Giving And receiving the 'dreaded' negative feedback

26/5/2020

I don’t think that anyone likes to give nor receive negative feedback, however this is something that happens when you work as a freelancer and it's clearly because people have different opinions, views on a specific grammar or syntax issue and because strict guidelines can be a problem on their own. I have been on both sides, first as a PM and then as a freelance translator, and although receiving negative feedback is definitely the worst bit, I really despise giving a negative opinion on a translation and I much prefer reading a well translated text and praise the translator for their job. Having said that, I noticed that sometimes, both agencies and linguists, are not very effective and most of all not very polite in giving their opinion and providing feedback on someone’s work. Not that there is guidebook on how to do this, but I thought of putting together some of what I consider 'best practices' to follow within the revision or LQA workflow – you’ll find them here below.

GIVING NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

Try to be polite when you comment on someone else’s work – you may not know what the time or budget constraints were or what the translator was going through. If you are a professional translator, chances are you always try to do a great job, but sometimes things get in the way and you also should consider that we are not machines, but HUMANS and we all know that humans make mistakes.
If the project allows it, explain your choices using the best available and relevant terminology (if you have an MA or a PGD in translation, try and use some of the most “PM-friendly” terminology from your commentaries to explain why something is wrong).
Provide links to any reference material or reputable sources to justify your comments – this will give them relevance. If you are working into Italian, quoting Treccani or Crusca should do the trick.
Understand when you want to make a preferential change and when you are actually correcting something. Is adding a comma to a particular sentence a preferential change or is it really needed? If your preferred amendment is not really needed and you are making it to make it look like you’ve worked on the file, don’t do it. From my perspective, a reviser or QCer that has the guts to say: “The translation looks great – I didn’t need to make any changes” is more professional than a linguist who rewrites the text completely just to show they have done something.

RECEIVING NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

Try not to take it personally. It is true that this is your work and it represents you and who you are and any negativity around it is essentially saying that you are not good enough, but detach yourself from a specific translation that you might have done when you were tired or overworked. Repeat with me: “You are not your translation! Oooom!”
If you are given the chance, reply to the comments that were left in your translation, justifying your original choices and adding any relevant links or additional explanation. Don’t just say “No, it was right” or “ This doesn’t make sense” because this will show not only that you are not able to explain why you translated something in a certain way, but also that you don’t feel like spending time on it.
If the only comment you receive is “it doesn’t sound right” or “the translation is wrong”, go back to your client or agency and ASK them to provide a more detailed feedback that can substantiate their claims and give you actual explanations on the errors they signalled. This is crucial to improve your work – maybe they’ve found actual errors that you need to accept and avoid for your future work or maybe there are no errors, but they are really telling you what their preferred terminology is.

These are only a few of the best suggestions I would give to someone who’s starting out or who has never received or given negative feedback. In this sector, I think it’s important to respect colleagues, but also to admit and take feedback in when we could have done a better job.

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Thanks for reading it.

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How to Import Revised Target Files in SDL trados studio: the Retrofit function

26/5/2020

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Receiving and implementing feedback are common practices within the translation industry: some people love it and some people hate it.
But when can this happen? Let's have a look at the possible scenarios:

Your client may have an in-house team of native speakers, translators or revisers that make sure the company’s output is in line with certain guidelines or standards and that the final files do not contain any errors and typos.
There may be distributors or in-country revisers who, again, before publishing the material may check the files just to make sure they are aligned with the standard content they produce and publish.
Your client has requested you to amend the final file in order to be consistent with new guidelines or amended terms and you need to update this in your TM and project.

In my case, I have a couple of clients whose in-country distributors provide feedback for almost every project. It’s very constructive and useful feedback because they correct any sector-specific terms I may not know and that I would never have found just researching through the depths of internet. The “issue”, for me, is the format of the files I receive back: most of them come in a Word format with track changes. This would be fine if it wasn’t that the original file I delivered was an SRT used for producing subtitles to link to YouTube videos – but that’s my problem.

As you can see, revised files can create a great number of challenges for translators, and PMs, on how to effectively and efficiently implement the final changes. Having worn both hats, I can say that how you tackle such situation depends on what file you want to work on: either the xliff file or the TM. Having said this, I will explain all the options here below.

XLIFF files
We all know what they are, or at least if you work with CAT tools, you should definitely have heard of them. In case you are not sure, have a look at this page.
If you have worked on a local project that you haven’t yet imported in your TM, you can:

Make manual changes in the file, maybe even using the Find and Replace function – it's easy, but it can be extra time-consuming, so I suggest this option if you need to make one or two changes,
Use the Retrofit function in SDL Trados Studio which essentially takes your final revised target file and overwrites the original XLIFF implementing the amends in your Studio project. This video explains the process very clearly; otherwise, you can use the following instructions (please note that the text used is from Wikipedia and was translated using Google Translate solely for the purpose of demonstrating this function).

Your target revised file may look like, so make sure you hit save and close it before proceeding to the following steps.

Select the Retrofit function from the Batch Tasks menu and follow the next steps.

Select a Specific Review Document.

Look for your revised file, select it and click Open (or Apri, if you are Italian).
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Finally, follow the next steps, clicking on Finish and Close.

At this point, you’ll see that the changes included in your revised file in Word will appear within the SDL Trados Studio environment.

Then, accept or reject the changes using the appropriate buttons in the Review tab and you'll have your final file in Trados. You can import the final xliff in your Translation Memory or you can make sure your TM is attached to the project and then re-confirm the segments you modified. At this point, you will have a clean and extra approved resource to use for your future translations!

TM files
If you are not interested in changing the xliff file because you have already imported the relevant segments in your Translation Memory, you can:

Again, make the changes manually and "committing to the changes", like so:

Use the magical world of filters in the TMs overview and filter out the segments that contain a certain word. This will allow you to get a “view” of all the affected segments and amend them manually (remember to "commit the changes").
Otherwise, you can still use filters, but this time you can extract the segments imported in the TM on a certain date and delete them completely; then, work on the xliff and reimport it again. This is not the preferred option, but I thought of including it just in case someone wanted a grand tour of Studio.

I hope you have found this useful – some people may already know how to go through this progress, but I think it’s always worth sharing any information I find useful for other fellow translators.

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Giving And receiving the 'dreaded' negative feedback

How to Import Revised Target Files in SDL trados studio: the Retrofit function

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