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What is said, and what is not said...
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tamaraland sounds off on some pet peeves, which reminded me of an assignment not long ago...
It was an assignment where I had been hired as an "extra" interpreter, where it turned out the two gentlemen who were the "real" interpreters were... well... I had to interpret for one of them at the very start of the assignment, okay? That should have been my first hint.
In any event, there we are, in the middle of a meeting, and I'm interpreting a presentation. All of a sudden, a densely worded PowerPoint <spit> slide comes on the screen and the presenter tells the assembled Russian delegation that rather than "waste time" reading the slide sentence-by-sentence and have me interpret what he said, he'd just ask me to translate the slide directly.
I did a fast estimate, concluded there were something between 350 and 400 words on the screen, and then apologized to the presenter, explaining that attempting a "sight interpretation" of the slide would be time-consuming and would leave many of the technical nuances on the screen. I then offered to call the office and have his slide translated into Russian, adding that said translation shouldn't take more than an hour or so.
The speaker panicked visibly, saying that the next 8 slides in his presentation were as dense, textwise, as the one on the screen, and that if we had to pause for the office to translate everything, it would mean delaying the meeting by a full day.
The unspoken alternative he was proposing was to have me sight interpret nearly a full day's work for most translators in... golly, the 23 minutes remaining for the presenter to finish his presentation and field questions!
In the end, I interpreted the gist of the slides for the delegation, and - mirabile dictu - the world did not come to an end.
There are days when I am glad I am not interpreting. Today is one of them.
Cheers...
tamaraland sounds off on some pet peeves, which reminded me of an assignment not long ago...It was an assignment where I had been hired as an "extra" interpreter, where it turned out the two gentlemen who were the "real" interpreters were... well... I had to interpret for one of them at the very start of the assignment, okay? That should have been my first hint.
In any event, there we are, in the middle of a meeting, and I'm interpreting a presentation. All of a sudden, a densely worded PowerPoint <spit> slide comes on the screen and the presenter tells the assembled Russian delegation that rather than "waste time" reading the slide sentence-by-sentence and have me interpret what he said, he'd just ask me to translate the slide directly.
I did a fast estimate, concluded there were something between 350 and 400 words on the screen, and then apologized to the presenter, explaining that attempting a "sight interpretation" of the slide would be time-consuming and would leave many of the technical nuances on the screen. I then offered to call the office and have his slide translated into Russian, adding that said translation shouldn't take more than an hour or so.
The speaker panicked visibly, saying that the next 8 slides in his presentation were as dense, textwise, as the one on the screen, and that if we had to pause for the office to translate everything, it would mean delaying the meeting by a full day.
The unspoken alternative he was proposing was to have me sight interpret nearly a full day's work for most translators in... golly, the 23 minutes remaining for the presenter to finish his presentation and field questions!
In the end, I interpreted the gist of the slides for the delegation, and - mirabile dictu - the world did not come to an end.
There are days when I am glad I am not interpreting. Today is one of them.
Cheers...
no subject
Still remember one bunch of ejits who I was courting for a nice *translating* contract. The phone interview started with the words "our first assignment for you is to fly half way across the country tonight (this was Friday night), to interpret at high level business/ contract negotiations with our client. The meeting is scheduled to start tomorrow at 8am, and we would like to show our guests around the city for the rest of the day as well". At a translator's, not interpreters rate.
*sigh*. There is such a fine line between being pushed too far and wanting a job (read: extra income)... In retrospect, I think I made the right choice anyway.
no subject
:^)
(I assume you mean they quote an hourly rate that assumes you translate about 150 words per hour, yes?)
Cheers...
no subject
Now, THAT's a good idea! :*)
They were offering a certain hourly rate, since it was an in-house contract for a few months. For a translator in Australia, it was a nice rate, however interpreters usually get paid almost double that, and high level business negotiation meetings interpreters can go up to 3-4 times the amount. I figured that they either had no idea what they were doing, or were being cheap skates. Either way, it would have been an extremely unpleasant client to work for.
Just curious... what's an accepted speed of translation in the US? Its officially 250 per hour here, thanks to NAATI.
no subject
Back when I worked in-house as a manager, we did establish 250 words per hour as the minimum acceptable speed of translation for translators who had recently completed their initial training and familiarization, but never pushed it from there.
We mostly used the figure to beat on cranky clients who wanted impossible volumes of work completed in criminally foreshortened periods of time (like the synapse-challenged yahoo who wanted a 30,000-word document turned around in 3 hours).
Cheers...