People in every industry are often quick and eager to claim that what they offer is “high quality”, assured that it will give them a competitive advantage and engender trust and respect in their target market. But even if what someone offers really is justifiably “high quality” in some way, you generally don’t expect them to elaborate on the reasons why – in other words, where their supposed pride and confidence come from.
So I took the time to write this article explaining exactly how it is that the work I do – translation – is “high quality”. I went to university, so I’m sure anyone would expect me to have a high standard of literacy at the very least. But no-one speaks of a “standard of understanding”, for the perfectly simple reason that any person’s understanding of the full range of subjects and pursuits that one could experience in life, varies enormously. It is only made more complicated by the concept of “fake understanding” i.e. seemingly justifiable arguments that form the basis of myths.
But I’m not just a translator; I’m a professional translator. And this article is a piece of business marketing. And, where I’m standing, it’s fair to argue that the quality of the output of a piece of work depends on the right kind of attitude on the part of one or more people. “Attitude”… what significance and impact that word generally has. All too often, many people are quick to bring up “attitude” in connection with something important (or just accepted as important), such as working life – for example (certainly in my case), my own career as a self-employed translator. But “attitude” in relation to something important tends to be only defined by the catch-all qualities of “good” or “bad”, “positive” or “negative”; in the case of working life (among other things), “professional” or “unprofessional”, “helpful” or “unhelpful”, “courteous” or “disrespectful”. By all means discuss just how important it is to be professional, helpful and courteous in the workplace, but my argument here is that a blinkered mentality of accepting that “attitude” will always be loosely defined as either “good” or “bad”, with no actual interest in what qualifies it as such (because certain standards, rules and expectations “out there” render the particulars what they are – whatever the weight behind it), is a bad thing, because it stifles creativity and initiative. I know I certainly can’t function without creativity and initiative in my own career: creativity because of the role it plays in ensuring that the translation work I do is correct, nay definitive; initiative because, well, I’m self-employed, for God’s sake!
Yes, I’m self-employed, which leaves me inclined to discuss here the very concept of what a “professional” attitude actually means. In the case of a project requiring several people at least one of whom only cares about following the orders they are given and “ticking boxes” as they see fit, nothing more, nothing less, while remaining ignorantly blind to the situation of those they are supposed to be working with because it’s “not my problem”, a problem just may occur which no-one is prepared to deal with, as everyone searches for someone to blame (and people are all too often inclined to look for someone to blame when emotional, huh?). Even if everyone were determined to show an attitude they label as “good” while undertaking such a project, it won’t help if someone is fixated on their idea of a satisfactorily “good” attitude on their part such that it means they are precluded from understanding certain important information, or tacit developments, in the project. This is not so much co-operation as “by-operation” – a failure to “work as one”, as they say. Anyone can tackle a problem with reasonable confidence when they can be sure of all the confirmed or confirmable facts (or close enough) to begin with, but I have gotten the impression that failure to work as one encourages hindsight bias, and maybe even lack of empathy. A failure to work as one just might be the key cause of someone creating a problem that they would be incapable of remedying all by themselves. A failure to work as one is – in the bluntly honest sense of the word – unprofessional. But… part of being professional – and mature in general – is an ability to accept that one need not necessarily expect nothing but humiliation when admitting that one is to blame for something bad, depending on what the matter is.
Then there’s professional standards (or rather, the general concept of “professional standards”). If you go on my business Twitter account you’ll see me wearing a dark grey T-shirt with three horizontal stripes on it, standing next to a suburb road. That’s the thing in the workplace (certainly office jobs, and my job certainly is an office job) – I know lots of people would say that I should have dressed more formally, with a shirt and all that. I wear a T-shirt in my office all the time, to be honest, and unlike most people with as senior a professional role as me I’m not averse to enjoying a bit of chewing gum as I do the work I do for my customers. But trust me, I wouldn’t dress or behave like this in anyone’s office so readily.
To continue: certain facets of etiquette in the workplace which may strike some as pointless formalities, may be for those higher up the most comforting thing as far as the attitude and loyalty of others are concerned. I can see, now, that those with senior roles often respond negatively to “going through the motions” attitudes on the part of their subordinates, since it tends to impede the latter’s perception of what matters in their duties and leave them less inclined to take charge and make sacrifices along with their superiors whenever, if you will pardon the expression, “shit happens”. The truth is that professional standards and etiquette (or, as some might put it, stubbornly insisted practices in honour of something which may come across as but quaint) are not purely about subservience for its own sake, however strongly one may start to dispense with cheerful optimism when doing something which they maintain is obviously against their wishes. And I can certainly empathise when, in a time of a global pandemic, things are pretty much more unpredictable than ever.
Let’s take the example of respect and courtesy – in particular, how strictly these things are enforced by the sentinels at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in the USA. To get an idea of the requirements for becoming one, what their standards actually are: they really do maintain that their standard is “perfection”; their definition, not mine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QebrbHpjAac But on the subject of respect and courtesy: laugh too loudly when you’re a visitor at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the guards will immediately challenge it, saying a preset line, “It is requested that everyone maintains a level of silence and respect at all times.” Fair enough. For most people (including soldiers, if you ask me), something, like “Hey, everyone be quiet here, as a matter of respect for these dead soldiers”, without being too aggressive about it, would generally suffice. Such exact words (“hey” in particular) may hardly be impolite by any means, but I would agree that the actual quote used is more formal – closer to perfection, as it were. But anyway, I used to think that (ending up) laughing a bit too loudly in such a circumstance could and should be excused easily enough because it should be obvious that no harm would be intended; in truth, the reputation of brave dead soldiers is hardly going to be marred by something like that, which is why I can imagine someone who laughs a bit too loudly and gets criticised for lacking in respect in such a setting, getting angry at such criticism. I mean, it’s not like they decided to engage in unnecessary loud and silly “party animal” behaviour or whatever at such a location for a laugh (as if they had brought along a vuvuzela or something) – something amused them and the “disrespectful” laughter just slipped out. But then, to earn someone else’s respect often requires that you put yourself in their shoes, as they say, and not everyone is so inclined to do that. And maybe one would do well to just accept that such an episode of laughing a bit too loudly, while far from grossly inappropriate in itself, could invite behaviour that is more inappropriate if it were left unchallenged; because when a guard says “it is requested that everyone maintains a level of silence and respect at all times”, that’s what he’s doing, challenging it, and in a way that is meant to avoid giving the impression that he is rushing to judgement. Now, I don’t approve of some of the things the American military does either, but courage and honour are undeniable virtues. Not that this article is the place for siding with anyone for or against this kind of angry criticism; but, whatever you want to say about these people, the true thing deserving of angry criticism would be if the guard didn’t challenge such laughter, as it would be accepted as not only discrediting the guard himself but as a betrayal of those he is supposed to be performing the duty in question for. And he must realise that. Besides, the preset line “it is requested that everyone maintains a level of silence and respect at all times” is actually kind in that the “offender” is not singled out, and “everyone” means just that: not just the “offender” but all other visitors and indeed the guards themselves.
But let’s not forget that I’m here to discuss quality in the activity of translation, the actual work people might agree to approach me for in exchange for payment, as per the title – the work I actually do for a living. I’m going out on a limb here – talking about why people really should be convinced that my work is, as I put it, high quality / of a high standard rather than simply passable / mediocre. For a start, when writing a translation sentence I mark off all individual words in the original to show that they have been accounted for; using different colours helps to mark separable clauses and such as I do what I find to be the most helpful thing for me with the least risk of making any kind of mistake.
Recently I did a German to English translation job (although it was actually an unpaid test). But before I provide details: do you agree that the sentence, “Hanging from the wall, I saw a picture”, while grammatically correct, is also bad English because of the utterly peculiar notion it suggests in real terms (i.e. “I was hanging from the wall when I happened to see a picture”), and that the proper way to write it is “I saw a picture hanging from the wall”? There are definitely websites which cover faulty English like this. Anyway, in the aforesaid project I initially ended up writing this as my translation of one bit:
“Application developers, network administrators and consultants (for SAP systems in particular) have been among the most sought-after specialists in the IT field for years.”
Yes, this is perfectly grammatically correct English on a technical level, but to me this matter is more subtle than the one to be recognised with “Hanging from the wall, I saw a picture.” I looked at the first draft of this translation after I did it and eventually decided that, by the finer rules of English, this suggests that it is answering a hypothetical pre-established question as to exactly how long these “application developers, network administrators and consultants” have been among the most sought-after specialists in the IT field in a context of unique personal experience, and the answer just happens to be “years”. But in reality it’s not like that. I relocated the “for years” bit, thus:
“For years, application developers, network administrators and consultants (for SAP systems in particular) have been among the most sought-after specialists in the IT field.”
Such is my approach and an example of how I ensure true high quality in my translation work. I have been very vocal about matters pertinent to this in my other blogs and in my business Twitter feed.