As long as the translator's role is clearly defined and everyone understands that good translation requires whoever requests translations to actually get involved, the in-house translator can be more efficient than external translators. The in- house translator has all the information required on hand. He also has direct access to the relevant sources, i.e. the product or process concerned, the authors of the material being translated, existing in-house documentation, authoritative validation and technical revision facilities, etc.
The ideal situation is when clear contractual rules specify the way all the partners within the company (prominently the in-house 'clients') should work together to try and achieve maximum translation quality. Efficiency and quality can be improved even further if the company has a General Manager in Charge of Translation to interface with the translation requesters within the company on the one hand and the in-house translators on the other. The translation manager thus helps draw up specifications and briefs, negotiates deadlines and defines and prioritizes work schedules. An increasing awareness of translation and documentation quality constraints usually helps to enhance the status (and performance) of the in-company translation department. Ultimately, this should lead to the specification of the respective rights and duties of the translation requesters and providers but also to the implementation of codes of good practice, style guides, and any number of guidelines.
Unfortunately, the engineers and technical staff all too often tend to view in- house translators as 'language and literature bods' with little knowledge of what 'real' work involves. In such a context, in-house translators have to fight hard to gain recognition as professionals in their own right, who are involved in a highly technical and complex job, and who can only be expected to deliver quality if (a) they are given sufficient notice and time in which to complete the job, and if (b) those who need the translation are willing to provide all the information required and requested by the translators and, at least, to guarantee the quality of the source material.
The in-house translator's in-company 'clients' may be just as awkward as the freelancer's clients on the open translation market, if not more so, as the former may consider that "the translators should just get on with it: after all, that's what they're getting paid for and for heaven's sake, it's not that difficult a job... ".
The major institutional translation services which are part of well-known governmental or international organisations (e.g. government departments, the Canadian Government's "Translation Bureau", the European Union's Directorate General for Translation, NATO, the UN or UNESCO, etc.) are generally well known. Translators working for such services are usually the envy of the profession due to their rather (very) favourable terms of employment and working conditions.
A special case: decentralised in-house translation services
When a company or organisation has to cope with a high volume of translation needs, it may find it more efficient to split the translation work between a number of different in-house departments or services - which may also be the case when a government translation service has offshoots in each ministry for example. Each separate service will then be expected to specialise in the domains or types of materials particular to their sector of government or to their division within the company.
Official translation services generally share a number of common features:
- They have usually been set up in response to particular social, cultural and political contexts: national bilingualism or multilingualism as in Canada or Switzerland or institutional multilingualism as at the U.N. or UNESCO.
- Institutional translators generally specialise in a fairly narrow field (often dictated by the special remit of the institution or division in which they work).
- The service usually has to sub-contract varying quantities of work to external translators, simply because in-house staff alone is not sufficient to cope with demand.
- Just as any other manager, the manager of a translation service maybe tempted to outsource most translations on the grounds that it will be cheaper and quicker to have them done on the free market - except, naturally enough, for confidential or classified documents. Then, once they have gone down that road, they start thinking, rightly or wrongly, that in-house processing might actually be more cost-effective after all...
- Institutional translation services usually find the going easy when the economy is thriving and politicians and public opinion do not consider the translation service as a 'luxury'. Things don't look so bright when cost-effectiveness and 'profitability' (meaning cost-cutting) become the order of the day.
- Institutional translation services usually apply stringent recruitment criteria (a minimum of five years professional experience in most cases, and the ability to get through in an impressive series of gruelling recruitment tests).
2.1.2 'Temping'
To all intents and purposes, translators hired by 'temping' agencies work as freelancers, except that they are salaried employees and do not have to look for contracts themselves.
2.1.3 Translation company translators
Translators working for a translation company are fortunate in the sense that they work in a business that is wholly centred on translation and where the company itself will be responsible for:
- getting the translation contracts,
- negotiating the contracts with the clients and work providers,
- acquiring and maintaining all the 'tools of the trade' needed by the translator (i.e. documents, equipment, software, means of communication, terminology and phraseology resources, etc.),
- paying the translator's salary, and
- offering all the statutory entitlements (paid holidays, pension schemes, etc.).
In return, the salaried translators have a duty to make sure that their work will enable the company to operate profitably and pay their salaries. In-house translators must therefore:
- be sufficiently productive to provide a return to investors, pay the various operators' and the management's salaries and cover all the company's expenses, including the cost of marketing, accounting, advertising and overheads,
- guarantee 100% quality (within the specifications agreed with the work provider),
- uphold the company's values and ethical code at all times.
2.1.4 Agency staff
Salaried translators employed by a broker or agency are generally paid to manage freelance sub-contractors and proof-read their translations. Their role is to manage each translation project by interfacing with the freelance translators and the clients respectively. This is similar to the role of a salaried translator working for an in-house translation service and who happens to be responsible for outsourcing part of the workload to freelance translators.
By definition, translators working for brokerage companies (i.e. carrying out translation contracts brokered by the company or agency) are freelance or independent contractors.
The difference between a broker and an agency is that the broker simply buys and sells translation whereas the agency usually takes care of at least part of the translation process. In most cases, in effect, the agency will prepare the material for translation, provide at least part of the terminology, get information from the work provider and pass it on to the translators, take responsibility for quality control and perform any task having to do with disassembly and reassembly of the translated material and its supporting medium. The broker does none of that.
2.1.5 Translators under the umbrella company system
Translators working for an umbrella company are in an unusual legal position. They are basically freelancers but with the status of salaried translators.
Having won a contract for one of their own clients, they sign a short-term 'consultancy' contract with an umbrella company for the duration of the job.
The umbrella company then invoices the translator's client for the total amount including tax. It pays the VAT to the tax authorities, takes out its own overheads and commission, reimburses any relevant expenses and pays the employer's contributions. What remains is paid to the translator, who pays the employee's contributions.
The whole point of the exercise is to shift the burden of statutory employer contributions away from the translator. In the more sophisticated schemes, the umbrella company system involves companies based in countries where the contributions and tax burden is considerably light(er). The drawback of this type of scheme is that the translator can become suspect in the eyes of the local tax, health insurance and social security authorities.
Under the umbrella company system, which can take on many different guises, the translators have a hybrid status. They are both freelancers since they set their own rates, find the translation contracts and remain in direct contact with the clients, and salaried employees of a company (i.e. the umbrella company), which will take care of all the administrative and legal paperwork on behalf of the translators (and pay for it out of the translators' pocket of course). In the more sophisticated set ups, the translators are part of a team and a fraction of their salary is based, as a bonus, on the overall income generated by all team members. The company may also provide various services such as training (notably training on how to use the various CAT tools), commercial backing (as in a franchise system) and bulk purchase prices for equipment and consumables. Some may also offer various bonuses and incentive payments to attract more members.
Under such schemes, a translator who has accumulated a sufficient number of 'contract days' with the umbrella company will also be entitled to paid holidays, unemployment benefits and other forms of compensation, just like any other employee.
In this case, the translator is, to all intents and purposes, an employee, covered by health insurance and social security, with paid leave, pension rights, unemployment benefit, statutory access to life-long learning courses, free consumables and bonus payments. But she/he can also choose when and how to work and carry on managing her/his client portfolio, with the commercial backing of the umbrella company.
2.1.6 Special cases
Salaried translators do not necessarily translate on their employer's premises all the time. They may also work as 'on-site' translators, or as translation project managers for outsourced translations or as 'remote' or 'seconded' translators.
The 'on-site' translator actually works on the work provider's premises, particularly in cases where:
- the source material is not available outside the client's premises - for security reasons or otherwise,
- the translator is expected to be in constant touch with the authors or developers of the source material,
- each translation lot has to be assessed and edited in real time because it will be used right away in other parts of the documentation,
- any part of the translation is likely to be re-used immediately (as in on-line help systems) or even integrated into the ongoing development,
- the job has to be carried out using dedicated in-house software or particularly expensive equipment (e.g. content management systems) that the translator service provider cannot afford to buy,
- the translation must be carried out on the premises of a work provider and those premises happen to be in a foreign country.
Having a translator on site means the client gets all the benefits of an in-house translator without having any of the responsibilities and additional expense that go with employment.
A translation outsourcing project manager may be found either in a translation service or in a translation company. This is someone who manages translation projects by sub-contracting the work entirely to translators from outside the service or company. This involves:
- finding and selecting the relevant external service providers,
- planning the work schedule,
- drawing up the specifications,
- negotiating the purchase conditions,
- ensuring quality control,
- managing the project budget, etc.
If the main contractor is a translation company or an official translation service, the interfacing between work provider and sub-contractors will be done by one or several in-house translators who have a good knowledge of the client company and of its products and services, and who are also familiar with translation processes.
This favours close co-operation between the sub-contracting translators and the work provider who, being familiar with the translators' needs and difficulties will therefore be able to respond quickly and effectively or even anticipate whatever problems they are likely to encounter.
In some cases, the team-leader in charge of managing the translators may not be a translator, but a manager from another area of the business. In this case, the team manager will generally have an engineering background and will expect translators to comply with production and control procedures similar to those found in industry. This is a sign that they both take translation just as seriously as any other kind of industrial process and consider translators to be highly skilled specialists in their own field.
In the 1980s, IBM translation project managers were called translation 'pilots'. Everyone joining the company in the higher ranks of management had to 'pilot' translation projects for a whole year - which was considered as good a way as any other of getting to know the company and its products.
Companies now also more and more frequently outsource translation project management to external translators or translation companies. The latter will not actually carry out the translation themselves, but will manage the project and subcontract the work to other translators. The service that the translator or the translation company provides is not translation; it is translation management. This can be particularly effective since the person interfacing with the work provider and the translators respectively is perfectly aware of all the problems that may arise and is capable of reacting rapidly to find the appropriate answers if any problem does arise.
In a translation company, the outsourcing manager is a specialist project manager or 'dispatching officer' whose job is to optimise the process by finding exactly the right translator for each contract (i.e. a translator whose skills are best suited for the type of work on hand).
2.2 Freelance translators
Freelance translators, or so-called 'independent' translators, are self-employed, meaning they are not in any legal sense 'bound' to their clients or work providers. They either work for 'direct' clients (whom they invoice directly) or for agencies (or brokerage firms) that actually get the contracts and subcontract them to the freelancers.
Freelance translators are expected to pay all mandatory taxes, charges or social security contributions (i.e. local taxes, income tax, business taxes, health insurance, state and occupational pension schemes, etc.).
The freelance translators' independent status is legally based on the voluntary contractual relationship they enter into with their clients. This means that both parties agree on the rate that will be charged for the job and on the deadline, and translators are then deemed to be free to carry out the translation in the most appropriate manner, while obviously taking into account their clients' specifications.
Many freelance translators are registered as 'single-person companies'. Many bona fide translation companies consider that this amounts to unfair competition in the sense that 'real' companies have to face much higher overheads and costs.
The actual legal framework of freelancing depends on the national legislation applicable. Under French law, for instance, the work provider becomes an employer in the legal sense if he tells the translator how to do the work, monitors the work in progress and reprimands or otherwise penalizes that translator if the work is not carried out to his satisfaction. The practical effect would be for the work provider to have to pay all taxes and contributions that apply for salaried staff.
Given that their income depends on the time spent working, most freelancers work long hours and many would be willing to work longer hours as that would mean the order book is full.
This being so, flexibility and the freedom to decide on how much to work at any given period is considered the major advantage of freelancing. A highly significant number of freelance translators work part time by choice, and this explains why the profession is particularly attractive to women.
2.3 Translators working for publishing companies
In fact, any translator can work for a publishing company and the only reason for setting up a special category is because, in many countries, translations done for publishing companies are subject to specific and special conditions regarding payment and/or tax and contributions. Thus, in a significant number of countries, publishers pay translators a deposit with ensuing royalties depending on the volume of sales and the tax and contributions scheme is similar to that of authors.
Translators working under the "publishing industry" scheme may be literary translators, media translators and even localisers. Whenever applicable, they have in common that they are paid as authors.
2.4 'Outlaws'
Any person who practices translation on a commercial basis without paying any of the mandatory contributions or taxes can be considered as an 'outlaw'. In most countries, a significant percentage of all translations are carried out by unregistered translators who never pay any taxes or contributions on what they earn. Professional translators complain bitterly - and rightly so - about this kind of practice, which allows those who disregard the law to lower their rates and to compete unfairly with those who play by the rules.
Outlaw translators are generally completely impervious to what high-quality professional translation entails and what obligations it implies in terms of tax and contributions. This does not imply, of course, that all those who are guilty of unfair competition are necessarily poor translators. Not paying any of the mandatory dues, taxes and contributions does not mean you are professionally incompetent, any more than dutifully complying with the law makes you a good translator.
All the same, bona fide professional translators would naturally like to put an end to these practices, and have been trying to do so over the years through various channels: on an individual basis, via their professional organisations and by lobbying the authorities on the issue. They believe that every effort must be made to stamp out unfair competition, especially when, as is often the case, it goes hand in hand with downright incompetence.
It is only if all the market players share the tax and contributions burden equally that all translators can play on a level field. But this is no easy task, for three simple reasons:
1. Too many people consider that having "done foreign languages at school" is sufficient qualification for translating - especially if there happens to be available a technical dictionary of the particular subject area on hand.
2. Some work providers are quite happy to turn a blind eye to the fact that the translator is blatantly undercutting going market rates by not paying the relevant taxes and charges on the grounds that "it's no skin off my nose is it?"
3. Unregistered translators include both people whose annual turnover is below the contributions threshold, and those who deliberately avoid paying tax and contributions on what they earn from their translations. Those are more often than not translators with another main source of income.
2.5 'Invisible' translators
In many companies, persons doing translations may be employed under a number of different job descriptions (e.g. bilingual secretary, documentation manager, etc.), even when they are qualified translators, simply because the company does not recognise translation as a separate professional skill. This causes immense frustration for those involved because they feel that their qualifications and their work are not recognised for what they are worth (a feeling usually confirmed by their monthly pay slip) and the translations produced are not given the consideration they deserve by the managers who commission the work.
In this kind of business context, translations are also frequently carried out by people with some vague knowledge of languages but lacking any kind of training or qualification in translation. It is a well known fact that, in many companies, translations are done by whoever happens to be free or willing to do the work: the manager's personal secretary, the trainee from the marketing department who happens to have spent two months abroad, an engineer or technician who is "perfectly bilingual"... Translations can thus go unnoticed until the day when the time-bomb of non-quality goes off the day a poor translation returns with a vengeance... having caused loss of business and customer complaints.
2.6 Special cases
A comprehensive overview of translators at work must include those referred to as 'second-job', 'part-time', 'occasional' or 'remote' translators.
Second-job translators
The 'second-job' translator works in another professional capacity (e.g. as a teacher, lecturer, army officer, author, engineer, etc.) as well as working as a translator.
The number of 'second-job' translators varies from country to country, and very much depends on national or local tax systems, mandatory contributions and whether one person is allowed to hold two or more jobs at a time. In some countries, for instance, this is possible only as long as the translator is registered with the relevant contributions authorities and is not breaching his employment contract (public servants, for instance, should in theory apply for authorisation to avoid conflicts of interests).
Part-time translators
The part-time translator is someone whose main occupation is translating, but who chooses not to work full-time in that profession. The part-time translator usually is a freelance or salaried translator who has decided to spend more time with wife (or husband) and kids and who incidentally belongs to a household with more than one income - given the average translator's income levels, it is unlikely that a sole breadwinner would willingly opt to work part-time... The sad joke has it that quite a few translators do, albeit unwillingly, work part-time.
Occasional translators
'Occasional' translators are people who do not rely on translation for a living and who only carry out translation work on an irregular and occasional basis. They cannot therefore be considered, strictly speaking, as professional translators.
Remote translators
'Remote' translators do not make up a category perse. They are salaried translators who do not work on their employer's premises. All freelance translators, by definition, are 'remote' translators, unless they happen to be working on a client's premises for the duration of a particular job.
2.7 Distribution
The numbers of translators in each of the above categories are unknown. All we know is how those numbers vary.
The number of freelance translators is growing very fast, for quite obvious reasons:
- becoming a freelance translator is an open proposition in most countries, where no particular legal or administrative restriction applies,
- anyone with some knowledge of languages will readily feel encouraged to set up shop as a freelance translator,
- no heavy investment is needed - more especially as translators can work from home,
- everyone assumes (wrongly) that the Internet is some kind of'work providing' system, that all you need is a (fast) connexion, and that offers will come pouring in. This does work for some people, but not for everyone and not all the time.
- in the face of escalating personnel (and other) costs, many translation companies have given up, thus sending their former employees out on the freelance market. The same also happens with mergers and mergers have been frequent over the past ten years or so.
- there are so many training programmes and graduates all over the place that there is a glut of young translators or would-be translators who cannot find salaried positions and therefore have no alternative but to do it freelance (and cheap too!),
- to get a salaried job, a translator needs expertise and skills way beyond those required for 'just translating'. This is because the added-value that translation companies and agencies aim at lies in whatever has to be done before and after the translating in the traditional sense of the word and that calls for new 'value-added' skills.
At the same time, the number ofin-house translators is also on the increase. Except that their profile has changed. In fact, people working in the translation industry are mostly translators by training but not necessarily employed as translators - they work in multilingual multimedia communication engineering. Most of them, of course, translate, but many are expected to do whatever the freelancers do not do (either because they will not, or because they cannot, or because they are not asked to). They do what brings in the added value and money, upstream of, or downstream from the translating/transfer phase. They also act as project managers or as quality controllers and revisers for those jobs that freelancers do carry out and also as developers of new tools and processes or even webmasters or content managers.
So, the number of salaried people in the translation industry is also rising, at about the same rate, but the jobs are for translators with special localisation skills, special subtitling or dubbing skills, special IT skills, special project management skills, special terminology or language engineering skills, special post-editing skills (since, as we said, automatic translation is back mostly for cost-cutting reasons), special quality control and upgrading skills and special financial and accounting or management skills. Not to forget, of course, the commercial staff on whom translation companies depend for their survival.
3. Type of service and work organisation
3.1 'Pure' translation vs. extended service
3.1.1 Pure translation
'Pure' translation is when the translator simply deals with the actual transfer from source to target language (and culture). This means the translator just carries out the standard operations required in translating: information searches, data retrieval, terminology searches, translation, and finally proof-reading. Translators actually do 'pure' translation when they work in a team where other operators carry out the upstream and downstream stages of the process (see below: team work) and they can concentrate on the 'text translating' part.
3.1.2 Extended service
Translators may disassemble Web sites or software packages, write down scripts, detect time-codes, cue the subtitles, align a new translation with existing memories, create dictionaries, 'clone' Web sites after translating their contents, burn a CD-Rom, prepare a translation for printing or for publication, and much more. The service provided is then 'extended' or 'enhanced' and the translator's work organisation will of course be radically different, in particular because it involves using a wider range of tools.
3.2 Single translator vs. multiple translators
A translation may be carried out by one translator working single-handed or by a team of translators.
3.2.1 Single translator
In most cases, a translation will be carried out by a single translator, working alone. This does not mean that the translator is the only person concerned: it means the translator is the only person concerned with the translating activity including the proofreading.
3.2.2 Multiple translators
In some cases, the sheer volume of the translation and/or the tight deadline mean that the work can only be done by a team of translators. There are two possibilities:
- batch translation;
- multiple-pass translation.
Batch translation means splitting up the document or the family of documents in a job contract between several translators. The work may either be carried out in parallel and simultaneously or consecutively.
- Parallel or simultaneous translation means the different translators translate their respective batches in the same time interval. The main problem is terminological, phraseological and stylistic consistency between the different batches. This can be achieved upstream by making sure the resources or raw materials (terminology, phraseology, models, and memories) are made available to all the translators and validated and harmonised before the translation starts. It can be achieved downstream by harmonising the translations during the proof-reading process. It is essential in any case that all the translators concerned be duly advised that other translators are working on different batches of the same job.
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