Only two weeks have passed since theofficial death of the social media bubble, when Facebook’s IPO floated on thewide open market seas and proceeded to sink like a nylon bag filled with a lateMafia informant an a bunch of rocks. However, its ethos of deprofessionalizingtranslation lives on. The latest shooting star in the social media space,Pinterest, recently unveiled the exciting announcement that, following in theheels of Facebook and Twitter, it also wanted free low quality translationsfrom its user base. In an attempt to be coherent, it decided to announce it with apoorly written blog entry in Macaronic Spanish. This a print screen of the originalversion:
That prompted a lot of grumbling by Spanishtranslators on Twitter. For example, aside from the faulty punctuation, aphrase like “Llamando a los favoritos bloggers hispanohablantes!” is justawful.
Seeing the growing outcry, I tweeted (inEnglish) that Pinterest has apparently “done a LinkedIn” (this is a referenceto the firestorm occasioned when LinkedIn called for translator members totranslate the site for free, a curious request for a social media site that issupposedly designed for establishing professional connections.) As occurs quitefrequently on Twitter, my 140-character message prompted a query from astranger who turned out to be the very Pinterest employee who either wrote orwas responsible for the blog post. The ensuing exchange, in all its endearinginnocence, is copied in extenso:
Sarah Tavel
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At this point, the flustered woman told methat her mom had helped her translate it. However, when she saw my incredulous response,she decided to erase this tweet in which she indicated she had hired a relative for a defective translation (which I think is more than just a little dishonest):
financial-translator
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Yep, you read right. The Pinterest employeetold me that the translations should be fine, since they were done incollaboration with her mom, who is from Argentina (whew! I was worried therefor a minute!). Anyway, a few hourslater the blog entry had been improved after some input from several colleagues who contributed their time for free (personally I would not donate my time pro bono to a company that is going to crowdsource its translation work and also plans to float for a bilion dollars; investment banks are in low esteem right now, but at least they pay their outsourced suppliers):
This reminds me of the case of Smartling, a start-up that provides crowdsourcedpost-editing of websites. The problem is that its home page couldn’t decidewhether it was in Spanish or English. Aftera few snarky Twitter messages, the company corrected the mistake. Pinterest’scase is only slightly less depressing, since after all its core mission is nottranslation. Just another vignette of the 300-car pile-up that is thetranslated social Interspace.
Anyway, I sure hope that Sarah's mom was compensated for her work, regardless of what I may think about its quality. But somehow, I doubt it.
Miguel Llorens is a freelance financial translator based in Madrid who works from Spanish into English. He is specialized in equity research, economics, accounting, and investment strategy. He has worked as a translator for Goldman Sachs, the US Government's Open Source Center, and H.B.O. International, as well as many small-and-medium-sized brokerages and asset management companies operating in Spain. To contact him, visit his website and write to the address listed there. Feel free to join his LinkedIn network or to follow him on Twitter.
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