I’ve just received 4 English revision assignments from a company called…Hugemongous Translation
They are FILLED with impenetrable Chinglish management jargon. I speak English but I am far from fluent in Management. How on Earth do you people figure out what the pointy-headed bosses of the world are trying to say?
Suddenly .5 NT per hour seems like a lot less money.
[quote=“beautifulspam”]I’ve just received 4 English revision assignments from a company called…Hugemongous Translation
They are FILLED with impenetrable Chinglish management jargon. I speak English but I am far from fluent in Management. How on Earth do you people figure out what the pointy-headed bosses of the world are trying to say?
Suddenly .5 NT per hour seems like a lot less money.[/quote]
Send the work back and tell 'em to fuck off. Tell 'em you signed up for editing, not for rewriting crap churned out by students because the company’s too cheap to hire real translators. Or just send it back with great big “unclear: substandard translation” in red marker all over the Chinglish parts. If you’re getting less than NT$1200/hour for this kind of thing you’re being royally screwed.
The boy’s got sand in his gizzard, I’ll give him that.
Sandman, if I were an established and well respected freelancer I might feel comfortable taking a “screw you” attitude, but I need something to fill out my resume and I’m happy to get the work. Actually the translation per se isn’t bad. A middle manager could probably understand it.
But I am not a middle manager.
Try googling for the terms you don’t understand, if you feel that you need to understand them in order to polish the translation. But shouldn’t your focus be on the surrounding grammar? I’d have to see a sample to get a feeling for what you mean. Wanna type a couple sentences here for us?
As an editor, I sometimes get stuff I just can’t fix, and I mark it with question marks, and let the author or translator come to me to explain it so that we can fix the potholes together. I’m not a mindreader, after all.
There’s not many people who respect me.
Let’s see, that’s a contraction of “There is not many people who respect me.” Hmm… $1200/hour… Hmmm…
Let’s see, that’s a contraction of “There is not many people who respect me.” Hmm… $1200/hour… Hmmm…
:p[/quote]
Me I get a whole shitload more’n 1200 I do. 
They want you to leave the management jargon in. Without that there is nothing. More is less. No-one’s going to read it anyway.
Ouch! . . but sadly, and despite all the lost hair, it’s true!
HG
Yep, I am using google.
Guess what I am looking for is some kind of management jargon dictionary to speed things up a bit?
Well, I am freelancing by email here so things are different for me.
For instance I have noticed that when I leave too many question marks on a professor or manager’s lousy translation not only does he have no time to confer with me re: his intended meaning, I also stop getting business from that person. When I just guess at his meaning and return a clean-looking (but possibly nonsensical) document he becomes a repeat customer.
Anyway, I find that about half the time grammar repair does not necessarily require fully comprehending the text. But when chinglish syntax grows so vague as to cast in doubt whether X noun is the subject or object of a verb, that’s when I go to the context.
For instance, at the moment I am trying to decide whether the translator intended “rise/ raise” as transitive or intransitive. Again, i need context for this.
Sorry but I don’t want to post a sample online. “Hugemongous” might recognize itself : )
The Office?
HG
I totally agree with sending it back. You cannot possibly edit that which you can’t understand. I am often called upon to polish technical manuals for publication and to do a final edit of dissertations prior to submission to a publisher. I find all too often that some obscure technical jargon has been run through an electronic translation system, which only serves to compound what is otherwise gibberish in the first instance. What comes out the other end requires a total re-write and, unless you are involved in the research, it is not possible to complete the task. I would much rather they send me the dissertation in simple English using short easy to understand sentences. Then, let me write the paper. This will cut their bill in half and makes my task much easier. Sandman is exactly right “NOT LESS THAN 1200 PER HOUR”. If you think you can do it for less, you will be mistaken and regret the work. Actually, for scientific publication work, you are looking at this figure as a beginner salary.