Spelling out the differences – Thoughts on why most of us do not pronounce the word exactly as it is written

 

[frustrated Spock*]

One of the claims to fame of Esperanto is that the learners can pronounce words as they see them. As the exception proves the rule, almost all alphabet-based languages exhibit a marked difference between the letters on the paper (or screen) and how the speaker says the word. This linguistic schizophrenia often serves a purpose but more often derives from the fact that written script is snapshot from a given, often distant, time and place and rarely updated to another time and place. Thus, students, both native and non-native speakers, must do as all previous generations do, i.e. learn by heart how to spell the words.

One notable complication of spelling is the multiple manners of expressing the same vowel sound but this redundancy serves a practical purpose. Latin languages in particular use verb endings that sound the same but are written differently. For example, French speakers pronounce é, er, ez, ai, ais, ait and aient exactly the same. Thus, touché, toucher, touchez, touchai, touchais, touchait and touchaient sound alike despite their spelling differences. While this may seem confusing to listeners, mix-ups are rare due to the human ability to apply context. On the other hand, these multiple spelling allow French and similar languages to get more kilometers to the liter for its sounds; due to limited number of phonemes available to Latin languages (as compared to Arabic most notably), having numerous ways of writing them significantly adds to the number of possible visually distinct words. Thus, while such a tendency does add difficulty to learning spelling, it also enriches the vocabulary.

Yet, in most cases, it is the actual process of determining the official spelling that creates the mismatch between the oral and written form. Clearly, pronunciation is a dynamic process specific to a given place and time. It is true that people tend to speak like their family and surrounding neighborhood when they were growing up. My Fair Lady very musically portrayed that phenomenon. Their children may pronounce the same word differently if they move elsewhere or another form becomes fashionable By contrast, at some time or another, somebody writes a dictionary, which establishes the “approved” spelling. At the moment of writing, the composer writes the words exactly as s/he says it or, at best, most people in that area. The spelling is phonetic for that time and place. Thus, in parts of England, then and now, the sentence “the girl went through tough times, I thought” would include 4 guttural g’s, specifically girl, through, tough and thought. Alas, the vast majority of English speakers today would pronounce the each of those consonants a bit differently but the damage is done. There is no choice but to memorize the spelling.

In some cases, such as Hebrew, the actual ability to distinguish a sound from a similar but not identical one has disappeared or is disappearing. Hebrew has two related vowels א, alef, which is pronounced [a] and ע, ayin, which is pronounced [a’] (as in when the doctor checks your tonsils. Furthermore, there are two forms of the sound t, ט, tet, [t] and ת taf [t’], which resembles a soft th historically. Unfortunately, many if not most Israelis do not clearly pronounce the ayin, blurring the distinction. As for the “t” situation, aside from religious Ashenazi Jews who received formal training in biblical Hebrew and Arabic speakers, modern Hebrew speakers make no distinction. See the modern Hebrew Shabbat as compared to the Yiddish shabbas or English sabbath. To take an extreme example, in Hebrew, את ,אט, עת and עט all are generally pronounced the same, [et], but mean moment, slow, a particle to signal a direct object and pen, respectively. In some cases, speakers actually say the letter to make sure of the meaning as in אושר ועושר, [osher v’ o’sher], happiness and wealth, adding “with an ayin” for the second one. Once again, the spelling reflects a reality that barely or no longer exists.

Some languages have managed to clean up their spelling act to a certain degree. The Russian government after the 1918 revolution reformed the language and eliminated numerous historical legacies. The post-revolution version of War and Peace is several pages shorter as compared to the 19^th century edition. The Turkish government in 1928 changed the alphabet, which provided a clean slate for the spelling. Even in English, the distant colonies, notably the United States and Australia often took the liberty of removing the silent and meaningless letters. Some examples include thru instead of through, honor instead of honor and shop instead of shoppe. As there is no official academy of the English languages, such efforts will always be local and limited, unfortunately for learners of English. Comprehensive language reforms are few and far between.

The legacies of the past define a language’s spelling system and lag far behind the changes in actual pronunciation. While sometimes a linguistic factor may justify the gap between the oral and written forms, in most cases, learners have no choice but to depend on their memory and, in these modern days, some kind of digital spellcheck. For me, complaining about illogical spelling reminds me of complaining about the weather. It is an entertaining  topic for a few minutes but, ultimately, people adjust to it. Spelling is what it is, often locally illogical.

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Rue de Paradis – freelancing and the past, present and future of commercial concentration

 

[crystal vase*]

When I visited my family in Paris at the age of 16 in the mid-1970s, I was amazed when I discovered Rue de Paradis (10th arrondissement, near Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis). In a small geographical area of a few streets were a hundred crystal and porcelain stores, if not more, as well as workshops producing these goods. I enjoyed my purchase of a crystal vase for my grandmother (see picture) but found it amazing that the stores had chosen to locate themselves in such extreme proximity and create such intense price competition. Many years later, as a freelancer, I now view the choice as far more sensible and maybe even a model for entrepreneurs in the future.

Despite or possiblly due to its concentration of one trade, the European urban tradition of concentrating similar businesses in one area provides economic efficiency, increases sales, and creates solidarity. Since customers can quickly and easily identify and price competing products, the producers, wholesalers and retailers must hone their target market and create a competitive advantage. As conditions change, they can easily identify the trends and adjust their approach. It is easy to track both the price and product preferences of buyers. As purchasers know that they can find the best choice and prices in this one location, they are sure that they can maximize their budget and time. Thus, it takes relatively little effort to decide where to go. That means the vast majority of customers of these luxury goods in Paris choose to visit that location, increasing the potential market. Therefore, while the supply, the competition, is much higher, the number of customers, the demand, is also significantly greater, ensuring a livelihood for most businesses. On a human level, I saw how the craftspeople, salespeople and managers from all the establishments had their coffee or lunches at the various cafes and created a community that kept them up to date and provided them a with a feeling of belonging. They may have been competitive over buyers but also were all part of the same industry. Overall, this concentration benefited the businesses, customers and the workers.

Much has changed since then, notably due to the Internet, the pace of life and connectivity of the market. The new model for selling goods and services is freelancing from one’s home. The entrepreneur sits at the computer and, with a click of several buttons, sends goods from one location to another or produces and delivers a service such as translation or accounting documents. Providers do not even have to get dressed, let alone talk to their colleagues. They are free to work any hours and are not obligated to answer to any boss except the customer, of course. Even more importantly, they set the rate for their work without having to look over their shoulder to see what others are doing. The new model, whether in wholesale, retail or the service industry, is essentially an island.

While clearly fitting the personality of many people, this solo business structure creates serious challenges in terms of marketing, pricing and social connections. For most freelancers, reaching customers and getting them to finalize the purchase are the most difficult tasks. Even the largest corporations struggle with those goals. As for pricing, it is shockingly difficult to actually know how much a specific item or good will cost. It is true that the nominal price is posted front and center but often the potential purchaser only discovers the shipping costs and taxes when it comes time to pay. That means customers only have the patience to visit two or three sites, often the most well-known, leaving the less obvious sites in the cold. Even worse, customers find shopping for services, which tend not to be of standardized quality, to be extremely confusing. As usual, the conglomerated international agencies, including in translation, tend to dominate the first page of the search results. Yet, in the long term, the most difficult aspect of going solo is being solo. Without a communal coffee machine or café, there is no natural way to meet colleagues and talk. Freelancers feel little sense of comradery with their colleagues because they rarely, if ever, see them. They are on an island and usually unaware of vital information, including competitor prices and market changes. In many countries, the law does even allow them to state their rates to a colleague. Ignorance is not bliss over the long term. Going solo means going alone and is not always a successful strategy or a sustainable approach.

The vacillating  physcial concentration levels in business models are not a modern phenomenon. In medieval European markets, the farmers selling their foodstuff would push their carts throughout the city in search of customers while the sellers of writing tools, stationery, which was a luxury at the time, would remain in one location, stationary, knowing that the customers knew where they plied their trade and would come to them. The Internet has, to a certain extent, brought us back to those olden days as customers surf the Web in search of the best deal often based on how active and optimized a site is. With the number of consumers that order everything online, including food and even cars, as well as the volume of sales increasing especially since the start of the Corona period, merchants of all types cannot afford to sit still.

As I try to look into my crystal ball, not one purchased on Rue de Paradis, I would hope that it would be possible to create some Internet market for both goods and non-standard services that would combine the advantages of both extremes. On the one hand, it is nice to wear or not wear any clothes when working and avoid commuting as well as suffer no boss. On the other hand, it would create great satisfaction to experience the sense of belonging to a community on a daily basis and gain access to updated information on the current market. Both the purchaser and provider would undoubtedly profit in the long term. For freelancers, paradise would be a compromise somewhere in the middle of the street.

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On misfeasance, browsewrap and exhaustion or the fruits of summer school

 

[Exhausted man in office*]

For many non-retail businesses, August is a sleepy month, to put it mildly. In Israel, it even used to be called the “season of cucumbers”, the equivalent of the English "silly season",  due to its lack of relevant news. For me, this August is no different. Thus, I have directed some my spare time to reading the law digests I receive every week and don’t read. After all, continuing education is an essential task for any professional, legal translators included. Not being an attorney, I discovered some new terms, specifically misfeasance trading, browsewrap and horizontal and vertical exhaustion. I may or may not encounter them in the future but, in the meantime, it is fun to learn new terms.

In Wright vs Chappell, the court found the directors guilty of misfeasance trading as compared to wrongful trading. The former implies that directors breached their duties, including in regard to compensation, conflict of interest, due diligence and creditors. The former refers to actual trading when the directors know a company is not solvent. Clearly, both offenses refer to illegal acts, but the malfeasance is easier to prove.

Of a wider impact was the California Appeal Court decision regarding browsewrap, which refers to the “I agree” clicks on websites. The decision affirmed, among other arguments, that a clause stipulating arbitration was not enforceable if a “prudent user” would not have noticed it. This line of thought reminded me of the various “plain English” laws for consumer contracts that require key elements to be visually highlighted. To be clear, it did not say that these Internet agreements were non-valid but only that the site must present them properly.

I was quite fascinated by the discussion of horizontal and vertical exhaustion. These terms do not refer to the effects of training for the decathlon but instead to the conditions for applying for secondary insurance benefits. In many insurance policies, it is impossible to initiate a claim under a secondary insurance policy until the full payout, exhaustion, of all primary policies. That is horizontal exhaustion. By contrast, if an insured party has reached the limits of one of many primary policies, it may receive the benefits from a secondary policy under that same exhausted policy whether or not it has completely collected the benefits from the other primary policies, i.e., vertical exhaustion. Even if that sounds tiring to understand, the knowledge may be useful in the future.

For those busy in August or, even better, on vacation. I wish you happy days. For those waiting for the phone to ring physically or virtually, even if you know everybody else on too busy working or playing to need your services, August is a great time to gather “useless” knowledge. Nobody knows when you may need it, especially translators.

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Names of seasons – A linguistically dynamic spectrum

 

[pomegranates and grapefruits*]

All civilizations and, therefore, all languages label their seasons in one way or another. In practice, there are multiple approaches to this nomenclature, which can change over time and distance. To illustrate the spectrum of views on the seasons, I will present how English, French and Hebrew have related to the times of the year. Agriculture is often the key factor in this process.

In English, as in many languages, the spring is literally the beginning, whether of water or plants. It is the time they spring up, the start of the year for farmers. By contrast, summer is derived from the ancient word for year. I can postulate that the summer defines the year in terms of crops, i.e., if the fields produced in plenty, there was plenty to eat. By contrast, the autumn, a term more often used in the UK, signified the passing the year at which end the fields were bare, more or less. The American fall emphasizes the obvious physical aspect of the season, specifically the falling of the leaves. As for the winter, it was the wet season, literally.

As typical of Franco-British relations, the French view this situation differently. Le printemps literally means “first time”, which would imply that the world is born anew. L’été relates to burning, presumably to the effects of the sun. L’automne is the time for enriching, especially for the farmers as it harvest time for many crops. Finally, l’hiver is the rainy season, a variation of the wet theme.

Hebrew, a far more ancient language evolving in a far drier region, has a long and complicated story in regard to the seasons. Originally, there were two seasons, the fig harvesting season קיץ [keitz] and the wet, סתיו [stav], a bit like the same nomenclature in many countries in the equatorial regions but without the figs. At some point, writers referred to the season in terms of the name of their first month, i.e., תשרי [tishrei], טבת [tivet], ניסן [nisan] and תמוז [tamuz], starting from the autumn. The terms eventually evolved to identify  a separate spring season, אביב [aviv], which relates to young plants. Furthermore, Hebrew speakers began to use the word חורף [horef], which refers to picking fruit, for winter, another sign of how moderate the climate is in the eastern Mediterranean. The previously mentioned סתיו [stav], the rainy season, now was limited to the fall. On another level, the year was once defined from the spring to spring but the new year changed to the month of  תשרי [tishrei] in the fall. In Hebrew, the seasons do also change linguistically.

These are just a small sample of how cultures and languages relate to seasons. It is clear that weather and agriculture, the most basic of all industries, strongly influence the specific choice of words but climate also has an effect. In any case, there is no unilateral way to describe a season. Seasons" greetings.

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Guidelines to translator buyers – the path to a cost-effective quality translation

 

[balanced price and value*]

Effective translation requires time and skill. While machine translation of various types can often provide a reasonable idea of  the meaning, they cannot create an effective human equivalent of the source text, one that reflects all the layers of meaning and correctly resonate with the reader or listener. Thus, the price of quality human translation can seem relatively high. However, the price of poor translation is even higher, notably in terms of lost customers, wasted marketing efforts, law suits and even death (for medical texts). To help translation buyers enjoy both a reasonable price and a quality translation, I present some practical steps for receiving value.

A    Getting documents ready for translation

1.   Finalize the document – Changes applied to the document during the translation process waste time and create chaos. The buyer will pay for them one way or another.

2.  Prepare any required reference materials – If you wish the translator to use specific terminology or layout, provide the instructions before the translation begins. Mid- or post-translation changes significantly slow down the process and can create inconsistencies.

3.  Format issues –Documents in Word do not require pre- and post-translation processing. If you have no choice but to provide a PDF document, make sure it is clear. Interpreting poor quality PDFs takes time, which will be reflected in the price.

 

B    Choosing the translator

1.   Specialist – If your material has a specific purpose and audience, select a translator with that background in terms of academic knowledge and/or experience to properly do the translation the first time. Massive editing or retranslation by another translator adds significant costs.

2.  Don’t be cheap – If the price is too low to believe, it is too low. Translators that demand reasonable rates for their time generally have the skill and motivation to the handle the text properly. Your neighbor that just finished high school, albeit with high grades in English, while willing to work for a low fee, most probably will not provide you with a usable product.

3.  Practical deadline – Professional work takes time – Plan the documentation schedule so that the translator has sufficient time to both prepare the first draft and QA it. 1500-2000 words a day for a full-time translator, subject to variation based on the type of the text, is a ball-park figure for the translation phase. Add QA times of up to the translation time for long documents.

 

C    Post-translation

1.   Knowledgeable editor – The purchaser must clearly review the translation but that task should be done with person quite knowledgeable in the target language. Nothing wastes more time than an editor that adds grammar and syntax mistakes to a translation or, even worse, incorrect terminology.

2.  Communication – Prompt communication leads to fast results. If the buyer and translator need to clarify any issues, same day correspondence, allowing for time zones, is vital if the buyer wishes to receive the final version on time.

Most buyers are not rich enough to buy poor things, as the expression goes. To receive the best value for a translation, prepare the document properly, select the appropriate translator, pay properly and manage the post-translation process efficiently. In this manner, the translations will be effective and costworthy, in short, a true bargain for the buyer.

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Form templates – A translator’s view

 

[Greek salad*]

As a legal and financial translator, my work primarily consists of two types of documents, long legal texts involving specific terminology and a myriad of forms whose major challenge can be the formatting. Some examples of these forms are birth, death and marriage certificates, bank and insurance statements, utility bills and vehicle registrations. Producing a high-quality template for these forms can involve a significant investment of time. However, my experience is that this investment pays dividends in the long term. For this reason, my attitude to requests for document templates from random translators is not quite collegial. In any case, these templates are vital since they help meet customer expectations and serve as our profit on these low margin translations.

Standard forms are anything but standard to translate the first time. First, translators receive them in PDF form, often of poor quality. To the best of my knowledge, no currently available PDF converter can consistently produce a useable template. A close examination of many forms shows that the number of columns in the lines changes at a high frequency, often every other line. Fonts sizes and colors vary from item to item. The relative length and number of words also differ from language to language. For example, English are far longer than Hebrew words, which often forces adjustment of the line parameters. In short, creating an initial template of a single-page form can require several hours.

The process does not end at that point as the forms change over time. Governments change the data included in official documents from time to time. For example, in Israel, marriage certificates before a certain year did not include a line for the last name of each party after the marriage, apparently on the assumption that the wife automatically would adopt her husband’s last name. The same documents issued by different government entities differ slightly, e.g., a birth certificate issued by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs varies slightly from one issued by the Ministry of Interior. The major headache is the tendency of municipalities and utility companies to make small and mostly irrelevant changes to their property tax invoices and other forms, often on the occasion of the anniversaries of significant dates in the city’s history. While this does not affect the actual content, these small changes sometimes affect the formatting. Document translators have to pay careful attention and compare the template to the original to ensure an exact match.

This effort is essential for a certificate translator. First, just as people first eat with their eyes, customers first consider at the overall view of the document. If the formatting attains a high-level match to the original, it already looks “good”, regardless of the actual terminology used in it. On the other hand, an excellent translation poorly presented seems substandard. Thus, while technically secondary, presentation makes a strong impression. I can add that producing a sharp-looking document gives me a positive feeling too, i.e., a job well done. However, the most important reason for investing in a proper template is that it creastes profit. When a different customer requests a translation of the same type of certificate, it takes me far less time. Any losses, based on the difference between time invested and price received, incurred when producing the template are recouped and more in future uses. Furthermore, as these documents tend to come in large batches since they are often part of legal cases, the translator is able to quickly and efficiently take on a large amount of these documents. Thus, document translator should neither avoid nor regret the time spent creating a proper document template as the result is fruitful in the long term.

Given that a template is a product of much effort and vital to personal success, in my opinion, it is not appropriate to issue a general call for templates. These calls in public translator forums are more or less phrased as “Does anybody have a template for a ………?”. My initial internal reaction is “Make one yourself!” but I never write that. For select colleagues with whom I have active cooperation, including mutual referrals, I have no problem in sharing my template. I view this act as a favor, which I may need in return sometime in the future. In other words, the sharing is to our mutual benefit. Yet, on the whole, I tend to consider my templates as my intellectual property. I know that many translators disagree with that approach and may even call it selfish. The sharing of templates is clearly not a black-and-white matter.

Thus, any translator buyer wondering why translators charge for certificates on per-document, not per-word, basis, needs to understand how time-consuming creating the template can be. The document may be simple to understand but quite complicated to create. The buyer is paying for the experience and expertise of the translator just as computer technicians receive compensation for the years of experience they have, not the time it took to solve the problem. If someone is willing to freely share these templates, that person is being generous. In any case, like an elegant plate of food, a proper template is a beautiful site for translator and customer alike.

 

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To and around the point – the impact of social directness.

 

[circles in a tree trunk*]

At a recent translator conference in France, I observed the reaction of the audience of several hundred people, to a 45-minute boring lecture by a government official telling us how great he was. Not a single person got up and left nor did I hear a single complaint about that waste of time during the break. This passive accepance would probably not have occurred anywhere in the Mediterranean basin, especially in Israel, where complaining is an art form. The point is not that either form of expression or non-expression is better but instead that the rules of the social game differ from area to area, if not from country to country and ethnic group to ethnic group. Furthermore, this difference affects how visitors, immigrants and business people react to exposure to another world.

People express their feelings non-verbally and verbally. Walking out, becoming animated or making faces all reflect an internal feeling. For example, it is possible to understand whether or not a person agrees with the speaker by observing the facial expression, at least in some cultures. The verbal aspect ranges from silence, i.e., the thought never leaves the mind, to understated, as in “he went a bit too far”, to no-doubt: “the speaker is full of shit”. All roads lead to Rome but the road signs vary in language and scale.

While individual and family tendences clearly impact the manner of expression, the accepted manner of society tends to control the bounds of honesty. Admittedly, all societies impose a layer of veneer of politeness, especially in specific settings, particularly business environments and official occasions, but the thickness of this layers varies from country to country.  Thus, northern Europe, which includes the dominant cultures of most of the United States and Canada, tends to be rather stoic, hiding its dirty laundry and making every effort to maintain a serene atmosphere. In other cultures, notably most of the Mediterranean, people can keep a polite face for a while but it doesn’t take long before someone gets excited in a positive or negative way. Few natives take these incidents to heart as drama is an essential and integral part of life. In practice, normal behavior is what a person expects and can interpret.

When visiting a country with a “foreign” point of view (an Italian in Holland, not an Italian in Spain), difference makes the heart grow fonder. It is strange but somehow charming how polite or impolite the waiters and taxi drivers are or how simple or complicated dealing with bureaucracy becomes. The tone of conversations at a café sounds so exotic because they are unlike the familiar music of our familiar conversations. The body language, whether relatively restrained or unrestrained, display a completely different if not necessarily understood drama, adding to its charm. The foreignness of the communication, whether verbal or not, can be part of the charm, making it exotic.

However, living in such a place is another story. To reside in the country requires functioning in it and understanding both the text and subtext. It may be amusing to see a driver have an angry dispute with police officer but people used to law and order may find that “unbecoming”, bordering on anarchistic, and clearly not beneficial to society, especially when they experience that style of discussion with an inconsiderate neighbor. On the opposite hand, an Israeli expecting open discussions of annoying matters could find it frustrating that nobody speaks their mind, creating even more tension. Asymmetric communication patterns over time either lead to a person going native or leaving the country.

As business has become international, understanding these differences has become vital. “One size fits all” does not apply to business communication. A subtle reference to a Japanese or Norwegian customer may elegantly solve a controversial matter but that same message is lost or viewed as a sign of weakness in the Middle East. To complicate matters, every country, apart from Japan and a few others, is multicultural today, rendering it impossible to be certain of the appropriate tone. Still, when expressing dissatisfaction, it is important to consider the larger target culture in deciding on how direct to be. For example, “there appears to be issue with last month’s payment” is appropriate in some places while in others, “I have yet to receive payment” would be far more effective. When communicating with parties abroad, make an effort to take into account how direct the message should be.

Variety is the spice of life. It would be quite boring if all the world were the same. The fact that people express their thoughts in different styles makes it interesting to travel to foreign countries, comfortable to live in our native country and complicated to communicate with businesses abroad. Thus, both to-the-point and around-the-point are relevant forms of expression.

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Picture from Pixibay