The translation warrior rants

Once again the translation warrior is baffled by attitudes about quality of English. The Japanese give the judgement of other Japanese unquestioned credence. When the translation warrior asks one of his clients how his judgement of Japanese quality would be received, he gets the "now that you put it that way" routine. This doesn't occur to anyone?

And how many times has he run across arrogant "English specialists", who are committed to lowering English quality with direct translation, enhanced wordiness, and even by insisting on incorrect usage of "a" and "the." All this along with their own peculiar misunderstandings that are so universal they must be taught in school. This plus the intellectual laziness not to look up correct usage when in doubt. Any "little" problems in their own work can be fixed by "native check," that is, having a native speaker of English go over it. But what does that mean? The translation warrior knows what that means. Somebody hired off of the street looks at the translation and tries to fix it so that it reads normally, usually without reference to the original Japanese. Proofing? No. Editing? No. "Native check"? Yes.

Customers readily fall for the same line over and over: "We provide, accurate, fast, and cheap translation." Sure they do. Fast and cheap? Possible. Quality, too? If you believe that, I have a house for you, built fast and cheap. I'm sure it'll still be a fine building in a few years. Otherwise savvy consumers BELIEVE. Why? I don't know. Perhaps this suspension of belief arises from confidence in the ability of non-native speakers to judge their own translation quality: "My writing is good because I say it is." Heard that before? Like those people who tell you they write only good songs, which you stop listening to after the first 15 seconds.