| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | The ethics of translation Thread poster: Selkie
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| There is always bias | Oct 8, 2007 |
Heidi C wrote:
One thing the code of ethics of the profession would DEFINITELY not allow you to do is to modify the text in any way or translate following your own bias.
This sounds good in theory, but it is actually a silly statement if you think further. We always impose some form of interpretation or bias onto the text, even if we don't know it. What you're saying is that it is okay to do it unconsciously but not okay to do it deliberately. In other words, it is more acceptable to impose one's bias onto a text in ignorance than on purpose.
Don't you agree?
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| A similar thread | Oct 8, 2007 |
Selkie wrote:
I am stuck since I have already agreed to take the work, but feel like I am participating in mild fraud...
A similar thread recently:
http://www.proz.com/topic/84842
| | | | | Now do you see the best part of being a freelancer? | Oct 8, 2007 |
I agree that it would certainly be unethical to "doctor" the text. If you accept a translation job, you are obliged to translate it as it's written.
However, you are certainly free to cancel the job. You're not "stuck" because you agreed to accept the job. You're a freelance translator, not a newly enlisted soldier. You are free to resign if you feel that your participation in such an enterprise would compromise your ethical standards. I've had to do it on a couple of occasio... See more I agree that it would certainly be unethical to "doctor" the text. If you accept a translation job, you are obliged to translate it as it's written.
However, you are certainly free to cancel the job. You're not "stuck" because you agreed to accept the job. You're a freelance translator, not a newly enlisted soldier. You are free to resign if you feel that your participation in such an enterprise would compromise your ethical standards. I've had to do it on a couple of occasions for reasons very similar to yours. I simply tell the client that I cannot participate in any activity that would violate my Hippocratic Oath. It gives me a good out, but you can choose your ethical code of choice.
The worst that can happen is you don't receive any other offers from that client. The good karma you've sown will come back to you tenfold.
SaludoZ! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Four issues (two by two) | Oct 8, 2007 |
Selkie wrote:
1. I am stuck since I have already agreed to take the work, but feel like I am participating in mild fraud...
2. Can I use the slight leeway that language gives me to make the statements in English less deliberately misleading than the origional text?
There are two sets of two issues involved here. The first set is the balance between two types of responsibility, and the second is how much you can get away with.
1. On the one hand, you have a responsibility towards your client, but on the other hand, you have a responsibility towards the world. The balance between these two is the stuff of philosophical midnight discussions about ethics.
I think you should decide in each case where the one responsibility starts weighing heavier than the other. From what you've said, it sounds to me like the line has already been crossed and your responsibility towards the world is screaming louder than that of the client.
2. You live in a country/world with laws, and those laws can be regarded as the basic set of moral values of your culture, whether you like it or not. It is assumed that what is illegal is immoral, and that what is legal is moral, and that this applies to anyone doing business in your country (or anywhere in the world from where you accept work). This may sound harsh, but the at the end of the day the thing that broadly determines whether a job is moral or immoral, is whether it is legal or illegal.
You are free, however, to hold a different set of moral values than that of your country or that of your client's country, but the question is how far you're willing to go to hold to it. Are you prepared to accept financial and social penalties for your beliefs?
This then, should be your attitude with regard to the job in question: If the company is doing nothing illegal, then their actions are not immoral by the standards of the culture/country/world that you and your client shares... but if they are immoral by your own personal standards, then you should be prepared to suffer for your beliefs.
You have accepted the job, and you must complete it as best you can. If the job is illegal, then you are under no obligation to complete it, and you are obligated to take steps to see that justice is done. If the job is not illegal, but you don't want to do it for whatever reason, then you must offer reasonable compensation to the client for your failure to honour your side of the agreement.
What you cannot do, is to expect the client to suffer in this business arrangement simply because your moral beliefs are different from that which is generally accepted in the culture that you share with the client. Remember, there is no way the client could have known that your moral values are different from the ones that are broadly acceptable in his culture.
Having morals takes guts.
[Edited at 2007-10-08 21:04]
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Ruth Luna
Peru
Local time: 01:58
English to Spanish
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Selkie wrote:
What I mean by leeway is what we all do every day: choosing between the phrases "shown to be effective" and "proven to be effective", for example. Both acceptable translations of the origional German, but each with a slightly different flavour.
Why not discussing this very matter with your client? What would THEY feel would convey better what they are trying to express?
In my experience, not even conventional medicine talks about procedures "proven to be effective" per se, but "proven to be effective in most cases". As far as I know, absolutes are not welcome in medicine, precisely because they are not realistic.
This could give you a more accurate idea of your client's ethics, and if in the end you find that their ethics don't match yours, then you know what to do if they contact you for similar projects in the future.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Being free is no excuse for being dishonest | Oct 8, 2007 |
Dr. Jason Faulkner wrote:
However, you are certainly free to cancel the job. You're not "stuck" because you agreed to accept the job. ... The worst that can happen is you don't receive any other offers from that client. The good karma you've sown will come back to you tenfold.
I disagree strongly.
A contract is legally binding, and the terms of a contract can only be changed with both parties' consent (and in a few other cases where law, not personal preference, come into play), but a contract can't simply be cancelled by just one of the parties.
By the time a translator starts translating a job, it can be reasonably assumed that the offer and acceptance of the offer had taken place, and that a binding agreement between the translator and his client is already in place.
True, it may be very difficult for a client to get redress if the translator decides unilaterally to cancel the contract, but it remains bad to do so (possibly even illegal in some countries, even if the odds of you getting caught are slim).
| | | | Heidi C
Local time: 02:58
English to Spanish
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Samuel Murray wrote: Heidi C wrote:
One thing the code of ethics of the profession would DEFINITELY not allow you to do is to modify the text in any way or translate following your own bias. This sounds good in theory, but it is actually a silly statement if you think further. We always impose some form of interpretation or bias onto the text, even if we don't know it. What you're saying is that it is okay to do it unconsciously but not okay to do it deliberately. In other words, it is more acceptable to impose one's bias onto a text in ignorance than on purpose. Don't you agree?
Just a quote from the ATA code of professional conduct :
"I will endeavor to translate or interpret the original message faithfully, to satisfy the needs of the end user(s)."
(you can read the whole thing at
http://www.atanet.org//aboutus/committees_ethics.php)
As a translator, you are the one who makes the final decisions on the delivery of the translated text. And you have to be aware of this and not impose your interpretation or bias to the text.
Actually, the translator shouldn't be imposing any interpretation or bias onto the text. You have to check and double and triple check to make sure you don't. If you know you always do it, you should try and see how to avoid it!
Of course you will occasionally make a mistake or unwittingly pick a word that might change something in the translation. You are human. But you must avoid doing so to the "best of your abilities" (which is also quoting what an interpreter says when being sworn in at court).
If you are in a situation where you are AWARE that you might make a mistake, be it because you are lacking knowledge of the language or the topic, you do not have the resources to do the best job, or another reason (which would include knowingly not being able to express in the target language what you have understood to be the exact meaning transmitted in the original), that would be unethical.
One thing is to set yourself high standards and aim towards reaching them, another is saying: "well, there is bias and mistranslations and mistakes anyhow, so who will know, notice or care?"
| | | | | Follow your conscience | Oct 9, 2007 |
I agree completely with John Cutler. A couple times I was hired to translate texts I absolutely did not agree with. The difference with you was that before I got the jobs, I knew the topics, so I rejected them before even starting with the translation. Knowing what's the subject about beforehand is very important (as well as the deadline and pricing).
A text should not affect deeply your conscience and your principles. What is worse, you are not translating a fairy tale, a joke or a... See more I agree completely with John Cutler. A couple times I was hired to translate texts I absolutely did not agree with. The difference with you was that before I got the jobs, I knew the topics, so I rejected them before even starting with the translation. Knowing what's the subject about beforehand is very important (as well as the deadline and pricing).
A text should not affect deeply your conscience and your principles. What is worse, you are not translating a fairy tale, a joke or a song. It's a medical text involving lives of people which is an extremely delicate topic. If the writer is a liar, you don't have to be one too.
What can you do? You can stop with the job wherever you are. Explain your points of view with good arguments to the client, so you can be paid for the work you have already done. This is called renouncing or quitting a job, and it's valid whether you work full-time in an office or part-time as a freelancer. A secretary who is not satisfied with a certain job, can quit it at any time, even if a contract was signed between her and her boss. The client can look for any other translator elsewhere; there are always people who don't care and just do it for the money.
I am sure you are a good translator and you will probably get a nicer job of the same price or higher. ▲ Collapse
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Chun Un
Macau
Member (2007)
English to Chinese
+ ...
| Placebo effect | Oct 9, 2007 |
Selkie wrote:
But part of me wonders: who am I to say that these alternative methods don't work? None so far have been rated dangerous, just rather ridiculous, so perhaps I need to suspend my own disbelief and get on with it. A sick person's ability to clutch at medical straws may be the only hope left. And perhaps hope is always a positive thing.
As long as the methods don't do any harms, there's always something called a placebo effect which might do something good to the patient after all. But that's something we don't know either. Do your job and let the patients and/or experts judge.
| | | | Selkie
Local time: 08:58
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | Have reached a decision | Oct 9, 2007 |
Thank you all very much for your ideas and comments. They have helped me reach a decision, in conversation with the client, that I feel I can live with quite comfortably.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Much of what you say is true | Oct 9, 2007 |
Heidi C wrote:
Just a quote from the ATA code of professional conduct :
"I will endeavor to translate or interpret the original message faithfully, to satisfy the needs of the end user(s)."
Actually, this statement is rather vague and open to interpretation, but I'm not saying it is a bad statement. In fact, I agree with this item from the ATA code of conduct.
The translator must to the best of his ability (a) determine the original message and (b) determine what the needs of the end users are. These two things are sometimes *opposing*, as is the case with the text of the OP of this thread.
For example, if you're translating a flyer for a political candidate, the purpose of the flyer is to convince a voter to vote for the candidate, but the end user doesn't specifically have a need to vote for the candidate. In fact, the voter simply has a need for information. Would you then translate a flyer that uses emotional language into a flyer that uses neutral language but contains the same factual information, simply because you have determined (or guessed) that the end users have a need for a neutral flyer?
But I think we must be careful to get too theoretical about this. A good text will reflect the intent of the author, but many texts are so badly written that the translator has to make a best guess about what the author's intent may have been. I have made this type of mistake myself -- I once translated a piece of promotional material, in which all of the context suggested that the author is in favour of X, but it turned out that he was against X (even though a reader of his original text certainly would not have realised it), so I had to make some drastic changes to my translation.
Another issue that complicates the matter is slight differences in language. In a medical text, you may find the line "research has shown that..." and to an English reader this means that some of the research that has been done supports the fact. The direct (and probably also correct) translation into Afrikaans would be "navorsing toon aan dat", but the undertone of that statement to an Afrikaans reader is that most of the research that has been done supports the fact. However, the inference in both languages is slight, so the translator has to decide whether the English and the Afrikaans is close enough to each other for the purpose of that particular passage of text. What if the client had intended to mean "most research" and what if the translator decided to specifically use the word "some" in the Afrikaans...?
One thing is to set yourself high standards and aim towards reaching them, another is saying: "well, there is bias and mistranslations and mistakes anyhow, so who will know, notice or care?"
I agree completely. We should always endeavor to produce work that is of the highest quality and not have an attitude of "accidents happen, so let them happen".
[Edited at 2007-10-09 07:12]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Different countries have different laws | Oct 9, 2007 |
Cristina Heraud-van Tol wrote:
This is called renouncing or quitting a job, and it's valid whether you work full-time in an office or part-time as a freelancer. A secretary who is not satisfied with a certain job, can quit it at any time, even if a contract was signed between her and her boss.
This is not really true. Well, it may be true in some countries, but not in all.
In some countries an employer can fire an employee with little or no notice period, and the same applies to an employee quitting a job. In my country, an employer cannot fire an employee without a certain notice period, and the same applies to an employee quitting a job -- you can't just walk out on a job (well, you can, but you risk being sued, and the law is not exactly on your side in such a scenario).
In some countries, a deal is a deal, until one of the parties decide to change it. In my country, a deal is a deal until both parties agree to change it.
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 08:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Using excuses to get out | Oct 9, 2007 |
Heidi C wrote:
(Actually, this would be a valid reason supported by the code of ethics of the profession: you are not qualified to translate the text because even unconsciously you could end up modifying the text...)
Heidi, I'm not picking on you, but... I believe that the above quote is a bad catch-all excuse for quitting on a job. There is *always* the chance that you may "unconsciously modify the text", therefore you are always "not qualified to translate the text".
Instead of trying to deceive both yourself and the client by saying "My unconscious makes me unqualified", rather just be honest and say "My conscience makes me unqualified".
Pun not intended
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Selkie wrote:
But part of me wonders: who am I to say that these alternative methods don't work? None so far have been rated dangerous, just rather ridiculous, so perhaps I need to suspend my own disbelief and get on with it. A sick person's ability to clutch at medical straws may be the only hope left. And perhaps hope is always a positive thing.
That was my first thought, too, when I read your original post... Of course, everyone has their personal ethics, but I think this is a special case, as it's more or less only your *opinion* that they are dubious practices and don't work... And like someone said, there are two sides to that.
It would be interesting to know what kind of conclusion you reached, if you don't mind telling.
[Edited at 2007-10-09 16:44]
| | | | Selkie
Local time: 08:58
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | I am finishing the work with one or two alterations | Oct 9, 2007 |
No, I don't mind sharing. I spoke to the customer (once I finally got ahold of the man) and expressed my concerns about two areas in particular where I felt the origional pooh-poohed conventional treatment in favour of experimental methods that are very controversial (I did not rely on my own tendancy to dismiss the less than scientific, but took my information from what I felt were reliable sources).
I said that if I translated those particular parts as I understood them, I was wo... See more No, I don't mind sharing. I spoke to the customer (once I finally got ahold of the man) and expressed my concerns about two areas in particular where I felt the origional pooh-poohed conventional treatment in favour of experimental methods that are very controversial (I did not rely on my own tendancy to dismiss the less than scientific, but took my information from what I felt were reliable sources).
I said that if I translated those particular parts as I understood them, I was worried that patients would not seek the care they needed, and felt very uncomfortable. This left him an opening to claim that I had misunderstood (whether he meant it or not I do not know) and assure me that such treatment was only meant as a suppliment to, not replacement of, more conventional treatment. So I asked if I could add a similar explaination for clarity. After a rather long and disconcerting silence, I got a yes. I will check the site when it is up and running to see if that line was taken out, but feel I have done what I could to feel alright working on the project.
Stepping away was simply out of the question at this point due to the customer's time constraints. ▲ Collapse
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