, crowd computing, optimized management systems, the emergence of mega agencies, the use of computer assisted tools (CATs), technical tools enabling competition with translators in developing countries and other scary things like that.
Well, scary to us, human translators, but so exciting for “the translation industry”!!!
We have to understand these changes and learn how to adopt them in our own line of work if we want to survive, the first wolverine was saying in her presentation. She was using slides with graphs that were demonstrating on colorful rising and falling curves the progress of machine translation that seemed to be pretty exponential, at least in her graphs. We have to anticipate that within about 10 years, there is likely to be a breakthrough in machine translation that will result in something that is almost as good as human translation, she said.
When I raised my hand to point out that “the translation industry” has been claiming that machine translation that will be “just as good” or “almost as good” as human translation would be here in about five years is something that “the translation industry” has been saying for the last 30 years, she just nodded her head but did not pursue the thought further. (I felt bad for disrupting her train of thought.)
The conclusion that most translators would probably reach from her presentation would be that we translators have basically two choices: either we stop foolishly resisting technological changes and bravely adopt “translation technology” or “language technology” as human translators using technological tools for the purposes of “the translation industry”, for instance by becoming human post-processors of machine translations, or some of us may choose to become highly valued specialized translators in certain coveted fields who can more or less afford to ignore “translation technology”, (because they are so special, by which I mean both the fields and the translators).
I could probably more or less agree with the last conclusion, although I would tend to disagree with most of the other things that this translator coach was saying. But if I had the transcript of the session in front of me, it would be in fact my pleasure to tear the entire presentation to pieces because most of the so-called facts and conclusions were in my opinion about as wrong as the anticipated technological breakthrough in “language technology” that will result in a machine translation that is almost indistinguishable from the way you or I translate.
But it would be a very long post, and possibly not a very interesting one. Fortunately, I will not be writing it.
The main topic of the second wolverine, an older and much more experienced translator, was about something else, although her session was about a related topic – namely about the elusive definition of what quality in translation means and whether there is a correlation between quality and price.
Full disclosure – I’m definitely biased here because although I only met the second wolverine in person at the conference a few days ago, I have been talking to the second wolverine online in various translation discussion groups for about 25 years now, and she sometimes also leaves a comment on my silly blog, usually when she is moved to do so by yet another insanity that I post online.
So don’t expect me to be impartial here. If I were a judge, I would have to recuse myself. But I am not a judge, so I can pretty much say whatever the hell I want on my own blog.
As I was saying, the topic of the second wolverine was about whether there is a correlation between price and quality. She had the same text, about one page, translated by about five translation agencies. At least one of these agencies used a machine translation that was then post-processed by humans (my hearts goes out to them, as does yours, I hope). The other suppliers included a cheap agency that uses cheap humans and a more expensive agency. Unfortunately, as I came late to her presentation, I did not have the color-coded sheets of translations corresponding to the more or less expensive LSPs, which I am told stands for “Lame Service Provider.” But the two young and very pretty translators sitting behind me, one was from Russia and one from Italy, helpfully shared them with me (thank you so much again if you are reading this).
Although I had less time than most people because my translation sheets were shared, the experiment has shown even to me that it was pretty obvious that there is a correlation between price and quality because machine pseudo-translation post-processed by a pitiful, cheap human, which was the cheapest solution, was so gratingly unnatural that I would hesitate to even call it a translation.
It did make sense, but after the spirit of the original text, which was a clever piece originally written by an educated French writer, was murdered by the machine translation, there was not that much that a human post-processor could have done with it. And anyway, given how little these human almost-but-not-quite translators are paid, why should they bother to do more than just remove the most glaring mistakes even if they had more time to do something with the cadaver on their hands, which they don’t?
The additional translations provided by other translation agencies sounded more natural, and some even sounded good or pretty good to some people. But the interesting thing was that when we got to vote about which translations were the best and which we thought were the most expensive ones, there was no agreement between the translators and the other translators who voted differently.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the beauty or ugliness of a translation is in the mind of a translation critic.
We cannot measure objectively translation quality, although some translation agencies like to pretend that we can and that we do exactly that by using neutral and reliable quality metrics and standards that are internationally approved and agreed upon, called for example ISO (insert a number, updated for greater impact every few years), or EN15038 (this number is also updated for greater impact every few years).
Although the quality standards that some LSPs are advertising on their websites as an assurance of measurable quality are nothing but a big lie as they have nothing to do with the quality of the translators or translations and only relate to the way in which the papers are shuffled around a desk by various mendacious Lame Service Providers, they are very useful for advertising purposes, which is the only thing that matters in “the translation industry”.
But just like most of us can tell the difference between art and pornography, most of us can also tell the difference between a good translation and a really horrible one, which will always be the inevitable result of a machine translation, even a machine translation that has been subsequently post-processed by an underpaid human, as the spirit of the original text will always be killed by a non-thinking machine.
That, among other things, was what I took away from the presentation of the second wolverine.
The way I see it, the problem with the first wolverine was that she was looking at things only from the perspective of “the translation industry”, and also that she did not realize that the translation industry is not the translation occupation. She was sincerely trying to give good advice to translators, but her advice failed to take into account the fact that there is a big difference between these two concepts and that the “translation industry” is not the world. In fact, “the translation industry” represents only one segment of the translation market.
“The translation industry” needs us to work for them because otherwise it can’t make any money. But do we really want to work for “the translation industry” under the current conditions? And if not, what are the other options that translators have?
That question that was not examined in the first wolverine’s presentation at all. And yet, I believe that this is the most important issue facing translators at this point in time.
Let’s hope that she will eventually be able to examine the issue also from the viewpoint of translators, instead of just painting a picture of immutable reality to which we translators must surrender if we want to survive.
She probably will be able to do that at some point, I think she is very talented.
The second wolverine made translators look at the problem that “the translation industry” has with translation quality, which made her presentation so fascinating to me. She was thus also making us examine the sorry state in “the translation industry” while implicitly telling us that they way forward for the translation profession is to concentrate on quality, which is something “the translation industry” is often unable to even ascertain, let alone evaluate, as it is an industry of brokers who don’t really understand much about translation.
To me, the voice of the second wolverine at the BP16 Conference in Prague was much more interesting, much more important and therefore worth to be listened to and fed in my heart.
Audra De Falco 
Pieter Beens 
Sherif Abuzid 
Thank you for your article, Steve. And thank you for your comments regarding my presentation. I don’t have any problem with people knowing that the first wolverine you are referring to is me.
I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your comment during my presentation the way you were hoping I would. I had a lot of content to share and I wanted to ensure that there would be some time left for Q&A and debating at the end.
The first thing I would like to say is that I am not that young. I am forty and I have been a translator for over 15 years — although you might still think that this makes me “young and relatively inexperienced”.
The second thing I would like to say is that by “translation industry” I meant all of us. My primary goal is to help translators. Perhaps it wasn’t clear and I could have used another phrase. I will remember this for my next talk.
My intention wasn’t to tell translators that they HAVE to adopt machine translation or else. My intention was to encourage them, all of us, to think about it, because I believe that MT will play an increasing role in our profession. I used standard theory about technological progress, change management and the lifecycle of products and markets to illustrate my points.
The aim of my presentation was to explain that although it is perfectly normal to see change (including but not limited to MT) as a threat, in business it is more productive to see it as an opportunity. Not all segments of our market will deal with change and embrace technology in the same way of course, but by talking about change and change management in Prague I wanted to give people tools to think and make their own decisions. I am glad that you posted this article because it will make more people think about it.
Like all of the other presentations at bp16, my session was recorded and will be available here from May 12th: link to bp16conf.com
I encourage people to watch it and make their own opinion about what I said in Prague. I think that change in our profession is a very important topic and any feedback I receive will help me to improve the way in which I communicate this.
Thank you.
Well, Maignon (since you called me by my last name too for some reason, I am doing it to you too), as you must have guessed, I disagreed with most of the things you said in your presentation.
And you are young compared to some translators. Me, for example, as I have been merrily translating for a living on three continents since 1980.
I think that you are a very talented speaker, but your assessment of the status quo in the translation industry, for lack of a better term, and thus also your conclusions about future trends and what to do about them are IMHO completely wrong.
If one day you come to the realization that there is in fact a big difference between the current translation industry and the translation profession, I believe that you will be a very good motivational speaker for us, translators. I believe that instead of becoming a part of it, we translators need to figure out how to protect ourselves from “the translation industry” in its present metamorphosis, which is very different from what it used to be ten, twenty or thirty years ago. At this point, unfortunately, as you don’t see the distinction between the present translation industry and the profession, you speak mostly on behalf of the translation industry, and as a cosequence have very little to say to us, translators. That is what I think, anyway.
Dear Steve,
My apologies. I accidentally called you Vitek thinking that it was your first name and I realised my mistake just after I pressed “Post Comment”. I immediately corrected your name but you must have received an automatic email as soon as my comment was posted and therefore saw the first version.
Thank you for saying that I am a very talented speaker. I appreciate it. I realise now that my presentation was quite controversial, but this isn’t a bad thing. It means that people talked afterwards about the topic I wanted to highlight and that was my main aim.
Please believe me when I say that I do not speak on behalf of the “translation industry” (by which I believe you mean language service providers). I merely speak as an observer, and what I am observing is indeed a metamorphosis: the needs of many of our clients are changing and new tools are being developed to help fulfill those needs.
One of my roles as a coach is to help people increase their awareness about what is happening around them, as well as their self-awareness (how they respond to it) so that they can make better informed decisions. This means lifting stones to see what’s underneath, and this can sometimes feel unpleasant. But however unpleasant this might be, I believe it is necessary if we want to grow.
Most of the presentations we see at translation conferences tend to be “inward-looking”. This isn’t a bad thing at all; we need to talk about quality, efficiency and how to improve as translators. However, we also need to look outwards and talk about what people outside our profession are doing and how it may impact the way we work, and ultimately our future.
Thank you for taking the time to write this article and for giving me an opportunity to clarify myself. It looks like we may have to agree to disagree, but this is an interesting debate.
Dear Christelle:
It’s not that your presentation was controversial, that per se would be a good thing.
The problem in my opinion was that it was built in large part on wrong premises.
“The Translation Industry” is not the world, and it’s current version is so DDD (deceptive, disgusting and dangerous) to us that translators need to find alternatives to working for “The Translation Industry”. It can be done, and it must be done if we want to preserve our profession for the next few centuries until human brains are replaced by computers in most professions.
I hope to be given a chance to try to convince you about this if we meet at another conference, which will probably happen one day.
In the meantime, best luck to you!
Thank you, Steve. Yes, I’m sure we will have an interesting conversation next time we meet.
I find it interesting that so many freelance translators are offended by the term “translation industry”. It’s a common business term to me and by no means does it only refer to LSP. To me, it comprises all entities: LSP, freelancers, software companies, publishers who publish dictionaries and the like. Basically any business cases that involve translation-related actions, means, transactions. I am sure if you ask someone outside of our profession, outside of the industry, too, they will perceive it the same way.
The term profession, however, only refers to those who make a living with translation. Regardless if they freelance or if they are employed.
That said, taking technological advancements into account, I do think the correct “group” to speak about is the translation industry, because MT is not developed for us, but for the industry as a whole. Even as a bridging “tool” between different industries. I’m thinking IoT, Industry 4.0, Big Data, etc.
So the question is not what term we use, but how much we are willing to see ourselves as part of the big picture. Where we are the main stakeholders, and where we are “merely” protagonists.
I just want to make it clear that I see a major distinction between the terms “the translation industry” and “translation as a profession”.
I think that the terms that we use are very important. Most lawyers would probably cringe at being referred to as a part of “the legal industry” – although most, but not all, work for law firms representing the industry, as would most doctors if they were referred to as a part of “the medical industry”, or writers if they were referred to as being a part of “the writing industry”, etc., although they too usually work for “the medical industry” and for “the publishing industry”, etc.
It is important to keep in mind that there is a difference between “the industry” and “the profession”, especially since the interest of “the industry” are often directly opposed to the interest of “the profession” and not only when it comes to translation. That is why only lawyers can be members of the bar, while law firms are not eligible, only writers can be members of the writers’ guild, while publishing houses are not eligible, and the same is true for example about actors, bankers, etc. Some associations of translators in some countries recognize this factual contradiction (for example the association of translators in Germany), and some pretend that it does not exist (for example the ATA in United States), but that would be a topic for another discussion.
In the “translation industry”, for example, it would be in the interest of this particular industry to turn highly educated and highly experienced translators into meagerly paid “MT post-editors”, while this would not be in the interest of “the profession”. Also, it is in the interest of “the industry” to keep rates paid to translators as low as possible, while that is of course not in our interest, etc.
I believe that an honest analysis of the recent developments in “the translation industry” should take a good look at these contradiction.
And, yes, call me crazy, but I am offended if I am simply assumed to be a part of the “translation industry”, that’s how much I dislike it’s latest incarnation.
Good point. In my presentation, I used the phrase translation industry as a general term, but I will certainly pay more attention in the future as to how I use those terms.
As for MT post-editing, I believe there are different types of post-editing. There’s the meagerly paid type, which is light editing of automatic translations. It’s usually used for things like online reviews. It’s useful for brands who want to know what consumers are saying about them online, but translating all those millions and millions of words properly would cost a fortune and simply isn’t an option for them. This type of post-editing isn’t a great job, but there’s a market segment for it. It’s a new market segment.
At the other end of the post-editing spectrum is full post-editing of automatic translations provided by an MT engine that has been created and trained using the translator’s own translation memories, or an MT engine that is specific to an industry or even specific to a particular client. This is what some developers are working on, to help translators respond to the clients’ demand for faster translations whilst maintaining high levels of quality.
Of course, post-editing isn’t an option at all in some fields of translation. It is important though to understand what is happening around us.
Thank you, Tanya. Yes, I would agree with these definitions.
It so happens that my friend Tony Rosado published a post which among other things examines the difference between the term “the translation industry” and “profession” just this morning.
Here is a link to his post:
link to aiic.net
Thank you!
As translators, we need to be sensitive to not only the denotation of words, but their connotations as well. When the term “industry” is used in reference to a service, activity, or value that is not a commodity, it implies that it is being unethically treated as a commodity. This in turn connotes that it is being corrupted by overwhelming financial interests at the expense of everything else and that these financial interests are being avidly pursued by a large network of businesses that try to remain hidden behind noble but hollow rhetoric. Consider the flavor of some of these phrases, taken from assorted articles in the news:
— “the charity industry” (see link to devex.com )
— “the religion industry” (see link to patheos.com )
— “the recovery industry” (see link to psychologytoday.com )
— “the parenting industry” (see link to brainchildmag.com )
— “the self-esteem industry” (see link to nydailynews.com )
Even a quick perusal of these articles demonstrates how a service, activity, or value can be surrounded with an unsavory aura by pairing it with the term “industry.” They are noncommodified activities that are being perversely treated as commodities and exploited by big business interests that are ruthless in pursuing the bottom line.
Many translators who are attuned to such subtleties reserve the phrase “translation industry” or “language industry” for the network of big business interests that are trying to reduce our services to a commodity for their own benefit at the expense of ours. Insisting on identifying themselves as part of the “translation profession” is a way for translators to clarify that they are neither part of that “industry” nor share its perverse values.
Thank you very much for your comment, Catherine.
What phrase would you use to refer to the “thing” that encompasses all actors involved with providing translation services, i.e translators, language service providers, translation software developers, volunteers, etc. I used the phrase “translation industry” to refer to this, but if it offends people, I am willing to use another phrase.
I would greatly appreciate your help with this. Thank you very much in advance.
I’m not sure why anyone would want to encompass all the actors in one big thing, except for the purposes of mystification, pretending our interests are the same. Since they’re not, I prefer to be honest and keep them distinct in my terminology. If I need to refer to everybody, I say, “The translation industry and the translation profession” or else name the types of actors in sequence. Clarity of terminology fosters clarity of thought.
I hope that helps.
Very interesting comparison, Catherine, thank you for that.
Especially the comparison to the “charity industry” and “religion industry” made me laugh.
Everything is for sale in various industries that care only about maximum profit, including human dignity of low-level employees. When I buy something these days, in many shops the cashiers have to ask me whether I would be willing to round up the price to the next dollar, etc., for some noble purpose, such as helping children with cancer. When I asked one cashier whether this is charity for CEOs who are much more likely to receive most of this money, rather than children who have cancer, she was incredulous that somebody could pose such a question. The propaganda in this country works so well! In most countries, cashiers would probably laugh along with the person asking the question.