A long time ago, I stumbled across a website that expressed my exact translation philosophy and attitude towards customers of language service providers. I copied and pasted the few pages of text to a Word file for keeps. Once I restarted my blog, I decided to check that website. It still existed as of early 2021. I contacted the e-mail address on the site and asked if the current website owner also produced the content I had originally found so delightful. It turned out that he did, and he had reasons for taking down the pages.

Since I found that to be such a shame, I asked for permission to repost them here. I have respectfully not included one of the pages, which was about the translation industry in India. The sentiments about non-native speakers producing translations of poor quality using children and/or working conditions akin to slave labor were not the original author’s personal experience at a later time. So, I will reduce the message of that page with a personal anecdote of my own.

I purchased my first set of Bluetooth headphones in 2020. Because they are wireless, they have an internal battery than runs down following prolonged use. The headphones have no visual indicator on the outside to let you know the battery is getting weak. So, what did the manufacturers do? They had some individual record an audio message in a female voice to encourage the user to plug them in. That prompt with a distinctly Chinese accent goes like this: “Please charging.” So, my take-away and advice for anyone needing a professional translation, no matter how short or long: STAY AWAY FROM NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS!

The author has since retired, so his website no longer exists, and the hilariously biting pages are gone. Without further ado, here is the text that puts the truth of the translation industry in a nutshell:

 

EUROZONE TRANSLATIONS

"When quality and price don't matter"

Eurozone Translations bases its success on a very simple premise:
We know more about translating than the customer does.

We don't tell our customers how to make their widgets, and we'll be damned if we'll let our customers tell us how to translate.

We don't hesitate to reject documents that don't meet normal standards of coherence, grammar and common sense. If the source document is crap, why should we break our necks to turn out something better than the original? If you want that type of work, please contact our subsidiary, Rumpelstiltskin Translations.

People complain about the high cost of translations. Executives willing to spend sixty dollars an hour for their kids' piano lessons balk at paying half that for an hour of a translator's time. Five years from now, you'll realize that the piano lessons were a waste, but you'll still be bitching about the cost of translations.

In short:

Come to Eurozone Translations for your high-quality document needs.

Go to Rumpelstiltskin Translations for documents needing substantial revision in the original before being turned into something even vaguely intelligible in the target language.

 

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Rumpelstiltskin Translations

 

You've cut corners.

You saved money.

You used non-native speakers to create your document.

You've hired unqualified people to write procedures.

Now you have to translate a document that, if the instructions are followed, could cause damage to lives or equipment. This could cause production slowdowns, or worse:

LAWSUITS!

Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold.

We will turn sloppily written, unintelligible and incomprehensible text into translations much better than the original. But it will cost you. Our services are much cheaper than defending against a product liability lawsuit.