Ethics in Translation: Key Considerations

Which role do ethics play in translation? Coming up! Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse! I hope you're all doing well and I hope you enjoyed last week's Day in the Life video. They are super fun to make so let me know in the comments if you like them and I can do part three and four and five of them. It could be a cool series I think. Today's video is a sit-down video. I'm going to talk about a topic that I wanted to talk for a long time. It's ethics in translation. And this week actually I got a comment from Mel. Mel is very involved in this channel. I'm sure you're watching right now. So thanks so much for your support. It means a lot. She wrote, hey Adrian, I have a question for you. Do you have a golden rules about your job? Do you simply translate everything? I question myself about ethical considerations. Very great question. Thanks so much Mel. So let's talk about ethics. What does it mean to be ethical? So I did some research and I'm gonna spy a lot here on my screen. Apologies for that, but I really wanted to get... to inform myself if there is actually a set of rules, ethical rules for translators to follow. And apparently there are a lot, so you can do your own research and look into them. I picked one here from the French Literary Translators Association. ATLF is their acronym. I'm gonna link everything down below. And these rules are actually from 1988, so they're very old. But when I read through them, they still hold very much weight. They still apply to decisions that I make a lot. What I noticed, you can really split the ethical decisions of translators into two separate realms. The question before you accept the job about ethical convictions that you have, And then the ethics on its own while you're working on the job, right? These are two different things that you have to consider. So let's look at the first one first, because this doesn't really apply to the rules yet. The first one is really about do you accept any kind of jobs? My rights to simply translate everything, right? And this will come up when you manage to accumulate clients that work in a broad field. You know, you get asked a lot of different topics to translate. I do myself as well, right? Sometimes I get... I get asked sometimes quite weird things right once I worked for an Australian underwear company that made very like provocative men's underwear and this was the very beginning of my career and I mean I found it funny like I'm not offended by that but you know in certain countries where for example it's not allowed it's not even legal to be gay right working on something like this would could offend a translator very heavily right it can be for religious reasons it can be for personal reasons if maybe you have bad experiences in your family with alcohol with drugs and you don't want to work on for an alcohol brand you don't want to promote smoking for example or like oil companies drilling things just that these are commonly known ethical dilemmas that translators face right I just recently worked on a whole campaign about smoking, well not a campaign, it was a survey about smoking and about e-cigarettes and stuff. And I could see how some people wouldn't want to work on that. I, for myself, I would never work on something to promote smoking, but this was different because it was a survey that was made to interview smokers that want, or not that want to quit, but just a subset of smokers. And then the survey kind of let them through. it filtered out the people that don't want to stop smoking and the ones who want to quit continue to survey so i felt like this is something that i want to be part of but there are definitely things that i would never accept to translate and i don't need to openly tell you what exactly these convictions are right because as i said it's all personal just really think to yourself when a job comes in am i comfortable with this Do I want my name to be behind that? That can also happen because maybe if it's a big publication, your name might even be in there as the translator. And if you don't really believe in the subject matter, you should be careful with that. I'm not saying you shouldn't take it because especially in the beginning, you just want to make money. I also wrote with Mel a little bit and she said, I want to say no, I wouldn't go against my convictions, but if they really offer a very lucrative project, In the beginning you might just do it to earn money right because if you don't do it I mean that's the whole fallacy right if I don't if I don't fly in the plane someone else will so the planet gets polluted anyway it's kind of a non yeah it's kind of a logical fallacy in this argument if I don't translate someone else will but I know what you mean I know what you I know what's the thought process behind that right don't feel bad about saying no if it goes into against your ethics right just be clear about that be honest if you if you feel comfortable with that if you don't want to disclose i don't know maybe you don't want to disclose your religious beliefs to a client so you can just say i don't have any availability this month or this week i can't help you with this project perfectly fine no one no one will ask anything but if you want to make sure that you don't get offered this this topic again and again just tell them you know i'm sorry for this and this reason i don't feel comfortable working on this topic you If it's a whole company that you want to work with, right? If you know of a clothing company that has some shady dealings in the background, that maybe uses child labor. If you know of some very big corporations, I'm not going to name them, that destroy the groundwater in Central Africa, right? If you don't want to work with them, like I do sometimes, I don't want to work with them. uh just completely tell either the pm probably you don't get in touch with these big corporations as a freelancer on its own usually it's through an agency or through a communications department or a supply chain company just tell them i'm not up for working with this client right i i did this a few times and then the pm usually says oh i totally understand thanks for letting me know and that's it that's the one part of ethics right the one before the job now let's look at what you have to ethically do correctly when you accept the job. Now this has nothing to do anymore with sensitive topics, right? This is just in everyday jobs there are certain rules of ethics you need to apply. This is where I would like to introduce you to the 10 rules of the ATLF. So the first one here on the list is translators must have adequate linguistic competence. I always say on my channel only Advertise yourself as a professional translator and charge money if you feel comfortable, if you have overcome imposter syndrome to an extent, if you can say, hey, I'm good enough, I'm better than most of the people in the world in this specific thing, I feel comfortable charging money for this service, right? Because if you don't believe in yourself, you're not gonna do good work and then it's ethically not feasible or not justified to charge someone money for. That's actually, it seems very straightforward, but that's a big, big, big point, right, in the industry. Unfortunately, people do everything to make a living. I understand why, of course, but especially in English, especially in Spanish, so many people offer services not in their native tongue and it just gets muddled. And yeah, make sure you know exactly how good you are, that you trust yourself and then charge money for it. Translators must have knowledge of the pertinent subject matter. Make sure to only accept jobs if you feel comfortable doing it. Don't accept any surgical machinery jobs if you are specialized in legal. It doesn't make sense. Don't work on a sports retail project if you are specialized in heavy oil drilling. Because again it goes back to the first one. You're not competent enough to accept this job. This goes against ethics. If you did this in another more regulated job, you would even commit a crime, right? If you do things you're not competent for. So be careful with that. Number three, translators may refuse to translate a document conveying a message they do not agree with. That's the first part that I already talked about, right? If you don't feel comfortable working on it, you can of course refuse it. Sorry, my SD card was full again. I should really start checking that before I start filming. Okay, where was I? I think the third one, right? Yeah, to refuse work. We discussed that in the beginning. No question. Number four, translators may only alter a text with the author's consent. Very important. In other words, be accurate, right? Don't just think you can change what the author wants to say just to make it sound better. That's very important. Sometimes you have like a metaphor in mind in German or in your native language or maybe another way to say something. But always think of the double meaning, right? You don't want to put words into someone's mouth. Let me think of an example quick. It's a very basic example. But if someone says, you know, the show was not bad. and you then write you then translate it as the show was good which technically could mean the same thing right not bad equals good but it's it can be a very different connotation right not bad can you even mean two things right someone can say oh the show was not bad or someone can say wow this show was not bad right that's a very different not bad and then translating it with good with good maybe it doesn't do it justice so these things you really You have to pay really good attention to the source text. Always ask for more references if you don't have enough context. That's actually one of the next points coming up. So be accurate, definitely. Number five, translators may demand the related documents necessary for the translation. As I just said, always ask for context, right? Don't just translate. If you only have a five-word job, it can change the whole thing if you have the context around it, right? Don't think just because something is short. It can just be done on the fly just next to another job, right? Context matters more than in any other profession I feel like. Number six. Translators must respect privacy rules. That is so important, becomes more and more important with things like DeepL becoming very popular. I'm not against using it. I use it myself sometimes. Just make sure to buy the license if you use a tool like this. I can't stress it enough. Whatever you put online is there to stay right if you use a service for free then you are the price you are the product and if you put a client's text into deep l then the system uh the whole ai system eats this up right and uses it to then produce better and better content so in a way you are giving away information that is not yours to then make you obsolete in the future so be really careful with these with this kind of stuff and always respect the privacy rules that your client gives you For some people I work on like very secure servers they even give me email addresses and I only communicate with the specific email address with this client right so everything is safe and then don't go out of your way and and don't respect these rules because they're there for a reason right. Make sure you backup your files don't work in public without a VPN if you want to use a VPN make sure to click the link in the description I'm partnered with NordVPN, they have a very good deal for you. So if you are someone that works in cafes a lot, make sure to make use of this because it's so important to have a secure network when you work, not in your own home network. And also your home network should be secured anyways as well. So privacy becomes more and more important. Pay attention to that. Next up, translators must ensure that their name appears on book translations. That's only relevant to literary translations, but there it is very relevant. It's actually an open discourse that I learned in my specialized episode. You can click here if you're interested in book translation. There and also the next point is similar to that. In the case of code translation, the names of all translators must appear. This happens in book translations, this happens also in academic articles. They're usually also noted, the translators there. So if you want, if you feel like you should be recognized, credited for your work, for your translation, make sure you let your clients know. It's a right you have and you could definitely ask for that. The last one on this list is kind of a funny one. I haven't heard of this and I'm not sure what could be meant by that. Translators must refuse work detrimental to a fellow translator. If you don't know what detrimental means, I also had to look it up, it basically means that is bad, that could harm another translator. So you must refuse things that could harm another translator. Yes, please do that, please don't harm any other translators, but it's a strange point to include there. Anyways, the ones above were more than enough and what I would personally add to this list is be professional always be professional be kind in your communication be up to date with your business development invest in things that that make you a better translator stay up to date in your in your target language in your specializations because that's also part of the ethics right you don't want to fall behind in the latest developments and then not be able to to offer very good translations just because you don't invest in CPD. Another point I wrote up is be sensitive to cultures, right? Be very culturally mindful. That's something we have a very strong notch to anyways as translators and that's important. Don't assume other people's opinions. If you think someone is saying something that's untrue in a source, don't just correct it in the target, right? You are there. You are the gateway between source and target. You're not there to correct or to put words into someone's mouth. If you really think something is untrue, if someone maybe makes a claim that you know is not true in sports, if I translate an article about a game and they say, this guy scored the last goal and I know it's not true, someone else scored it, don't just correct it in the target. That's not a good look, right? Always go back to the client, tell them, hey. I know that's also good for you right because you can say I noticed there's a mistake in the source you really need to change the source I should I directly adapt the target or do you want me do you want to send me a new source don't just change things beforehand and then inform the client that's not good and that's of course it's very last minute and it needs to go out immediately I have a client that sends like push notifications to phones and sometimes they have to go out immediately after again and there it makes sense to really adapt it if you are 100% sure that you're right you can change it there but you need to have the trust from the client first. Yeah so always stay impartial don't get offended by things it's you are not there to to judge someone and you're not there to be judged you're there to be a gateway between one person speaking one language and another person speaking the other language you want them to exactly understand what the person means right there you go This is my take on ethics in translation. Let me know down below if there are things that you would never translate. You don't need to tell me why. This is your personal thing. Just let me know if you have thought of this thing. Extremely interesting topic I find and I'm happy Mel reached out and I could make this video. I hope you enjoy it too. I'm just gonna film right after that another video so I'm a bit ahead again. I hope you enjoyed it and I see you next week with another completely different video. I see you then. Take care.

Which role do ethics play in translation? Coming up! Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse!

I hope you're all doing well and I hope you enjoyed last week's Day in the Life video. They are super fun to make so let me know in the comments if you like them and I can do part three and four and five of them. It could be a cool series I think. Today's video is a sit-down video.

I'm going to talk about a topic that I wanted to talk for a long time. It's ethics in translation. And this week actually I got a comment from Mel.

Mel is very involved in this channel. I'm sure you're watching right now. So thanks so much for your support. It means a lot. She wrote, hey Adrian, I have a question for you.

Do you have a golden rules about your job? Do you simply translate everything? I question myself about ethical considerations. Very great question.

Thanks so much Mel. So let's talk about ethics. What does it mean to be ethical? So I did some research and I'm gonna spy a lot here on my screen.

Apologies for that, but I really wanted to get... to inform myself if there is actually a set of rules, ethical rules for translators to follow. And apparently there are a lot, so you can do your own research and look into them. I picked one here from the French Literary Translators Association.

ATLF is their acronym. I'm gonna link everything down below. And these rules are actually from 1988, so they're very old. But when I read through them, they still hold very much weight. They still apply to decisions that I make a lot.

What I noticed, you can really split the ethical decisions of translators into two separate realms. The question before you accept the job about ethical convictions that you have, And then the ethics on its own while you're working on the job, right? These are two different things that you have to consider. So let's look at the first one first, because this doesn't really apply to the rules yet.

The first one is really about do you accept any kind of jobs? My rights to simply translate everything, right? And this will come up when you manage to accumulate clients that work in a broad field. You know, you get asked a lot of different topics to translate.

I do myself as well, right? Sometimes I get... I get asked sometimes quite weird things right once I worked for an Australian underwear company that made very like provocative men's underwear and this was the very beginning of my career and I mean I found it funny like I'm not offended by that but you know in certain countries where for example it's not allowed it's not even legal to be gay right working on something like this would could offend a translator very heavily right it can be for religious reasons it can be for personal reasons if maybe you have bad experiences in your family with alcohol with drugs and you don't want to work on for an alcohol brand you don't want to promote smoking for example or like oil companies drilling things just that these are commonly known ethical dilemmas that translators face right I just recently worked on a whole campaign about smoking, well not a campaign, it was a survey about smoking and about e-cigarettes and stuff.

And I could see how some people wouldn't want to work on that. I, for myself, I would never work on something to promote smoking, but this was different because it was a survey that was made to interview smokers that want, or not that want to quit, but just a subset of smokers. And then the survey kind of let them through.

it filtered out the people that don't want to stop smoking and the ones who want to quit continue to survey so i felt like this is something that i want to be part of but there are definitely things that i would never accept to translate and i don't need to openly tell you what exactly these convictions are right because as i said it's all personal just really think to yourself when a job comes in am i comfortable with this Do I want my name to be behind that? That can also happen because maybe if it's a big publication, your name might even be in there as the translator. And if you don't really believe in the subject matter, you should be careful with that. I'm not saying you shouldn't take it because especially in the beginning, you just want to make money. I also wrote with Mel a little bit and she said, I want to say no, I wouldn't go against my convictions, but if they really offer a very lucrative project, In the beginning you might just do it to earn money right because if you don't do it I mean that's the whole fallacy right if I don't if I don't fly in the plane someone else will so the planet gets polluted anyway it's kind of a non yeah it's kind of a logical fallacy in this argument if I don't translate someone else will but I know what you mean I know what you I know what's the thought process behind that right don't feel bad about saying no if it goes into against your ethics right just be clear about that be honest if you if you feel comfortable with that if you don't want to disclose i don't know maybe you don't want to disclose your religious beliefs to a client so you can just say i don't have any availability this month or this week i can't help you with this project perfectly fine no one no one will ask anything but if you want to make sure that you don't get offered this this topic again and again just tell them you know i'm sorry for this and this reason i don't feel comfortable working on this topic you If it's a whole company that you want to work with, right?

If you know of a clothing company that has some shady dealings in the background, that maybe uses child labor. If you know of some very big corporations, I'm not going to name them, that destroy the groundwater in Central Africa, right? If you don't want to work with them, like I do sometimes, I don't want to work with them.

uh just completely tell either the pm probably you don't get in touch with these big corporations as a freelancer on its own usually it's through an agency or through a communications department or a supply chain company just tell them i'm not up for working with this client right i i did this a few times and then the pm usually says oh i totally understand thanks for letting me know and that's it that's the one part of ethics right the one before the job now let's look at what you have to ethically do correctly when you accept the job. Now this has nothing to do anymore with sensitive topics, right? This is just in everyday jobs there are certain rules of ethics you need to apply. This is where I would like to introduce you to the 10 rules of the ATLF.

So the first one here on the list is translators must have adequate linguistic competence. I always say on my channel only Advertise yourself as a professional translator and charge money if you feel comfortable, if you have overcome imposter syndrome to an extent, if you can say, hey, I'm good enough, I'm better than most of the people in the world in this specific thing, I feel comfortable charging money for this service, right? Because if you don't believe in yourself, you're not gonna do good work and then it's ethically not feasible or not justified to charge someone money for. That's actually, it seems very straightforward, but that's a big, big, big point, right, in the industry.

Unfortunately, people do everything to make a living. I understand why, of course, but especially in English, especially in Spanish, so many people offer services not in their native tongue and it just gets muddled. And yeah, make sure you know exactly how good you are, that you trust yourself and then charge money for it. Translators must have knowledge of the pertinent subject matter. Make sure to only accept jobs if you feel comfortable doing it.

Don't accept any surgical machinery jobs if you are specialized in legal. It doesn't make sense. Don't work on a sports retail project if you are specialized in heavy oil drilling.

Because again it goes back to the first one. You're not competent enough to accept this job. This goes against ethics.

If you did this in another more regulated job, you would even commit a crime, right? If you do things you're not competent for. So be careful with that. Number three, translators may refuse to translate a document conveying a message they do not agree with.

That's the first part that I already talked about, right? If you don't feel comfortable working on it, you can of course refuse it. Sorry, my SD card was full again.

I should really start checking that before I start filming. Okay, where was I? I think the third one, right? Yeah, to refuse work.

We discussed that in the beginning. No question. Number four, translators may only alter a text with the author's consent.

Very important. In other words, be accurate, right? Don't just think you can change what the author wants to say just to make it sound better.

That's very important. Sometimes you have like a metaphor in mind in German or in your native language or maybe another way to say something. But always think of the double meaning, right?

You don't want to put words into someone's mouth. Let me think of an example quick. It's a very basic example.

But if someone says, you know, the show was not bad. and you then write you then translate it as the show was good which technically could mean the same thing right not bad equals good but it's it can be a very different connotation right not bad can you even mean two things right someone can say oh the show was not bad or someone can say wow this show was not bad right that's a very different not bad and then translating it with good with good maybe it doesn't do it justice so these things you really You have to pay really good attention to the source text. Always ask for more references if you don't have enough context.

That's actually one of the next points coming up. So be accurate, definitely. Number five, translators may demand the related documents necessary for the translation.

As I just said, always ask for context, right? Don't just translate. If you only have a five-word job, it can change the whole thing if you have the context around it, right? Don't think just because something is short.

It can just be done on the fly just next to another job, right? Context matters more than in any other profession I feel like. Number six. Translators must respect privacy rules. That is so important, becomes more and more important with things like DeepL becoming very popular.

I'm not against using it. I use it myself sometimes. Just make sure to buy the license if you use a tool like this.

I can't stress it enough. Whatever you put online is there to stay right if you use a service for free then you are the price you are the product and if you put a client's text into deep l then the system uh the whole ai system eats this up right and uses it to then produce better and better content so in a way you are giving away information that is not yours to then make you obsolete in the future so be really careful with these with this kind of stuff and always respect the privacy rules that your client gives you For some people I work on like very secure servers they even give me email addresses and I only communicate with the specific email address with this client right so everything is safe and then don't go out of your way and and don't respect these rules because they're there for a reason right. Make sure you backup your files don't work in public without a VPN if you want to use a VPN make sure to click the link in the description I'm partnered with NordVPN, they have a very good deal for you.

So if you are someone that works in cafes a lot, make sure to make use of this because it's so important to have a secure network when you work, not in your own home network. And also your home network should be secured anyways as well. So privacy becomes more and more important. Pay attention to that.

Next up, translators must ensure that their name appears on book translations. That's only relevant to literary translations, but there it is very relevant. It's actually an open discourse that I learned in my specialized episode. You can click here if you're interested in book translation. There and also the next point is similar to that.

In the case of code translation, the names of all translators must appear. This happens in book translations, this happens also in academic articles. They're usually also noted, the translators there. So if you want, if you feel like you should be recognized, credited for your work, for your translation, make sure you let your clients know.

It's a right you have and you could definitely ask for that. The last one on this list is kind of a funny one. I haven't heard of this and I'm not sure what could be meant by that. Translators must refuse work detrimental to a fellow translator. If you don't know what detrimental means, I also had to look it up, it basically means that is bad, that could harm another translator.

So you must refuse things that could harm another translator. Yes, please do that, please don't harm any other translators, but it's a strange point to include there. Anyways, the ones above were more than enough and what I would personally add to this list is be professional always be professional be kind in your communication be up to date with your business development invest in things that that make you a better translator stay up to date in your in your target language in your specializations because that's also part of the ethics right you don't want to fall behind in the latest developments and then not be able to to offer very good translations just because you don't invest in CPD.

Another point I wrote up is be sensitive to cultures, right? Be very culturally mindful. That's something we have a very strong notch to anyways as translators and that's important.

Don't assume other people's opinions. If you think someone is saying something that's untrue in a source, don't just correct it in the target, right? You are there. You are the gateway between source and target.

You're not there to correct or to put words into someone's mouth. If you really think something is untrue, if someone maybe makes a claim that you know is not true in sports, if I translate an article about a game and they say, this guy scored the last goal and I know it's not true, someone else scored it, don't just correct it in the target. That's not a good look, right?

Always go back to the client, tell them, hey. I know that's also good for you right because you can say I noticed there's a mistake in the source you really need to change the source I should I directly adapt the target or do you want me do you want to send me a new source don't just change things beforehand and then inform the client that's not good and that's of course it's very last minute and it needs to go out immediately I have a client that sends like push notifications to phones and sometimes they have to go out immediately after again and there it makes sense to really adapt it if you are 100% sure that you're right you can change it there but you need to have the trust from the client first. Yeah so always stay impartial don't get offended by things it's you are not there to to judge someone and you're not there to be judged you're there to be a gateway between one person speaking one language and another person speaking the other language you want them to exactly understand what the person means right there you go This is my take on ethics in translation.

Let me know down below if there are things that you would never translate. You don't need to tell me why. This is your personal thing.

Just let me know if you have thought of this thing. Extremely interesting topic I find and I'm happy Mel reached out and I could make this video. I hope you enjoy it too.

I'm just gonna film right after that another video so I'm a bit ahead again. I hope you enjoyed it and I see you next week with another completely different video. I see you then. Take care.

Transcript for:Ethics in Translation: Key Considerations

Transcript for:
Ethics in Translation: Key Considerations