ATA'S DENVER GATHERING: Some Personal Observations and Comments

The American Translators Association held its 51st Annual Convention from October 27 to 30 in Denver, Colorado.  Although attendance was nowhere near the levels that had been attained for the 50th Annual Convention held last year in New York City, the attendance by any objective measure was respectable and evidenced the association's continued success in staging these events, and this, despite the persistence of the recession that has gripped the United States since 2008, and the ever-increasing costs of attending these annual meetings (some observers place the cost per individual at close to US$2000, a cost that would cover registration fees, 4 to 5 days of lodging and meals, and round-trip transportation to the convention site).  But even with attendance down from last year, the ATA public relations machine (which now operates 24/7) immediately sent out a release stating that the 2010 convention was one of the best-attended and most successful in the organization's history.

The ATA is arguably one of the largest - if not the largest - translator organization(s) in the world, and if it is not the largest, then it has certainly been one of the most successful from a  financial and public relations point of view.  With a permanent professional staff housed in a suite of offices in a Washington, DC suburb (Alexandria, Virginia), it has forged partnerships with numerous suppliers of translation hardware, software and related technology, partnerships that have added to its coffers, but at the same time engendered some hesitating criticism from outside (but always muffled or totally silenced by the organization, which carefully and painstakingly guards its image)  

In the past decade or decade-and-a-half, the American Translators Association has moved inexorably towards a definitive technological orientation, and its 51st Annual Convention in Denver evidenced that beyond any doubt.  It might have been sheer coincidence, but ATA's 51st annual gathering immediately preceded the ninth biennial convention of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA), an organization which as recently as the mid-1990's was viewed as some kind of leper to the rank-and-file of ATA membership.  Today, AMTA's respectability is no longer questioned and the fact that it chose to hold its party immediately following that of the ATA, and in the very same city, says something or gives some insight into the direction that both organizations appear to be taking.

Without doubt, the attendees to the 51st Annual Convention of the ATA had more than a sufficient quantity of translation technology on which to feast.  A few of the attendees, but certainly not an army of them with whom this correspondent spoke, pointed out if not complained about the absence of attention to economic issues.  Not one of the 18 pre-conference seminars or the 167 sessions was devoted to economic issues.  Curiously, despite the ATA's obvious ignoring of or perhaps total disinterest in (or maybe just plain fear of) economic issues, private conversations among attendees in the hallways, bars and restaurants seemed more often than not to focus on economic matters.

Following is a kind of summary tour of some of the more highlighted (or perhaps more lowlighted) sessions that were offered up on the menu of ATA's 51st Convention in Denver last month:

First on each day’s schedule, and competing with the regular sessions, was a new “event” coordinated by Naomi J. Sutcliffe de Moraes, the head of ATA’s Translation and Computers Committee.  This “event”, which appeared under the heading “Learn”, consisted of a series of “tool tutorials” and took place in a special area of the exhibit hall that had been set aside for the purpose.  Each company was responsible for its own presentation, which to be expected was designed to promote that company’s products, some of which were cloud-based or SaaS (Software as a Service).  In reality, calling these sessions (at least the ones I attended) “tool tutorials” was a big stretch of the imagination. 

ATA also added a new Session Code dubbed “TIP” (Translation & Interpreting Professions).  This new code was given to “sessions that explore developments affecting the Translating and Interpreting Professions as a whole” (my emphasis).  Although I was able to attend only two sessions near the end of the conference, judging from the titles of all the sessions under this code, the single most important development affecting the translation profession is the reversal of the letters TM (translation memory) which results in MT (machine translation) and its acceptance by the profession(s).  I was struck here by the similarity to the hand-wringing that never ceases in the interpreting industry, where major issues are put on a siding to allow endless discussion on whether interpreters should be called or can be called translators or demanding that the public stop calling interpreters translators (or vice-versa). 

To give readers some insight into the eight TIP sessions, I shall list the titles of a couple of the sessions I was unable to attend along with a brief biography of the speaker(s) and a few comments before giving a more detailed report on the two sessions I did attend.  Descriptive details in quotes were provided by the presenters.

TIP-1:  A Futuristic View of the Translation Profession.  The speaker was Renato S. Beninatto who, according to Milengo, Inc.’s webpage (he is their current CEO), is “a corporate strategist and market research evangelist [sic] with nearly 30 years of executive-level leadership in the localization industry.”  He “has forged a reputation for visionary leadership, most recently as the co-founder and former Chief Connector [sic] of Common Sense Advisory, the industry’s foremost market research firm.”   Notably lacking in the speaker’s background is any experience as a translator or linguist.  If I was somewhat dubious about the man’s “visionary leadership”, I was very much put off by the description of a “market research evangelist”, for I found the religious overtones a little scary.  However, since I did not see his presentation, I cannot comment in any way on his “futuristic view” or his view on what the future holds.

TIP -3:  Machine Translation:  Friend or Foe?  The speaker was Adriana Beaton, an account director at SDL International.  Her biography states that she has worked in localization since the early 90s and that “in her long career (I’m not sure if 20 years really qualifies as a “long career”, however…) she has covered [sic] many roles as linguist, project manager, program manager and globalization analyst, working for multinational corporations like Hewlett Packard, Sage Software, and Recruitmax, as well as a few localization providers.  This has given her a deep perspective on the issues that companies face every day when trying to establish or consolidate a global presence.”  There was no mention at all of any insight into issues that translators, some with more thirty, forty and even fifty years of experience, are facing.   Other than that, an internet search indicated that she was actively “tweeting” during the ATA gathering.  Again, since I couldn’t attend the presentation, I was left wondering about the question in the title and more so the answer: Is MT a friend or foe…and to whom?

TIP-6:  Machine Translation Post-Editing and Machine Translation for Productivity.  Speakers were Laurie M. Gerber, who is currently the treasurer of the Association for Machine Translation in the Americas; Walter K. Hartmann (no relation to Nicholas Hartmann, current ATA president), a translator who has been working with MT and post-editing since 1985; and Maria F. Lozano, a scientific and technical translator from Buenos Aires, Argentina, who is currently employed as the in-house Spanish translator and reviser at the Pan American Health Organization in Washington D.C.  There was a great deal of interest in this session and it played to a standing-room only crowd in a room that I estimated could accommodate 250-300 people.  I spoke with a couple of translators seated near me, both of whom expressed the opinion that, like it or not, post-editing machine translations is something that 21^st-century translators must consider.  Ms. Gerber served as panel moderator and spoke briefly about the AMTA and how attitudes toward machine translation have changed are continuing to change rapidly.  

Mr. Hartmann told the audience that he began post-editing machine-translated technical literature from a large manufacturer of copy machines and then expanded into applying MT to other customers’ technical documentation, mostly in the automotive and electronics domains.  While there was improvement after 2000, source-text quality remains low and, not surprisingly, certain types of texts are more suitable than others for the MT process.  Formatting can also be a hindrance as can in-line codes, bulleted text, proper names, abbreviations and punctuation.  Nonetheless, he stated that 40% of his work now consists of post-editing machine translations and that he “enjoys the work”.  

Ms. Lozano gave an in-depth report on how the Pan American Health Organization uses machine translation.  The PAHO program was developed in close contact with human translators who give ongoing support.  Computational linguists work to improve the program and translators cooperate.  There is always a human component which corrects output and makes certain that the translation fits the target audience as well as manually checks dictionary entries.  She stressed that complete automation would never be possible and that there is still reliance on feedback from human translators.

PAHO uses two main editing modes, minimal and extensive, and translators are free to change as much as they like.  She listed some of the advantages of post-editing work such as never having to face a blank page, having to do less research (preferred terms and official country names are used; in addition, she cited the accuracy of figures, the reliability of dictionaries, the absence of omissions (the program translates everything), and the presence of uniformity (the program helps maintain terminology consistency).  “The program works well with WordFast,” Lozano said, “and is great for translating large quantities of material.”

The disadvantages all had to do with diminishing translation skills, including the loss of creativity, forgetting terms and solutions, overlooking errors because MT output “sounds correct”, and settling for less because it’s easier.  CAT operators and those working with translation memories seem to be experiencing the same things.  (There will be more on that subject in a future article.)  

While Ms. Lozano painted a rosy picture of how machine translation works at PAHO, one was left without the certainty that this rosy picture could be duplicated in other translation domains and therein lies another issue.

TIP-8:  Man vs. Machine:  Do Translators Need to Pick a Side?  This session, one of the last, was also listed under “Learn”, but not as a “tools tutorial”.  It was moved to the meeting room that had been used for the Annual Meeting and even so, it was SRO.  The description began:  “Some of the finest minds in our profession will discuss the current status of machine translation, the continued importance of human translation, and new ways the two approaches are being combined.”  The “fine minds” referred to in the description belonged to: Mike Dillinger, a past president and current vice-president of the AMTA, who has developed machine translation systems at several companies; Chris Durban, a freelance translator and recipient of ATA’s Gode Medal in 2001, who specializes in financial translation and whose claim to fame and qualification for the Gode Medal is the relentless exposure of “bad translation” and a messianic quest to make the world safe and secure from it;  Jiri Stejskal, a translation agency owner and a past president of ATA, who also chairs the Status Committee of the International Federation of Translators (FIT); and Joap van der Meer, director of TAUS and the TAUS Data Association (TDA), a global language data-sharing initiative.  Jost Zetsche, a German translator and localization and translation consultant who has written a number of books and articles on the technical aspects of translation, and is ATA’s leading guru of translation technology, moderated the discussion. 

Two large screens showing a robot-like arm clenched in combat with a very muscular human arm were set up at each end of the long stage.  To this commentator it seemed obvious from the beginning that we were about to witness a theatrical production of sorts.  The “discussion”, which took the form of a question and answer session with Zetsche asking the questions and members of the panel giving their opinions, appeared to have been scripted to make certain points that would lead to certain conclusions.   Here are some of those points and conclusions:

·         There is not just one market; there are many markets.  These markets offer translators the opportunity to earn more money.  Pre-editing (improving the source-language text) and post-editing (improving the target-language text) are rapidly expanding segments of the translation industry.

·         Data has replaced memory in importance.  Both MT and TM require a lot of data.  Translation “in the cloud” allows data to be searched efficiently and output is improved.  The hostile attitude toward machine translation has changed. 

·         Human translators need to communicate the value they add and, thus, there is a need to find a way to document quality.  Could that way to document quality be ATA “certification”? 

So, what was billed or advertised as a “battle” that should have involved genuine questioning, discussion, and differing opinions, turned out to be nothing more than a session clearly designed to enhance and promote the corporate image that ATA ceaselessly seeks to project:  “We are all united, we are of a singular mind and determination, and we are in agreement that the future is bright”.

In response to a recent article published here, one reader commented:  “CAT tools themselves are not to be regarded as our enemies.  They didn’t do anything.  But the supposed translation specialists did it to themselves and the “real” translators let them.”  It seems to me that now is the time when we should all be questioning and discussing what is happening.  By way of one small example, translators are being asked to “translate documents that contain MT/TM and ‘new words’.  How should they price that kind of work?  Discussions on issues like this were totally absent in Denver and my guess is that they will be totally absent forever from the ATA scene.

Even among those who say they believe that translation is a writing profession, many have in reality forsaken that belief and adopted the view of the translation technocrats who foster the notion that translation is nothing more than the selling of “well-written” words.  Clearly, somewhere along the way the idea of translation as meaning and communication has been lost.  It certainly was lost at the 51^st Annual Convention of the American Translators Association. 

Globalization and Its Role in Commodification

News Commentary

OBAMA’S REMARKS IN INDIA BRING OUT INTO

RELIEF PRESIDENT’S DISCONNECTION FROM REALITY

By Bernie Bierman

Speaking last week in India’s commercial capital of Mumbai (née Bombay), U.S, President Barrack Obama said that “India is a creator of U.S. jobs not a usurper of U.S. jobs”.   The reaction in the U.S. among Obama opponents was predictable, namely that the man is totally divorced from reality and is viewing the world from some academic tower where theories are alive and well…and where theories are not everything, but the only thing.  Among Obama supporters, or rather the ever-dwindling number of supporters, his remarks were received was gasping horror.  His political party, the Democrats, had just taken their worst beating in contemporary times, a beating ascribable for the most part to continued unemployment and outsourcing of jobs to cheap-labor nations.  And one of the nations that is high on – if not at the very top of - the American employment enmity list is India.

Two reasons are given as being behind  Mr. Obama’s comments that “India is a creator of U.S. jobs not a usurper of U.S. jobs” : (1) That the man is totally disconnected from reality and/or (2) he will kiss any derrière that is placed in front of him; indeed, he may be the most compleat kisser of les derrières in the annals of American politics, and an “equal opportunity” one at that.

This commentator would never expect a man like Barrack Obama with his fancy Harvard University education to be acquainted with the experience of a city like North Tonawanda in the northern reaches of New York State, and even less to be acquainted with the North American translation industry or even the western European (and perhaps even central and eastern European) translation industry.  Translation is not something that weighs on the mind of President Obama, even though he does get periodic reports from his military advisors about the chronic shortage of oral and written translators and other assorted linguist-types, a chronic shortage that appears to have some connection to the sexual tastes and proclivities of many military and government linguists.

In the United States, the bête noire of the translation industry is unquestionably India.  China may be a beast, but it doesn’t appear to be a black one.  Ah, but India is something else, a something else that is in a category of its own.  Is the condition called India perception or fact or a little bit of both? Or is it 20 parts perception and 80 parts fact?  Or vice-versa? 

Do we know anything about the Indian translation industry?  It seems to me that we most certainly do, and we know it because one of the key aspects of the Indian translation agency industry has been on open display to us for at least the past decade through translator “watering holes”, i.e., places like ProZ, TranslatorsCafe, TranslationDirectory and a score or perhaps two score more translator blogs, journals and “saloons”. 

I would say that based upon the data I have collected and/or noted from the aforementioned translator “watering holes” and “saloons” that very few, if any, can compete with the Indian translation industry in terms of price.  Not even the Chinese.  India is not the bottom.  India is below the bottom.  Can one even measure one (1) Indian Rupee against one (1) U.S. cent or one (1) Euro cent? Or try two (2) Indian Rupees.  In other words, what is the bottom line for “We have 10,000 words of (language) for translation into (language), and we will pay 2 Rupees per word”(?) 

I cannot speak with any authority – not even simulated authority – on European translation industry economics in an historical context.  But I can speak with some authority about the history of American translation industry economics, and I can say to the readers of this column with all of the authority and certainty I can muster, that the Indian translation industry has pushed North American translation prices not back to the 1960’s.  Not even to the 1950’s.  Indian translation prices of 2010 are perfectly in line with North American translation prices of the 1940’s and 1930’s.

But as Mr. Obama opines,  “India is a creator of U.S. jobs not a usurper of U.S. jobs”.  Perhaps next Mr. Obama will suggest that India has helped to raise income in the North American translation industry to all-time highs.  See what a Harvard University education can do?

* * * * *

 Stay tuned for reportage on the recent ATA "gathering" in Denver.

THE COMMODIFICATION OF COMMUNICATION: SELLING WORDS

“What I get from "traduttore-traditore" is that it is near-impossible to render a text -from one language into another with 100 percent accuracy, because there are always nuances and subtleties in any language that cannot easily be conveyed in another. (If every language had every possible subtlety within it, it would almost be unnecessary to have other languages at all, because they would have the same power of expression.) All but the simplest texts have shades of meaning that are hard to translate with precision.  A sophisticated text can contain ambiguities, intentional and unintentional, and the task of the translator in this case is to convey the ambiguities that are in the text without introducing any that are not.  In reality, the translator's job is to minimize the losses during the passage from one language to another; in other words, the object is to minimize the betrayal!”. 
            - Christine Quinones

WORDS FOR SALE
Part 2

By Bernie Bierman

To the older practitioners of the industry, the greater of the surprises was not so much the speed with which the change occurred, namely the conversion from what could be called cerebral translation to what could be called robotic translation, but the overwhelming acceptance of the latter by the next generation of practitioners.  While the older group of practitioners most certainly accepted, used and even welcomed the new technologies, there was an element of selectiveness in the process.  One technology that was not accepted – and indeed scorned and resisted – was computerized translation…in any of its varied forms and shapes.

The younger generation did not see the world of translation through the eyes of their seniors or even their mentors.  The younger group had been literally baptized in the rivers, streams, lakes and even oceans of technology, particularly computer technology.  They were fully wired, wireless-ed and gadgetized. The older translation practitioners were fish who had to learn to swim.  To their offspring, swimming was as natural as natural could get. 

But the technological changes in the translation process that began as a trickle in the late 1980’s, morphed into a quick-flowing stream in the middle-to-late 1990’s and became a torrent in the first decade of the new century, weren’t by any stretch of the imagination the sole reason for the massive changes in the industry that were witnessed in the first decade of the 21^st century.  The technological changes that affected how we translate and how we approach and view translation were accompanied – or perhaps slightly preceded – by major (if not earth-moving) non-translation-related technological advances that in turn caused or certainly helped bring about major (and again, if not earth-moving) market and economic changes. 

In geologic time, the development of the internet was about a nanosecond.  In terms of the lifetime of the human being, it was about overnight, or for the more conservative, two overnights.  The Internet made next-door neighbors of New York and Paris, Beijing and Berlin, Moscow and Buenos Aires and (not “or”) made communication between Yellowknife, NWT and Novosibirsk as easy as communication between two towns 5 minutes distant from each other.  The oceans separating the continents literally dried up.  And we gave that drying up a name: globalization.  In the first part of the 1990’s, we could still talk about a French translation industry or a German translation industry or a U.S. translation industry or a Japanese translation industry or even a budding Chinese translation industry (as China’s communist leaders were beginning to see, appreciate and even slightly worship good old capitalism).  By the time we were celebrating the millennium (amidst stomach-churning fears that our computers would crash and burn), there was really only one translation industry: the world translation industry.

The last decade of the 20^th century also marked the beginning of what would be the very rapid demise (and extinction) of a species I called the “translator-merchant” and the coming of the businessperson (more often than not armed with an MBA diploma in marketing) fascinated with the seeming profit potential of the translation business, a business that appeared to these business types as virgin territory for the implementation of all the theories learned in graduate business school.  One of the more interesting things about the new translation businessperson of the 21^st century was that he or she had only the most rudimentary knowledge of language, knew virtually next-to-nothing about translation and the translation process, and appeared in more cases than not, to have little knowledge of and skill in his or her native tongue.  Nonetheless, the translation business impresario of the new century came adorned with the titles of station: “President & CEO”, “Executive Vice-President for Marketing”, “Senior Vice-President of Linguistic Systems Analysis”, ”Translation Resources Coordinating Manager” and all sorts and manner of other titles that could easily bring one to a thunderous commercial orgasm.  But it was the nomenclature applied to this new breed by the late Robert Addis that was really far more descriptively accurate: “Language-blind administrators”.

Unlike their predecessor “translator-merchants”, these language-blind administrators and business impresarios did not hesitate for a moment to avail themselves of either machine translation or its close relative, computer-assisted translation.  Indeed, computerization and robotization of translation were very much in line with the tenets and theories learned in graduate business school respecting productive efficiency and cost-effective efficiency.  Computer-assisted translation in particular was not the future.  It was now.  CAT would eliminate what had been the historical bane of the translation industry: labor-intensiveness.  It would not only do away with labor-intensiveness, but it would definitively allow for greater production, more efficient production and product consistency, for after all, “once you have translated a sentence or passage, you will never have to translate that sentence of passage ever again”, as SDL Trados, a leading CAT manufacturer, promised the translation world.  One of the many proofs of this pudding was the proud (and loud) announcement by Marian Greenfield, a U.S.-based translator and former president of the American Translators Association, that she had translated 33,000 words in 10 hours thanks to CAT (not coincidentally SDL Trados’ CAT). 

Surprisingly (at least to this observer), the European translation world went quickly and overwhelmingly for CAT, far more quickly and overwhelmingly than North America, where at least at the outset there was some discernible hesitation.

By the year 2001, the economic impact of CAT (and to a slightly lesser extent, MT) was beginning to be seen, if not felt.  However, there were two more factors the impact of which would literally turn the translation world on its head.  One was the full-blown globalization of the industry and the other were the economic downturn twins: the more benign one of 2001 and the far more malignant one of 2008, the latter downturn (or if the reader prefers, recession) being one that has not responded too well to even high dosages of economic radiation and chemotherapy.

Globalization and the two economic downturns sent overall translation prices in the U.S. down to late 1950 levels and in western Europe to late 1960 levels.  India and China became major players in this new fully globalized translation world, and competing with Indian and Chinese (and southeast Asian) prices became almost impossible, especially in nations with much higher costs-of-living.  But CAT and its broad acceptance by both translation service providers and their freelance sub-contractors – now more CAT workers or operators than actual translators or linguists – helped not only to push prices downward, but also to maintain them at incredibly low levels. 

But CAT has done something else, something of far great significance than was done by either globalization or the mini-recession of 2001 or the great recession of 2008.  CAT has done away with the concept of translation as a communications service (a communications service requiring some very unique and singular skills) and converted it into a service based solely upon the providing of words, i.e., the sale of words.  The myriad of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that went into determining – many times on an ad hoc basis -  a fee or rate or price for a translation service in pre-CAT days have been dispatched to the proverbial city garbage dump.  CAT programs are able to determine everything “scientifically”, from “new” words to “old” words to “similar” words” to “identical phrases” to “somewhat identical phrases”.  According to conventional wisdom as furnished by the purveyors of CAT tools, the computational power of CAT programs can determine with unquestioned accuracy the percentages of phrases, parts of phrases, sentences, parts of sentences that all fall under certain matching criteria.  Percentages of such matches can be determined with allegedly pinpoint accuracy, with little room for dispute.

The entire process that has been engendered by CAT for evaluating the service is based solely and exclusively upon words.  Just words.  Only words.  Exclusively words.  Nothing else but words.  CAT has converted translation from a communications service into a commodities service, with the commodity being the word, the individual word, the isolated word.  CAT and its champions, proponents, disciples, propagandists and the hordes of happy CAT workers and operators have in this post-translation world brought us “Words for Sale”.

[In Part 3 of this series, the author will detail some of the word-counting acrobatics performed by CAT tools that have resulted in translation having become a words-for-sale commodity, and at the same time converted translators into ordinary robotics workers…at corresponding compensation.]

ARE WE JUST SELLING WORDS?

“I am sure you are not following the trend.

If you are frozen in the 70s and want to keep working

with your typing machine there is nothing I can do”.

- Renato Cedin

  Link Translations (Brazil)

“Welcome to the 21st century: Computers are the future of translation

If you want to be as efficient a translator as possible, Microsoft Word and Excel

should not be your primary translation environments”.

- Jon Ritzdorf, Solutions Architect

  Introduction to Computer-Assisted Translation

  New York University - SCPS

♪ ♫ ♪

CAT for sale

Words perfect and unspoiled

Words never even slightly soiled

CAT for sale

Let the translators pipe of words

In their now extinct way

CAT knows every type of word

Better far than they ...

♫ ♫ ♪ ♫

- Inspired by Cole Porter’s “Love For Sale”

WORDS FOR SALE
(A Multi-Part Series)

Part 1

By Bernie Bierman

As far back as my memory can take me (and that is indeed many years), translators have been debating and arguing the question of the value of translation, and more particularly the best or most effective way to calculate that value.

My own memories and written records of this debate and argument reveal that various approaches were tried over the years in an attempt to calculate that value: per line, per word, per typestroke, per hour, by exotic formulas that combined the per line, per word and per hour criteria, and by all sorts and manner of esoteric calculations. 

For reasons that are still not clear, the per word method outlasted and outlived all the others.  Although many translation practitioners decried the per word calculation as inadequate, the consensus was that it was the most adequate of all the inadequates.  However, it did have the financially-redeeming virtue of consistency, that is, if one could agree on what precisely was a “word” for purposes of calculating a price.  Was a number in digital form a “word”?  And if the number in digital form was viewed or counted as a “word”, was 1000 really two “words” rather than one “word”?  Was 1,789,348 one “word” or nine “words”?   Was a name a “word”?  If the Italians called their city “Firenze”, was the English-language version of “Florence” a translated “word”?   And in the pre-computer and pre-CAT age, if names and numbers were viewed as countable or calculable “words”, the question or problem often arose as to how one precisely went about the actual counting of words?   Did the document really contain 8600 words, or was the real count 8492 or 8710 or 8628? 

And if the question of calculation and/or the method of calculation weren’t sufficient enough to stir the arguments, there was the matter of which words should form the basis of calculation: the source language words or the target language words.  Which was economically more equitable to the translator?  Which was economically more equitable to the client or user of the translation?  Was the source language calculation an accurate reflection of the overall translation process?  Or was the target language calculation a much more accurate reflection of that overall translation process?  And on and on the debate went…and raged.

* * * * *

Here in the United States, a man named Lewis Bertrand came upon the commercial-industrial translation scene in the 1920’s.  Bertrand was not merely a translator and writer (which has the same redundancy as “composer and musician”), but also a highly astute and (soon-to-be) successful businessman in the translation industry.  By the 1930’s Bertrand’s influence on the tiny U.S. commercial-industrial translation community was quite discernible and that influence grew in the following two decades.

Indeed, Bertrand’s incessant preaching of his gospel of translation economics brought many converts and spawned many faithful.  Henry Fischbach, the co-founder of the American Translators Association was a disciple of Bertrand’s translation economics, along with so many of the men and women who helped found and build what is arguably one of the largest translator organizations in the world.  (Sadly to a few, the leaders and members of the modern ATA haven’t the foggiest idea of who this Lewis Bertrand was, but even more sadly and more regrettably, the concepts developed by him respecting the essence and value of translation as a commercial endeavor and later promoted and fostered by such founding personages as Henry Fischbach, the Mins brothers, Robert Addis and so many others whose names are now long-forgotten, have been discarded like a piece of rusting machinery as a new generation of computer worshippers and technological “geek-speakers” have come along to proselytize and spread their own gospel.)

In economic and commercial terms, translation to Lewis Bertrand was not about words.  The idea that translation was about the sale of words was so anathema to him that he could literally break into a wild rage over the slightest suggestion in that direction.  To Bertrand, translation was about communication; translation, particularly in the commercial and industrial domains, was a communications service; translation was not about the supply of words; translation was about the supply of ideas, concepts, knowledge, a supply delivered by a person or persons having certain well-defined and unique skills…and talents.

I was only a teenager when I first heard one of the numerous Lewis Bertrand stories about translation and translation economics.  The one particular story that remained with me for a lifetime – as if it had been branded into my brain – went like this:

He was asked by one of his firm’s more difficult and chronically-complaining clients why it was being charged for “translating” names and numbers and what was the rationale for this “seemingly unfair charge”.  He was asked by this difficult and chronically-complaining client whether his firm could eliminate all the names and numbers from a translated document, thereby lowering the invoice by what could be a considerable sum.

Bertrand listened attentively to his client’s complaints and attempted to explain the nature and essence of a translation service.  But the client was adamant.  It did not need names and numbers “translated” and certainly did not want to pay for any such needless “translation”. Bertrand politely acceded to the client’s wishes.  The next translation job to be done for this client would be absent all non-translation elements, i.e., names, numbers and other “noise of like purport and tenor”, and the invoice would duly reflect a sharp reduction in the client’s translation cost.  The result was something like this:

“Dear Mr. [see original] :

“We acknowledge receipt of your letter dated [see original] and with regard to the delivery of [see original] tons of [see original] rolled steel scheduled for shipment on [see original] via the SS [see original], we would like to advise you as follows:

“Because of major dredging problems in the port of [see original], Captain [see original] of the Port Authority of [see original] issued Directive No. [see original] which prohibits vessels over [see original] tons displacement from entering port channels Nos. [see original] and [see original] until [see original] at the very earliest.  Although we could arrange for transshipment in [see original] between the dates of [see original] and [see original] to a vessel of lesser displacement, the costs would increase, and the letter of credit No. [see original] issued by the [see original] Bank in the amount of US$[see original] would be insufficient.

“Should you have any further concerns, please feel free to contact the undersigned by telephone at [see original] or telex at [see original], or his deputy manager, Mr. [see original], whose telephone number is [see original] and whose telex number is [see original].

“Yours, etc.

“[see original]

By: [see original]”

The upshot of this was a very quick telephone call from the chronically-complaining client: “Mr. Bertrand, we got your point.  Please provide us with a complete translation and charge us accordingly”.

Lewis Bertrand was never happy with or enamored of the per word method that was the dominant method in calculating the value of a translation service.  He saw it as a reference tool at best, a reference tool that was far too often not reflective of the true value of the service and all of the elements that went into providing the service. At worst, he viewed the per word invoicing method as a manifestation that the translator was really selling just words.    He and his contemporaries and competitors often tried combinations of various calculation methods, such as per word and per hour or various complex formulas that combined numerous calculation methods.  Bertrand believed fervently and passionately that translators possessed certain highly-defined skills and knowledge that could not be adequately compensated by the mere counting of words and attaching a figure to that count. 

“We are in the communications business”, he would often bellow.  “We are not a bunch of (expletive) clerks”, he would yell.  “We are not  (expletive) typists or transcribers”, he would scream.  [In the mid-1940’s, he charged a client US$100 to translate one word – it came out as two words in the target language.  “If an advertising agency can charge a client thousands of dollars to come up with a 5-word slogan or phrase”, he said, “then surely all of the thought, time and talent that went into finding the right expression in another language for that one English word makes the $100 fee not just a bargain, but a steal”.]

In his day, lots of people in the translation industry (both in the U.S. and Europe) listened to this fiery preacher of translation economics, and many followed his preachings.  Although Bertrand was certainly around in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when the first attempts at computerized translation were undertaken, he and so many of his contemporaries dismissed this endeavor as a bad joke and as a need by certain people to robotize everything in sight (and even out of sight).

Clearly, if some “geek-speaker” appeared before a vast assembly of translators in the days of Lewis Bertrand and his contemporaries – or even in the days of their successors – and told the audience that “once a word or sentence or phrase or paragraph had been translated, that very same word or sentence or phrase or paragraph (or a close facsimile thereof) would never ever have to be translated again”, the laughter and howls in the assembly hall would have been of a decibel level that would have surely compromised the structural integrity of that assembly hall.

If Bertrand and virtually all of his contemporaries were blind to the coming of robotized translation, which was not merely on the horizon, but rather just around the corner, there was not so much as a nanosecond thought given to the possible economic impact upon the translation industry that this robotization would wrought.   Of course, there was only handful of people anywhere who saw a world connected through a place that didn’t as yet even have a name.  And never mind the word “globalization”, the concept alone was if not science-fiction, then certainly economics-fiction. 

[To be continued in Part 2]