I’m sure I’m not the only one who receives e-mail applications from other translators offering their services in hopes of work. I’m always amazed that they seem to think I am an agency, when clearly I am not – all they would have to do is take a look at my website to see that there is only me. But that’s a rant for another day…
Today, I would like to share something with you that one of those hopeful applicants wrote in her mail listing her services. Here it is:
“Usually, I do human translation, but I also can use,
Power translator, Wordfast, Trados and any other software.”
Power translator, Wordfast, Trados and any other software.”
I don’t know about you, but I stumbled over “human translation”, because she went on to list CAT tools as the apparent opposite. Had she said something about machine translation and post-editing, I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. But like this?
For me, any translation I do, whether “off the cuff” or using a CAT tool, is “human” – I am a human, after all, so what else could it be? Just because I am translating using a program that helps me be faster and more consistent and lets me ensure a higher quality doesn’t mean that the translation wasn’t done by a human, does it?
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So, either I am misunderstanding something here, or the writer has no clear concept of what the actual opposite of human translation is…
Or what do you think?