Not too long ago I posted a blog about a couple of “irregular” jobs I have done in my career as a self-employed translator https://www.georgetrailtranslator.co.uk/professional-translation-irregular-jobs/ Well since then I have completed a certain multilingual proofreading job – for a private client rather than a translation agency. That’s pretty irregular, at least for me personally. In my experience, translation agencies tend to have procedures in place for ensuring that completed translation jobs are proofread; usually, but not always, with the original text (in the “translated from language”) provided to the proofreader(s) they are willing to pay for the work. I’ve played that role before. I’ve even done proofreading assignments in which I’ve proofread an English translation which was a translation from neither French nor German, the very foreign languages in which I am expected to be proficient for professional purposes. (Have you ever heard of the “four eyes principle”?) But in this case I was given a multilingual proofreading job by a private client who I could be sure didn’t really care what I did as long as I “did what he expected” – just anything the output of which he would agree would earn his confidence.
Now, the title of this blog is “Multilingual proofreading is never too easy”. So what was this material I was expected to proofread? Bank statements. That’s right, just simple bank statements full of entries which often had only one or two English words describing what the payments or receipts were for. And the guy who asked me to do this job, it’s not like I know anything about his life; but I understand that it is none of my business, so who could blame me? But it’s not enough to say that. Text in the entries of bank statements is usually conspicuously short, with no actual sentences to contend with. For my part, it was tempting to treat a job like this as too easy, and be all too insouciant in my approach to it. For this reason, it was all I could do to make it look like I had actually treated this as a professional assignment.
Maybe at this point you’re wondering how I even ended up doing a job like this, as part of my actual professional career? Well, the original version of the material in question was in German, but this guy told me he had a German wife who had already had a shot at translating it into English, and that’s the only reason the assignment I did was multilingual proofreading, all for the sake of a final touch by a native English speaking language professional. When I started I knew I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there was nothing to actually correct – in a weird way, I was actually relieved when I did find one or two things worth correcting e.g. “daytrip” changed to two words rather than one – “day trip” (and I know the Germans like to string their words together) – and “debit card load” changed to “debit card charge,” where “debit charge” in German is “Lastschrift” but “Last” in German means “load”. I believe that the customer expected me to spot things like that mainly, even if he would never specifically state as such. In that particular instance I did have access to the original German version (I didn’t actually have the original German version available for all of this stuff) and “debit card load” was a clear mistranslation I did not delay rectifying.
But, in practice, for much of the work I did in this project, I just (in a way) let my imagination take over. For instance, for some entries there was only the single English word “parking” provided as details. For better or worse, I suggested to the customer that “‘parking charges’ just sounds better to me – or maybe these are in fact parking fines?” For “fuel”, I asked “For an automobile? Personally, I would say ‘petrol’ (or ‘diesel’) – unless we’re talking about ‘heating fuel’ or something.” There were plenty of suggestions on my part for which I’m guessing many people would have been inclined to argue that I was just splitting hairs, and I freely admitted this to the customer. Or add a single word: change “stock adjustment” to “stock adjustment expenses”. Or change “doctor” to “doctor’s fee”. I also saw “dining out” written by whoever this German woman was. Like I said to the customer, I’ve heard of “eating out,” and I accept that that is a common and popular expression, but I’m not too sure if it’s quite the same for “dining out” – do people really say that? And with “Kids clothes” I suggested putting an apostrophe on the end of “kids” to signify possession, even if I wouldn’t blame anyone for calling it a pointless argument at the end of the day.
When I finished this job the client asked for a “clean version”. But the originals were not in digital format like a Word or Excel file. Did he really expect me to produce whole new files from scratch with my changes taken into account? Even if he was willing to pay me extra for it… come on!
Update: I have sent the customer the invoice for the originally agreed lump sum fee of £16, but he decided to pay me a bit more for “fast service”. Well, fair play to him.