Last week, I reviewed comments about translation from a very well-informed attorney at the Hague Law Blog and pointed out a number of serious misconceptions lawyers have about translation. This week I confront the egregious misrepresentation that there is no quality difference between certified (or sworn) translators and unverified translators. I believe that unethical translation companies are to blame for sending this misinformation to lawyers, and I’ll present convincing evidence showing that such misinformation was deliberate next week in Part III. While lawyers like the Hague Law Blog’s authors are victims, the real victims are actually the legal clients being cheated and subjected to serious economic damage.
While some of this may come off as critical, it’s important to recall that, in the last article in this series, I pointed out that the Hague Law Blog’s author appears to be highly qualified in the law and superior to most international lawyers, and that the blog is a “must read” for legal translators. Thus, the point of this series is not to point out what international lawyers don’t know but what they need to know and would know if they ever got involved with professional translation. One way I achieve this is by looking at what some of the best lawyers are saying about translation and simply assuming their less-qualified colleagues also have these same misconceptions.
Misinformation about certified translators
Quote 5
This next quote has to do with sworn translators in Europe under a parallel system to the American Certified translator system, with more emphasis placed on swearing an oath to be ethical, whereas certification places a lot more emphasis on competence. I would say a certified translator needs to be moderately competent, a sworn translator just minimally competent. In my observation, a certified translator in the federal system needs a second language proficiency ILR4, whereas a sworn translator needs about ILR3. There is no evidence of someone rated ILR4 by the federal government failing certification exams, but I have encountered lots of ILR4-rated people who have passed.
When discussing previous European requirements to use sworn translators:
“These folks were hard for translation companies to find, and their work was really no better than other professional translators, but their small guild monopolies* inflated prices to double or triple what those others charged.”
The Hague Law Blog author’s second quote basically makes two claims: first, that sworn translators’ ability is no greater than totally uncredentialed translators, and second, that the price is not worth it. I’ll address the quality issue first.
Credentials Worthless?
To unpack the unwritten part of the statement, the author is expressing the idea that, “We, as a firm that employs me, someone with no translation qualifications, and my intern Emily, who has some undergraduate education in translation, think there is no difference between a sworn translator and an uncredentialed translator.” This a logical fallacy I’ll call amateur’s fallacy, something well-documented in medicine and best described in that context.
Many doctors have been documented complaining that patients with no medical training come to their office and challenge their diagnosis and prescriptions by presenting them with information from WebMD. There are even cases where an experienced and licensed doctor is challenged with the opinion of pre-med students, which is essentially the empirical process described by the Hague Law Blog’s author. In medicine, as in academia, there is a concept called peer review, which is often manifested as a second opinion and involves the quality of a statement about treatment options, as in the case of published medical opinion or a particular diagnosis. This is particularly important because if you, the lawyer, do commit malpractice and expert testimony is taken, it’s usually an ATA Certified translator who testifies – and I get asked to testify about things all the time. This kind of mistake on high-stakes issues often gets people thrown into jail.
When a layperson does a translation, they generally tend to look at the wrong sources and insist on a wrong answer. Thus, the sworn translator gave you a good answer, but you just let a random intern spin gold into copper like a reverse Rumpelstiltskin. Not good for the client.
Unethical translation companies spread misinformation that certified translators are no better qualified than uncertified translators, even in public blog posts. However, these translation companies know this is false and that such misinformation has been disproven by science because virtually all of them are (or apply to be) federal contractors; and federal translation contractors need to accept the federal government translation skill gradings system. Moreover, the Department of Justice provides training for agency personnel to ensure they use certified linguists, with actionable tips to prevent them from falling for the same scams as the Hague Law Blog did (the same can be said for every other lawyer not DOJ-trained). The sworn translator system in Europe uses the same kind of skill gradings, and a sworn translator is given a higher grade than a non-sworn translator. Therefore, the ability level is higher even if a layperson can’t tell. This stuff has been well-settled science for decades, and in the UN/EU/ASEAN systems is as basic as saying “the Earth is round.” Here, the Translation Qualification Deniers sound a lot like Anti-Vaxxers or Flat-earthers rejecting the scientific consensus based on the personal intuition of laypersons.
The main reason the Hague Law Blog’s suggestion could result in actionable malpractice claims is found in the leading legal case Daubert. Certified translators apply science—the brain-centric science of linguistics found in the 6,000 pages of those Cambridge manuals, whereas students enrolled in translation programs generally do not. Maybe they will after a decade of apprenticeship like neurologists do. For layperson clients and staff, most people learn language by memorizing bilingual word lists and “translate” by consulting bilingual dictionaries. That is not science and, therefore, easily defeated by Daubert. I’ve gotten numerous people out of jail just based on Daubert’s rock-paper-scissors approach, where evidence always beats dictionary.
The bottom line for lawyers: laypersons can’t second-guess a credentialed professional based on things they looked up online.
Sworn translators double the cost?
This is a big misconception and a pretty obvious lie told by the Hague Law Blog author’s translation contact, albeit a bit of misdirection that’s standard operating procedure at most translation companies. The basic fact of the matter is that the intermediary doubled the price – not the translator. The math makes this clear:
Low-Cost Intermediary’s Preferred Housewife/Translator Hybrid Option
Intermediary’s Price: .15USD/word
Translator’s Price: .09USD/word
Project Size: 40,000 words
Project Cost: $6,000
Gross Margin: $2,400
Same Intermediary’s Sworn Translator Option
Intermediary’s Price: .30USD/word
Translator’s Price: .18USD/word
Project Size: 40,000 words
Project Cost: $12,000
Gross Margin: $4,800
The shocking part comes with the gross margin the company’s SOP requires it to charge you for headhunting a sworn translator. For instance, translation project managers generally spend maybe up to 2 hours calling several sworn translators in Spain. But the gross margin they earn per hour of this work—translation PMs’ version of the billable hour—is $2,400. This is an outrageous amount of revenue to generate per hour and also a huge waste of client money for international lawyers. A fair market rate for translator headhunters is maybe $200 to $250 per hour. The situation looks a lot like Hollywood lawyers charging a percentage of a star’s multi-million dollar contract when corporate general counsel know that paying by the hour costs only 10% as much for the same service.
Think about it for a minute here: $30/hour internal staff could call up a bunch of translators off a sworn translator directory. For five hours of work, could be found and permanently serve the law firm—for the same price that a typical Spanish housewife/translator hybrid typically charges. I believe that Spain relaxed the sworn translator requirement to allow Spanish translators in the UK/US under the certification system to participate in the filings equally. The idea was not for lawyers to totally waive Spain’s intent that translators should be bound and held accountable to ethical commitments. The USA has no sworn translator system; most federal government translators must undergo a polygraph to detect dishonesty, which is one of the dumbest ideas in human history, according to a best-selling book by a federal whistleblower who was fired for warning that the polygraph failed to screen out dishonesty.
Sworn translators overpriced?
While I don’t interact with sworn translators much, I do read their books, such as about Spain’s sworn translation process. In the USA, we use the ATA Certified Translator program, and the UK uses CIOL, which is also excellent. Spain’s sworn translators are highly professional and serious about what they do in a profession extremely notorious for fraud. The way fraud is accomplished is that uncredentialed translators use bias prediction artificial intelligence to pack translations full of incorrect results that a layperson, but not a professional, would believe. The way it works is the AI tool uses predictive analytics, has a bunch of laypersons tell it what laypersons trust, and then spits out sham translations that look good and can fool your staff. The sworn translators are charging the appropriate rate; your preferred guys are selling you shiny fakes. It’s not unlike the amateur antique hunter who runs around China and buys a bunch of fake Tang Dynasty statues based on stuff he looked up on the internet. You could avoid that by using a credentialed professional.
The best evidence comes from looking at the 2022 data published by Nimdzi, an industry think tank. Nimdzi said translation prices are too low to make logical sense, “In some cases, like German, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese (in combination with English), translation rates might be as much as 25% lower than what they should be.” This is basically to say that if your translation rate is 25% lower than it should be, then about 25% of the content will be faked – and this is for low-difficulty Netflix subtitles and not legal documents. Let’s examine that more closely.
I popped onto Google, searched for German translation services, and hit one of the top results. I asked for an instant quote for English to German services and got this:
Let’s do the math on this. The rate offered is 12 cents per word, which, after the agency’s 40% commission, equates to 7.2 cents per word. Numerous guidelines say an appropriate human translation rate is about 300 words an hour, or up to even 500 words an hour. That comes out to about $21/hour for the translator. Since typical translator annual work hours look a lot like solo attorneys’ annual billables—usually about 1,200 a year, except for some rockstars—German translators with law expertise and near-native English skill would earn $25,000 a year. From a simple mathematical perspective, this is an unrealistic expectation that would never occur in reality. Double that amount, and the translator is making $50,000 a year, which is more in line with what compensation surveys for ATA and sworn translator regions say.
Now, the Hague Law Blog author might say, “but look at my site; I work with a number of top translation companies.” Due to the incredible litigiousness of some companies, I won’t comment on who he lists using, but these are just typical, highly representative translation outsourcers (one of which has a great reputation among outsourcers!). However, if you read the Nimdzi report, you’ll see that about half of translation companies earn revenue from doing work for other translation companies. So, if Big & Fancy Inc. charge you 20 cents a word, this usually means they are outsourcing it to someone else for 12 cents a word, and their translator gets 7.2 cents per word.
The Nimdzi reports on the site say that there are basically three kinds of translation purchasers. One uses consolidating vendors, i.e., all-services outsourcers, and another kind uses, on average, 10 single-language outsourcers. What this means is that 8 cents of the Hague Law Blog lawyer’s payment of 20 cents to Big & Fancy Inc. are used to consolidate about 20 single-language vendor contracts. Then, another 5 cents is paid to the single-language vendor to consolidate those contracts. Thus, the math still adds up.
Like most lawyers, the Hague Law Blog lawyer is paying translators where the outsourcer-side managers know, but don’t say, that industry standards say this person earns $25k a year for a law degree holder’s job and is making up the income gap by using artificial intelligence falsification tools. They also look the other way for an important reason. The Hague Law Blog is written in a tone that says to me, “I know best. My opinion on translation is great.” No translation PM is going to tell this kind of client that the translations they are asking to buy are substandard and argue with their Dunning-Kreuger Effect. And there are actually corporate compliance rules against it. A PM who does that will get their company fired without benefitting the company in any way. The General Theory of the Translation Company says in its core insight about translation outsourcers, “Quality doesn’t matter.” Don’t try to steer the client to good quality. Always pick the cheapest translator, even if fraud is possible.
In my own experience as an auditor, ONLY certified and sworn translators I have looked at in a blind audit consistently do honest work for clients. Everyone else I see is, to some extent, cheating, and this makes sense. The certified and sworn translators took an oath to follow ethical practices; the others didn’t. If someone is avoiding ethics requirements oaths like that, why should you trust them? This isn’t to say many aspiring sworn translators aren’t honest, only that out in the industry, what happens in reality is that the cost-cutting observed by Nimdzi results in rampant cheating by people who just want to put food on the table. The main reason translation companies try to market uncertified translators is that certified translators don’t fit the translation intermediary business model of “quality doesn’t matter” very well; the point of certified and sworn translators is to provide services more like a law firm would, whereas translation intermediaries provide services more like DoorDash.
The bottom line for lawyers is that certified and sworn translators associations exist for a good reason – to protect clients from fraud and incompetence. Sworn and certified translator associations generally certify anyone who has even very minimal qualifications, and the main benefit they provide is that certified translators cannot cheat clients without being removed, unlike uncredentialed translators. While I’m not a sworn translator, I would use the best option preferred by the host country for translations. So, in the case of Spain, sworn or certified translators are a pretty basic requirement. This also isn’t an attack on translators who have yet to obtain certification. Rather, it’s an attack on translation companies that try to prevent certified translators from being involved with their work process at all to insulate their low-cost substandard translators from any possibility of criticism.
If a company has serious qualms about paying for translators who make $55,000 or even $80,000 a year for their expertise and start looking for fakes because that seems like an outrageous sum to pay, then international business is probably not for them. Companies who go into foreign countries and try to pay subsistence wages for professional services are going to get scammed. Not just by unscrupulous translators but also by suppliers. A good case study for this is the poisoned baby formula scandal that hit Fonterra Foods’ China division or the toxic wood import scandal covered by “60 Minutes” that caused a stock price collapse for Lumber Liquidators.
The bottom line for lawyers: if the math says you are outsourcing professional services to someone who would be making subsistence wages unless they faked the work, then it probably means you’re getting faked work. I’ve seen billion-dollar companies sink under scandal because they couldn’t spare a few thousand dollars to accurately understand their business intelligence.
Quotes 1 + 5 = ?
A very interesting insight can be gleaned from putting quotes 1 and 5 together. As a brief recap, Quote 1 said that an intern with a translation degree is qualified to do commercial litigation Hague service translations. Quote 2 said that certified translators are no better than uncredentialed translators. This is an extremely common thought process, but it’s hard for people to think “outside the box” and see how this would appear to external parties. A good way to break the box is to Google “Chinglish” and see what hundreds of companies have been embarrassing themselves with. My point is for well-spoken, American lawyers: we are guilty of Chinglish, too.
The phenomenon known as Chinglish is actually a direct result of the thought process described by the Hague Law Blog here—instead of trusting credentialed experts such as sworn translators and certified translators, an organization’s interns or staff with some foreign language or translation training but no real credentials second-guess experts the same way WebMD readers second-guess their physicians. Chinglish gets produced not because these organizations want to do such an awful job, but because they are using a thought process that puts random amateurs and even interns in a position of authority over credentialed experts with industry recognition.
Conclusion
Sworn Translators and the parallel common law system of Certified Translators work and provide better quality. This system is already well-accepted by modern science, like the efficacy of vaccines. Nonetheless, due to deliberate misinformation by unethical translation companies, many lawyers are using dishonest translators who pack translations with faked work and overall damage clients.
