For those interested (cue sound of pin dropping), translation is carried out today in a much more efficient manner than was the case in the era of typewriters, tippex and telex.

Firstly, a job request will arrive in the translator’s inbox. After raising an eyebrow and sipping from a mug of caffeinated liquid warmth, they will proceed to open the message with an ever-sceptical eyebrow held in position. If the job passes the bogus-client test, the translator flies into a flurry of finger-tapping. The response must be dealt with urgently as 4 other translators are at the very same stage of the very same process at that very moment.

The reply is sent. The retort is positive. Purchase Order in hand, the translator downloads the document. If it’s a text file, great; if it’s a scanned PDF, sigh. Scanned PDFs are fossilised remains of a bygone era where translation memory tools that save a translator’s every keystroke didn’t exist. Scanned PDFs mean not being able to re-use any work from this job to speed up future jobs of a similar nature. They also mean reformatting the document to follow the original style. Time consuming and not translation.

But this is our plucky translator’s lucky day. It’s a text file. It is promptly loaded into the translation memory tool and the first sentence is stared at inquisitively. Who are we up against this time? The battle begins, a scene filled with the cries of pain and suffering - the tutting of a thousand translators at the awkward scrawlings of the original author.

The final text is emailed home with a digital invoice. If all goes to plan payment follows sometime in the near future. Sometime before the translator’s next local solar eclipse.

And thus the cycle continues.

Future developments

Machine translation is the ever growing threat to a translator’s livelihood. Of course, no machine can yet translate anything to be used professionally but if that did come to pass, future translation may look something like this:

- Future job request arrives.
- Future translator approves.
- Future translator turns machine handle for 5 minutes.
- Future job is returned as a 140 character tweet.
- Future client updates their online status as:

Very satisfied with quality and turnaround time of translation that I have no way of understanding, yet for some reason the foreign client is still not clear on how our anti-gravitational differential gearbox mechanism works. Perhaps should have proofread? Lol.

The internet can often be an impersonal place, so allow us to introduce ourselves, the owners of World to Writers. Just a warning, there may be some writing in the 3rd person involved.

Chris Yeomans is a graduate of the British Institute in Paris (University of London), the very place where he met Luke in the university café. The degree gave a solid grounding in language acquisition and usage with specialised lectures in translation for two of the three year course.

Since then he has spent several years living, working and studying across Europe. He holds a post-graduate qualification in law, having specialised in the European Union. He has eight years experience as a freelance writer and journalist and has filed copy from locations such as Prague, Tallinn, Madrid and Stockholm on a number of topics.

His translation specialisms are law, social science and business and he translates from French and Spanish to English.

 See Chris’ profile at Translators Café

Luke Spear MCIL completed his three year degree course in Paris soon after Chris and long after being switched on to French at seven years old when his family moved to Canada. After graduating, he soon started translating part-time while working in the French department of a charismatic company that sold plastic pens. The translation soon took off and after some more time in France managing a Swedish restaurant he moved to Sweden as a full time translator.

Now with a linguists eye on the world and two languages under his belt, the determination to continue to work with languages drove him to work with Chris to create World to Writers.

Luke is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and a Member of the Federation of Small Businesses.

See Luke’s freelance site

As linguists, Luke and Chris pay a lot of attention to detail in text. The quality of their work being a reflection of the pride in what they’ve worked hard to learn, they aim to please by returning perfect translation and writing with great communication throughout the working process.

World to Writers are now in full swing, helping clients from around the East Midlands and Europe with various translation and interpreting assignments and getting great feedback.

To facilitate payments an online invoicing and payment method has been added via Google Checkout but to instill yet more trust in our payment systems we have also ordered a merchant account with Streamline, owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland in the UK. This will be able to handle all major credit cards in a secure and expedient manner. We’re expecting full functionality from February ‘09.

We look forward to working with you and helping to make your translation, writing and interpreting projects go as smoothly as possible.

As the network of collaborators grows, so do the aspirations of the company. An application to bid on tenders for the Olympic Games 2012 is underway, aiming to help translate documents for the various Olympic teams.

We are receiving support from a local government business agency and are aiming to be fully compliant with health and safety, equal opportunities, quality control and other standards in the coming weeks.