Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp reveals how AI is affecting literary translators
Originally published in The Author (see details below)

" A third of literary translators have already lost work or income because of generative AI, according to a recent SoA survey of members. But this is not the only impact that generative AI has had. It is raising new issues for translators around working methods, copyright, credit and transparency. It may even change how we think about the act – and art – of translation.

Illustration © Yuji Takahashi

A help or hindrance? 

In the SoA survey, 37% of translators reported having used some form of generative AI in their work. The leading technologies for automated translation are neural machine translation (NMT), such as DeepL, and large language models (LLM), of which the best known is ChatGPT. NMTs have been used for years by professional translators. They’re based on neural network architectures, and were trained using bilingual documents and texts found online in two-language versions. LLMs were developed more recently, and while they are based on a similar architecture, they are trained to predict the next word in a sentence and to generate text based on statistical likelihood.

Many other services and computer-aided translation (CAT) tool plug-ins exist. ‘I use (the CAT tool) Wordfast Anywhere,’ explains Kazakh-to-English translator Mirgul Kal. ‘It offers MyMemory translation, which is mostly inaccurate for my source language, but I find it useful to have a quick look at it before replacing it with my own translation. Sometimes it offers a great word choice that didn’t occur to me, and secondly Kazakh syntax is markedly different from English, so I appreciate any help I can get.’ Noting the pitfalls, Mirgul adds, ‘I’m always chuckling because some MyMemory translations are simply hilarious: they make me want to abandon translation and start writing strangely moving absurdist prose poems.’

For some, using a machine translation plug-in to throw up (only to throw away) possible versions of a sentence has been a game changer. For others, AI is best avoided. French-to-English translator Roland Glasser argues that AI tools can be a hindrance rather than a help: ‘The process of undertaking the first draft, of immersing yourself in the source text, sussing out nuances, wrangling cultural references and specificities, attending to alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme and scansion (and sometimes several of the above combined) is integral to the creation of a high-quality translation. Our unconscious brains click and whirr in unimaginable ways as we work on a text. With the best will in the world, working on a machine-translated draft can never be the same.’

‘Machine translation post-editing’

Of rising concern to literary translators is the adoption by some publishers of ‘machine translation post-editing’ (MTPE, or PEMT): hiring a bilingual editor for a relatively light-touch edit of an AI-generated draft, instead of commissioning a professional translator (who might or might not consult AI to some degree).

But it is translators, not their clients, who are best placed to select the appropriate tool to produce an automated draft, and translators have these tools at their disposal already: they don’t need literary agents or publishers to run a text through AI software for them, and there are many dangers inherent to embarking on this approach unknowingly. ChatGPT at least warns you that it makes mistakes; DeepL claims rather optimistically, ‘With DeepL, you’ll never have to compromise on quality again.’ Yet I regularly see that even with German, a language with a vast quantity of high-quality training material, DeepL makes basic mistakes like repeating lines and mistranslating dates and figures.

Quality control difficulties are compounded by time pressure. In similar creative industries such as video games, MTPE pays very low rates while only offering negligible time gain, warns Japanese-to-English translator Jennifer O’Donnell. ‘This means a translator can either work twice as hard to create a high-quality translation for less than half their normal rate, or they can put in as much work as they’re getting paid for and only perform a cursory glance to make sure the machine translation is at least grammatically accurate, but not whether it’s accurate in meaning, style or consistency.’ The result, she says, is that the vast majority of talented creative translators prefer to translate from scratch rather than do post-editing work. ‘Post-editing creative works that have been machine translated takes just as much time as translating from scratch, and produces a lower quality translation.’ Perhaps translation is no different to any other service or industry: you can have two out of three of speed, quality or low price, but you can’t have all three.

We’re already seeing publishers skimp on professional translation in the case of some supposedly ‘easy’ translations. Literary agents, for example, sometimes provide machine- translated samples of picture books which monolingual editors edit in-house and publish without crediting a translator. But this is at the expense of the nuance a professional translator provides, and at the possible risk to the author of their intentions being misconstrued. It is a dubious approach for short illustrated texts; it can be disastrous for longer fiction, non-fiction or scholarly texts, and yet it’s a tempting strategy for a budget-conscious publisher who’s unaware of the risks. ‘It’s up to us to explain that it takes longer and ultimately costs more,’ says French-to-English literary translator Louise Rogers Lalaurie. ‘In literary translation, publishers embrace popular campaigns to #NameTheTranslator and put #TranslatorsOnTheCover, so they must see that AI can actually undermine their standing with readers. #PutDeepLontheCover doesn’t really cut it...’

At the moment, ‘post-editing’ seems to be a catch-all term that is far too vague and often underestimates the work that’s required, suggests German-to-English literary translator and editor Katharina Hall. ‘There’s the sense that it’s just a matter of “give that a quick final polish, would you?” We need to push back with more nuanced terminology and distinctions between different types of editing work.’

Copyright and moral rights

Another immediate threat associated with a move towards MTPE, for literary translators, is the perception that such work should fall under an anonymous work-for-hire contract rather than one that recognises a literary translator’s claim to copyright and the moral right to be credited. Whether we use NMT to prompt vocabulary within a CAT tool, or whether we ‘post-edit’ a machine translation draft, literary translation is creative work, and a translator has full agency over their creative decisions, as well as culpability for their mistakes. 

Copyright is also essential for quality control, as a safeguard for the intent and meaning of the original author to be respected; without copyright over their translation, a translator risks losing sight of the translation after submission. It could be sublicensed and re-edited, with changes to the text that diverge from the author’s original intention; unless the translator is consulted, and has the contractual right to approve editorial changes, there’s the risk of the author’s intention being misconstrued.

Opportunities

The controversy surrounding AI in the creative industries, and the raising of difficult questions about the author of a translation might have some positive effects. It could boost the #NameTheTranslator and #TranslatorsOnTheCover campaigns. If more editors saw the first draft churned out by an AI provider, they might become more aware of how difficult, and how subjective, literary translation is. And if – as the SoA is lobbying for – we establish a licensing framework for training AI that reassures translators they can legally use it in drafting a professional translation, then automated translation might help make the industry more accessible and inclusive to a broader range of linguists, including from traditionally marginalised backgrounds.

One exciting possibility for me, which publishers and agents could be making more imaginative use of, is the ability to read or get an overview of a manuscript before commissioning a reader’s report or a sample, especially for languages traditionally under-represented in translation. This would only be the case if we can keep low-pay MTPE at bay, though, and if there are cost-efficient but legal means for developers to expand the training datasets for as yet unfeatured languages. DeepL, for example, still only supports 30 languages, of which only Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean and Turkish are the only non-European ones.

I don’t see humans being pushed out of translating and editing altogether; I see the human-machine symbiosis as an evolution in professional roles, but in a context where we’ll always need human, bilingual insight, instinct and intuition. Just as fast food exists alongside Michelin-starred restaurants, there may be an emergent cut-price, low-on-quality market for post-edited machine output, but I think there will remain a parallel market for human-crafted translation of international literature. The question for literary translators is where we want to position ourselves. And for publishers: is it worth the risk of getting it wrong? •

Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator working into English from Arabic, Russian and German. Her most recent translations were Brothers by Jackie Thomae (DAS Editions), and a new translation of Wassily Kandinsky’s seminal work Concerning the Spiritual in Art (Penguin Classics). 

The NOTIS Publications Committee secured written permission from the author, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, to republish this piece in the Northwest Linguist Blog. The article was originally published in the Summer 2024 issue of The Author (linked here). The Author is a quarterly publication of the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for all kinds of writers, illustrators, and literary translators.

As you may have noticed, scammers seem to be as busy as ever these days! NOTIS would like to remind all members to remain extremely vigilant when reading and responding to emails — even to messages sent to you through the NOTIS directory page.

While we've taken measures to shield our directory from scammers, your directory information is public by default (so that colleagues and legitimate potential clients can reach you). Unfortunately, this means that people with wrongful intentions can email you too.

To further protect yourself, you can easily change the privacy settings on your member profile so that members of the public cannot contact you through the NOTIS system. To do this, click on your name at the top right corner of our home page (you must first log in), go to the “Privacy” tab, and click “Edit profile”; then, set the “Send message form” field to “Anybody,” (NOTIS) “Members” (only), or “No access” (see screenshots below). NOTE: There are several other privacy settings you can edit on this same page, according to your preferences. If you do want to be contacted regarding legitimate work offers, we recommend you keep your email address visible.

Please, in general, exercise caution when reading — and screening — emails from people you don’t know, especially when something about the message strikes you as odd. For example:

• if the person claims to be from a large company but is using a free email domain (such as yahoo.com or gmail.com) 

• if the message is generic and vague 

• if the offer seems too good to be true, or 

• if the person asks you to send them money or share personal information.
  

If anything seems suspicious, the best strategy is not to respond. It can also help to do an online search, inputting, for example, the sender’s email address or the body of the message between quotation marks, to see if others have received the same message and identified it as a scam. Additionally, you can check on the legitimacy of a potentially suspicious offer by asking your colleagues in online forums such as one of the following Facebook Groups:

• Northwest Translators & Interpreters Society (for members)
• Northwest Literary Translators 
  
• Oregon Society of Translators & Interpreters
• Resource Center for Certified Interpreters

Please contact NOTIS at info@notisnet.org if you receive an email through the NOTIS directory and you’re not sure it’s legitimate. We will be more than happy to review it with you and offer our opinion. 

To get an idea of what some of the latest email scams look like, check out these recent social media posts detailing:

• An October 2024 scam targeting NOTIS members via the NOTIS Directory (here on Facebook or here on LinkedIn)
• A June 2023 scam about a Pfizer job (NOTE: It’s not Pfizer!), shown here on Twitter
• A recurring scam aimed at language professionals nationwide, explained here in a 2024 post from CCHI (Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters)

Here are some additional resources for guidance: 

• NOTIS’s on-site guidance for members about known scams and frauds: Scams targeting freelancers

• BBB Scam Tracker is a free tool anyone can use to report suspected scams (from the Better Business Bureau)

• Spot a Scam, from the Better Business Bureau, provides up-to-date information on recent scams and how to identify them.

• A 2023 article from ATA with links to other resources, including a 2020 webinar titled “Don’t Fall for It: Scams Targeting Language Professionals”

• ATA Podcast, Episode 88: Scams (June 2023)

• A Proz.com page describing typical scams, plus a dedicated forum for discussing scams
  
  
  

Attention NOTIS members: NOTIS is now recruiting volunteers to join our Board of Directors!

The Northwest Translators & Interpreters Society is busier than ever. The Board of Directors, NOTIS’s governing body, is seeking 2-3 new directors for terms beginning January 1, 2025, to replace directors who are stepping down at the end of this year.

As a NOTIS Board member, you will enjoy professional prestige and camaraderie while helping to shape the future of our society, including our professional response to an ever-changing work environment. This is also an excellent opportunity to learn new skills and develop leadership potential.

Board members serve two-year terms (for a maximum of six consecutive years). Duties include attending monthly meetings and actively participating in at least one committee or division. Board members are also strongly encouraged to help organize and attend major events, such as the annual conference, picnic and holiday party.

To apply, please submit your CV, as well as a brief statement explaining why you would like to volunteer to info@notisnet.org. If you know someone who may be interested, please pass this along!

Thank you for your ongoing support and for all the good work you do for our thriving T&I community.

Best regards,
The NOTIS Nominating Committee

by Charlotte Schwennsen, 2023 NOTIS Grant recipient

This year, I attended the UK’s ITI Conference thanks to a generous NOTIS conference grant.* I was a first-time attendee at the UK’s largest translation and interpreting event. It was a whirlwind experience! If you haven’t had the chance to attend, I hope this short post will give you an idea of what it was like.

The two-day hybrid conference (in Edinburgh, Scotland, and online) attracted around 400 attendees, including 120 who joined the hour-long sessions and networking chat rooms through the Canapii event app. For the in-person attendees, there were lunch and tea breaks as well as “fringe” events like singing, dancing, and city tours (side note, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the host city’s annual arts and culture event). A few days before the conference, I noted the sessions I would attend synchronously. Attendees also have asynchronous access to the app so they can take part in continuing education throughout the year..

The topics I focused on were: AI for T&I professionals: skills, ethics, and the changing landscape; business skills; career pathways and journeys; English grammar and style; and health and wellness. 

Day 1:

• Welcome Address by ITI CEO Sara Robertson and ITI Chair Nicki Bone
• Selling Human Tech Skills in an AI World: Brainy Things a Robot Cannot Do
• How (Not) to Make £100k as a Translator: Five Pitfalls of Starting Out and How You Can Help a Newbie
• Keynote (by Joanna Drugan): The History of Training Professional Translators and Interpreters in Scotland
• Goodness Gracious Grammar
• Raging Against the Machine: Is Translation Really Dying?
• Spice Up Your Writing with Figures of Speech

Day 2:

• Welcome Address with Nick Rosenthal, CEO Sara Robertson, and ITI Chair Nicki Bone
• Rage Against the Machine: Translating Swearwords – and Everything Else – in the Age of AI
• The Invisible Burden: Managing Cognitive Load in Translation
• Keynote with Sara Robertson: New World, New Work... New You
• Caring for Your Brain and Hearing Health

In her keynote speech, “New world, new work,” Sara Robertson reflected on the changing landscape in the translation and interpreting industry, recommending we as professionals focus on the future, increase our ability and willingness to be adaptable, entrepreneurial, professional, our own marketing team, and a solution for our clients’ problems. Her advice to create a business continuity plan was also relevant.

To conclude, I am grateful to NOTIS for the opportunity to attend this valuable event. I learned from a variety of presenters representing diverse sectors, industries, specializations, and languages. Since the closing session, I’ve started using some of the wellness tips I learned, and I am working toward revising my business plan in light of all the inspiring and practical discussions.

Charlotte Schwennsen is a French-to-English translator and editor based in Seattle. She currently specializes in communications for businesses and non-profit organizations, translation of official documents, and copyediting academic journal articles in the social sciences and humanities. 

*CLICK HERE to learn more about the current round of NOTIS Conference Grants. The deadline to apply is September 1, 2024! 

María Concepción Uribe Ramos Dopps was born in Autlán de la Grana, Jalisco, Mexico, on March 11, 1969. Her parents are Luis Bonifacio Uribe Capacete and Socorro Ramos.

She is survived by her mother, Socorro, three brothers, four sisters and their families, as well as her husband Mike and countless friends and colleagues. Maria graduated High School in Mexico at Escuela Preparatoria Regional de Autlán and moved to the United States at age 18. On October 14, 2000, she was married to Mike Dopps.

As she continued mastering English, she was certified as a Medical Interpreter and in 2011 obtained her certification from the Administrative Office of the Courts in Washington State as a Court Certified Spanish/English Interpreter. Maria participated and belonged to several interpreter associations such as WASCLA and NOTIS and was a pillar in the interpreting profession. She was passionate about her craft and worked hard to move the profession forward.

Maria was a dedicated interpreter, a loving friend, and was kind to everyone she met. She was personable, fun, and loved socializing. She often hosted gatherings at her house with food and sometimes even karaoke. Maria had a great sense of humor, both in English and Spanish, loved singing, and participated in her local church choir. She loved the outdoors, especially beach combing. She was proud of her Mexican heritage and enjoyed sharing it and educating others about it.

Her loss will be profoundly felt on many levels within her family, friends, community, and the interpreting world.

by Tim Gregory

Prolific and bestselling Korean-English literary translator Anton Hur was the first guest of the University of Washington Translation Studies Hub’s Translator-in-Residence series, thanks to a generous gift from Lee Scheingold and the ongoing support of the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the UW. Hur led three public events during his visit to Seattle:

• first, a lecture titled “Translator Jetlag: Voice and the World We Build,” 
• second, a literary translation masterclass at Seattle Central University,
• and third, a workshop titled “How Books are Born: The Art of Pitching Translations.” 
  
  

To wrap up his visit to our region, Anton Hur also attended a reception and Q&A hosted by NOTIS and the Northwest Literary Translators at Folio (a favorite venue of ours, tucked away in Downtown Seattle’s Pike Place Market).

Each event was enthusiastically attended by students, faculty, and members of NOTIS and the Northwest Literary Translators, and Anton Hur freely shared his experiences and knowledge he has gained as he has shifted from earning a living as a full-time freelance translator and interpreter to a full-time translator of Korean literature.

TRANSLATOR JETLAG

In the first lecture, Hur compared the act of translation to the fog of being stuck in the “in-between” during periods of jetlag, contrasting this with the very different experience of a reader—the author’s intended audience. Anton explained that the author generally eases the reader into the story, giving them time to adjust to the world as they read and find their way to familiarity with the narrator, characters, texture, and style. If any disorientation arises, it is usually intentional. For a reader, finding their way into the story is like riding a slow ocean liner from Asia or Europe to America—with plenty of time to acclimate to the shifting time zones.

Translators, he said, “cross that ocean on the god-damned Concorde!” After a supersonic flight, translators are parachuted into this new text, expected to carry on as though we had not just crossed an ocean in less than four hours—and then, when our feet hit the ground, we are expected to sound like we have lived in that new world our entire lives.

The jetlag a translator experiences when beginning a new text is a third space, a gap between the source language’s literature and that of the target language, but the hard part is when we start out: “It is the part where you have to peel off your skin, take a new one out of the package, and then stuff yourself into it that is hard.” Your immune system will kick up a fuss, but adjusting to this new skin lets you, the translator, feel like you have become the narrator.

VOICE IN TRANSLATION

On the issue of voice in translation, Hur encouraged translators to read and engage with their languages in books written in a diverse array of styles because you never know when a specific voice you’ve read or heard will suit a project.

Anton Hur said that his personal preference for translation is to stay as true to the source as possible, arguing that “the binary between accuracy and beauty is concocted by nerds who always need rubrics and the approval of authorities to create works of art.” And on the other great dichotomy of literary translation—whether it is a talent or a learned skill—Hur came down more on the side of learned skill. He said that to be a great writer or translator, you must understand the source materials and your own work at the critical level, and literary criticism can only ever be taught.

PITCHING LITERARY TRANSLATIONS

Prior to the lecture, attendees were encouraged to read Anton Hur’s blog post on pitching literary translation and to review a sample cover letter he has shared on his website. I would also encourage you to review these excellent resources!

One of the first points Anton Hur made was to remind those in attendance that, no matter how much we love them, the books we want to translate (or that we have translated) are “properties” and “assets.” Translators must make a living.

In pitching, Anton Hur called to mind that one friend we all have who has fallen head-over-heels for a certain book or TV series and will gush for hours about it if we let them, leaving you wanting to rush home to read or watch it for yourself. When pitching a book, the translator must become that friend. We must convince publishers that the book we are trying to sell is the very best book, share those things that make the book special, that make it interesting, and, especially, that will make it sell.

In writing a pitch, we cannot hold back spoilers. A full synopsis of the story, the unexpected twists and turns, and the surprise ending should all be included. He encouraged us to make the synopsis fun to read and entertaining in its own right—but all in under two full pages. This synopsis should be in the body of the email you send, not an attachment; editors are unlikely to open attachments without the incentive of a good cover letter and synopsis. If you do include an attachment, that is a good place to put a translation sample.

He used car sales as an analogy for selling translated books. If the publisher knows both languages, this is like being able to go to a car dealership and take the car for a drive—they can read the book for themselves. A publisher has hundreds of cars coming in every week that they can go test drive, but when a book comes in where they do not have direct access to the source language, they are now in a position where they are asked to buy a car without touching it, much less driving it. They have to trust you, the translator, completely. This leaves us translators in a position where we must become the greatest salespeople in the world.

If an editor or buyer is interested, he told us, we have to help that person become the next greatest salesperson by providing them with nuggets they can share: like awards the author has won in their own language, notable source language reviews (which you will likely have to translate for free), or reviews in other languages (if it has been translated before). If the author has given a particularly good interview, it may help to translate it or portions of it.

Another sales point Anton Hur brought up was about classification or category; often the general category is unhelpful in a pitch. He said that “Arabic Feminist Fiction” may be important, and it should be read by more people, but, if you want a publisher to invest $20,000 in bringing a book to print, you need to give them the hook: what is it about the book that will make people really want to read it?

THE POWER OF THE TRANSLATOR

When it comes to getting into the publishing community, Anton Hur said to keep yourself open to new friendships and connections at book fairs, awards ceremonies, and conferences. Despite the reputation of literary translators as introverts, which Hur acknowledged as a useful trait when it comes to getting the work done, valuable opportunities can be created by pushing yourself to code-switch into extroversion and to get over any aversion you have to reaching out to talk to someone who may benefit you or have advice on something you have come across.

Near the end of the seminar, Anton Hur stood up from his seat to be sure we were all paying attention to this statement:

“We as translators, we hold so much power, but we are constantly gaslit into thinking that we are the least important, the lowest people in this room. That is so not the case. We hold everyone’s careers in our hands. Even our authors; we are more important than our authors! You are there because your author cannot market their work in your target language. You can. You are the source of everyone making money and literary prestige. Without you, nothing happens.”

CONCLUSION

The final event of Anton Hur’s residency in Seattle was the NOTIS Northwest Literary Translators reception at Folio. Those attending were a mix of people who had attended the other events, Folio members, and members of NOTIS and the Northwest Literary Translators. This provided a much more personal venue and allowed for a less structured Q&A with Anton. The Northwest Literary Translators gave Anton a collection of books translated by members in gratitude for spending time with us.

There are other articles about Anton Hur’s visit, each of them well worth reading: 

• Inside Seattle’s Burgeoning Community of Literary Translators
  —Julia Park, Cascade PBS
• Anton Hur and ‘Translator Jetlag: Voice and the World We Build’
  —Annika Stanley, The Daily
  
  

NOTIS and the Northwest Literary Translators were actively involved in and present for each event during this first UW translator residency, and we look forward to continuing to work with the Translation Studies Hub for their Translator-in-Residence series and other events of interest to us all.



Image captions, top to bottom:

by Teodosia Rivera

Dear Colleagues,

We’ve come to the last segment of the 5Ws series, the “Why.” It all began with my proposed 5Ws method (who, what, where, when, and why) for emerging translators and interpreters.

As we go back and reread each of the previous four segments, a guiding question remains: What do I do when I don’t know what I don’t know? I believe by now that the reasons each of us has joined and remained in the language profession can be found intertwined in how we’ve answered the first 4Ws in this series. Here is how:

1. When you are clear about WHO you are (or visualize yourself to be) as a translator or interpreter, that idea can help you define why you’ve chosen to pursue a path in the language profession.
   
2. When WHAT to do or what to avoid as an emerging T&I professional becomes second nature to you, the why becomes more evident.
3. WHERE your language skills and financial stability reach new heights, and you have discovered a niche for your professional work, your success justifies being a professional translator or interpreter. 
4. Then comes the WHEN. As you launch your new career in the language profession, knowing the right time to revitalize your language skills, network with other professionals in the industry, and keep yourself healthy all around are more than enough reasons to cultivate your commitment to the linguist in you.

5. The answer to WHY is obvious: Why not?!
   
   

We all may have different reasons for being the linguists we are today. But whatever specialty we find ourselves in today, we share a common thread: We love working with languages and using them to create connections, and we are ready and willing to support our peers—especially the emerging T&I professionals that surround us.

I hope the 5Ws series has helped you discover new ways to look at the profession we all love. Please share your reflections in the comment section below!

Have a question for Teodosia? You can get in touch by leaving a comment below or, if you prefer a less public sphere, by emailing social@notisnet.org.

Teodosia Rivera has been working as a professional translator and interpreter since 2018. She is a member of ATA’s Interpreters Division, Spanish Language Division, and Translation Company Division, in addition to two ATA chapters: the Association of Translators and Interpreters of Florida (ATIF) and the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society (NOTIS). Teodosia has established her own business since participating in professional development in the language profession. She brings with her the background of a classroom teacher, having taught for more than 20 years in Osceola County, Florida. “I am still growing and learning,” she says.

The Northwest Translators & Interpreters Society welcomes content submissions for our blog and newsletters on a rolling basis (submit by October 10 to be considered for a 2024 publication)—and we want to hear from you!

This is an excellent opportunity to put your name and your voice out there, to draw attention to your work, and to be recognized by your peers.

The Northwest Linguist & NOTIS News Quarterly, the official printed publications of NOTIS, are designed to share organization and industry news, useful tips, fun facts, and educational pieces with our members.

We are currently accepting submissions in the following areas:

Articles or essays on:

• approaches to translation
• interpretation skills
• translation reviews
• T&I technology (AI, MT, etc.)
• local language access developments
• legislation affecting language professionals
• your personal/professional experiences in the industry
• and more…

Translations of:

• poems
• short prose pieces or excerpts
• recipes
• songs
• etcetera…

Plus: Comics, memes, bloopers, and other bits of humor!

Submissions should be written in English and should fall somewhere between 200 and 800 words (longer pieces will be considered for the blog or the annual newsletter; shorter pieces, for our quarterly newsletters or blog). Relevant images may also be submitted alongside or independent of the written piece.

If submitting a translation, please send both the original version and the translation. Copyright notes and source references should be included as well, if applicable.

Submissions will be evaluated by the NOTIS Publications Committee and edited for content, grammar, and space limitations.

Please send your submissions and other queries to our publications editor, Brianna Salinas, at social@notisnet.org. We look forward to publishing your work!

With best wishes from:
The NOTIS Publications Team

NOTIS recently conducted a survey to gauge member satisfaction, with the goal of using the information gathered to learn more about our members and to improve our services, programming, resources, and communication with your needs in mind.

Below, you will find a summary of the results with charts scattered throughout. 

We were surprised to see so much representation (7) in British Columbia! Nearly all the responses not shown here (from pages 2 and 3 of the drop-down menu) are from members in B.C. (or “BC,” or “BC, Canada,” and so forth), plus one in Minnesota and one in South Carolina.

The survey was distributed by email to all 835 active NOTIS members, 168 of whom responded. Given that NOTIS is almost entirely volunteer-run, we were thrilled that over 77% of respondents were either satisfied or extremely satisfied.

Survey respondents praised the “committed and engaged volunteer leadership” who exhibit a great deal of “care and support for their members,” as well as “energy, enthusiasm, and desire” to do good work for our Society and the greater T&I community.

Chart #3 depicts an active and diverse Society: “We are NOTIS.”

Our members expressed interest in seeing the following — or more of the following — from NOTIS:

• Local gatherings
• Support for professional development and certification preparation
• A greater variety of continuing education courses (in-person and on-demand), specifically on the topics of ethics, legal interpreting, and medical interpreting
• More workshops on translation and translation technology tools

There were many other great suggestions, too, and they have been shared with the relevant NOTIS committees for their consideration!

Lines 1 and 6 are the same, resulting in a total of 50 votes for “local gatherings in different areas.”

We hear you! Currently, and thanks in part to your valuable feedback, we are working on:

• Contacting members in regions outside of Western Washington to set up local gatherings (To propose something in your area, email treasurer@notisnet.org. NOTIS will help pay for refreshments!)
  —> Check out our Professional Development Series on June 1 in Yakima!
• Diversifying and strengthening our workshop and course offerings…
  —> We’re currently offering 11 on-demand webshops.
  —> Be sure to catch Machine & GenAI Translation Techniques (free).
  
  

Moreover, we recently inaugurated a new committee — Member Care & Development — that is already working hard to develop T&I support groups and other new member-centered activities.

Our heartfelt thanks to all who took time from their busy schedules to share their thoughts and feelings with us. We are grateful to all of you, not only for your participation in our Society, but also for the important work you do every day to improve language access, represent our profession, and bridge barriers in the PNW and beyond. Thank you.

If you would like to follow up on something you mentioned in the survey, share any specific requests, or offer to help in some way, please consider emailing us at social@notisnet.org. Please also consider joining the Board of Directors, which is seeking a few energetic new members to begin in January 2025. 

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NOTE: If you are a NOTIS member, you can view the results in full here. Please note that you must be signed in to your account for the link to work.

BY ZAKIYA HANAFI 

“In addition to the effects of the paradox whereby a translation is judged better the more invisible it is, scholarly translation can be lonely in part because it has no clear territory in the professional world of translation and interpretation. It is neither technical nor literary; it lands squarely in the region between art and craft.”

I can’t deny it: it feels great to be recognized and praised for my craft by my peers. After all, it’s the closest thing to an Oscar I could ever hope for in my field! And the big, fat cherry on top is how the prize committee members expressed their recognition: they called my translation “smart and clear, with extremely precise word choices and a sense of musicality that surpasses the craft of other translations.” (See the full statement here.) That’s the greatest compliment a translator could ask for.

The truth is, receiving the Modern Language Association prize has upped my self-esteem and given me a new appreciation for my practice. Of course, happiness comes from within, and the satisfaction we get from our work should come primarily from doing it. And yet… the truth is, as a translator of the humanities — I’m talking about philosophy and literary theory, history of all sorts, anthropology, literary criticism, and so forth — I have sometimes felt left out of the spotlight that literary translators can aspire to. Translators of literature have the potential to go on book launch tours, to receive royalties, to give interviews, to appear on social media. Let’s face it: there can be a lot of buzz about literature (poetry, novels, short stories) that rarely surrounds academic work. Maybe that’s because literature is accessible to everyone: it does not put up the intellectual barriers that some academic jargon does.

Still, in addition to the effects of the paradox whereby a translation is judged better the more invisible it is, scholarly translation can be lonely in part because it has no clear territory in the professional world of translation and interpretation. It is neither technical nor literary; it lands squarely in the region between art and craft.

Because accuracy is paramount when it comes to communicating ideas, scholarly translators first need to do scads of research to understand their authors’ ideas. Then they need to track down source language quotations in the target language, if they exist in authorized translations, and update footnotes with new titles and page numbers in line with a newly compiled target-language bibliography. There’s also terminology to attend to, which may need to be adapted in the quotes, since it must be consistent across the entire text for the author’s ideas to make sense to the reader. Normally we think of terminology as a technical translator’s purview, but, when it comes to translating philosophy, for example, terminological consistency is just as vital. Scholarly translators need to consider the way keywords from antiquity like Form, Idea, and Nature have been passed down through centuries of translations — from Greek, to Arabic, to Latin, to English, for instance. And then there’s the modern tradition of translating Heidegger, which alone would require an essay to explain why one must never confuse Being, uppercase B, with being, lowercase b (or with ‘beying', for that matter, and that’s not a typo!).

All this negotiation between past and present and established lexical traditions requires massive attention to detail, but the result must be expressed in a prose (or poetry, as in my prize-winning book, On Modern Poetry by Guido Mazzoni) that honors the author’s style and verbal nuance, so important for this genre.

Scholarly translators like me walk the line, with every sentence, between communicating like a technical translator and painting with words like a literary translator. Thanks to the commitment this practice requires, every book feels like a tremendous achievement and a true collaboration with the author. It feels miraculous to me to be able to transmit ideas from one tradition of thought to another, without distorting or losing their sense.

I can’t wait for there to be a NOTIS Division of Scholarly Translation, with conferences and journals all about my field. But, in the meantime, winning this prize has given me and my practice that extra little bit of visibility I was craving. And while it may not exactly create a buzz, it does make me glow with pride! Thank you, MLA!

P.S. If you’re thinking of translating a scholarly work and wonder what it involves, or you just want to learn more about the practices of scholarly translation, join me for a NOTIS webinar on the topic on November 7th, 6-7 pm. Click here to register!