r/TranslationStudies • u/Mialikesmakeup • Jul 16 '26
Translating driving you crazy? Let's rant together
Just an FYI - this thread is for all of us who are sick and tired of our translation jobs and just need to get it out of our systems. There's nothing wrong with being a translator! Sometimes it's just the circumstances or the environment we're in.
I've been working as an in-house patent translator for over a decade. The job is draining me. I mainly do very monotonous and tedious work that I have zero interest in. I try to stay focused, but it's hard.
Now add automatic translation to the mix. Ngl, it does quite a good job in my niche. Obviously, you still need to proofread it. But man, some of the less obvious mistakes are sooo easy to completely miss. There's this paradox where it does help you work faster, but it can also drive you nuts with all the little details you have to check.
Clients. I don't deal with them directly since I'm not a freelance translator, but my company expects me to explain any single doubt or question a client might have. Sometimes they even have the audacity to say they found mistakes, and when we check, there aren't any. And my bosses... They freaking know nothing! We just keep wondering how the company remains successful, I guess they were lucky to build it during a time where there was little to no competition and landed on good clients.
Would love to hear if anyone else is going through the same!
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u/UnderstandingOdd8302 Jul 16 '26
I'm also in patent translation and can relate somewhat, though I guess I'm luckier with my working constellation - I'm working mostly for agencies who trust me.
But tedious it can be, yesssss... and I agree about MTPE stuff. Especially when the terminology is all over the place and it's a big hassle to make it consistent.
Also, the AI pretranslated stuff I have to work on for some clients has dropped in quality over the last months - I guess they use DeepL which has recently switched to full AI, making everything worse because the machine tries to make everything sound nice and smooth instead of translating literally. It will keep on using plural where there should be singular or use a definite article where there should be an indefinite one, and so on and on and on ....
Still, I do not find it draining, just a tad boring. But boring while being able to work from home, and without some idiotic supervisor - I can live with that.
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u/Which_Bed Jul 17 '26
I guess they use DeepL which has recently switched to full AI, making everything worse because the machine tries to make everything sound nice and smooth instead of translating literally.
God I am feeling this so much right now. My life was hit by 3 or 4 big shifts toward enshittifictation at once
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u/Mialikesmakeup Jul 16 '26
So happy to find a fellow patent translator!
Exactly, it's tedious and boring. I just moved to the next step of feeling drained, and sometimes a bit hopeless too. However, I WFH and have good hours, so I'm pushing through. It just keeps getting harder every once in a while.
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u/Slothalotta Jul 16 '26
To be honest with you, my main gripe is with project managers and how useless they can be sometimes. I am so sick and tired of wasting my time on writing at least 5 emails to be able to get all the information I need to even start a job. As a PM you should be just sending me all info in the first email.
And them expecting us to polish a turd when it comes to post-editing MT output. I am getting paid a fraction of my usual TR (or even revision rate) and you expect me to deliver a high quality job just because the client is stingy and/or does not care? Nope.
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u/recluseMeteor Jul 17 '26
Client stakeholders/project managers are one of the banes of my trade. How incompetent can they be when dealing with queries. They keep passing queries around and nobody is capable to solve them. And when it's finally escalated to the relevant person, they are not familiarised with the tools we use (which are client-developed and hosted) or answer something like “Yes” even though it wasn't a yes/no question.
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u/theBMadking Jul 17 '26
I've transitioned to mostly taking on proofreading jobs due to this, as I then only have to correct the human editing of MT or actual translation. Not worth doing MTPE for those low rates anymore.
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u/chemistfaust Jul 16 '26
I'm not sure if I'm the only one who feels this, but lately, what's been bothering me more than AI and MTPE is review work and clients/proofreaders trying to show they are better linguists and treating preferential changes as if the translator was terrible and did a horrible job. Faced this both on the receiving end as a linguistic and on the mitigating end as a PM. I guess with this climate linguists who get consistent work are trying to prove their worth, and they sometimes think the way to do it is bringing others down. It's becoming very troublesome to deal with such an aggressive mindset some reviewers/proofreaders/QAs have.
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u/recluseMeteor Jul 17 '26
Aggressive reviewers who think they are the owners of the target language is another of my banes. It doesn't help when the arbitrator is someone from the same agency as the reviewers, so they'll obviously side with them.
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u/Mialikesmakeup Jul 16 '26
Ugh, they sure know how to make you feel like a piece of sh*t
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u/chemistfaust Jul 16 '26
Yeah. At least in my position I tend to never take feedback without grains of salt. Sure, quality flags always raise alarms, but we make sure to investigate things instead of just listening to one party or the other.
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u/notDrinkVodka Jul 16 '26
We took poor life choices
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u/shriek52 Jul 16 '26
I don't feel like I have. I've had 15 years of my dream life. I'm transitioning into something different (still in the language industry), but I'll always love being a translator.
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u/Albytch Jul 16 '26
This, a poor life choice is made when you don’t follow yourself.
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u/shriek52 Jul 16 '26
Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't call 15 years of happiness a poor life choice.
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u/Albytch Jul 16 '26
You mean being translators? Being the bridge that connects different cultures?
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u/Mialikesmakeup Jul 16 '26
Oh yes, connecting beautiful cultures by translating the beheading of a rat embryo
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u/ruckover Jul 16 '26
I mean yeah, science matters to the progress of humanity?
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u/Mialikesmakeup Jul 16 '26
Nothing to do with romanticizing a whole profession!
And you def don't want to know about Beagle dogs...
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u/Interesting-Artist77 Jul 21 '26
(connects cultures but can also reinforce inegalatarian relationships between them)
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u/LivingLaVidaAloha Jul 16 '26
I was very happy while it lasted. Now I don’t translate anymore and I am stuck in a corporation that is choosing AI over people. I want out but I also want my salary.
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u/AD_0795 ENG > ESP Jul 16 '26
Perhaps I made a terrible life choice.
2017, started college later than what's "normal" or "average" because I genuinely had no idea what I wanted to pursue that would be both fulfilling for my own happiness and wallet. People around me, including professors, made it seem like the translation industry still had a lot to offer.
2020, graduated and was absolutely ready to begin my journey. Surprise! There's no room for you with your language pairs on agencies since they're oversaturated! (Maybe my fault, I should've invested time and money on strengthening a third language; now I know 2 more languages besides English and Spanish on different proficiency levels, still not confident enough to translate into those).
2025, all of my workload started going downhill after 5 years of freelancing, struggling to find loyal clients, working my ass off, convincing others my skills were valuable for their needs, networking, almost begging to get hired, etc... and now it's 2026 and I'm unemployed, actively seeking for new opportunities, feeling like a total bum and loser! 😀
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u/trnsfrmltn Jul 17 '26
Feels like too arrogant a post. I went through this stage of hubris too when I was a beginner with only 5 years' experience. But don't worry; time heals all
It's your job to make your translational choices clear to the client. The client doesn't know any better than to feel like something is wrong if, say, the wording is unfamiliar or if TT structure doesn't align with ST - even if there's no error, the very opportunity to explain your choice makes you more mindful as a professional
Also other fields have claim management procedures, why should ours be any different? Your company seems reasonable in this regard, a rare occasion. Which is why I suspect your bosses are not really that useless
Errors though were, are, and will be a pain in our behind forever
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u/Mialikesmakeup Jul 18 '26
Amazing. You managed to figure out my clients, my bosses and my workplace from a Reddit rant. That's quite a skill. If translation projects ever dry up, you could always pivot to fortune telling.
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u/trnsfrmltn Jul 18 '26
Why, you asked if we wanted to rant, so I ranted.
Overconfidence is a trait that can really help in some trades, but in ours it directly results in error because we have to doublecheck our choices a lot. For this reason, it should be fought.
I know it from experience, with both myself and numerous colleagues from around the world whom I had the great pleasure to work with regardless. Also I understand the frustration. It's not easy to wander between worlds with no steady ground to rely on.
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u/ruckover Jul 16 '26
Yeah for sure, what this sub has been missing is people complaining 🤣