No Peanuts! hakkında bilgi edinmek için en iyi başlangıç yeri No Peanuts! Prensipleri Bildirisi olacaktır.

Bu sırada blogumuzda derlediğimiz makaleleri okuyabilirsiniz. Mizah, Direniş, Yanlış Tercümeler, ve Devamlı Tercüman bölümlerimiz için yapacağınız katkılarınızı da kullanabiliriz. Her dilde materyallerinizi  nopeanuts.fortranslators@gmail.com adresine gönderin. Ve Facebook sayfamızı ziyaret etmeyi unutmayın (http://www.facebook.com/NoPeanutsMovement).

Eğer Tercümanlar için No Peanuts! Hareketinin resmi bir destekçisi olmak isterseniz, nopeanuts.fortranslators@gmail.com adresine bir posta gönderin. Destekçiler sayfasına eklenmek için adınızı, dillerinizi, ülkenizi ve üyeliklerinizi de yazın. (Eğer listeden çıkarılmak isterseniz, bize haber vermeniz halinde derhal listemizden çıkarılırsınız.)

Ortak amaçları, yaptıkları iş için geçimlerini sağlayabilecek bir gelir kazanabilmek olan profesyonel mütercim ve tercümanların büyümekte olan uluslararası bir topluluğu olan Tercümanlar için No Peanuts! Hareketine siz de katılın.

Mütercim ve tercümanlar için geçinmeye yetecek kazanç sadece bir slogan değil, geleceğimize olan bağlılığımızdır.  

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Kindly translated for No Peanuts! by Ali Yucel.

No Peanuts! (Fıstık İçin Çalışmaya Hayır) Hareketi, çıkardıkları çalışma için geçinmelerini sağlayacak ücreti isteme ve alma konusunda profesyonel mütercim ve tercümanları desteklemektedir.

No Peanuts!, tercümanların güçsüz olduğuna inanmayı reddetmektir. No Peanuts!, sanki kendi pazarlarımızı yaratamazmışız gibi “piyasa talebine” muhtaç olmak zorunda olduğumuz düşüncesini reddetmektir. No Peanuts!, kendi dalımızda ekmek paramızı kazanabilmek için korku içinde yaşamamız veya istismar edilmeyi kabullenmemiz gerekmediğini bilmektir.

Siz de aşağıdakileri uygulayarak No Peanuts! Hareketine katılabilirsiniz!

1. Fiyatlarınızı düşürmemek için direnin. No Peanuts!’ın başlangıcı da, sonu da bu temel prensibe dayanır. Bunu söylemek biraz naif gözükebilir, fakat aslında gerçek gayet basittir: Eğer her birimiz çıkardığımız iş için adil ve yeterli ücretler almakta ısrar etmiş olsaydık, şu anda adil ve yeterli bir ücret alıyor olurduk. Fiyatların düşmesinin tek sebebi, tercümanların buna izin vermiş olmasıdır. Bu sorunu yaratan biziz, ve durdurmak da bizim elimizde.

2. Müşterilere sebebini anlatın. Düşük fiyat tekliflerini reddetmek veya görmezden gelmek yeterli değildir. Sadece tercüme bürolarını, yayıncıları ve diğer müşterileri bu konuda bilgilendirmek için gerekli adımları attığımızda No Peanuts! hareketi gerçeklik kazanacaktır. Düşük fiyatlara çalışmayı neden reddettiğinizi onlara anlatın. Söz konusu iş için uygun olabilecek fiyat ve koşulları açıklayın. Kızgın anlatın, nazik anlatın veya eğlenceli bir şekilde anlatın: Nasıl söylediğiniz değil, söylemiş olmanız önemli!

3. Panik modunda çalışmayı bırakın. Tercüme piyasası çökme tehlikesi altında değil. Müşteriler tercüme hizmetlerine ihtiyaç duymaya devam edecek. Eğer onlara profesyonel tercüme ile ucuz, kalitesiz tercümeler arasındaki farkı göstermeye devam edersek, beceri ve tecrübenin çok daha fazlasını hak ettiğini anlayacaklardır. Gerçek şu ki, müşteriler adilce ve yeterli düzeyde ücret ödeyebilir. Ödememelerinin sebebi, aynı ürünün daha ucuza var olduğuna inanmaları. Daha ucuza olan aynı ürün değil, ve bunu onlara açıklamak bizim görevimiz.

4. Çeviri dillerinizdeki tüm meslektaşlarınızla aynı durumda olduğunuzun bilincine varın. En düşük düzeyde fiyatlar belirlemek veya “piyasa” bahanesiyle ya da müşterilerinizin baskısına karşı fiyatlarınızı düşürmek, diğer tercüme uzmanlarına doğrudan zarar vermektedir. Eğer No Peanuts! Hareketini desteklemiyorsanız, Peanuts for Everyone! (Herkes İçin Fıstık!) hareketini destekliyorsunuz demektir.

5. Müşteri/hizmet sağlayıcı ilişkisinde rolünüzün kontrolünü tekrar elinize alın. TransPerfect gibi devasa tercüme bürolarıyla birlikte ProZ, TranslatorsCafé, GoTranslators gibi çevrimiçi takas merkezleri, yıllarca müşteri-hizmet sağlayıcı ilişkisinin tersyüz edilmesine yol açtı. Birçok müşteri bunların yaptığı bu öncülüğü takip etti, ve şimdi tercümanlara fiyatlarını zorla kabul ettirme hakkına sahip olduklarını sanıyorlar. Yanılıyorlar.

6. Mütercim ve tercümanları istismar eden ve tercüme uzmanı için saygı yoksunluğu gösteren çevrimiçi tercüme aracılarını ve bürolarını boykot edin. Bu aracılara ve meslektaşlarınıza boykot ettiğinizi söyleyin ve nedenlerini anlatın.

7. Kabul edilemeyecek uygulamalar hakkında meslektaşlarınızla iletişim kurmak için kendi tercüme dillerinizdeki tercüman posta listelerini, The Checklist for Freelancers, Payment Practices, Translator Client Review list, veya Il Segno di Caino: The Translator’s Hall of Shame gibi kaynakları kullanın.

8. Fiyat deflasyonunun sadece ekonomik değil; aynı zamanda ahlaki bir problem olduğunun da bilincinde olun. Öncelikle eğer bir tercüman ölü fiyatına çalışırsa, bu tercümanı çalıştıran dış kaynakçının, son müşteriye bu kadar düşük bir fiyat verdiği anlamına gelmez. Genellikle tam tersi olmaktadır: tercümanı çalıştıran, “tercümana düşük ödeme yaparak” ve “müşteriye yüksek fiyat sunarak” adaletsiz kazançlar elde eder. İkinci olarak, tercümana ölü fiyatına tercüme yaptırmak, neredeyse her zaman tercümeyi isteyenin (bu tercüme bir kitap, bir TV programında altyazı, veya bir ürün katalogu da olabilir) umduğunuz şeyi aldığı anlamına gelir: düşük kalite. Diğer bir deyişle, düşük fiyatlar hem tercümanın, hem de tüketicinin saygınlık kaybetmesine yol açar.

9. İstismar edici çalışma koşullarını reddedin. Bu koşullar geçiminizi sağlayabilecek kadar kazanamamanızla başlar, fakat akıl almaz teslim süreleri, mesai ücretinin verilmemesi veya hafta sonu çalıştırma, sebepsiz indirimlerde ısrarcılık, geç ödemeler, ve tercümanı köleye çeviren diğer birçok uygulamayı da içerir. Bunların hiçbiri bu işin bir parçası değildir.

10. Geçiminizi sağlayacak bir gelir kazanma isteğiniz hakkında meslektaşlarınızla görüşün. Onları da No Peanuts! Hareketine katılmaya çağırın. No Peanuts! rozetini indirin ve web sitenizde yayınlayın, veya No Peanuts! blog’una link verin.

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Keywords: istismar, toplu hareket, fiyat, tercüme, çeviri, tercüman, çevirmen, tercümanlık, çevirmenlik.

Kindly translated for No Peanuts! by Ali Yucel.

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A tutti gli aspiranti traduttori: volete essere i primi a entrare nella squadra di una vera casa editrice? Allora leggete qui!

Ecco come fare: basta che scuciate 160 euro per partecipare al nostro incontro sulla «traduzione letteraria», e noi vi raccontiamo tutto sull’industria editoriale e il ruolo che potreste ricoprire al suo interno.

Poi vi diamo una prova di traduzione da fare a casa; e se la superate, magari vi assegniamo un libro intero. Più avanti, vi pagheremo in royalty. Occasione grandiosa, vero!!!???
Ebbene, no: per l’esattezza, è una grandiosa fregatura. Vediamo di… ehm… tradurre:

Voi ci date 160 euro. Poi traducete un libro gratis. Se il libro vende, è possibile che vediate qualche centesimo. Ma se noi non lo promuoviamo, o decidiamo di non pubblicarlo, o il libro non è un granché… che vi dobbiamo dire? Ci avrete smenato 160 euro e qualche mese di lavoro, mentre noi… niente di niente. (I libri di Faligi sono tutti e-book. Vale a dire che le spese di produzione sono minime, ma le vendite – di libri di autori perlopiù sconosciuti e traduttori totalmente sconosciuti – anche.)

La grande battuta di caccia che Faligi sta conducendo (e che si ripete ogni sei mesi) tramite e-mail firmate da un’altrimenti anonima «Redazione» mira a catturare:

- italiani madrelingua che hanno studiato lingue straniere o traduzione; madrelingua (o italiani che hanno vissuto all’estero) con un manoscritto nel cassetto che desidererebbero tradurre; e giovani senza alcuna esperienza, universitari compresi;
- stranieri madrelingua che traducono dall’italiano. In quest’ultimo caso, Faligi non richiede alcuna qualifica universitaria, purché si possieda una «buona padronanza» dell’italiano acquisita nel Paese.

In altre parole: se volete fare i traduttori, bastano e avanzano la passione, la disponibilità a farsi sfruttare come una badante senza permesso di soggiorno… e 160 euro da buttare.

E allora com’è che centinaia di aspiranti traduttori ci cascano? Com’è che Faligi ha milleseicento e rotti «amici» su Facebook?

Due motivi: il primo è la disperazione galoppante fra i giovani aspiranti traduttori italiani, che non sanno cosa sia la professionalità e farebbero «di tutto» pur di mettersi qualcosa in curriculum. E il secondo è che non c’è limite all’autolesionismo umano (altrimenti detto «beata ignoranza»).

Sì, ma alla fin fine: la Faligi Editore è un’impresa e fa la sua corsa, no? Che c’è da scandalizzarsi tanto? Ecco cosa c’è. Mettiamo che Faligi si fosse presentato direttamente alla vostra porta. Offrendovi un magico biglietto della lotteria che costa solo 160 euro—i quali vi regalano il diritto a lavorare gratis per diverse ore alla prova di traduzione. Se la passate, poi potete lavorare gratis qualche altro mese della vostra vita; dopodiché, il vostro biglietto magico finirà nella riffa. Un giorno o l’altro ci sarà forse un’estrazione; e forse voi vincerete qualcosa. Ma non c’è nessuna garanzia, eh!

Fosse andata così, avreste chiamato la polizia e fatto arrestare i truffatori. Nel nostro caso, invece, potete cliccare il pulsante «Mi piace» su Facebook. Ecco: più o meno la differenza che c’è tra la vita vera e the Wonderful World/Le fabuleux destin/Die fabelhafte Welt della traduzione.

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Traduzione in italiano di Isabella Zani.

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Calling all wanna-be translators. Don’t miss your chance to get in on the ground floor of a real publishing endeavor!

Here’s how it works. You pay us €160 (about $220 US) to attend a “Literary Translation” meeting where we tell you all about the publishing industry and your new role in it.

Then we give you a test translation that you can do at home. If you pass the test, maybe we’ll assign you a book. Later on, we’ll pay you in royalties.

Sounds great, huh!?!?!

No, it doesn’t. It sounds like a scam — which is exactly what it is. Let’s … um … translate:

You pay us €160. Then you translate a book for free. If it sells, you might see a few euro. If we don’t promote it, or we decide not to publish it, or if it’s just not a very good book … oh well. You’re out €160 and several months of work, and we’re out … nothing. (All Faligi’s books are e-books. This guarantees not only that production costs are minimal, but that sales — of books by largely unknown authors and wholly unknown translators — will be equally minimal.)

In the fishing expedition that Faligi is currently engaged in via mass email (a semi-annual event), Faligi’s unnamed “Redazione” (Editorial Department) seeks:

– native Italian speakers who have studied foreign languages or translation; native speakers (and/or those who have lived abroad) who have a literary manuscript in mind that they’d like to translate); and young people with no experience, including university students;

– native speakers of other languages who translate from Italian. In this case, Faligi requires no university degree of any kind as long as you have “good experience” with the Italian language acquired in Italy.

In other words: If you want to be a translator, all you need is “passione“ (on this topic, see “Please Stop Talking About Art!”), a readiness to be exploited like an undocumented nanny … and a spare €160.

So how come hundreds of would-be translators are falling for it? How come Faligi has 1664 “Friends” on its Facebook page?

For two reasons. First, desperation among young Italian would-be translators who have no concept of professionalism and who would do “anything” to get something on their résumés. And second, because there is no limit to the amount of self-harm human beings are willing to inflict upon themselves (aka “ignorance is bliss”).

But hey: Faligi Editore is just doing its business thing, right? Why get all bent out of shape about it?

Because this. Let’s imagine that Faligi Editore had come along and knocked on your door instead. The sales person offers a magic ticket that costs a mere €160. That €160 entitles you to work for free for several hours as a test. If you pass, you can then spend 1-3 months of your life doing more work for free, at which point your magic ticket will be thrown into a pot. Someday maybe they’ll draw it out. You could win something. No guarantees, though.

If that happened, we’d call the police and have the scammers arrested for fraud.

In this case, you can “like” them on Facebook.

And that about sums up the difference between real life and Il Favoloso Mondo/Le Fabuleux Destin/Die Fabelhafte Welt of translation.

• “ALS’s ‘misleading’ signs” (December 2011)
• “ALS Well?” – Applied Language Solutions’ Lucrative Deal with the Ministry of Justice
• “‘Major pay cut’ for court interpreters in Lincolnshire” (August 2011)
• Police Rip Up Contract with Interpreter Agency after Claims it Was Hampering Investigations
• MoJ in Line of Fire over Interpreters Contract
• Defence Solicitors Warn MoJ over Interpreter Outsourcing
• Written Ministerial Statements, UK Parliament – Interpretation and Translation Services

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Language interpreters used by four police forces in north-west England are refusing to work for the sub-par agency that won the contract — cut-rate outsourcing once again goes awry….

• Speakers Cornered – Private Eye, Issue 1280, 21 January 2011 – Page 30 (Criminal Justice Roundup)
• Row erupts over police interpreters — Catherine Baksi, Law Society Gazette, 3 February 2011.
• See also: IAPTI Support for Professional Interpreters’ Alliance Petition to UK Ministry of Justice

Row erupts over police interpreters

Thursday 03 February 2011 by Catherine Baksi

Detainees at police stations in four areas of the north-west are at risk of miscarriages of justice due to the police forces’ use of inadequate interpreters, the Gazette has been told.

The Professional Interpreters Alliance (PIA) has been granted permission to begin a judicial review of a decision by police authorities in Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire and Cumbria to outsource their interpreting services and enter an exclusive agreement with Applied Language Solutions (ALS).

PIA, which represents the interests of interpreters who are registered with the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, alleges in its judicial review claim that commercial agencies such as ALS ‘compromise standards of quality of service by the use of unqualified interpreters’.

ALS denies the claims.

Rob Taberner, police station representative for Bolton firm Fieldings Porter, said that since the new contracts began in August, people who are not properly qualified have been sent to the police station to interpret.

‘They sometimes cannot translate properly and do not understand simple legal terms, which is a fundamental part of their job,’ he said.

Where the police cannot get an agency interpreter before the custody time limit expires, Taberner said he had heard of detainees being charged and sent to court without a proper understanding of why they were there. ‘It’s a farcical situation that could lead to miscarriages of justice,’ said Taberner. ‘They want a professional job done on the cheap.’

Lina Tsui-Cheung, an associate at Manchester firm ABM, said she had noticed a similar decline in standards since the new contracts began in August, and her firm had experienced ‘a lot of difficulties’ under the new arrangement.

‘The agents are of poor competence. It appears to me that what is translated is not always correct, and clients have told me that they are not always able to understand the interpreter, or what they are being asked,’ she said.

An ALS spokeswoman said: ‘The interpreters providing interpreting services to the criminal justice system have grave professional responsibilities. Work allocated to interpreters by Applied Language Solutions is done under the terms of the National Framework Agreement, which details the qualifications required to undertake legal interpreting assignments in the UK.’

She added that it was ‘not true’ that ALS interpreters struggle to understand basic terms.

Ian Kelcey, chair of the Law Society’s criminal law committee, stressed the importance of properly qualified translators. ‘Accurate interpretation at the police station is absolutely vital to avoid miscarriages of justice,’ he said.

In their acknowledgment of service of the judicial review claim, the police authorities said they had undertaken a ‘rigorous procurement exercise’ before awarding the contracts to ALS, which was ranked highest by the panel.

They said: ‘The central aims of initiating the procurement process were the freeing up of administration resources, matching availability to demand, and control over the budget, without compromising the quality of the interpreters provided.’

The forces said they were satisfied that the interpreters engaged ‘would be provided as and when required and that they would be competent’.

If you are listed, please take a look at your listing and make sure it is accurate. If you would like to make changes, please let us know at: nopeanuts.fortranslators@gmail.com.

Up until now, we’ve limited ourselves to pointing out that the term “free market” is a misnomer. There’s no “free” market because someone always pays for it — usually those with the least contractual power or who are considered most expendable.

But you don’t have to just take our word for it anymore. University of Cambridge economist, Ha-Joon Chang, in his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, gets right to the point in his very first chapter: “There’s No Such Thing as a Free Market.”

What there is, instead, as Chang points out, are political and moral decisions about whose welfare (economic and other) most deserves to be defended and about whose rights are more important.

Thus, if you don’t think the right of mega-agencies to reap huge profits is more important than the right of individual professional translators and interpreters to earn a living, you probably won’t consider the philosophy of No Peanuts! to be unfriendly to the so-called free market.

If you have a problem with clients who incite unfair competition by replacing experienced language professionals with students, interns, newbies, and other unqualified translators — and who then demand that qualified translators and interpreters compete at the same cut rates that nonprofessionals receive — then you probably won’t consider the philosophy of No Peanuts! to be unfriendly to the so-called free market.

If you’re convinced that translators’ and interpreters’ livelihoods are under systematic attack by online translator clearinghouses, agencies, publishers, and other clients whose philosophy is “your work and your time are less valuable than ours,” then you probably won’t consider the philosophy of No Peanuts! to be unfriendly to the so-called free market.

We don’t accept the legitimacy of efforts to destroy our livelihoods. We reject the rules — established by others — that undermine the distinction between professional and amateur translators and interpreters. We don’t think there is too little translation work — we think there are too many translators who believe they have more of a right to earn a living than do their colleagues. And that’s a moral position, not an economic one.

Read Chang — and arm yourself for the next time someone tries to dazzle you with a lot of nonsense about the “free” market.

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Ha-Joon Chang dismisses the idea that any capitalist market is free and questions whether it can ever really be fair.

A translator who cannot translate properly is like a mechanic who is unaware that diesel won’t make a petrol engine go or a brain surgeon who thinks the brain is located in the pelvis….

Guest Blogger Colm Ryan has a few choice words to say in favor of that much-maligned component of translation: quality.

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Way back in the early 1980s, there was a popular graffito that went: “Yesterday I coudnt even spel executiv. Now I are one.”

If you replace “executiv” with “translater,” that 1980s graffito suddenly starts to ring frighteningly true today. It is my sad and sorry duty to inform you that the translation industry is full of people who not only cannot spell, they also cannot understand the foreign language they profess to be able to understand, and—rather more worrying—they cannot write in the language they grew up speaking.

A translator who cannot translate properly is like a mechanic who is unaware that diesel won’t make a petrol engine go, or a brain surgeon who thinks the brain is located in the pelvis, or a milkmaid who can’t find a cow’s nipples even with the aid of a handheld bovine nipple locator that beeps as it gets closer to its target and features an illuminated display that flashes “COW NIPPLES DETECTED – MULTIPLE HITS” in glowing red text. (The comparison is not unjustified. If you think about it, a good bilingual dictionary provides about this level of detail.)

We translators don’t just translate porn subtitles and clock radio instructions, you see: we also translate laws, contracts, and international treaties. We translate lists of ingredients that are closely scanned by people with allergies. We translate blueprints for rockets, the results of drug trials, and—remember this if you ever need to go to hospital while you’re in a foreign country—we translate the operating instructions for complex medical equipment.

That alone should be sufficient to impress upon you just how cataclysmically frightening this situation is.

You’ve may already have figured out that this article contains some of the translation howlers I’ve come across in my work. Recently, in fact, our translation agency received a commission to translate a book on the history of sport. As is common practice in these cases, we gave aspiring Italian-to-English translators a short extract to translate before considering them for the job. Below are a couple of sentences from the extract, on the history of tennis:

I reali d’Inghilterra lo praticarono intensamente, nota era la passione di Enrico VIII per il gioco: la sua seconda moglie Anna Bolena venne arrestata per adulterio mentre assisteva a una partita del marito a Hampton Court.

For those of you who aren’t experts in Italian, here is a translation that would be considered “very good”:

The English royals played it incessantly. Henry VIII was famously fond of the game; and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was arrested for adultery as she watched one of her husband’s matches at Hampton Court.

You need to know a couple of things before I continue. First, the verb assistere (as in “mentre assisteva a una partita” in the extract above) here means to watch or to witness. It’s a classic false friend, but one that all translators from Italian would be expected to know.

Second, there is no confusion possible in the original Italian that Ms. Boleyn was committing adultery while hubby was playing tennis. No: it clearly means that she was arrested while hubby was playing tennis. The kind of howlers I’m going to show you aren’t of the predictable “Anne Boleyn was discovered in flagrante delicto by the Tudor adultery police while she watched her husband play tennis over the shoulder of her manly lover” variety. Even bad translators aren’t quite that bad. (I hope.)

Here, then, are some entries we received. All errors have been carefully retained from the original tests submitted to us.

The royal family of England practised it intensly [sic], Henry VIII’s passion for this game was well known; his second wife Anna Bolena was arrested for adultery while she was watching a match of her husband in Hampton Court.

(Ask yourself: who, in the English-speaking world, doesn’t know that “Anna Bolena” has an English spelling?)

The royal family of England use [sic] to practice it intensely; known was the passion of Henry VIII for the game….

(More than a touch of Google Translate in that one, methinks.)

… his second wife Anna Bolena was arrested for adultery in the middle of a game with her husband at Hampton Court.

(Anna Bolena rears her ugly head again, and this time she’s actually playing tennis. Sigh.)

The game was intensely adopted by the English Royalties and Henry VIII was an avid player: his second wife Anna Bolena was arrested for adultery while assisting her husband’s match at Hampton Court.

(I can see her business card now: “Anna Bolena: Ball Girl to the English Royalties.”)

These are just four of no fewer than ten failed tests. You’ll be glad to hear that we did finally find someone to translate the book who can read fairly simple Italian (this text is by no means difficult) and who can write reasonably well. But now let’s give the translators who failed a chance to defend their work. After all, maybe they just had a bad day.

Here’s the reply we received from the author of one of the above tests, when she discovered she wasn’t going to get the job:

I am very suprised [sic] and disappointed at your comments. No one has ever refused my translations in my eleven years of translation work except for [your company] who do not seen [sic] to want to work with me.

And that, in every possible sense of the phrase, was all she wrote.

See also Kevin Lossner’s pungent commentary on “silly sign-up forms [sent out so that] folks like you and me [can] become part of the great feed lot of translating cattle waiting to be slaughtered by translation consumers hungry for low rates: “Subprime.”

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Posted by: patenttranslator | November 26, 2010

Why It Usually Makes No Sense to Fill Out Forms Sent To You Ahead of Time – Except When You Are a Subprime Translator

Since its inception, the aim of No Peanuts! has been to promote an ecological approach to the working life of professional translators and interpreters.

We start with the belief that language professionals deserve to receive a decent, appropriate, “living” wage for their work. At the same time, even as we call upon direct clients, agencies, publishers, online translation “services,” and others to compensate translators and interpreters adequately, we recognize that the only proper “exchange” for decent pay is truly professional performance.

That’s not just fairness—it’s a basic necessity if we want to maintain the “ecology” of our work environment and keep our profession pollution-free.

For No Peanuts!, one way to begin assuring clients of our professionalism is by asking our Translators & Interpreters Directory members to make an ethical commitment to offer written translation services solely into their native languages.

In the translation environments in which we live and work these days, the lack of respect for native-target-only translation has become an urgent ethical and professional issue. Sadly, many translator groups, national and international professional associations, and university-level training programs continue to dodge this essential issue.

We understand that the issue is complex, but it’s cowardly to pretend it doesn’t exist or to behave as if it doesn’t matter.

In fact, No Peanuts! is pleased to point out that no other online service, association, or clearinghouse currently upholds this standard, no matter how “professional” they say they are. Not one.

Drawing the line against non-native-target translators eliminates a large (and, unfortunately, growing) group of individuals who simply are not qualified to translate into their non-native languages. Eliminating unqualified translators, in turn, may help translation rates rise again, because it will put an end to one of the main sources of unfair competition in our field.

On a more practical level, we have a big vision for our Directory. We want it to grow as a useful and reliable tool in the translation industry, and we want potential clients who come to us to be confident that they can use the Directory to find translators who respect this basic principle of professionalism.

And that’s why we are announcing a change in the No Peanuts! Directory of Translators and Interpreters.

In the near future, the No Peanuts! Directory of Translators and Interpreters will migrate to a new site and will become an independent entity: The TNT Directory. The TNT Directory is just one of the services that will be hosted on the soon-to-be-unveiled forum, TheNewTranslator Network (or TNT for short – “Exploding the Way You Think about Translation!”).

Meanwhile, we are asking each of the translators listed in the TNT Directory (formerly the No Peanuts! Directory) to identify a single, native target language for written translations. If you’ve already done so, great. If not, we’ll be contacting you shortly.

(And let’s clear up a potential misunderstanding: Our concern is limited to translators. We recognize that interpreters employ different skills and that their work is almost always “bidirectional”; as a result, interpreters will continue to be able to list any language combination in which they regularly work.)

The No Peanuts! Endorsers list will remain where it is, on the No Peanuts! blog. We will continue to ask our supporters whether they would like to officially endorse the No Peanuts! Statement of Principles and whether they would also like to appear in the TNT Directory.

And we’ll keep fighting for professional pay for professional translators and interpreters. It’s fair, it’s ecological, and it’s about time.