Jianjun’s Blog

When a global financial turmoil evolves and businesses get credit pinch and many of them even collapse, cash is once more the king and everyone is cutting costs and craving for liquidity, companies surely will cut back translation budgets. 

Besides that, I insist that the best time (by ‘best time’ I mean a period in which online outsourcers and suppliers have almost ready-made mutual trust) for online translation marketing is going away if not completely over. ProZ as such a portal has met its bottleneck and now is struggling to keep up the revenue by reducing premium member fees to less than 60 USD/year for China-based translators and creating self-issued certificates or badges for paying members to attract new clients. 

Despite of the efforts, however, online clients probably will soon no longer trust anyone simply because she/he has a nice-looking picture, a glamorous profile or a flashy website. In a cyber translation outsourcing market where even certificates can be self-made or even faked, they will need to grab something concrete about that person, something they can prove as reliable, before contacting the freelancer. More and more wise outsourcers now know a simple rule: Established translators never lack jobs. So these translators are unlikely to stay online everyday looking for new clients and new projects and pay this fee or that fee to get job opportunities.

On the other hand, if a freelancer started earlier like from 2001 to 2005 (when many online swindlers hadn’t even realized there was a market that they could also easily cheat in), and if she/he could keep her/his good quality and hence had retained a good client base, she/he should not feel much pain during this hard time. Having a large client base is like investment diversification (although this strategy is not doing very well at this time in the financial world as the global markets and sectors plunge indiscriminately ;)) - there are always long-term clients giving you enough jobs. 

If you work as a freelancer, lowering per unit rates won’t bring you out of the mire. Instead, it will kill your translation skills until one day your quality is ruined and you can never get any good clients. The theory behind this is quite simple: to earn enough with low rates, one has to overwork and for long hours, and this results in unavoidable lower quality. After a time, when it has become a habit, the translator can no longer provide quality services and never get good rates. This is a vicious circle. 

Therefore, don’t worry about other people’s low rates. Keep your rates and quality and the client will come back when those guys fail them time and again. And also don’t worry about those clients (agencies) that only accept low-cost offers without caring about any quality, they are swindlers themselves and will be kicked out of business after a while. 

Freelancers are individual business entities and all businesses need a sound development and risk management strategy. If one has knowledge about these and the necessary mechanism in place, she/he will regret less when financial disasters happen and it is a lifetime’s job to learn from these experiences.

Many translators would agree that academic curiosity and a willingness to learn new things are vital assets in the highly competitive translation market. While marketing skills and linguistic knowledge are essential for a successful career in freelance translation, translators must also know how to research new terms and understand what it is that they are translating. This is especially true of those translators who choose to specialise as they will need to be familiar with the relevant jargon and be familiar with their chosen area of specialisation. Medical translators are often expected to have at least a basic knowledge of biology and medical terms, while technical translators may find it useful to know how certain components of a machine function.

For those translators who choose to stick to ‘general’ translation, or who are considering moving into a certain area of specialisation, it’s important to know where to turn to when you come across an unfamiliar term or concept. Specialised dictionaries are a good start and the reference section of your local library can be a great help in times of need. Online encyclopaedias are a relatively new resource and there are several Chinese-language encyclopaedias that are worth bookmarking.

• Hoodong (互动在线) - China’s largest wiki site and online encyclopaedia. Its format is very similar to that of the well-known Wikipedia, it’s easy to browse and covers a wide range of subjects. With over 2 million articles, you should be able to find what you’re looking for.

• Baidu Baike (百度百科) - The second most popular online encyclopaedia with over 1 million articles and is pleasing to the eye. Its only drawback is that it’s quite hard to browse.

• Wikipedia ZH (维基百科) - Last but not least, there’s the Chinese-language edition of the world renowned Wikipedia encyclopaedia. Due to the popularity of the other two websites and internet restrictions in some parts of Mainland China, Wikipedia hasn’t had the same level of success amongst the Chinese-speaking community. It’s still a useful resource as its multilingual platform will allow you to cross-reference unknown terms with relative ease.

That’s all from me for now. The Beijing Olympics kicks off in a few days’ time so I would like to end this post with a resounding “中国加油!”

Hello John,

I just received from you a second comment with exactly the same content of a message you left a couple of days ago. As you do seem to have a habit of leaving comments on irrelevant posts and, at the same time, ignoring my reply to your comment, I think it’s advisable to write a post to draw your attention so you could stop this SPAM act.

On July 18, 2008, you left on Kelly’s post a comment (http://www.yeasir.com/blog/2008/06/how-to-keep-up-with-the-times/#comment-2587) as follows:

Hi Jianjun
I am lucky to find your blog on the web. We invite you to write original articles for a blog named as Westernwords operated by our company, which is about strategies, news, trend and case study of translation industry. I will appreciate you to order your articles with 500-1000 English words about the above aspects above.
You can quote me by one article and I will paid after I release it on our blog. I will give you a subject each time or you may choose a subject confirmed by us to start writing.
I will need 4-8 articles each month.
As a cooperation return, I would request a link from your blog to ours in order to have both of our articles shared by wide audience.
Hope we have a long term cooperation.

And my reply (http://www.yeasir.com/blog/2008/06/how-to-keep-up-with-the-times/#comment-2588) was:

Hello John,

Thanks for leaving a comment on my blog.

As a localization professional, I blog for fun and for sharing interest with friends around the world, and I’m not interested in writing commercial pieces for other sites - otherwise, I’d be X times richer by just blogging.

I suggest you hire someone who’s a professional writer to contribute to your translation blog.

Good luck!
Jianjun

However, you posted the same message today (July 21, 2008) on my post “Can Translation Change the World for the Better” (http://www.yeasir.com/blog/2008/03/can-translation-change-the-world-for-the-better/#comment-2590)

As a matter of fact, after receiving your ‘comment’ the other day, I checked your sites Transhorsa.org/com out and even tried your phone and fax numbers listed on http://www.transhorsa.org/Contact_us.htm (No 30, #14-04, Sturdee Road, Singapore 207852 TEL: +65 6493 3637 FAX: +65 6733 6786) in Singapore (some fake translation companies use fake addresses/numbers so I have to do this routine check). Unfortunately, both numbers, at the time of my check, had a problem - the phone number being nonexistent, while the fax number being the same with another company called Corporate Visions (http://www.bizspace.net/rental.php).

As I said in my reply to your first post, I am a localization professional and I blog only for fun and not for money. Now I’d also like to add (just in case), that all the information under the domain Yeasir.com and its network of websites are copyright material. Any use of this information without prior written permission from its respective copyright owners is prohibited.

I hope this post is enough to draw your attention to the issue and hope no further ‘comment’ of a similar nature from you or your company appear here again.

Many translators would agree that living in the country where your source language is spoken is the best way to build upon your existing language skills and give your translation career a certain credibility. It’s hard to disagree with this view. Immersing yourself in the local language and culture is the ideal way to equip yourself with the linguistic and cultural knowledge needed for a career in translation. What better way to learn obscure slang and the latest ‘buzzwords’ than through daily interaction with native speakers from all walks of life?

Not all translators have the luxury of living in the country where their source language is spoken, whether it is due to family obligations or financial circumstances. Trailing spouses and partners of expats may find themselves living in a country where neither their native nor source languages are spoken, working as translators in countries where their language combinations are in lesser demand.

Thanks to the Internet, however, there are still ways for translators and other language professionals to maintain, even improve, their language skills and keep up with the latest terminology and developments in their chosen areas of specialisation. As a former freelance translator looking to re-enter the highly competitive world of Chinese-to-English translation, it’s important for me to know what the latest trends in the PRC and Greater China are, which political and social ‘buzzwords’ are in fashion and, like all other translators, continue to learn new words and expressions on a daily basis. Language is constantly evolving and 普通话 (国语 in Taiwan) is by no means an exception.

I have a list of resources I have found invaluable and would like to share with fellow Chinese-to-English translators, especially those of you who are no longer living in the ‘Middle Kingdom’. If there’s a resource I may have missed and which you feel a translator should have among their list of bookmarked sites, then do not hesitate to leave a comment with a link to the resource in question.

• Online Dictionaries : There are a number of fairly good online dictionaries. One of my personal favourites is Jukuu, which lists a number of example sentences with every search result. iCIBA is also a link worth bookmarking. It’s important to note that these dictionaries do not necessarily provide translations for highly specialised or technical terms. Links to specialist online dictionaries and glossaries will be dealt with in a separate post.

• Internet Slang : For those who come across obscure slang while browsing online forums, check out 网语网. It’s quite possible that much of the slang and terms listed on that site will be out of date by the time I finish writing this post. Nevertheless, it’s one of the best resources I have found thus far for the rapidly-evolving language of ‘net speak’.

• New Terms & Buzzwords : The Chinese Terms section of the People’s Daily Language Tips website is full of useful words and phrases. The site is actually aimed at ESL learners but those wishing to boost their Chinese vocabulary may find it equally helpful. Latest additions include 高清晰度的卫星图片 (high-resolution satellite photo) and 堰塞湖 (quake lake). The Shanghai Daily’s Buzzword Blog is another great resource, which gives the reader a bit of background information about each ‘buzzword’.

• Glossaries : While I intend to cover specialist glossaries in another post, I thought I would share a link to a site which has a sizeable collection of subject-specific glossaries. FanE.CN’s has over 20 pages’ worth of glossaries and word lists for subjects ranging from media and traditional Chinese snacks to needlework and real estate.

Online newspapers, radio and blogs are also excellent ways to stay informed about linguistic and social developments in the Chinese-speaking world. I will review a selection of these in my next post.

This is all for my debut post at Jianjun’s Blog. Check back often for more of my articles on the challenges of Chinese-to-English translation.

FireFox now displays a warning (see picture on the left, click to see large image) when you are tricked to click on some of the ‘Pics for MSN Friends’ phishing site URLs created by the so-called ‘TST Management Inc.’

At the time of writing, a new URL emerged and, according to the ‘official’ phishing site’s server status report, “c0mpics.info” is now the most active site that’s hoaxing not only MSN users, but ICQ users.

When you visit the phishing site (never do it!), a window pops up displaying content from ‘awesomeoffers.info’ (see picture below, click to display large image) saying, ‘We’re sorry! This offer is not available in your area. You will

be redirected shortly. If you are not automatically redirectly, please click here.’ Then you are served ads from various sources.

Thanks to our fellow netizens, sites such as jumphost.info, ther1ng.info, etc. were alerted as potential phishing sites by FireFox. But if you are using IE or Safari, the chances are you won’t see these warnings.

Personally I think MSN and ICQ should do their fair share of work and warn their users never trust any offline messages containing such links. That will be the most effective and proactive way to deal with these bad guys. However, each one of us who knows about the phishing attempt can also lend a helping hand by telling our MSN/ICQ or other IM buddies about this and report any such sites through FireFox or IE.

Here’s how:

FireFox:

When you are on that site, click on ‘Help’ -> ‘Report Web Forgery.’

French version, click on ‘?’ -> ‘Signaler un site contrefait…’

IE:

When you are on that site, right-click this icon on bottom status bar.

*UPDATE*

Good news. As on June 6, all phishing sites from the so-called ‘TST Management Inc.’ have been down. But I am not sure if they are simply banned by the ISP in Hong Kong and are in the process of finding other server locations. If you find any further information, please let me know. Thanks.

*UPDATE-1*

The phishing sites are back on again. A new one to watch:

“freakpics.info”