The fog of Ignorance




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I use to read all your posts and comments: how our profession as translators should be, how much we love to translate, how proud we are to be a translator, how difficult is to manage the time of a freelance translator, how to deal with translation agencies, etc. All wonderful to keep ourselves sailing into an ocean of words and while we continue to learn, word after word, to comprehend sentence after sentence, to give the right sense in the target language aimed to the reader, you know what I mean: to be a professional…….meanwhile we put our knowledge in doing all that stuff, the fog of ignorance surround us.

The fog of Ignorance
I think our profession is the one with the highest rate of unauthorized practitioners [esercizio abusivo della professione in Italian or Intrusismo profesional in Spanish – Outlaw in Spain and Italy]. This situation arises from the ignorance of employers, recruitment agencies due to the lack of knowledge about what a translation means. As it was stated several times at the Open Mic, a person who knows two languages is not synonymous that is a translator. We know why.
Maurizio Hsu - The Open Mic
It’s possible to dissipate the fog of Ignorance?
I cannot remember where I had read the following sentences: “instruct the ignorant” and “ignorantia juris non excusat”. Both of them have the implicit meaning to help others not to under-valuate our profession and due to the fact that my arrival port “Retirement” is at sight, I will spend part of my time trying to show to the above mentioned ignorant subjects, thru associations, blogs, etc., the stated differences so as to avoid them to incur in that outlaw practice. BTW to be ignorant is not an offense is just the lack of knowledge.

Star Wars or how Don Quixote used to fight windmills?

Maurizio Hsu Palombini

About Maurizio Hsu Palombini

2 thoughts on “The fog of Ignorance

  1. It’s nice that you embraced this fight, Maurizio. Our professional class can definitely benefit from more “soldiers” like you. 🙂

    This was a very timely post for me, since somehow today I stumbled upon this website link to onehourtranslation.com. It portrays translation as something that can be done by stay-at-home-moms who speak more than one language. Nowhere in the post I could find any reference to some kind of professional education, formal or informal. If someone is a stay-at-home-mom, wants to make some money and speaks a foreign language, translation could be perfect! But we — serious professionals — know that it takes way more than that.

    And I want to make clear that the problem here is not the “stay-at-home-moms” part. It could be “stay-at-home-dads”, “students”, “retired-of-any-career”, etc. The problem here is to think that translation is something anyone who has or believes to have good knowledge of a foreign language could do, if one decides to make some money.

    So, again, thank you!

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