20,000 words: The amount of words (some) clients think can be translated overnight.
Back translation: (1) I can’t proofread and I don’t trust you. Send translation of your
translation. (2) Back translation: When the chicken and egg conundrum becomes a
language assignment.
Capital letters: Something that clients love to put in and translators love to take out.
Charm: A coercive ploy used by clients when they need you to dig them out of a
hole.
Client: “Please provide some alternative headlines” = “We have no idea what the
message is”.
Customer feedback: A lengthy exchange of emails where the customer attempts to insert error
in a translation, resulting in attempts to insert errors in a translation,
resulting in a debate of life, the universe and everything.
Deadline: (1) The unreasonable delivery schedule that will almost kill the
translator, but not quite. (2) Deadlines: Clients love to give them, but (some)
hate to keep them when they’re on the bottom of an invoice.
Dictionary: Gives you every alternative except that elusive word you are searching
for.
Excel Files: A file format used by clients who don’t know how to create tables in
Word files.
Fee: The tiny figure on your bank account that keeps you from starving and
that clients make such a fuss about.
Feedback: Something that is never forthcoming unless it’s negative. Not to be
confused with complaint!
Friday night: chances are big your favorite client asks for a huge translation due 9am on Monday.
Holidays: non-existing term in translators’ community.
OCR: A tool that scans the words “I love you” as “1 i0u3 40v”.
PDF: A file format used when the client has lost the original source text.
PPT files: A file format used by people who are planning to bore their audience to
death.
Proofreading by the client: The phase of implementing spelling and grammar errors.
Proofreading: The PERFECT job for grammar-obsessed pedants.
Relevant background material: 20 GB of completely useless stuff.
Research: five hours spent on the internet looking for two words, only to be told
it’s a typo and to leave them out.
Rush fee: Trying to sell a ten percent raise as a hundred percent raise.
Sample Translation: A long document a client has split between 20 agencies as a way of
getting the work done for free.
Social media: how your whole extended family and friends of friends can ask for free
translations.
Ten free test translations a day keep
the translator’s money away.
Translation Agency: The pariah in the middle of the client/supplier sandwich.
Translation theory: That thing they teach you in school that you never quite seem to use in
the real world.
Translator: A person expected to do today what the client should have done
yesterday.
Weekends: The 2 days between Friday and Monday when clients mini-break in Paris
Word File: a word-processing document that is guaranteed to crash when a deadline
is looming.
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