A former colleague of mine, a French national and teacher of French, used to bemoan the somewhat ridiculous reality that a coach-load full of women accompanied by one single baby boy would be collectively referred to as “ils”, in spite of the obvious outweighing of female to male presence in that situation. When both men and women are together, the French language defaults to the masculine plural. And this is not the only concern. What of those who are neither “il” nor “elle”?
In a world where the rights of nonbinary and genderqueer people are often under threat, I have been reflecting on some of the oddities of western European languages which appear to have gender at their grammatical core.

Gender and gendered language is instilled in us early on. As a school pupil learning the basics of French grammar, it didn’t strike me as odd (though it since has) that the verb tables so rigorously drilled into me - je suis, tu es, il est, elle est - did not include an option for those who identify as neither male nor female. 
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I may have experienced a moment of surprise on learning, at eleven years old, that according to the language objects had a gender too. I’ve often wondered since who actually decided that the bottle from which wine is drunk is feminine but that the glass is masculine. What is even odder about some languages is that, in the animal kingdom, a creature may take a feminine definite article regardless of its biological sex. Thus, in Italian, a fox takes a feminine definite article, la volpe*. Italian horses, on the other hand, are apparently all males. Then we have the reflexive verbs, and the adjectives; for example, again in French, one is either “content” or “contente”, depending on one’s gender, and cannot simply be “happy”.                                                                                                                                 
The German language has a third gender: neuter. The masculine definite article (“the”), for example, is der, the feminine is die, and the neuter form is das. But the language still appears to have strict and complicated rules about how objects are assigned their genders; the neuter form has little to do with distancing the language from gendered connotations. However, in German, the pronoun “xier” has now been introduced and is gaining traction, equivalent to the English “they”.
As an aside, several French words are feminine because, coming from Latin and being neuter plural, they ended in "a". Lexicographers mistook them for feminine plural!


Non-gendered pronouns
Many English-speaking nonbinary people use the pronoun “they”, with “their” or “theirs” as the appropriate possessive pronouns. While this can, on occasion, create some confusion if your listener believes you are talking about more than one person, it is a useful pronoun as it is neutral, unlike in other languages where even groups of people are referred to by their gender (in Spanish, ellos or ellas; in French, ils or elles; in Italian, essi or esse). 

“They” is also a helpful pronoun if you don’t know who the person referred to is. “Someone has been in my office and left their diary behind. They must have been in a hurry.”  Moreover, in academic or scientific writing, using the word “they” can prevent repeatedly having to write “he/she”, and is more inclusive. 

You may believe that the use of the word “they” as a singular pronoun is a very recent thing.

Wrong.

According to the Oxford English dictionary, this idea began as early as the fourteenth century. A number of websites, including Teaching Outside The Binary and Academic Writing Success, refer to the medieval poem William and the Werewolf, in which the word “they” is used to refer to an unnamed person. This piece of literature is the oldest usage of the singular “they” discovered so far, but since the written word was hardly common before that, it is likely that it was in parlance long before. More recently, but still not that recently, the authors Dickens, Austen and Fitzgerald are all known to have used “they” in their writing as a singular pronoun. 

In 1750, the author Anne Fisher published a book, “A New Grammar” in which she declared that “he” should be used to cover both masculine and feminine pronouns, with “his” as the universal possessive. Sadly, one still hears echoes of this to a certain extent. I translate pharmaceutical and medical documents. All too often I read a sentence in the source language that translates “if symptoms persist, it is important to inform your doctor and seek his opinion”. The absurdity of this needs no explanation.

Unsympathetic resistance
In what should be a more optimistic development, but one that is sadly proving controversial, the French have come up with the helpful word “iel”, a contraction of “il/elle”, which is pronounced “eeyell”, and is now included in the well-respected French dictionary Le Robert. In such a binary language, this is a big step, but one that has predictably kicked off arguments. In 2021 François Jolivet of the French National Assembly wrote, “Le Petit Robert, dictionnaire que l’on pensait être une référence, vient d’intégrer sur son site les mots “iel, ielle, iels, ielles”. Ses auteurs sont donc les militants d’une cause qui n’a rien de Français: le wokisme.” [Le Petit Robert, a dictionary we thought of as a reference text, has recently included the words “iel, ielle, iels, ielles” on its site. Its authors are therefore militants of a cause that has nothing to do with French: wokism.”] This viewpoint was supported by the former Minister of National Education and Youth of France, Jean-Michel Blanquer, who denounces “inclusiveness” in the French language.

This stuffy, unsympathetic resistance to progressive ideas brings us to what, in fact, there is to be learned from all this. The suggestion here that “inclusiveness” and “wokeness” (defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality”) must be seen as negative concepts is deeply worrying. It implies that we should be less tolerant of others, exclude those not in the mainstream, and those who do not fall into traditional, familiar categories, or worse still make them conform. And this backlash against efforts to promote inclusive language is not confined to France; it is found across the world.
 
What matters here is not so much the words, the grammar, the context, as the willingness to respond to a completely reasonable request from an individual that may help them feel more accepted. These new (and not-so-new) words, be they pronouns, adjectives, or verbs, may take some effort to get used to. But this is nothing new - languages are constantly adapting - and isn’t it time we all recognised the realities of gender and the importance of respecting identity?
 

If you get the gist, if you can grasp the main message in spite of a few hiccups, blunders, and missing commas, is it really that important? Well actually yes. I think it is.

The photograph above shows an English translation (from Spanish) of a list of rules to be observed in a swimming pool. It is not at all difficult to understand, and it starts off reasonably well. However it contains poor choices of prepositions: “at front desk”, instead of “to the front desk”; missing articles; adjectives that follow the noun when they should come before, verbs that would not normally be used in English (“introduce”), incorrect verb endings, e.g. “prohibit”, when it should be “prohibited”, use of a singular that should be a plural, i.e. “regulation”, instead of “regulations”, and spelling errors, e.g. “wouds” instead of “wounds”; “influece” when it should be “influence”.

Are these minor details that would never prevent a holiday-maker using the facilities from enjoying the recreation? Am I being pedantic? Perhaps. But to me, it’s a sign of lack of care, attention to detail, and it does not present the organisation, in this case a hotel, in a good light.

Arguably, it is only texts such as legal documents, for example contracts, where the understanding and thereby the agreement between the parties must be made absolutely clear or, in the case of my own work, medical records, in which precision in the reporting is essential for obvious reasons, where attention to detail really matters.             
                                
But one question that comes to my mind is this. If we reflect on the huge attention to detail paid to almost every other aspect of presentation in, to remain with this example, a fairly luxurious hotel: the careful positioning of the cutlery, napkins and wineglasses at the dinner table, the meticulous way in which the soaps and towels have been arranged in the bathroom, the impeccable standard of cleaning, the painstaking work of the gardeners, the luxurious comfort of the furniture in the lobby, why then is the translation of a few instructions deemed to be so insignificant? After all, waiters might get disciplinary action if they made mistakes in a restaurant. I’ve even seen examples of poor English in display cabinets or information boards in the most prestigious museums in capital cities.

Among the many possibly undesirable costs of mistranslation, the newsletter and digital magazine Marketing Gazette cites mistakes that cause a negative reaction among potential clients, problems relating to gender, where the advertisement for a product may be targeted at the wrong audience due to the non-recognition of a masculine or feminine possessive pronoun or verb, and unthinkable consequences for hospital patients due to the incorrect translation of manuals for operating medical devices. Loss of money, loss of clients, health implications, legal implications....these have all been recorded.

Even more alarming is that it is now widely acknowledged in academic circles that the immaculate conception of Jesus, narrated in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, was a mistranslation, the original Hebrew word meaning “young”, as opposed to “virgin”. This is significant because it removes the rather supernatural dimension to the story and shatters the somewhat unjust and hypocritical concept that girls and young women should strive to emulate this alleged purity. The ramifications of this translation error cannot be exaggerated: it has fuelled a belief that the church has propagated for hundreds of years. One writer on the bibleodyssey.org site points out that “the virgin birth of Jesus is a cornerstone of Christianity, (and, as it happens, is important in Islam as well)”.

So why does mistranslation and poor translation happen, and why is it allowed to slip through the net?                                                         
                                                                         
Perhaps people overestimate the accuracy of machine translation and assume that a quick cut and paste into their chosen MT device will give them a precise rendering of their text without having to pay for it. Whilst the machines are definitely getting better, there is still some way to go, and it remains highly unlikely that they will produce the expected results without some degree of human intervention. Or perhaps the not-quite-right-but-well-they’ll-know-what-we-mean approach is considered acceptable and of no consequence.

But I suspect that the main reason is that many individuals or companies who need translated material are simply unaware of how vital it is that the text is translated or at least checked by a native speaker. Unless the target language is the mother tongue of the person responsible, the results are probably going to be poor at best, and could have far-reaching outcomes. I imagine that this problem occurs when someone who speaks the desired language fairly fluently is confident that they can do the translation, without training or experience in this very specific skill. They assume that what they have written is correct and, unaware of the need to have it checked by a native speaker, send it for printing or publishing, and when you go travelling you can see the results all around you.

My mother tongue is English and, although I can comfortably converse in French or Italian, I would never dream of translating from English into either of those languages. I’m often surprised at how surprised other people are when I tell them that. In my opinion, it is this lack of awareness of the importance of this very issue that is at the heart of the problem. I translate a sentence, check it against the source material, check it again, then read out the English to myself to make sure it flows well. I move onto the next sentence, and in this blow-by-blow fashion work my way through to the end of the document. Then I go through again, checking each line against the original, then read through the entire English translation, with an objective view, as though seeing it for the first time. On the few occasions where an error has been pointed out to me after delivering a document to a client, I have been mortified. This is one reason why I find it demoralising to see a bad job, as if the writer had been careless or unaware.                                                                                                                          
I would very much like to see greater prominence attached to the art of translation. If it’s so important to get the knife on the right and the fork on the left, let’s at least get the menu in order as well!

Parrots, notoriously good at mimicking language, can be found in many parts of Central and South America .

“Hey, where y’arl frarm?”, asked the American lady whilst we were waiting for a guided tour around the beautiful Teatro Nacional in San José, Costa Rica on the very first day of my January holiday.

“England”, I replied, knowing that to our friends across the water that would encompass the entire United Kingdom, and actually to them London would have been enough to describe my location, even if I live over 6 hours’ drive away.

“Y’arl speak Sparenish?”

“No, but I’m hoping to learn some basics here”, I ventured.

“Oh done whirrry”, came the inevitable. “Mose peopul heeurr know enough to git baay”.

Strange, I thought, although I didn’t respond because the tour guide was clearly ready to start showing us the magnificent marble statues in the theatre lobby. I had assumed we were the ones supposed to be getting by, not the indigenous population.

In fairness to my otherwise very pleasant fellow traveller, I hadn’t made all that much effort myself up to that point. I could have capitalised on marginal time and spent the two hours of delay before our flight left Gatwick or even some of the eleven-hour flight itself memorising the introductory pages of my Collins pocket phrase book and dictionary, but I hadn’t done so. Mind still elsewhere. Not mentally prepared for the trip I’d been almost certain would be cancelled like so many other events of the past 2 years.

Travelling anywhere with a similar selection of letters, i.e. anywhere apart from areas using an Arabic alphabet or South-East Asian writing characters, it’s small wonder almost everyone everywhere knows some English. You only have to look at a poster, drinks machine, high street window to see it all around you, or listen to the radio in a café to hear it. There’s a constant, albeit partial, diet of English that drip feeds anyone with the slightest attention span.

Yet I can’t help but feel we should at least try. I don’t speak or read Spanish and being able to speak Italian can be both help and hindrance. Many words are the same or similar enough to sound nearly the same, but different enough to cause confusion. Simply speaking Italian quickly with an attempted Spanish accent would be cheating and lazy, I felt. Eventually I did dig out the phrase book as a starting point, and it worked some of the time. However it seemed to be intended for use in mainland Spain, standard Spanish, and didn’t always work in terms of the expected pronunciation, emphasis, or vocabulary in Central America. I asked to borrow a pen from the reception desk in one hotel, using the word that appeared in my dictionary –“lápiz”. After frowning at me for a split second, the receptionist asked if I meant a ”lapicera”, which is less common according to my online lexicons, but obviously widely used in that part of the country. Equally as important was to keep my eyes open and look at the road signs during the long journeys on our road trip: “ceder el paso”, the messages on buildings: “se vende”, and shops: “rebajas en ropa infantil”.

I have an undisputed fascination for languages and can even find them as exciting as the attractions I have gone on vacation to see. I take a childlike delight in the simple pleasure of saying something in someone else’s language and having them reply. The novelty of this will never wear off. And let’s face it – it doesn’t take much effort to learn the first steps: Hello, goodbye, please, thank you, a coffee with milk, a beer and a margherita. These are simple things that make a difference. In my opinion, it’s not about how well the staff of a restaurant, a national park or a museum speak English, it’s about courtesy. Offering a modest attempt shows a willingness to do things on someone else’s terms; a barrier is broken.

So what holds us anglophones, or at least many of us, back?

To me there are a number of answers to this question. Some people would argue that they simply have no aptitude for languages. A (hopefully) small number have a sense of entitlement, particularly if they are paying for something, or feel there is just no point in trying if the other end of the conversation speaks English anyway. In my years as a teacher accompanying school exchange visits to Marseille and Toulouse, the pupils would often complain that their attempts to communicate in French received an English reply, and I would always urge them to fight back and stand their ground: politely insist on speaking French. Another drawback is that others want to practise their English.

All of the above. But I have an additional theory. Like so many other skills, to advance in a language you have to be prepared to show up and try, to make the unavoidable mistakes, to be corrected and to learn from the errors. While staying at a sleepy hotel high in the cloud forest at El Miradores de Quetzales,         one unusually patient waiter went above and beyond his obligations and pointed out a number of mistakes, for example teaching me the difference between a wineglass and a tumbler. Clearly in a busy city in high tourist season no one would have the time to pander to my desire to learn in such a way, but I was grateful for the indulgence and once started there is a certain snowball effect in accumulating words. But whether it’s pride or embarrassment, not everyone wants to be seen to make a mistake, and sometimes when we are feeling less than confident keeping silent seems the preferred option.

Let’s overcome the pride and the embarrassment. Small steps can do a lot to cast a more favourable light on the reputation of a nationality. Many people are willing to take a few tentative steps, but when it comes to attempting other people’s languages overseas, we English-speakers have some way to go. So let’s jump in and have a go – it really is worth the effort.

I’m often asked – especially by people who lack confidence in the area of language learning – how I go about improving in a second language. I find it surprising how many people seem to think they simply don’t have a propensity for languages, perhaps because of negative experiences in school. I’m not sure I entirely believe in such propensity or lack thereof, but that’s another story.

Clearly the most effective way to learn a language – spending a substantial and immersive period of time in a country that speaks your target language – is unattainable for many of us. However, there are other fruitful options.

Enrolling on an adult education class, for example, is a good way to find an approved teacher and meet others hoping to achieve comparable goals, with the additional, obvious possibility of working with a partner or in a group. These kinds of classes are often provided by local authorities, but depending on your chosen language it isn’t always easy for the organisers to find or retain teachers. You may run into similar problems attempting to find a private tutor – an option that could be highly effective, though potentially expensive.

There are also audiobook courses (such as Michel Thomas) based on repetition with a focus on essential language only; or the multiple-choice, test-and-check-based Duolingo; or there’s Memrise, based on flash cards and video clips. These apps can be great if your goal is to learn the basic vocabulary required for a holiday or travelling, but if you want to develop and retain an in-depth knowledge of a language, they might not be enough alone.

One strategy I can highly recommend – which takes advantage of our connected and technologically advanced world and is unaffected by national lockdowns – is to work with a tutor who lives in a country that speaks your target language. For about a year now I have been working with a teacher through Italki, which offers online one-to-one language lessons in a staggeringly long list of languages. In my own case, I consider this activity as continuing professional development. It may seem odd to take the step of developing knowledge of a language I work with practically every day, but in my experience those who profess to know all do not evolve and grow in their work.
I have now been talking (on Skype – again you have options) to a native Italian speaker living and working in Rimini roughly once a week since last January, and this has given me renewed confidence and a sharper awareness of my strengths and weaknesses.

Once you’ve created an account on Italki, you can choose a teacher according to your self-assessed level, your requirements or your budget. The teachers range from students or those starting out to skilled tutors with qualifications and many years of experience. You can also choose from a native speaker of your target language, or someone of the same mother tongue; there are advantages to both. Moreover, some teachers will be formal and serious while others will be more light-hearted. You may also prefer conventional, highly structured lessons, or more relaxed conversation with no particular focus or topic. Your desired vocabulary may require you to prioritise specialised, industry-specific terms, or you might wish to learn what is needed for general conversation. One of the main benefits of Italki is the sheer amount of choice available.

Each tutor on the website has recorded a short presentation which can help you decide who to pick. You can also book up to three trial lessons, to ensure you get the teacher that’s right for you. You can also select your preferred lesson type, depending on your focus – conversation, pronunciation, spelling, grammar, writing – or even ask for support in preparing for an interview. There is also considerable flexibility around the time, date, lesson length and number of lessons you sign up for.
My own experience with an Italki teacher has shone a light on my confident and less confident areas, with some surprises. It is fascinating to talk with someone working in a completely different sector, in her case the hospitality industry, and the lessons often drift into a sharing of how our respective days have gone, with the associated humorous anecdotes about the workplace. There is a genuine sharing of views and encounters that goes beyond a teaching and learning experience, and I never know what is going to come up. We’ve discussed everything from Dante’s Inferno and Etruscan archaeological sites to her family recipe for frittata.

As someone who usually prefers to secure several safety nets and relies heavily on ticking off a list of advance preparation tasks when tackling any challenge, this randomness and unpredictability goes against the grain for me. But that’s what makes it such an effective learning tool: a reflection of those real-life, unforeseen dialogues generated when working or travelling that cannot be rehearsed. There is no textbook, no hierarchy to the lesson progression over time. In fact, my teacher actively encourages me to avoid preparing for my lessons. She encourages me to ask questions, without writing them down in advance, thus generating a conversation that is allowed to flow in any direction it chooses. She corrects any mistakes or pronunciation problems and I make a note of new vocabulary, keeping my own handwritten dictionary of new words.

This has so far worked well. I have learned expressions and proverbs that would never appear in a textbook and become quicker at formulating a reply. Most importantly of all, my confidence has increased – especially when someone wants to contact me on the phone or talk face-to-face on Skype.

Such an unstructured approach isn’t for everyone; others would no doubt prefer a more systematic method of learning. Nevertheless, whatever one’s needs, whatever one’s choice of language, style, or teaching method, I would recommend giving sites like Italki a go. As far as I can see, the range of options and flexibility as a language learning tool are unrivalled.

Un âne (donkey), the very first French word I learned at age 11

Back to School at last

After months of absence, with parents battling to juggle their own workload with home tutoring and teachers struggling with the difficulties of educating online, schools are finally reopening. This has prompted some reflection on my part as to the importance of what happens in the classroom and how some teachers left an indelible mark on me.

I often review the list of my top five favourite films of all time, occasionally reshuffling and revising the options or adding in a new one, but it will take a truly remarkable production to knock Dead Poet’s Society off its perch among those five.

Something about the camera work that captures the gorgeous scenery as Autumn turns to Winter around the grounds of the boarding school where the action is set; the depth and warmth of the characters; the familiar classroom customs and banter that bring back memories of my own days at the chalkface. It encapsulates the energy of youth and schooldays, the excitement of discovery, the secret dens and clandestine midnight meetings, the heady illusion of limitless possibilities. And of course, there’s Robin Williams’s character, the enthralling, persuasive Mr Keating and the extraordinary hold he has over the boys.

Anyone familiar with the story will know that it doesn’t end well, and finally raises concerns surrounding the power and influence a charismatic individual can have, despite good intentions. It explores the potential harm done by taking too literally a role model who has cast a spell, and whose ideas some may consider romantic and idealistic.

Responsibility for the devastating climax of the film is not laid solely or even primarily with the teacher. We are also encouraged to question the suffocating expectations of family, society and education at the time – yet there is no doubt in my mind that an individual teacher can work magic. Did I have a Mr Keating in my childhood and adolescence? Probably one or two, although they are not commonplace by any means.

Imagine this: I arrive at the railway station, knowing I have less than 2 minutes to queue up in front of the glass screen, obtain the required ticket, then leg it over the bridge to reach platform 3 on the far side of the track in time to catch the 8.11 to Marylebone. I grab my one-day travel card and set off, explaining hurriedly that, since the client I am scheduled to meet is unlikely to transfer money in settlement of the services to be provided into my account for some time, I will pay for my ticket, purchased in mid November, sometime within the first few days of February, but without specifying an exact time and date.

Sound ridiculous???

Of course it does. I would never do that, and I think, hope, that very few others would either. Not only would I have railway staff chasing me along the platform demanding immediate compensation, I might even find myself confronted by the police. Most people now book tickets online on their phone and pay before stepping onto the train, but even if that were not the case, I would feel uncomfortable with the idea of delaying any payment. I even feel uncomfortable when the garage mechanic repairs a faulty exhaust but I can’t pay straight away because their invoice isn’t ready.

Yet this is precisely what I and countless other sole traders or small businesses are faced with month after month. For example, if I start working on a translation project on, say, 1 December 2019, irrespective of how long it takes to complete, I will invoice this work right at the end of the month, which is the usual practice in the language services industry. Each company has its own invoicing policy, which essentially means that each invoice I send must be adapted to the specific requirements of the accounts departments of individual companies: for example, all require different information relating to the bank into which the payment is to be made; some expect invoices to be uploaded onto a dedicated portal; some require “proof” (can you believe it?) of completion of the work in the form of a copy of the PO or visual evidence verifying fulfilment of expectations (for which they have already confirmed receipt); some have particular preferences regarding colour and font. It seems preposterous that someone who has already received goods and services is dictating the terms under which they are prepared to pay. To continue, once compiled according to these specific demands, this hypothetical invoice will be sent between 28 and 31 December 2019, with a “payment due” date, based on the 60-day payment terms imposed by what appears to be an increasing number of companies, of 28 February 2020. So, as unreasonable as it sounds in view of the fact that the work was done and duly delivered in the first few days of the month, can I then expect the payment to reach my bank account by 28 February 2020?

Absolutely not.

Some accounts departments will then insist on a further few days of waiting while the “payment is processed”. I will be lucky to receive the outstanding payment before 10 March. I wish this were an exaggeration, but sadly this is not the case. As if 60-day payment terms were not bad enough, the reality is much starker. The period of time between work I do tomorrow and the payment landing in my bank account can actually become more like 98 days. This is more than one quarter of a year. How is this even remotely acceptable?

As one contributor to the Ghostblogwriters.com site comments:
“Sometimes, 60+ days is totally fine. But as you’ve probably seen, it’s not the 60-day terms that is frustrating. It’s when 60 days turns into 70, 80 and even 100+ days.” This site also offers some useful tips, for example on sending reminders, and including the contact person in the accounts department in all communications.
 
Five years ago, when I first started working as a free-lance translator at the very base of what proved to be a precipitous learning curve, I sought advice on the subject of invoicing from a small business owner. Not all he said was relevant to me. For one thing, he was working in the construction industry and, for the most part, operating within a twenty-mile radius. Much of my work comes from the continent. However, one thing he said stuck in my mind: “the little guy does what the big guy says”. Naive as I was then, I accepted this as normal. And to my mind, herein lies the problem: an unacceptable situation becomes so commonplace that it becomes routine. Or worse, we are persuaded that because it is standard practice and legal, we sleepwalk into what is clearly morally outrageous in the mistaken belief that it is somehow tolerable.

I have even tried to rationalise this situation by reminding myself that there is a chain of beneficiaries and an end client, and that companies must await payment themselves before paying service providers. Seriously? Who am I trying to kid? That is like me refusing to pay for computer repairs (my service provider) until I am paid by those who owe me money for that month (my end client). And this doesn’t even take into consideration the fact that companies with 60-day payment terms tend to be the larger fish in the pond and are more than capable of settling up earlier. Another rationale I often hear concerns the length of time it takes to process payments: documents need to be signed off, paperwork waiting in the in-tray of the person responsible etc. Again, this is a weak argument. I recently grew tired of one particular company who were repeatedly late with payments, and finally announced that I was no longer able to collaborate. Surprisingly, the outstanding amounts appeared in my account with no further hesitation. Interesting. Let’s be honest, if companies can’t pay up within 30 days, they shouldn’t be seeking services in the first place. After all, you don’t buy what you can’t afford.

There is also a palpable inequality here. I have always been meticulous in observing deadlines, knowing that a late delivery could have consequences for a number of people, and have never been late in delivering a completed, thoroughly checked piece of work. If I had, I would have been under relentless pressure to get the work done, and potentially faced with the possibility of reduced payment or refusal to pay. The double-standard here does not need pointing out.
 
I’m not alone. In an article entitled “Late Payment” on the FSB Experts in Business site, I read that “Small businesses are owed on average £6,142 mostly by larger firms not paying them for goods and services on time” and also that “37% (of) small businesses have run into cash flow difficulties, with 30%... forced to use an overdraft”. The writer then expands on some details associated with being the victim of late payments: being bullied into reducing an already agreed price, for example. This latter problem is particularly sinister since, if some clients are offering earlier settlement if the provider is prepared to accept less, there is the possibility of exploitation and manipulation of those in serious need of funds.
 
https://www.fsb.org.uk/standing-up-for-you/policy-issues/finance-and-the-economy/late-payment
 
I use the word “snare” in my title, because the 60-day payment terms (and some companies insist on 90 days) can function as a way of trapping providers. Once someone owes you money, staying on the right side of them by continuing the collaboration can seem inevitable, a little like a donkey and carrot scenario. This, again, has become so much the norm that it is (wrongly) considered acceptable.
 
As far back as Nov 2018, Rachell Astall made the alarming observation on the gocardless.com site that 41% of small business owners were finding “late payments more concerning than Brexit”, with 89% reporting becoming “stressed and anxious” due to “uncertainty around when payments will come in”. Consequences of this, she writes, include inability to grow the business, staffing problems and even sacrificing salary or holidays.
 
No matter how carefully someone in my position manages their monthly budget, there is a certain amount of unpredictability in the world of a freelancer. I never know how much work I will receive during any particular week, let alone month, and with different clients having different payment terms, budgeting monthly incomings and outgoings (bills) is challenging and highly variable.
There is, of course, the question of what is actually legal. According to EU law (we are still just about in the EU at the time of writing), this issue is regulated by the Late Payments Directive 2011/7/EU, which states that “the payment period for businesses must not exceed 60 days from the date of safe invoice receipt”. This law appears to allow for some flexibility if such flexibility is agreed between the client and contractor but is clearly open to abuse. Most freelance translators are not in a position to take legal action, partly because they are so frantically occupied in completing the next project. So larger companies can easily get away with loose interpretation of the legislation:

"It should therefore remain possible for the parties to expressly agree on payment periods longer than 60 calendar days, provided, however, that such extension is not grossly unfair to the creditor." (Article 13 of the Preamble of the Late Payments Directive)

Two further points should be made here: the first is that a small number of organisations will not accept invoices until the total amount owed exceeds a specific threshold, usually around 40 euros. This means that it can take several months to accumulate the desired amount, months that are usually being spent working on other projects. In my earlier analogy, this is like me getting off the train at Beaconsfield instead of proceeding to Marylebone, then claiming that until I have clocked up enough journeys to total an arbitrary amount it is not worth the time it would take to pull my wallet out of my pocket and pay. Secondly, since some firms do not accept invoices until they issue an invitation to invoice, which is often beyond the end of the month in question, the number of days is only counted from the date of receipt of the invoice, a date that is not under the supplier’s control.
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Some companies will glibly inform you that 60-day payment terms are “normal” and “standard practice”. However, unless you have good reason for accommodating this: you are invested in that particular type of work, you trust and respect your contact person/project managers, you can budget effectively and accordingly, my suggestion would be to refuse. When approached by the company, set out some clear terms and conditions, stick to them firmly and don’t assume that you are always in a position of weakness. Yes, there are other service providers in competition with you, but there are also other agencies/clients who require your services. And if you agree to be thorough, reliable and deliver/complete on time, with good communication and willingness to go that extra mile, for example by helping out when PMs need something in a hurry or just need the odd question answering, they will recognise the value of working with you and it is then up to them to take or leave your terms. No one wants the apprehension that comes with constantly having to check a bank account to find out whether that missing payment has finally arrived. Our time is better spent on the work we enjoy and joined the industry to do.

A few months ago, while languidly browsing the second-hand book tent at the west country festival I attend every late summer and start look forward to as soon as the line-up is published in late January, I happened to overhear a conversation between a couple close by, who had picked up a copy of something whose title I couldn’t quite see. “Nah. You don’t wanna read that,” came the comment that sticks in my mind, “it’s a translation, remember. It’s bound to be awful”.  “Hmm.” said her partner, carefully replacing the book onto one of the neat piles arranged, alphabetically by author, on the tables around the room. I inhaled sharply, ready to provide an uninvited retort, but thought better of it. An opinion is an opinion, after all.

It wasn’t just that this was a carefully selected and collected, lovingly protected assortment of pre-owned but still in good condition books, whose seller was standing patiently in the corner while visitors, passers-by or half-in-and-half-out people read, handled and viewed with varying intentions to buy. Or the fact that this particular book was probably, as with everything else in the fiction corner of this large yurt, a classic, a prize-winner, or a celebrated piece of literature. My indignation came from knowing how laborious and tricky book translation can be. I have translated very few books and my work is almost entirely associated with factual documents. But I admire book translators enormously, especially fiction translators, and would like to say a few words in their defence.

The difficulties facing book translators are numerous, but the one that interests me the most is to do with the communication of author’s intended meaning in another language, especially when the writer is writing about events that took place in a time and a place that perhaps can never quite be captured and appreciated by those who never lived through those experiences. OK. That also applies to reading a book written in our mother tongue but set in another English – speaking country in another historical setting. Maybe. But there are additional difficulties when dragging a text, sentence by sentence, even phrase by phrase, into a new language, which makes me think of winding damp laundry through an old-fashioned mangle. You can pull it through, but something can be lost. It’s the voice, the subtle inflection, the way that an attentive reader can almost hear which syllables the speaker is emphasising when reading a text in their own language, but which a translator might struggle to re-create when armed with a very different toolbox in another.

Of course, there are skilful translators who obviously succeed. I refer to one or two such people, along with the respective authors and books, in my blog for February 2017, but I do not feel that the difficulty in doing so is widely appreciated. As mentioned in that blog, a word-for-word exchange simply won’t work. Languages vary in their sentence organisation for one thing. I have just finished reading the 2018 Man Booker Prize winner “Milkman”, written by Anna Burns and published by Faber and Faber, through which the author paints a vivid, brutal and shockingly enlightening picture of life in Northern Ireland at the time of the struggles. I have no doubt that this book will be translated into other languages, although I can find no current evidence of this, but I can imagine the obstacles such linguists will have to overcome. When studying and training to become a translator, we are told that it is essential to write good, grammatically correct English, to be succinct, to attempt to avoid repetition, and to be specific. On the face of it, this unique, brilliantly-written book does none of these things. Told from the point of view of a teenage girl experiencing unthinkable difficulties, the language is repetitive, the sentences necessarily long-winded and the word order, which challenges preconceptions about “correct” structure, is jumbled and unexpected. Punctuation is unusually placed or absent where it might be anticipated. This is a girl trying to express and reflect upon her thoughts in a way that is in one sense garbled but at the same time gives these thoughts remarkable clarity. My empathy as a reader awoken, I found I could follow her line of reasoning clearly. So much for grammatical rules.

Temporal and spatial reference points in this book are limited. Neither the town in which the story is set or any of the characters are ever named. People are described as “third brother-in-law”, “eighth woman” or “Somebody McSomebody”. Places are described as “over the water”, “over the border” or “over the road” This makes it difficult to achieve concision and added to this is the breaking off of the narrative to provide backstory and context. This, while helpful, can go on for pages. Succinctness is not part of the plan. Moreover, the author has created some of her own terms.

“They said it was the media’s fault, and indeed the media had espied the issue women via their placards in amongst the traditional women carrying their own placards. And even though there were only seven of these issue women compared to the few hundred of traditional women, all the world’s cameras instantly focused upon them.“

Often points are hammered home through the use of multiple adjectives to describe the same action or emotion, or countless anecdotes and examples are provided to illustrate the point.
My argument is that, yes, this can be translated into another language, but in the target language, with its own set of (different) grammatical rules, the translator will have their work cut out to generate a text that represents the author’s intended message, but also "breaks" the generally accepted grammar rules in the new language in order to create the desired register and intonation: that of a victimised girl with astute observation of the world around her, who is trying to make her reader grasp what she is saying by labouring each point. Furthermore, with no understanding of past troubles in the character’s location, the impact of the phrase “that country over the water” will inevitably be dulled.

Another quagmire that book translators can wade into is the feeling of treading on eggshells when working with an author who, understandably, is proud of their achievement and sensitive about how the material in their book is treated and re-created in a language they may or may not have mastered themselves. Good communication throughout the process is essential, and rather than present the translation as a fait accompli on completion of the target language version, piecemeal translation of each chapter can help to avoid embarrassing disagreements. Authors can be easily put out if they feel that their work is not being processed as they had imagined. Nor do they always realise that the source and target languages simply have a different rule book. This is especially true of punctuation. One author I worked with read the draft version of my translation of his book and could not understand why I made extensive use of commas in some places. Whereas Italian sentences can often ripple on extensively with no punctuation, ending on the key words of the sentence and its final full stop, commas are used more frequently in English. I was obliged to send him a photocopy of a page from Lewis Carroll, to show him that the English language simply does not do so much of this punctuation-free writing, unless used as a stylistic device.
Take the sentence:

“ Durante la guerra mangiavamo di solito nella cucina sopratutto quando veniva la nonna da pranzo,  spesso faceva male la testa percio non voleva prendere il sole.”

Whilst it is conceivable that the writer might put a comma after the “cucina”, the Italian sentence will work quite well without. Consider the same sentence in English:

“During the war we usually ate in the kitchen, especially when grandmother came to lunch. She often had headaches, so she didn’t want to be out in the sun.”
Not only do we need at least one comma in the English, the sentence would also be clumsy without the full stop and new sentence after “lunch”. In Italian, a comma is often used to separate two ideas, where we would use a full stop.
 
Perhaps the biggest handicap for those involved in book translation is that, generally, translations don’t sell. Unless you’re working for a well-known, widely-acclaimed writer, and few translators are, it is highly likely that your translations will sit in obscurity for years, or forever. When I first set out in this industry, I translated several books in the space of two or three years, before my work on pharmaceutical and agricultural projects became so all-consuming. Sadly, only one of these has sold copies. The royalties I receive from this every two or three months have gradually accumulated into what amounts to a reasonable income for the work involved in that translation, although I regard this as a welcome surprise rather than an expectation. As for the others, which I felt were well-written by authors who had carried out extensive research, and whose work was based on sound experience and knowledge, or imagination in the case of novels, there has been little or no response, even though my translations received good feedback from the writers concerned. The problem is that very often neither the author or translator is doing any marketing. The book may have sold successfully in its original language, but unless someone is actively promoting it, it will not be bought because no one knows it is there. As I wrote in my blog two years ago, only a very small percentage of books sold in the English language have been translated from another. Until we have some international focus on this issue and a united, well-thought-out effort to overcome the problems, this is unlikely to change.
 
In spite of all this, some of my own favourite books are translations. I have already described my reactions to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series of Carlos Luiz Zafon, whose wonderfully flowing prose is translated from the Spanish my Lucia Graves and in which both writer and translator give an outstanding performance. Unable to wait for the paperback version of the latest, “The Labyrinth of the Spirits”, to reach the shops, I have the hardback waiting on my bedside table, and I look forward with genuine relish to immersing myself in that world from tonight.

(Police vehicles parked outside the Trieste seafront hotel where Macron was to meet Angela Merkel and Paolo Gentiloni before attending the Western Balkans Summit of July 2017)


A few months ago, I happened to overhear a rather stilted but amicable dialogue in a coffee shop between a woman who, it transpired, had purchased property in Italy, and her native-speaking instructor who was being paid to hold twice-weekly conversations to help her improve her spoken Italian. The exchange was somewhat one-sided, in that the student was doing most of the talking and her listener was mostly nodding and murmuring agreement or empathy. I remember thinking that this was a cosy, fruitful way to learn or develop competence in a foreign language, particularly speaking and listening skills, provided that your tutor is willing to correct and interrupt as necessary, and provided you have the time to commit.
As a UK-based written translator of scientific material, for the most part associated with the pharmaceutical and agricultural sectors, I don't get the opportunity to speak and listen in my source languages as often as I would like. My work is still fascinating and rewarding and it presents new challenges and obstacles, but tends to throw up largely similar vocabulary from one document to the next and I have steadily grown an ever-thickening, insulating comfort zone. Sadly, my visits to the two countries in which my source languages are spoken, although invaluable, are all too infrequent and I have very little opportunity for day-to-day conversation. So how then is it possible to overcome this sense of losing contact with languages learned but not often practised verbally?
I was first introduced to Euronews by one of my course tutors while undertaking my translation training. She insisted that it offered an effective way to improve both reading and listening skills, and she was right. While studying I found that by far the most difficult text to translate was the content-loaded, jargon-rich, brusque and truncated journalistic style of news articles, often assuming a knowledge of politician sobriquets or for-those-in-the-know abbreviations and euphemisms. (I hadn’t realised, for example, that the word l’hexagone was often used by reporters to refer to the country of France.) Therefore, for me, the most useful aspect of Euronews, established by the European Broadcasting Union in 1993, is that it often provides a written and rapidly spoken version of the article, enabling me to read and listen at the same time.
Euronews has a slightly misleading name – it delivers stories on events worldwide – but it relates to its original objective of presenting news from a European perspective, and the majority of the thirteen available language options are European. There are live-streams of top stories, with videos and photographs of events and commentary, and often a written account of what you are hearing which, while not an exact transcript, closely summarises the discourse. You can quickly read and listen to headlines to catch the main thrust, then you are encouraged to click on further links to explore the issue or related issues in more detail.
An interesting dimension to this for me is the alternative perspective on UK events. Euronews contributors offer an external viewpoint, with less of the hype that emits from UK-based media coverage, particularly from partisan sources. Moreover, with so much upheaval and uncertainty in our own country, it is refreshing to read that life goes on elsewhere and there are developments that do not impact Britain much at all. Earlier in September, for example, I read that European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, in delivering his 11-point State of the Union speech, made only a fleeting reference to the UK and our imminent departure from the EU, instead focussing on trade, currency, Africa, foreign policy and immigration. This may come as a surprise to those of us who might think Brexit is dominating European thinking.
One rather odd, almost comical feature of Euronews – which has thankfully now disappeared – was the bizarre way in which readers or listeners were formerly invited to provide feedback. Alongside the article on the screen were two quite sizeable circles, one labelled “Good news” and the other “Bad news”. This often raised a dilemma: did it have to be one or the other? I remember a couple of years ago, when I first started using the app, that a group of migrants adrift on the Mediterranean were being temporarily sheltered in a sports complex on a Greek island. Good news that they were safe. Bad news that they were forced to flee their homeland in the first place and their future was uncertain. Not straight-forward, and until making a choice by clicking on the chosen circle, you never knew whether or not you stood with the majority.
That aside, Euronews is a great way for me to capitalise on marginal time in between projects, invoicing, software updates and emails. It serves the dual purpose of keeping me up-to-date on current affairs and providing real language practice in current topics. Making the effort to read and listen in the language you wish to learn is well worth the effort.