Read This, Translators!

"Will you blog about it?" a friend asked, and I said no, I was too shocked.
But now after a couple of days, I decided: Yes, I will blog about it because however much it shocked me, I mustn't keep silent.

So what was it all about? It was all about the word "Lebensmittelpunkt" (the centre of one's life) which a translator thought had something to do with groceries (Lebensmittel). Oh yes they did.
Whilst this is so utterly hilarious that you can now probably dine out on it at bilingual dinner parties for the rest of your life, it's also serious. Very serious indeed. It is quite literally the equivalent of translating "carpet" as "small domestic animal in a vehicle". And it tells you one thing with  brutal laser-light clarity - somebody who would even think of such a possibility has no idea about the language, no grip of German, and should most definitely not be working as a translator. 

This is not an isolated case. I look at translators' websites, flyers, promotional material - and I shudder. It's so bad. And if they cannot manage their own advertising in a "foreign" language, how can they translate customers' (no doubt they would call them "clients") texts? There are translators who write blogs (in their 'other' language) which on a good day you think are a bit manky, and on a bad day they are incomprehensible. Yet those people put themselves about, have fan pages on Facebook, etc.etc

 Listen - I don't begrudge them their money, and their income. I'm NOT a translator, therefore I'm not your competition. I'm just someone who cares deeply about language, and really feels that this shady, furtive ("och, no idea but nobody will notice, just say groceries...") behaviour has to stop. Please realise, all you good, honest, able translators out there that those people are damaging your industry, your work, and your reputation. You should be campaigning against THEM, not against falling rates and machine translators. (Oh btw, my examples aren't anonymous students slaving away in a translation factory! They are ladies and gentlemen with an office, a company name, and as I said a badly translated website.)

So please don't just always feel under attack - DO SOMETHING! Stop going to conferences and organise yourselves into guilds and "Verbände". Your language won't get better that way. What are you going to do with all those "referrals" if you translate utter rubbish? And don't think people won't notice. This isn't just me speaking as a language lover. People in major companies have become highly suspicious of translators and are collectively moving away from those dodgy rate-quoters, just in it for the money - who nevertheless hide behind high-falutin' "Quality has its price" mottos. I know this because I talk to them about it.

So what SHOULD you be doing?

1. Be self-critical. An old O-level, a dusty dictionary and plenty of online resources (Linguee et al) won't see you through. Fact. Accept it. 
2. Improve your language drastically. And I mean drastically. You already have a certain level of "expertise" - work it" Read nothing but "foreign" language websites, books etc. Whenever you can, avoid speaking your "mother tongue".Write original text, e.g. on social media sites. I notice people stick to their own language all the time - don't! And  also follow people who write in different languages.
3. Stop trying to hide the fact that you're not that good. People WILL find out. And it will reflect badly on you. Work within your limitations. Don't take on work for the money when you know it is too difficult.
4. Don't take a correction as a slight.  I have had so many abusive responses when I point out mistakes and errors. You will simply have to accept it. I certainly won't stop -  but more importantly your customers (err, clients) won't either. (If an electrician does a shoddy job, the customer would complain, too - with translations it might take longer, but it will come to light!)
5. I personally have little faith in translators who can only translate "into" X. If you're not able to switch between languages and have a near-adequate native speaker level in either language, you shouldn't take on translations. 
6.  A way out of this dilemma would be to organise yourselves into groups of mixed native speakers, thereby guaranteeing a level of quality.
7. Don't bemoan your fate with other translators (rates time-pressure, machine translations etc etc). It's a waste of time. Go out and exercise your language skills instead.
8. If you see bad translation work, say so. There's absolutely no point in solidarity with bad translators. Bad translators are bad for the whole industry. Their bad work will reflect badly on all of you.
9. And lastly, do not ever translate "Lebensmittelpunkt" as "grocery point" - but you wouldn't do that anyway, would you?

10 Reasons Why Germans Tend to Be So Bad At English

Two street views, or rather audio-boos from two European capitals:

A couple of months ago I visited Amsterdam- and was truly gobsmacked: Amsterdam is a bilingual town. English and Dutch are spoken as if they were the two natural indigenous languages of that town. Amsterdamers are loquacious, eloquent, and switch codes with ease. Last weekend I was in Berlin. And I was shocked:  Berliners mostly seem to speak a sort of pidgin-English, with every verb in the present tense - unidiomatic, halting, and what is worst - they carry their local dialect over into English.

Of course I'm not singling out Berlin as a focus for bad foreign language skills. All over Germany, people will nod enthusiastically when asked whether they speak English - and reply  with a resounding"Yesss!" (It's a sign of their incompetence that it wouldn't occur to them to say "I do"). Their grammar is generally non-existent, their pronunciation atrocious and their vocabulary limited to about 200 words. Besides, they have a fatal tendency to translate word by word. "You go high there" (Gehen Sie da hoch).

Why is that? Why are Dutch people so adept at English, and Germans, despite their personal conviction of total fluency so useless at it?

1) Teaching methods are far too theoretical. At school, you don't get exposure to the actual spoken language, you get to memorize rules and regulations. ("The adverb always goes infront of the ...")

2) Teachers themselves aren't very good at English (having gone through equally bad language education), thereby procreating bad pronunciation and general linguistic inadequacy.

3) Children aren't exposed to how English is actually spoken: All foreign TV series are dubbed. In Holland, they all come with subtitles.

4) Pupils are not required to spend time abroad. And few Germans (as opposed to the Dutch) go for ,say, a weekend break in the UK.

5) There is an implicit understanding that German and English are quite similar.Thus, the radical difference in e.g. grammatical tenses gets totally overlooked. In German you  get by by just using the present tense - English with its complicated tenses/aspect system doesn't work at all if reduced to the present tense.

6) At university level emphasis is placed on translating texts, rather than active competence of a foreign language. It's almost as if styudying a foreign language automatically means wanting to set up business as a translator. Maybe this is a way of guiding students towards professional pragmatism, but it is not conducive to foreign language fluency.

7) Native speakers as foreign language assistants do exist both at school and unversity level, but they are too grateful for any active participation to actually bother much about students's accents. Incompetent pronunciation is so strong in Germany, that students are often baffled and at a loss when faced with the actuality of proper British (or indeed American) pronunciation.

8) Given the self-image as a competent speaker of English, Germans tend not to carry on learning, or even adding new vocabulary or idioms. ("Wieso? Ich kann Englisch")

9) Idioms are  crucial to proper English. German has far fewer idioms, and a rule-restriczve way of teaching/learning never gets anywhere near them. Germans learn words, not idiom clusters.

10) Bad English spawns off more bad English. Even companies advertising for international positions mostly do so in faulty English. Technical brochures, tourism websites, youth magazines and other publications are frequently written in pidgin English. And who is to notice?

A lot needs to be done to help this situtaion. Germany is seriously falling behind in European language competence, especially as other foreign languages (French and Spanish are currently  No's 2 and 3) are only spoken by a tiny minority. Massive funding of improved language teaching would help the situation, but what's even more important: The country needs to actually admit to itself that there is a problem which needs addressing.