ATA SLD

Slavic Languages Division (American Translators Association)

American Translators Association: The Voice of Interpreters and Translators

Human Rights Translation: An Interview with Lucy Gunderson

SLD member Lucy Gunderson has had an active role in ATA and SLD for many years. SLD members know her as a past Administrator of the Slavic Languages Division (2011-2015), an extraordinary colleague, and an expert in human rights translation. This important subject seems fascinating to many, but it is challenging to find information about what it takes to work in this field.

We asked Lucy to share her story and advice with SLD members. She also presented an ATA webinar on this topic in September 2020, which is now available on-demand.

  • Can you please share your story of getting started as a translator?

I remember learning the instrumental case at the end of first-year Russian. We had to answer the question “Кем Вы будете?” (What are you going to be when you grow up?). My vocabulary was quite limited at the time, but I went carefully through the choices. Doctor – No. Lawyer – No. Engineer – No. Переводчик – Hmm. “Я буду переводчиком!” So I guess I’ve always felt an obligation to remain faithful to that solemn oath I took in first-year Russian.

I held “regular” jobs (English teacher in Russia, document manager/translator at a banking company doing business in Russia, editor at a newswire service) before going full-time freelance, but I always did some translation as part of my job or on the side. I understood fairly quickly that I wasn’t suited to a corporate environment (or, to put it better, that the corporate environment wasn’t suited to me!), so when an attractive translation opportunity presented itself, I started working part-time at the editorial job. That part-time job was eventually moved to another city, so I took the leap and started working towards full-time translation.

  • Why did you start specializing in human rights and how did you build up your expertise in this area?

I never consciously made the decision to specialize in human rights, but I can see how I ended up here when I look back.  I spent my junior year in Voronezh, Russia. I arrived two weeks after the August putsch in 1991 and stayed until June 1992, which means that I witnessed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the formation of newly independent states. I returned to Russia in 1993 and experienced the October 1993 coup and, later, the currency fluctuations of the mid- to late 1990s. This experience living in Russia was what initially sparked my current interests in human rights, international relations, and law.

My first referral for a human rights translation came from an SLD colleague (Nora Favorov). The file she asked me to handle was about electoral fraud in Belarus. I was initially worried about my ability to translate this file, but then I realized that 1) I actually knew where Belarus was, 2) I actually knew who Lukashenka was, and 3) I had read an awful lot about electoral fraud when I lived in Russia, so I was probably better prepared than I thought to translate this. The client was apparently happy with my translation because they kept coming back to me for more and also referred me to other human rights groups.

I am constantly building up my expertise by pushing at my boundaries. It’s important for us to specialize and know our limits, but it’s also important to understand when we can stretch those limits just a bit.

  • What type of clients do you usually work with and why do they need their documents/content translated?

My main human rights clients are NGOs, although I have also worked with one agency that specializes in human rights. The kinds of documents they need translated are reports for UN Committees, government agencies, the human rights community, and the general public; columns and articles for online media; and sometimes even primary sources.

  • Can you share an example of the most rewarding project you have ever worked on and why it felt this way?

My most rewarding project has been ongoing for several years and is the #AllJobs4AllWomen campaign. The goal of this campaign is to get former Soviet countries to repeal the List of Arduous, Harmful, and Dangerous Jobs Prohibited for Women. My work on this project has involved translating reports for the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and columns for the general public about this list. Now, several former Soviet countries have repealed their lists and others have shortened theirs or agreed to review them specifically because of the pressure mounted by this campaign. So I feel very good about being the main English-language voice for this campaign.

Another project involved mining on indigenous lands. The affected indigenous group won a court battle against the mining company and had their lands returned to them. Even though the court proceedings took place in Russia, my client in this case had repeatedly raised this issue at the international level using my English translations. I believe this had some impact on the outcome, so that makes me proud.

  • What project was the most challenging and why?

The most challenging projects are the ones that touch my emotions the most.

One was the translation of a blacklist, published by the Luhansk People’s Republic, of Ukrainian police officers (along with their photographs) who were allegedly actively working against the Luhansk People’s Republic. This list called for the capture or murder of these officers. Even though I understood that the purpose of my translation was to reveal atrocities, it was still difficult to process.

Another difficult project was the translation of a letter from a political prisoner to his wife.

If you work in this area, it really helps to have someone to talk these jobs through with. I have found that my clients have struggled with the psychological effects of this kind of work and are more than ready to talk about them, so that has helped me get through these difficult jobs.

  • What are your favorite resources for research and continued professional development on human rights, translation, and related topics?

For human rights, my favorite resources are Human Rights Quarterly (published by Johns Hopkins University press), Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, by Jack Donnelly, and Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction, by Andrew Clapman. The first keeps me updated on current human rights issues and helps me understand major trends in this area, and the last two are great for reference information when I have trouble understanding a certain concept. And of course, the Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) websites are extremely useful resources for understanding contemporary challenges, learning new terminology, and improving my writing in this field.

For translation/writing resources, I also recommend the AI and HRW websites because their publications on Russia are almost always available in the original English and a Russian translation, which helps with terminology and writing. I would also recommend any book on plain language, since human rights documents can be heavy on the legal language. I love Dreyer’s English for grammar.

  • What advice would you give to colleagues who would like to start specializing in human rights translation?

Network, network, network! I’m lucky to be based in New York City, so I have been able to attend several talks at universities here where I made some contacts, and I’ve even represented ATA at the UN twice. The pandemic hasn’t been good for much, but it has presented the perfect opportunity for people who don’t live near universities to attend lectures online that they wouldn’t have been able to attend otherwise. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to email a speaker that you hear online and establish contact with them. Both Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and New York University’s Jordan Center have had great online offerings since the pandemic started. You can sign up for their mailing lists on their websites.

It’s also important to network with colleagues working in the same area or language pair. It can be tricky to approach a translator working in the same language pair, but it is always possible to offer editing services to them. It’s even better to approach linguists working in a different language pair because then that translator has no fear of competition or losing a client to the other translator. Finally, I’ve had some success attracting attention from my ideal clients on social media, but this is really a long-term effort the requires dedication, a lot of trial and error, and openness to failure!

Lucy Gunderson, CT is an ATA-certified Russian>English translator specializing in human rights, academic, legal, and literary translation. She has a master’s degree in Russian from the University at Albany and a certificate in translation studies from the University of Chicago, where she also served as a tutor in the Russian>English translation program.

Lucy has been translating for non-governmental organizations for the past ten years and follows the human rights situation in Eurasia closely. She has presented on human rights translation for ATA and the New York Circle of Translators.

She is a past chair of ATA’s Divisions Committee (2015-2019) and a former administrator of the Association’s Slavic Languages Division (2011-2015).

Website – https://russophiletranslations.com

LinkedIn – Lucy Gunderson, CT | LinkedIn

Webinar – Challenges in Human Rights Translation: How to Research Terminology and Make Your Writing Shine (atanet.org)

Twitter – @LucyGund

ATA58 Review: Search Engine Optimization (T-5)

Persong googling

Review by Anna Livermore

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

The session titled “Search Engine Optimization: Website and Social Media Localization,” presented by Laura Ramírez, a lecturer at the department of translation studies at the University of Illinois, was one of the highlights of my visit to this year’s ATA conference. The content of the session was exactly as promised in the title (with one small exception), the subject matter was very relevant, the delivery was professional, and the examples were on point. I came away wishing the slot for the presentation had been twice as long.

First of all, Ms. Ramírez drew a distinction between SEO (Search Engine Optimization) & SEA (Search Engine Advertising), which together make up SEM (Search Engine Marketing). She explained why different approaches are required when dealing with the 2 parts of SEM, both in terms of strategy as a website owner and impact on the translation. The better a translator understands the workings of SEM, the better they will be able to serve their clients’ needs and add value with their service.

Organic SEO is a strategy that yields better long-term results, but its ROI is notoriously hard to calculate. Essentially, by using SEO clients optimize their content for better indexability by search engines, thus affecting the rank the webpage is assigned when users search for certain keywords. In order to appear in the top search results, companies employ a combination of tactics: building good links, writing good content, using proper indexing, and integrating social media and blogs. It is time consuming for the client and, when translated into another language, it needs to retain all its parts from the obvious (content, URL name) to the subtle (meta tags and keywords). Those who offer website translation/localization services should remember that different search engines use different approaches to language tagging and educate themselves about the concepts of geo-targeting used by the search engines of their target region.

SEA, on the other hand, yields quick results and the ROI is easy to calculate, making it suitable for short, targeted campaigns. However, the conversion rates are lower (due to lack of consumer trust towards this kind of advertising) and it is an expensive option. When translating keywords for SEA, it is important to remember that repetition is good. Also, translated keywords will (or should) change depending on the target segment, audience, location etc.

As Ms. Ramírez pointed out, CAT tools are a good option for translating this kind of content: it tends to be repetitive, and consistent use of the same keywords is beneficial to a given ad’s ranking. One should also be aware of the limits set on the number of characters that can be used for ad headlines or ad descriptions, as it might become an issue when translating in certain language pairs: for instance, when translating English into Russian, the latter tends to require more characters.

Ms. Ramírez made an interesting point about translating SEA: the process can feel counterintuitive at first to translators who aim to produce a perfect translation. In this case, a functional approach serves better for creating the desired impact, which is to sell the product or service. When translating SEA text, one should always keep in mind the end user: what search term spellings are they likely to use, are there any regional variants to keep in mind, are there any synonyms that should also be included in the keywords, are there any other variants one should consider, such as calques from the source language and misspelled words (a quick Google search illustrates just how many ways there are to misspell the word pregnant).

Summarizing some of the characteristics of SEA language, Ms. Ramírez highlighted the use of calques, elliptical constructions, unusual punctuation (exclamation marks, apostrophes etc.), abbreviations, using all CAPITALS, and mixing registers when addressing the audience (using equivalents of Russian ты and вы in the same ad), which should all be reflected in some form in translation.

Drawing on her experience as a lecturer and a freelance translator, Ms. Ramírez noted another characteristic of SEA that influences the translation process: clients might ask for several equivalents for one keyword, and they will ultimately decide which one will be used.

The last notable point covered during the session is the importance of knowing how search engines other than Google work. This is significant because other markets might not use Google as their primary search engine: Yandex is the main search engine in Russia and Baidu plays that role in China. And although the essentials of the search engine functionality are largely very similar, there are some elements that differ and might impact the localization process.

Ms. Ramírez also covered practical aspects of managing ads, matches and click-through rates, as well as various tools for managing keywords and best practices for writing ads. With so much valuable information to deliver, there unfortunately was no time left to look at social media techniques and their impact on translation process, and I look forward to a future presentation where these would be covered.

Anna Livermore is an English>Russian and German>Russian translator and former marketing specialist. With a linguistics degree from the Oxford Brookes University and a Professional Diploma in marketing, she came to specialize in translating marketing materials, corporate communications, website content and various components of SEM. She is a member of the Slavic Languages Division’s Social Media team. Contact: livermore.translations@gmail.com

Audiovisual Translation: Joys and Challenges

cover photo: old video camera

By Julia Thornton

Photo by Anca Luchit on Unsplash

My first introduction to audiovisual translation (AVT) happened while I was growing up in the Soviet Union. I don’t remember the first foreign movie that I watched, but they were many and came from an array of countries. Premier movies and shows that were dubbed in Moscow were a work of art: I laughed at Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieux, was enthralled with colorful scenes of India, sympathized with Michele Placido, felt at home with the Mexican and Brazilian soap operas, and was mesmerized by the enigmatic American way of life. Then came the 90s: the Iron Curtain fell, and my country was flooded with overseas movies available on video tapes. The voiceover for those movies was done by individuals whose “stage voice” was purposefully nasal and monotonous. Fast forward to today, and one of the fields I work in is subtitle translation.

Audiovisual content has been experiencing exponential growth fueled by the Internet boom: not only can we stream movies, shows, documentaries, concerts and sport events, but now there is online education and gaming. The recent development in the AVT world has been with Netflix and Amazon, as they started offering their products in many countries. Because of the volume of audiovisual content, subtitle translation has become the mode of choice, since it is the least expensive and the fastest way to localize an audiovisual event. Voiceover is more audience-friendly, but costs more, since it involves a voice talent and studio; dubbing is the most enjoyable for the audience, but it is the most expensive.

A good audiovisual translator is a person who is familiar with the culture, comfortable with slang (there is a lot of that!), and quick to adapt to the peculiarities of AVT. Here is what makes subtitle translation different from other types of translations:

  1. The translator is always looking for ways to make the translation shorter. There is the ever-present factor of reading speed that the translator needs to consider. Currently, the speed of 17 characters per second (CPS) is widely accepted for grown-up audience. This speed allows the viewer to read the subtitle and to have time to see what is happening on the screen. When actors talk fast or when translation into a target language is longer, it calls for re-creation: words and phrases that are not critical to the plot will be dropped, expressions reworded and repetitions omitted. The translator aims at translating maximum meaning within the tight boundaries of reading speed.
  2. Translation is geared toward translating emotion versus text. It is of primary importance to make the translation sound as natural in the target language as possible. Instead of staying close to the original text, substituting common expressions in the target language is normal. In a lot of cases, the shortest option will win (see point 1).
  3. Translating a lot of conversational speech: one might need to brush up on slang (Urban Dictionary comes in handy) and the current corresponding phrases in the target language. Punctuation in conversational speech also can be tricky.
  4. Working with style guides that differ slightly, and keeping in mind those differences. For instance, one client might want a space after a hyphen at the beginning of each speaker’s line in dialogs, another might not.
  5. The translator is usually paid per minute of runtime, not per word. This is unfortunate, as content varies in difficulty and word count: a 45-minute show can have as many as 850 subtitles and as few as 550. Netflix has a multi-language chart of per-minute prices that it pays agencies for a finished product.

Commonalities:

  1. The translation needs to be as accurate as possible (tense, register, punctuation).
  2. The translator researches terminology (for historic films or ones dealing with a particular field, e.g. medicine or law, and especially documentaries).
  3. Sometimes translators work alone, other times they works in a team of other translators (when there are several seasons of the same show, for example). Some agencies provide platforms for translators to collaborate in order to unify their efforts, others do not.

While I do other types of translation and hope to keep it that way, so my skills are more balanced, I enjoy audiovisual translation, and here is why:

  • a good translation can bridge a cultural gap for the audience;
  • watching a show or a movie and translating it helps with the boredom that naturally comes when translating documents;
  • it’s a thrill to find a good equivalent in the target language that fits into the reading speed!
  • when working for an agency, the software is provided on the agency’s site: no need to buy yet another CAT tool.

Challenges of audiovisual translation:

  • relatively low pay, if counted per word;
  • getting stuck with translation because all the words are plot-pertinent, yet they don’t fit the reading speed;
  • tight deadlines: a 45-minute show is usually translated in 2 days or less.

Now is a good time to get into the field for anyone who wants to give it a try. While it is possible to work for direct clients who regularly produce audiovisual content (government organizations, religious groups, educational websites), most audiovisual translators work for agencies who are subcontractors of major content providers. A narrowed-down search in the ATA directory will yield names of companies that work with subtitles. Most of these companies require a prospective translator to take an unpaid test. If you want to build your subtitle translation skills, you can learn them as you volunteer (for instance, on the TED Project). Acquiring this new skill will help you see translated movies in a new light and gain appreciation for the work audiovisual translators do. You might like it so much you will want to continue!

Julia Thornton is a certified EN-RU translator (ATA). She grew up in Russia and graduated from the Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. She then moved to the USA and earned a master’s degree in theological studies. Her other experiences and interests are in interpreting and education. She can be reached at julia.thornton@alterustranslations.com.

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