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Requirement for native speakers only? - Isn't that discrimination?
Thread poster: Earl Rogers
Özden Arıkan
Özden Arıkan  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:41
Member
English to Turkish
+ ...
Without getting into what constitutes being a native-speaker for the purposes of translation... Nov 19, 2003

would it be discrimination had I demanded a policewoman to search me, when required to be searched -on my body- to enter a... congress building, for example?

would it be discrimination to seek a black actor to have the lead role in a movie on the life of... Muhammed Ali, for example... or a male actor, for that matter?

would it be discrimination had I declined receiving psychotherapy from an English-speaking therapist, or declined entrusting my heart for surgery into th
... See more
would it be discrimination had I demanded a policewoman to search me, when required to be searched -on my body- to enter a... congress building, for example?

would it be discrimination to seek a black actor to have the lead role in a movie on the life of... Muhammed Ali, for example... or a male actor, for that matter?

would it be discrimination had I declined receiving psychotherapy from an English-speaking therapist, or declined entrusting my heart for surgery into the hands of a surgeon specialized in gastro-intestinal diseases?
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IanW (X)
IanW (X)
Local time: 16:41
German to English
+ ...
Well said, Xola! Nov 19, 2003

How right you are!

 
MIGUEL JIMENEZ
MIGUEL JIMENEZ  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:41
English to Spanish
+ ...
Native competency or everyone can do it Nov 19, 2003

I am a Spanish National and currenlty live in North Carolina. Just where the poster of the question lives.

There is not a clear understanding in most area in this State of what a TRANSLATOR really is. As an effect, anybody who speaks Spanish can do it ( Even at University Hospitals, namely Chappel Hill University, they require a Secondary Education Diploma to do translations). Even at courthouses, it is the judge who decides if whoever is translating is truthfull... that means, that
... See more
I am a Spanish National and currenlty live in North Carolina. Just where the poster of the question lives.

There is not a clear understanding in most area in this State of what a TRANSLATOR really is. As an effect, anybody who speaks Spanish can do it ( Even at University Hospitals, namely Chappel Hill University, they require a Secondary Education Diploma to do translations). Even at courthouses, it is the judge who decides if whoever is translating is truthfull... that means, that cousins, sons, uncles can be your legal interpreter if the judge has nobody else.

As a result, I have seen the worst tranlations in my life over here... in North Carolina... no wonder the require Native Speaker.. with everybody jumping to do bad jobs, many people hiring are extremely tired of bad Spanish Speakers that get them into trouble. Think about people suing people for medical errors and the like.

Just be persistent, and if you can, pass the English Spanish ATA test... I don´t like it too much but I will prove to these people that your competency is pretty much at native level.
I know plenty of people that did NOT pass it even when they described your same situation and even when the ATA test if pretty easy for translators.

Have a great day and if you ever visit Wilmington, I would not mind meeting with you.

Regards
Miguel
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Nadia Bughrara
Nadia Bughrara
Local time: 16:41
Italian to English
very similar problem... Dec 7, 2003

I was born in Rome to an English mother and Arabic father. I had a mainly English education in Rome and spent over seven years in the UK where I got my TEFL certificate. I feel more confident writing in English and teach English in Rome. However when applying for 'Mother Tongue only' jobs in Italy I often have problems convincing them I am bilingual as I sound Italian on the phone. To complicate matters further my name and surname are Arabic! Not sure what my mother tongue is really!!... See more
I was born in Rome to an English mother and Arabic father. I had a mainly English education in Rome and spent over seven years in the UK where I got my TEFL certificate. I feel more confident writing in English and teach English in Rome. However when applying for 'Mother Tongue only' jobs in Italy I often have problems convincing them I am bilingual as I sound Italian on the phone. To complicate matters further my name and surname are Arabic! Not sure what my mother tongue is really!!Collapse


Augusto Mello Furtado
 
RafaLee
RafaLee
Australia
Local time: 01:41
Spanish to English
+ ...
Ideally one should translate into one´s native tongue but..... Dec 8, 2003

Ideally one should translate into one´s native tongue; However, as Narasimhan Raghavan said, it is unrealistic to insist on the requirement for native speakers all the time.

When accuracy is more important than style ,especially in technical texts, an expert non-native speaker often translates better than a native speaker who is not familiar with the subject at all.

In a lot of cases, it is hard to find an available native speaker who can translate "rare languages" suc
... See more
Ideally one should translate into one´s native tongue; However, as Narasimhan Raghavan said, it is unrealistic to insist on the requirement for native speakers all the time.

When accuracy is more important than style ,especially in technical texts, an expert non-native speaker often translates better than a native speaker who is not familiar with the subject at all.

In a lot of cases, it is hard to find an available native speaker who can translate "rare languages" such as Oriental, African and Eastern European languages. Even if you can find one, the price is often not affordable.

If one should always translate into one´s mother tongue, then NO ONE should translate any languages into "Bahasa Indonesia"! Unlike most languages in the world, "Bahasa Indonesia", the official language of Indonesia, was a planned language based on Malay. Although it has been used in official context and media, NO ONE speaks it on daily basis and regional languages are used instead. Therefore, it is not surprising that "Bahasa Indonesia" is not included in top-ten world languages.

In your case, as you may be more familiar with socio-cultural context of Central America than what-so-called native speakers from Spain or Argentina, don´t worry. Just GO FOR IT!
Maybe you better set up your own agency instead of applying for a job?
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ckatsidonis
ckatsidonis  Identity Verified
Belgium
Local time: 16:41
English to French
+ ...
Humility anyone? Dec 9, 2003

earlrog wrote:

I believe that it may be. Why should I be discounted an not even considered for a job before even looking at my credentials or performance? Is it just, or even legal, that job selection be based on what language you grew up speaking? I have been told many times by native speakers that I speak spanish as well as a native. I learned spanish through immersion. I love Spanish. I love to translate. I speak spanish more often than I do English, I love Hispanic peoples and cultures, yet I am passed over for jobs because Spanish is not my native tongue! That strikes me as ridiculous. I have been translating locally for a long time. There are over 100,000 -150,000 Hispanic people in the rural area where I live and I deal with many of them on a daily basis. I effectively communicate with people from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador every week. I also ocassionaly speak with people from other Spanish speaking countries with no problem. I am new to internet translating, so maybe my fellow translators are used to this, but it angers me. Any thoughts or comments? Or is this something that we just have to put up with? (No offense intended or implied to native speakers. If you are a native Spanish speaker, do you get passed over for jobs being translated into English? If so, comment on that, please)
Thanks,
feeling frustrated in Carolina del Norte


Humility anyone?

I won’t enter in this debate trying to convince anyone as this is not my role but I would like to remind to those who actually defend the point of view of the original message in this thread that as a translator we also need to be humble. Translating to another language than the native one seems wrong to me. No matter what your level of proficiency is, you will always be one step behind a native professional of that language.

I speak (European) Spanish at such a level that when I go to Spain nobody can recognise me as a foreigner. It is a language that I speak daily at home, when I go out, I am involved in the Spanish speaking community living here in Brussels (music group, newspaper, etc.) Nonetheless, my native language is French (although my name and surname (and family) are Greek). I know by experience that I speak better than the average Spanish speaker BUT if I had to compare my skills to the ones of a Spanish linguist, translator, philologist, etc… I would certainly not be able to compete. So I humbly say, when asked (very often) to translate into Spanish that I prefer leaving it to a professional.

It is also a way of not going over somebody else’s “market”. I have enough work with French so I personally don’t work into another language.

Look at what happens with English. Half non-native English translators on this planet assure they can translate into your language. Doesn't that p*** you off? I mean, I just get literally sick when I see some texts written by non-natives. Lately, I had to translate some technical texts from English into French on electronic devices produced in Korea. Guess who wrote the original English text: the Korean engineers! It felt sometimes like archaeology instead of translation: I had to uncover the meaning of the text by examining it, imagining what they had meant by this or that. Just a plain pain in the… donkey.

By the way, concerning what Mr. Raghavan writes, I would just ask: how do you manage to translate a text concerning everyday life if you have actually not lived in these countries (talking about French and German here)? Would you consider yourself skilled enough to translate texts for the Belgian French speaking market then or the Canadian market? Talking about engineering/very specialised texts is one thing and might be OK because as you said substance is more important than the form for the end-reader but translating some targeted marketing material or a novel or a law text or some text with cultural substance is another thing.

Well, anyway, everybody: do as you feel you should do but a little bit of ethics and humility won't hurt... the eyes of the “final reader”.

Regards,

Charalambos


 
sylver
sylver  Identity Verified
Local time: 23:41
English to French
500% with you Dec 10, 2003

Charalambos Katsidonis wrote:

...
Look at what happens with English. Half non-native English translators on this planet assure they can translate into your language. Doesn't that p*** you off? I mean, I just get literally sick when I see some texts written by non-natives. Lately, I had to translate some technical texts from English into French on electronic devices produced in Korea. Guess who wrote the original English text: the Korean engineers! It felt sometimes like archaeology instead of translation: I had to uncover the meaning of the text by examining it, imagining what they had meant by this or that. Just a plain pain in the… donkey.
...
Regards,

Charalambos


I have done the same. Hell. I am even proofreading "French" texts written by Korean translators, and that takes imagination, I swear!

To cover the issue of "discrimination" in one fell swoop, I would like to remind you that we are service providers, and they are *clients*. It's their money, and their choice to buy what they want with it, no matter how (ir)relevant their criteria are.

Think about it from the customer's point of view.

You have money, and you are considering a purchase. Picture it for one minute. Let's say *you* want a hair cut. Don't you have the right to decide what criteria you will use to choose your hairdresser? For exemple, I like to get my haircuts from women rather then men. Is it discrimination? No. It's my money. I earned it and I spend it as *I* please, even if I have no reason to believe that a woman would cut hair better then a man.

A translation customer has exactly the same rights. If he want his English documents translated in Japanese by a 25 years old Swedish guy, born in Malmö, with black hair and currently living in Keokuk, well, providing he finds one, what do you have to say? Do you feel you have the right to tell him what he should do with his money?

No matter how stupid/intelligent/... the clients' criteria are, please let's recognize that it's their money and they have the right to decide what to do with it.

Please respect the clients' choice. Be smart and find ways to convince them that you are the best choice available. But don't complain if they decide not to consider your application. Their choice.

Market yourself better and deliver. If you are really competent enough to do a decent job (I am not talking about a work of art here), then why not? But no one *owes* you a job. You want one? Find it.

On a completely different level: Is the Native vs Non Native speaker a valid issue, quality-wise?

My personnal opinion is "YES, it is a valid issue". Why? While some non-native may hypothetically translate on par with a native (and I have yet to see one), it must be recognized that this is very, very, very far from being the norm, unfortunately.

We get this talk every once in a while, non-native speakers feeling they are being wronged when told the customer wants "native only", and they immediately highlight those theorical few able to do it.

But what is often forgotten is that for every non-native able to do a decent job, there are hundreds who can't and yet offer the "service" nevertheless. And many of them are not just "not good" but actually dreadful!

Show me one good non-native translator, and I will show you 10 non-native able to skillfully butcher a text in ways you never thought possible. And of course, they advertise quality too. Who doesn't?

At least with a native translator, even a bad one, you can expect a minimum standard. "Native" is a quasi-garantee that the guy actually speaks the language.

Believe it or not, I know folks who translate into a language they barely understand, providing you pay them. And not just one. Many.

So what is the customer to do? Is he going to test hundred of applicants in the hope of finding THE translator? No. He uses criteria to pre-screen potential provider, then check out the most likely candidates. "Native" is a very useful criteria for that matter, and one I use when I have to outsource a job.


 
Kevin Lossner
Kevin Lossner  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 15:41
German to English
+ ...
"Native" speakers Dec 11, 2003

Narasimhan Raghavan wrote:
Now when such a text, say an English text written by an Indian and influenced by his mother tongue, say Tamil, is to be translated into French, do you think that a French native speaker will be better in translating it? I think not. Here the idea of a native translator is made to stand on its head.


Amen. I'm American, and on those rare occasions when I am confronted with an Indian English legal or administrative text to translate into German, I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone. A German who hasn't lived in India would probably not have a chance of understanding much of the text. An Indian translator would be the best choice, with editing afterward by a German native perhaps. Most (99%) of the time, of course, I translate into EN-US, but when I get a technical text written by a German who can't draw a line between his local dialect and Hochdeutsch, I often feel a German competent in that dialect might do a better job of interpreting the text (or at least an intermediate text which can then be transformed into good, idiomatic English).


 
AllisonK (X)
AllisonK (X)  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 16:41
Dutch to English
+ ...
definition of native speaker Apr 22, 2004

could shed some light on this topic as it seems some people on ProZ are confused as to what this really is (and have two native languages listed on their profile, even when this is CLEARLY not true). A semester spent abroad, while an excellent way to brush up one's foreign language skills, does not a native speaker make - i.e., time spent in a U.S. high school does not give one native skills. I've lived in Holland for 12+ years and don't think I would consider myself a native even after 112........ See more
could shed some light on this topic as it seems some people on ProZ are confused as to what this really is (and have two native languages listed on their profile, even when this is CLEARLY not true). A semester spent abroad, while an excellent way to brush up one's foreign language skills, does not a native speaker make - i.e., time spent in a U.S. high school does not give one native skills. I've lived in Holland for 12+ years and don't think I would consider myself a native even after 112........
see these definitions:
The first language a human being learns to speak is his native language; he is a native speaker of this language’ (Bloomfield, 1933)
If you did not learn a language in childhood, you do not speak it as a native speaker. Later-learnt languages can never be native languages, by definition. Children who learn two languages simultaneously from birth have two first languages (Davies, 1991)
It seems nativeness is too often confused with fluency by many translators and is often misleading to clients.

[Edited at 2004-04-22 18:56]
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vorloff
vorloff
Bosnian to English
+ ...
If you respect language, accept the native concept May 14, 2004

I agree. I would also add that it is the language in which you received most of your education. I learned Serbo-Croatian as a child along with English, and lived there twice for a total of 7 years (3 in early childhood, 4 in adulthood), and visited many times, but would not classify myself as a native speaker because I did not spend the years in school having my grammar and writing corrected, not to mention developing writing skills in high school and college. I know a lot of great, talented tr... See more
I agree. I would also add that it is the language in which you received most of your education. I learned Serbo-Croatian as a child along with English, and lived there twice for a total of 7 years (3 in early childhood, 4 in adulthood), and visited many times, but would not classify myself as a native speaker because I did not spend the years in school having my grammar and writing corrected, not to mention developing writing skills in high school and college. I know a lot of great, talented translators, but personally have never read any text in English by a non-native that was not immediately apparent as such. I'm sure that the same is true for Spanish. (I have read a lot of crappy writing by native speakers too, but that's another story.)

But fret not. Not being native in one of your languages means you ARE native in the other one in your your pair. Why not concentrate on that? If you love Latin culture, why not move somewhere where native English is low in supply (Spain, for example). Then there will be no reason to complain about a native language requirement, since it will be to your advantage.

AllisonK wrote:
definitions:
The first language a human being learns to speak is his native language; he is a native speaker of this language’ (Bloomfield, 1933)
If you did not learn a language in childhood, you do not speak it as a native speaker. Later-learnt languages can never be native languages, by definition. Children who learn two languages simultaneously from birth have two first languages (Davies, 1991)

[Edited at 2004-04-22 18:56]
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Jeff Allen
Jeff Allen  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 16:41
Multiplelanguages
+ ...
native language, mother tongue, and language matrix Jan 2, 2006

This thread reminds me of a couple of my previous posts which were in similar types of threads on the overall topic of mother tongue and native language.

mother tongue ?
http://www.proz.com/post/174932#174932

mother ton
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This thread reminds me of a couple of my previous posts which were in similar types of threads on the overall topic of mother tongue and native language.

mother tongue ?
http://www.proz.com/post/174932#174932

mother tongue in African countries
http://www.proz.com/post/189435#189435


and someone 1-2 pages up in this thread mentioned something about spoken language versus written language. Go to the post below and follow the links. The text by Tom Sawallis is particularly excellent:
http://www.proz.com/post/227654#227654

Jeff
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Subhasish Majumder
Subhasish Majumder
India
Japanese to English
Deep Logical fallacy! May 7, 2018

Özden Arıkan wrote:

would it be discrimination had I demanded a policewoman to search me, when required to be searched -on my body- to enter a... congress building, for example?

would it be discrimination to seek a black actor to have the lead role in a movie on the life of... Muhammed Ali, for example... or a male actor, for that matter?

would it be discrimination had I declined receiving psychotherapy from an English-speaking therapist, or declined entrusting my heart for surgery into the hands of a surgeon specialized in gastro-intestinal diseases?


would it be discrimination had I demanded a policewoman to search me, when required to be searched -on my body- to enter a... congress building, for example?

It might become a discrimination if you specifically ask for a policewomen after scrutinizing her sexual orientations.

would it be discrimination to seek a black actor to have the lead role in a movie on the life of... Muhammed Ali, for example... or a male actor, for that matter?

It might become a discrimination if you persist that the black male actor should be of american origin.

would it be discrimination had I declined receiving psychotherapy from an English-speaking therapist, or declined entrusting my heart for surgery into the hands of a surgeon specialized in gastro-intestinal diseases?

It might become a discrimination if you deny the treatment from a renowned specialist from say S.Arabia.

So,at the very end the point is, you can ask or opt for whatever,you find good for yourself,but as humans our choices goes deep down and hence we need to maintain a balance in between or draw some line rather than being pessimistically blunt like you.

The world is large enough for all of us to find our appropriate choices,of course we need to find our specialized heart surgeons and the best among them maybe in some corner,of a remote village in Nigeria.

Its up-to us entirely to question ourselves do we have the time and the patience?


 
Maxi Schwarz
Maxi Schwarz  Identity Verified
Local time: 10:41
German to English
+ ...
When they can't figure out what to ask for? May 8, 2018

Is it discrimination or a certain level of ignorance. I've been a marker of certification exams. The exams came without names - only a number - and the only thing you could go by was the quality of the work itself. Can one then later go to a person who passed the exam and say "Sorry, but you cannot have done as well as you did, because you have the wrong name, grew up in the wrong country, etc.?"

Tony Cella
 
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Requirement for native speakers only? - Isn't that discrimination?






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