Author: Maria Karra

Is there a ‘critical age’ for language acquisition?

This case study in relation to the research conducted by linguists in second language acquisition, shows that there is no critical period for vocabulary, syntax and grammar, but that there is a critical period for phonological skills.  This period is different among individuals, and is determined by several factors, such as motivation, repetition, encouragement, and shared phonological features between one’s first and second language.

The argument I am supporting in this article is that there is a critical period for second language acquisition, and that it applies only to accent. To support my argument, I will examine the case of J.M., a native Spanish speaker who learned English as a second language. In addition, I will examine whether the conclusions drawn from J.M.’s case are in agreement with some of the existing literature where viewpoints of linguists are presented.

J.M. started learning English at the age of eleven in Spain. His teachers gave great importance to syntax and grammar, and consequently J.M. was very competent in these areas. However, all of his teachers were non-native speakers of English and their accent was not native-like; as a result, J.M.’s English sound production was also non-native like. In the classroom, J.M. was never corrected when he pronounced a word incorrectly. J.M. was immersed into an English-speaking environment when he came to the United States at the age of 18. This age is quite beyond the critical age, which ends at puberty, according to Lenneberg (1967, cited in Grimshaw et al., 1998).

I will examine whether and how J.M.’s accent, vocabulary, grammar and syntax evolved after his arrival in the United States, and will investigate whether these results agree with the existing literature. First, let’s examine vocabulary. Contrary to what one might expect, J.M. had greater difficulty learning new words during childhood than after the age of 18. This can be easily explained if we consider that during childhood, J.M. was not exposed to the foreign language continuously, but only in the classroom (1-2 hours per day) and a couple of hours outside the classroom, when watching English television programs. In contrast, in the United States he increased his vocabulary with great ease. I believe this was due to two factors: repetition and need. By repetition I mean that J.M. was now exposed to the language continuously. Marcotte and Morere (1990) showed that environmental deprivation leads to atypical brain organization as regards language functions. Marcotte and Morere’s study concentrated on first language acquisition, and we could hardly say that J.M. was deprived of learning the language; however, J.M.’s case agrees with Marcotte and Morere’s results in the following aspect: environmental factors play a very important role in language acquisition. In J.M.’s case, vocabulary repetition constitutes an environmental factor that is linguistic in nature. The need to communicate is of great importance for language acquisition; it is a big incentive to the learner. This need is the pressure that Hurford (1991) refers to when he argues that the capacity to acquire language “was helped to happen by selective pressure resulting from the enormous usefulness of language” (p.172), or when he argues that “the critical period effect “just happened”, and was allowed to happen because of the lack of selective pressure to acquire (more) language (or to acquire it again) once it has been acquired” (p. 172).

My argument is that there is no critical period for vocabulary, and that vocabulary can be acquired at advanced ages. In first language acquisition, the reason that the increase in children’s vocabulary is much greater than that of adults’ vocabulary is that children have a greater need to learn new words because their vocabulary is not rich enough at an early age, thus making communication difficult. J.M.’s case is similar to a child acquiring his first language. Although for J.M. English is his second language, he felt a similar need to communicate, since his English vocabulary was not rich enough, making communication difficult in his everyday life in the United States. The above conclusion agrees with that of Davis and Kelly (1997), whose “experiments examined the vocabulary component of language and […] did not find sensitive period effects” (p. 457). They add that although “one’s ability to learn the phonology and syntax of a new language later in life would be compromised, vocabulary acquisition is much more open-ended as new words are encountered throughout life. Thus there is a clear advantage to maintaining the ability to learn words” (p. 458).

Now let’s examine syntax and grammar. When J.M. arrived in the U.S. at the age of 18, his level of English syntax and grammar was already quite advanced. Great importance was placed on these two aspects of the language since he started learning it in Spain; in addition, due to similarities in syntax and grammar between English and Spanish, he didn’t have much difficulty reaching an advanced level quickly. This is why when he arrived in the U.S. there was no significant improvement observed, which we could have used to investigate whether there are critical age effects on syntax and grammar and whether syntax and grammar can be acquired after the critical period. However, we should keep in mind that J.M. started learning English at the age of 11. If there were a critical period for syntax and grammar, J.M. would not have been able to reach a native level. This conclusion is in agreement with Scovel (1998, cited in Gitterman, 1999), according to whom there is no support for a critical period for syntax. Nevertheless, this conclusion is not in agreement with Johnson et al. (1996) who concluded through discussion of experiments that grammatical performance of adult learners differs from that of native speakers qualitatively (i.e. not simply quantitatively). However, the results obtained by Johnson et al. may not be accurate, since, as they state in their study, “adult learners show a substantial amount of inconsistency in their judgments of grammaticality, and thus their performance is not well modeled by any simple or entirely deterministic model of underlying knowledge” (p.349).

So far we have examined vocabulary, syntax and grammar. But what happens when it comes to accent? Is there a critical period, after which one cannot learn to sound like a native speaker? Grimsaw et al (1998) examined the case of E.M., a man profoundly deaf since birth, who was provided with hearing aids at the age of fifteen. The language he acquired after that age was characterised by severe deficits in both verbal comprehension and production. This result favors the critical period hypothesis for first language acquisition. Gitterman (1999) examined Grimshaw et al.’s study and investigated whether the same conclusion can be drawn for second language acquisition. He concluded that there is certainly a critical period for phonological skills in second language acquisition. This conclusion agrees with that of Hakuta (1986, cited in Gitterman, 1999) and Scovel (1998, cited in Gitterman, 1999); “Scovel asserts that a loss of neuroplasticity in the brain of adults is the likely reason for the existence of a critical period for speech” (Gitterman, 1999, p. 378). In addition to Gitterman and Hakuta, Munro et al. (1996) also support the notion that there is a critical period for accent in second language acquisition. Munro et al. examined the hypothesis that production of English vowels depends on the age at which the second language is acquired. By examining English vowel production by native Italian speakers (but who had been living in an English-speaking environment for years), Munro et al. found that the presence of accent increased with age of arrival at the English-speaking environment. According to Long (1990) who studied the dependence of second language learning on age of acquisition, starting after age six appears to make it impossible for many learners to achieve native-like competence in phonology. Long attributes this lack of ability to achieve native-like competence in phonology to the loss of brain plasticity which happens with maturation. But what is that critical age, after which native-like competence in phonology is difficult to achieve? Johnson and Newport (1989) found that “performance gradually declined from about age seven on, until adulthood” (p. 95) (i.e. the decline begins far before puberty). Claude Hagège (1996), a French linguist, supports that the critical age is eleven years. Up to that age, he argues, the child can receive foreign sounds and the mouth can articulate them by imitation. At the age of 11 foreign sounds start being “filtered”, i.e. the child is no longer sensitive to sounds that do not exist in his native language. Lenneberg (1967, cited in Harley, 1995) suggested that the critical period ends at puberty.

The majority of studies seem to arrive at the conclusion that there is a critical period for second language acquisition as regards phonological skills. However, Bialystok (1997) argues that the evidence for a critical period for second language acquisition is not convincing. According to Bialystok, young learners acquire a second language with greater success than adult learners, but he attributes this success not to the existence of a critical period, but to other factors (such as the time one dedicates to language learning and motivation). Let’s examine J.M.’s case again, this time from a phonological perspective. When J.M. arrived in the U.S., he could hardly be understood; his accent was far from native. However, he had no difficulty at all in extracting (understanding) phonological information. For example, he pronounced the words “law” and “low” in exactly the same manner, although he could distinguish between the two when he heard them. Similarly, he produced / I / and /i/ in the same way (thus making no distinction between “feet” and “fit”), but had no trouble distinguishing the two when a native English speaker uttered them. Within a year after his arrival in the US, a significant improvement was observed. Although J.M. still did not sound like a native speaker, he could now be well understood. This observation shows that a phonological improvement can be achieved even after the age of eighteen. But is it possible to achieve native-like phonological competence after that age? During the following two years (age 18-20), J.M. continued to show phonological improvement, although this improvement was not significant (compared to the first year after his immersion into the English-speaking environment). How can we explain this decrease in phonological improvement? Can we argue then that 18 is the critical period for second language acquisition? At the age of 22, J.M. consulted a speech pathologist and had three one-hour sessions of “accent modification”. Tongue and lip positions required for production of various sounds were clearly explained to him. By using a mirror, J.M. could see whether he followed these mouth movements and compare them to those of the speech pathologist. In addition, J.M.’s sounds were recorded and replayed, so that he could observe himself where he needed improvement. After each session, J.M. practiced the sounds that he had worked on with the speech pathologist. After the treatment was finished, J.M. was able to produce the sounds he had worked on like a native speaker. For example, he could now produce the words “law” and “low” in a native-like manner. Unfortunately, the number of accent-modification sessions was not sufficient for an improvement in all of J.M.’s phonological difficulties. With more sessions and more practice, J.M. would likely have reached native-like phonological skills.

The answer to the question I posed earlier, i.e. how can we explain the decrease in J.M.’s phonological improvement, I believe is straightforward: he stopped trying; he did not dedicate any time or effort to practicing English sounds after his treatment was over. This conclusion is in perfect agreement with Bialystok (1997), according to whom adults can achieve the same success as children if they dedicate time and effort to language learning. As noted earlier, the decrease in J.M.’s phonological improvement started at the age of 18. Could this imply that 18 is the critical age? This contradicts most of the studies conducted on this subject, according to which this age is far beyond the critical period. However, this finding seems not to be in disagreement with Bialystok, who argues that the level where language noticeably declines is around the age of 20.

One could argue that J.M.’s case is an exception, and that we should not draw conclusions about what the critical period is based on this case. Therefore I will not use the study of J.M. as evidence to show that the critical period extends beyond the age of 18. I will rather use these findings to argue that the critical period is not a value common to each individual, but that it changes from person to person. Thus, although Claude Hagège argues that the age of eleven is a threshold for second language acquisition (and other researchers have suggested other critical ages), I argue that there is a critical period that differs among individuals, and that the loss of neuroplasticity is one of many factors (and certainly not the most important) that determine it. Other factors are motivation/need for communication, repetition, encouragement, relation between the native and the second language (shared features) etc.

Let’s examine how these factors affected J.M.’s phonological progress. The effect of motivation/need for communication has already been discussed; the need for communication was a very important factor in J.M.’s progress during the first year after his arrival in the United States. I believe that repetition also played a very important role during that first year. J.M. was now able to listen to English sounds repeatedly, and when he had doubts about the exact pronunciation of a word, he could easily verify it. As far as encouragement is concerned, it is a necessary factor so that an adult can practice producing different sounds exactly like a child does, without fear that he could make a mistake. Claude Hagège (1996) discusses this fear and considers it to be a big obstacle in an adult’s phonological progress. A child does not have a fear of being laughed at, if he does not pronounce a word correctly. An adult, on the other hand, is often afraid that he may produce sounds that will not sound native-like (for example, that he may over-aspirate a /p/ in the beginning of a word), and consequently he chooses to retain the sounds of his native language. J.M. certainly had that fear, but he made a great effort to overcome it when he realized that it was an obstacle to his being understood. J.M.’s speech pathologist gave him the encouragement he needed, as well as the option of trying to produce a particular sound many times until he produced it in a native-like manner. As regards non-shared features between English and Spanish, there are many. This is why J.M. had to put great effort into learning to produce new sounds. A bigger number of shared phonological features would facilitate the attainment of native-like pronunciation. This conclusion is in agreement with Bialystok (1997) who states that “the hypothesis is that language learners will find it difficult to master a structure that was not a defining feature of the first language and relatively easy to master a structure shared across the two languages. These differences may be exacerbated for older learners, but there should be no age differences in the ability to learn structures that are shared across the two languages” (p. 126). Although this statement does not refer specifically to accent, it is evident that it applies to accent, since no extra effort is needed to produce, in a second language, sounds that already have been mastered in one’s first language.

The examination of J.M.’s case in relation to the research conducted by linguists in second language acquisition, shows that there is no critical period for vocabulary, syntax and grammar, but that there is a critical period for phonological skills. This period is different among individuals, and is determined by several factors (and not simply by a loss of neuroplasticity), such as motivation, repetition, encouragement, and shared phonological features between one’s first and second language.

REFERENCES

Bialystok, E. (1997). The structure of age: in search of barriers to second language acquisition.Second Language Research, 13, 116-137.

Davis, S. M., & Kelly, M. H. (1997). Knowledge of the English noun-verb stress difference by native and nonnative speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 445-460.

Gitterman, M. R. (1999). The critical period: some thoughts on Grimshaw et al. (1998). Brain and Language, 66, 377-381.

Grimshaw, G. M., Adelstein, A., Bryden, M. P., & MacKinnon, G. E. (1998). First-language acquisition in adolescence: evidence for a critical period for verbal language development. Brain and Language, 63, 237-255.

Hagège, C. (1996). L’enfant aux deux langues. Paris, France: Editions Odile Jacob.

Harley, T. (1995). The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory. Coventry, UK: Psychology Press.

Hurford, J. R. (1991). The evolution of the critical period for language acquisition. Cognition, 40, 159-201.

Johnson, J. S., Shenkman, K. D., Newport, E. L. & Medin, D. L. (1996). Indeterminacy in the grammar of adult language learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 335-352.

Johnson, J. S. & Newport, E. L. (1989). Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology, 21, 60-69.

Long, M. (1990). Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in second language acquisition, 12, 251-285.

Marcotte, A. C., & Morere, D.A., (1990). Speech lateralization in deaf populations: Evidence for a developmental critical period. Brain and Language, 39, 134-152.

Munro, M. J., Flege, J. E., & Mackay, I. R. A. (1996). The effects of age of second language learning on the production of English vowels. Applied Psycholinguistics, 17, 313-334.

 

 

Copyright © Maria Karra, 2012-2019. All rights reserved.

Second Language Acquisition: Learners’ Errors and Error Correction in Language Teaching

Pit Corder’s 1967 article entitled “The significance of learners’ errors” is often cited as the starting point for the discipline now known as second language acquisition (SLA). This article discusses four major insights developed by Corder and explains how Corder’s thinking has influenced the following lines of subsequent SLA research:

  • studies of learner errors
  • studies of L1 influence on SLA
  • studies of corrective feedback

It is to S.P. Corder that Error Analysis owes its place as a scientific method in linguistics. As Rod Ellis cites (p. 48), “it was not until the 1970s that EA became a recognized part of applied linguistics, a development that owed much to the work of Corder”. Before Corder, linguists observed learners’ errors, divided them into categories, tried to see which ones were common and which were not, but not much attention was drawn to their role in second language acquisition. It was Corder who showed to whom information about errors would be helpful (teachers, researchers, and students) and how.

There are many major concepts introduced by S. P. Corder in his article “The significance of learners’ errors”, among which we encounter the following:

1) It is the learner who determines what the input is. The teacher can present a linguistic form, but this is not necessarily the input, but simply what is available to be learned.

2) Keeping the above point in mind, learners’ needs should be considered when teachers/linguists plan their syllabuses. Before Corder’s work, syllabuses were based on theories and not so much on learners’ needs.

3) Mager (1962) points out that the learners’ built-in syllabus is more efficient than the teacher’s syllabus. Corder adds that if such a built-in syllabus exists, then learners’ errors would confirm its existence and would be systematic.

4) Corder introduced the distinction between systematic and non-systematic errors. Unsystematic errors occur in one’s native language; Corder calls these “mistakes” and states that they are not significant to the process of language learning. He keeps the term “errors” for the systematic ones, which occur in a second language.

5) Errors are significant in three ways:
– to the teacher: they show a student’s progress
– to the researcher: they show how a language is acquired, what strategies the learner uses.
– to the learner: he can learn from these errors.

6) When a learner has made an error, the most efficient way to teach him the correct form is not by simply giving it to him, but by letting him discover it and test different hypotheses. (This is derived from Carroll’s proposal (Carroll 1955, cited in Corder), who suggested that the learner should find the correct linguistic form by searching for it.

7) Many errors are due to that the learner uses structures from his native language. Corder claims that possession of one’s native language is facilitative. Errors in this case are not inhibitory, but rather evidence of one’s learning strategies.

The above insights played a significant role in linguistic research, and in particular in the approach linguists took towards errors. Here are some of the areas that were influenced by Corder’s work:

STUDIES OF LEARNER ERRORS 

Corder introduced the distinction between errors (in competence) and mistakes (in performance). This distinction directed the attention of researchers of SLA to competence errors and provided for a more concentrated framework. Thus, in the 1970s researchers started examining learners’ competence errors and tried to explain them. We find studies such as Richards’s “A non-contrastive approach to error analysis” (1971), where he identifies sources of competence errors; L1 transfer results in interference errors; incorrect (incomplete or over-generalized) application of language rules results in intralingual errors; construction of faulty hypotheses in L2 results in developmental errors.

Not all researchers have agreed with the above distinction, such as Dulay and Burt (1974) who proposed the following three categories of errors: developmental, interference and unique. Stenson (1974) proposed another category, that of induced errors, which result from incorrect instruction of the language.
As most research methods, error analysis has weaknesses (such as in methodology), but these do not diminish its importance in SLA research; this is why linguists such as Taylor (1986) reminded researchers of its importance and suggested ways to overcome these weaknesses.

As mentioned previously, Corder noted to whom (or in which areas) the study of errors would be significant: to teachers, to researchers and to learners. In addition to studies concentrating on error categorization and analysis, various studies concentrated on these three different areas. In other words, research was conducted not only in order to understand errors per se, but also in order to use what is learned from error analysis and apply it to improve language competence.

Such studies include Kroll and Schafer’s “Error-Analysis and the Teaching of Composition”, where the authors demonstrate how error analysis can be used to improve writing skills. They analyze possible sources of error in non-native-English writers, and attempt to provide a process approach to writing where the error analysis can help achieve better writing skills.

These studies, among many others, show that thanks to Corder’s work, researchers recognized the importance of errors in SLA and started to examine them in order to achieve a better understanding of SLA processes, i.e. of how learners acquire an L2.

STUDIES OF L1 INFLUENCE ON SLA 

Various researchers have concentrated on those errors which demonstrate the influence of one’s native language to second language acquisition. Before Corder’s work, interference errors were regarded as inhibitory; it was Corder who pointed out that they can be facilitative and provide information about one’s learning strategies (point 7, listed above). Claude Hagège (1999) is a supporter of this concept and he mentions it in his book “The child between two languages”, dedicated to children’s language education. According to Hagège, interference between L1 and L2 is observed in children as well as in adults. In adults it is more obvious and increases continuously, as a monolingual person gets older and the structures of his first language get stronger and impose themselves more and more on any other language the adult wishes to learn. In contrast, as regards children, interference features will not become permanent unless the child does not have sufficient exposure to L2. If there is sufficient exposure, then instead of reaching a point where they can no longer be corrected (as often happens with phonetics features), interference features can be easily eliminated. Hagège stresses that there is no reason for worry if interference persists more than expected. The teacher should know that a child that is in the process of acquiring a second language will subconsciously invent structures influenced by knowledge he already possesses. These hypotheses he forms may constitute errors. These errors, though, are completely natural; we should not expect the child to acquire L2 structures immediately (p. 81).

In addition to studies of L1 transfer in general, there have been numerous studies for specific language pairs. Thanh Ha Nguyen (1995) conducted a case study to demonstrate first language transfer in Vietnamese learners of English. He examined a particular language form, namely oral competence in English past tense making. He tried to determine the role of L1 transfer in the acquisition of this English linguistic feature as a function of age, time of exposure to English, and place and purpose of learning English.

The influence of L1 on L2 was also examined by Lakkis and Malak (2000) who concentrated on the transfer of Arabic prepositional knowledge to English (by Arab students). Both positive and negative transfer were examined in order to help teachers identify problematic areas for Arab students and help them understand where transfer should be encouraged or avoided. In particular, they concluded that “an instructor of English, whose native language is Arabic, can use the students’ L1 for structures that use equivalent prepositions in both languages. On the other hand, whenever there are verbs or expressions in the L1 and L2 that have different structures, that take prepositions, or that have no equivalent in one of the languages, instructors should point out these differences to their students”.

Not only was L1 influence examined according to language pair, but according to the type of speech produced (written vs. oral). Hagège (p. 33) discusses the influence of L1 on accent; he notes that the ear acts like a filter, and after a critical age (which Hagège claims is 11 years), it only accepts sounds that belong to one’s native language. Hagège discusses L1 transfer in order to convince readers that there is indeed a critical age for language acquisition, and in particular the acquisition of a native-like accent. He uses the example of the French language, which includes complex vowel sounds, to demonstrate that after a critical age, the acquisition of these sounds is not possible; thus, learners of a foreign language will only use the sounds existing in their native language when producing L2 sounds, which may often obstruct communication.

STUDIES OF CORRECTIVE FEEDBACK 

Corder elaborated on Carroll’s work to show that the most efficient way to teach a student the correct linguistic form is to let him test various hypotheses and eventually find the right form (point 6, listed above). In these steps, Hagège points out the importance of self correction (p. 82-83). According to Hagège, it is useful to always perform an error analysis based on written tests administered by the teacher, but without informing the student of the purpose of the test. On that basis, self-correction is preferable to correction by the teacher, especially if the latter is done in a severe or intimidating way. Self correction is even more efficient when it is done with the help of children’s classmates. According to teachers, the younger the children, the greater the cooperation among them and the less aggressive or intimidating the corrections. Hagège dedicates a section in his book to the importance of treating errors in a positive way. In this section, titled “The teacher as a good listener”, he notes that it is useless, if not harmful, to treat errors as if they were “diseases or pathological situations which must be eliminated”, especially if this treatment becomes discouraging, as occurs when teachers lose their patience because of children’s numerous errors. This, of course, does not mean that corrections should be avoided; after all it is the teacher’s duty to teach the rules of the L2. But the correction of every error as soon as it occurs is not recommended. The justification that Hagège offers is the following: the linguistic message that the child tries to produce is a sequence of elements which are interdependent; immediate corrections which interrupt this message tend to produce negative consequences, even to the less sensitive children; such consequences include anxiety, fear of making an error, the development of avoidance strategies, reduced motivation for participation in the classroom, lack of interest for learning, reduced will for self correction, and lack of trust towards the teacher. Esser (1984, cited in Hagège) also made a similar point: repetitive and immediate corrections, he noted, may cause sensitive children to develop aggressive behavior towards their classmates or teacher. Thus, Hagège concludes, correction must not be applied by the teacher unless errors obstruct communication. This is the main criterion for error correction (i.e. obstruction of communication) presented by Hagège; however there have been studies which examined such criteria in greater detail, such as Freiermuth’s “L2 Error Correction: Criteria and Techniques” (1997). Freiermuth accepts Corder’s view (point 6) and proposes criteria for error correction in the classroom. These criteria are: exposure, seriousness, and students’ needs.

In the case of exposure, Freiermuth claims that when a child creates language (for example, when he tries to express an idea by using a linguistic form he has not yet acquired), he will most likely make errors; correcting these errors will be ineffective because the learner is not aware of them. Thus, error correction would result in the acquisition of the correct form only if the learner has been previously exposed to that particular language form.

As regards the seriousness criterion, Freiermuth claims that the teacher must determine the gravity of an error before deciding whether he should correct it or not. Here Freiermuth sets a criterion which agrees with that of Hagège’s: “the error, he states, must impede communication before it should be considered an error that necessitates correction”. But what constitutes a serious error? Which errors are those which should not be corrected? As an examples of non-serious errors, Freiermuth mentions those errors which occur due to learners’ nervousness in the classroom, due to their stress or the pressure of having to produce accurately a linguistic form in the L2. These errors can occur even with familiar structures; in that case, they are not of serious nature and are similar to what Corder called “mistakes”. Here again we see Corder’s influence in error analysis, and in particular in the distinction between errors and mistakes. Freiermuth goes on to suggest a hierarchy of errors (according to seriousness) to help teachers decide which errors should be corrected: “Errors that significantly impair communication [are] at the top of the list, followed by errors that occur frequently, errors that reflect misunderstanding or incomplete acquisition of the current classroom focus, and errors that have a highly stigmatizing effect on the listeners”. He also clarifies what can cause stigmatization: profound pronunciation errors, or errors of familiar forms.

Another important criterion that must be considered by the teacher is individual students’ needs. The importance of this factor is mentioned in Corder, who in turn notes that this idea had been suggested previously by Carroll (1955, cited in Corder 1967) and Ferguson (1966, cited in Corder 1967). Each student is different and thus may react differently to error correction. We infer from Freiermuth’s claim that the teacher must perform two main tasks: first, assess some specific character traits of students, such as self-confidence and language acquisition capability. Freiermuth agrees with Walz (1982, cited in Freiermuth) that self-confident, capable students can profit from even minor corrections, while struggling students should receive correction only on major errors. This claim agrees with Esser and Hagège’s claim that repetitive corrections are likely to decrease motivation; it is reasonable to accept that students who lack self-confidence will be “stigmatized” to a greater degree than confident students.

The teacher’s second task, according to Freiermuth, is to listen to learners’ L2 utterances in order to determine where errors occur (i.e. which linguistic forms cause students difficulties), their frequency, and their gravity (according to the severity criteria mentioned above). Then the teacher can combine the outcome of these tasks and decide on correction techniques for individual students.

A different approach to error correction was suggested by Porte (1993), who stressed the importance of self-correction. Porte refers to Corder’s distinction of errors and mistakes and points out that many students do not know the difference. It is important, Porte notes, that students know how to identify an error in order to avoid it in the future. She agrees with Corder that it is more efficient for learners to correct themselves than be corrected by the teacher, and goes on to suggest a four-step approach for self-correction. This approach consists of questions that the teacher provides to students. After writing an essay, students should read it four times, each time trying to answer the questions included in each of the four steps. Thus, in each re-reading task (each step) they concentrate on a different aspect of their essay. In brief, the first task asks them to highlight the verbs and check the tenses; in the second task students concentrate on prepositions; the third task requires them to concentrate on nouns (spelling, agreement between subject and verb); finally in the fourth task students should try to correct potential personal mistakes. Porte also offers some clarification of what is meant by personal mistakes, in order to help the students identify them.

The studies mentioned above are only a few examples that demonstrate how S. Pit Corder’s work influenced the area of error analysis in linguistics. The concepts that Corder introduced directed researcher’s attention to specific areas of error analysis; they helped linguists realize that although errors sometimes obstruct communication, they can often facilitate second language acquisition; also they played a significant role in training teachers and helping them identify and classify students’ errors, as well as helping them construct correction techniques.

REFERENCES

Corder, S. P. 1967. “The significance of learners’ errors”. International Review of Applied Linguistics 5: 161-9.

Dulay, H., and Burt, M., “Errors and strategies in child second language acquisition”, TESOL Quarterly 8: 129-136, 1974.

Ellis, R., “The Study of Second Language Acquisition”, Oxford University Press, 1994.

Esser, U., “Fremdsprachenpsychologische Betrachtungen zur Fehlerproblematic im Fremdsprachenunterricht”, Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 4:151-159, 1984, (cited in Hagège 1999).

Freiermuth, M. R., “L2 Error Correction: Criteria and Techniques”, The Language Teacher Online 22.06, http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/97/sep/freiermuth.html, 1997.

Hagège, C. “L’enfant aux deux langues” (The child between two languages), Greek translation, Polis editions, Athens 1999. (Original publication: Editions Odile Jacob, 1996).

Kroll, Barry, and John C. Schafer. “Error-Analysis and the Teaching of Composition”, College Composition and Communication 29: 242-248, 1978

Lakkis, K. and Malak, M. A.. “Understanding the Transfer of Prepositions”. FORUM, Vol 38, No 3, July-September 2000. (Online edition: http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol38/no3/p26.htm)

Mager, R.F. “Preparing Instructional Objectives”, Fearon Publishers, Palo Alto, CA 1962.

Nguyen, Thanh Ha. “First Language Transfer and Vietnamese Learners’ Oral Competence in English Past Tense Marking: A Case Study.”, Master of Education (TESOL) Research Essay, La Trobe University, Victoria, Australia1995.

Porte, G. K., “Mistakes, Errors, and Blank Checks”, FORUM, Vol 31, No 2, p. 42, January-March 1993. (Online edition: http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/vols/vol31/no1/p42.htm)

Richards, J., “A non-contrastive approach to error analysis”, English Language Teaching 25: 204-219, 1971.

Stenson, N. “Induced errors” in Shumann and Stenson (eds.), 1974, cited in Ellis (p. 60).

Taylor G., “Errors and explanations”, Applied Linguistics 7: 144-166, 1986.

 

 

Copyright © Maria Karra, 2012-2019. All rights reserved.

Marketing advice for translators? Enough already!

As I’m sitting here at home admiring my minuscule Christmas tree and just relaxing after submitting a painfully long translation on this Tuesday afternoon, I suddenly remembered Christmas in 1999, which I’d spent in my laboratory, back in my science and engineering days: a Christmas I spent looking at an oscilloscope instead of looking at a Christmas tree, working late instead of being with my family. It is a Christmas I will never get back. I miss a lot of things from those days but spending endless hours in the laboratory is not one of them.
  
One thing I do miss is that in that field an expert was really an expert. For someone to get recognition and, most important, to become an instructor, he/she needed to have the necessary background: extensive research, publications in reviewed journals, acknowledgment by colleagues, contributions to the field. I don’t see this in translation. In translation I see a lot of “facebooking”, a lot of “tweeting” and retweeting of the same unoriginal idea or advice going around. This seems to be one’s extensive research here: find something interesting a colleague said—or copied—and repost it and get some Likes; the more Likes you get the better known you become. How many publications in reviewed journals do we read or—God forbid—write every year? Sure, translation doesn’t lend itself to breakthrough research and publications of new findings. Translation theories are already formulated and published, and unless one of us comes up with a new theory now, we can’t expect to find many new original articles on the topic. We can conduct other types of research, the equivalent of scientific experiments, if you will, e.g. run surveys and publish our findings to share with the community. I wish we’d see more of those, more carefully designed and objectively interpreted surveys, not like the ones we see run and published by private companies that are self-proclaimed survey experts in the translation “industry” and which have already caused tremendous damage to the market.
  
No, we don’t see too many articles on translation. What is the general theme of the articles and posts we do see? Advice, marketing, more advice, more marketing, and last but not least, marketing advice. It seems a huge number of our colleagues are marketing experts. And it seems a huge number of them are eager to share their expertise with the rest of us, sometimes free of charge, sometimes at a price, and sometimes free of charge first and then at a price. But who are they, really? When I see a new expert sprung up like a mushroom I take a closer look. One expert has just graduated from college and yet presents himself as a successful and experienced professional (when did he have time to become that? It’s just impossible timewise). Another has been sharing his frustration in the forums of online portals for years, saying that he keeps lowering his rates to be “competitive” and that he’s had too little work to survive, yet on facebook he posts as an expert in translation groups and brags about his success (I mean, if you’re going to project a fake image, at least be consistent). I tend to sign up whenever there’s a new translation group on FB and LinkedIn, and I like following new colleagues on Twitter, but I get tired after a short while, tired of seeing the same thing over and over again. Advice from self-proclaimed experts who cannot back up their expertise except with the quantity of their social network posts. The same names, posting and reposting, trying to establish their presence in our heads (basic psychology) and consequently in the translation field.
  
I remember one such frequent poster trying to motivate colleagues (yes, we have lots of “motivational speakers” in our field too; they call themselves “coaches”), telling us to aim high, to have big dreams and goals, who even shared his dream of buying a house by the sea. This just seemed wrong. Frankly if I want advice and tips on how to buy a house by the sea I will go to someone who already has a house by the sea, not one that dreams about it. I mean, spend some time actually translating and establishing yourself, buy that house, and then lecture your colleagues on how to become successful. OK, this may be a bad example because it doesn’t really apply to me, I am blessed to live by the water, plus I have different goals in life; my point is that if I did share a goal with someone giving out advice, I wouldn’t want to see his plan for getting there in the future, I would like to see his strategy that already got him there.
  
So where are the people who got there? Where is their advice? My guess is they are busy translating or enjoying their house by the sea, not in social media trying to make a name for themselves by retweeting and reposting and advising. Others are teaching in recognized institutions like universities and well-established translation schools. Some others write books; though I see a trend in the last few years where self-proclaimed experts publish or self-publish their books; even the word “author” is starting to lose its meaning and its prestige. Translators didn’t start this trend, though. Anyone can publish a book these days. Way too many novelists out there. On the other hand, a new novelist usually doesn’t try to give out advice to other novelists, and the books we see on “how to write a novel” (I have one on my shelf, though I realized after reading it that writing novels is not for me) are written by authors with a proven track record, i.e. with quite a few successful books on their list of publications. And finally, other real experts are actually out there, in social media and at conferences, sharing real expertise and often trying to warn us against the phonies. They are a rare bunch, but they’re there, and I, for one, am grateful that they are brave and altruistic enough to try to warn less experienced colleagues and protect our profession.
  
So what does all this mean? To me it means that I should be very careful on whom I should dedicate my time listening to or reading. It means being critical and knowing whether someone really has something of value to say or teach me or whether he is just regurgitating information I read last week anyway on another “marketing expert’s” blog (who also copied it from another “expert” who found it on some marketing website and so on and so forth). It means looking at who is handing out advice. It means seeing one’s presence in social media for what it is and not as an attestation to someone’s expertise. It means exercising critical thinking now more than ever, now that the trend of seeing translators as a niche market for “expert” marketing advice has caught on.

Checks and balances in professional associations

Catherine Howard, Maria Karra, Attila Piróth
 
A society is democratic to the extent that
people in it have meaningful opportunities
to take part in the formation of public policy.
(Noam Chomsky)
In democratic structures (from associations to states), separation of powers (legislative, judicial and executive), regular elections, and diverse checks and balances ensure that no small group can obtain total control over the structure. In autocratic systems, checks and balances are dysfunctional or absent, the separation of powers is incomplete (the person/group in control of one power, e.g., legislative, is also in charge of appointing the people in control of other powers, e.g., judicial and/or executive), and often election rules are tailored to the needs of the ruling elite. Governments with autocratic tendencies are often tempted to declare a state of emergency, in which governing by decrees allows them to bypass democratic decision-making protocols (parliamentary votes). This is akin to suspending the application of the bylaws in an association, allowing the board of directors to take decisions without the regular checks and balances ensured by the bylaws.
  
Members of professional associations usually have a sufficiently deep understanding of the stakes of their own professional situation and the various factors that are at play. This allows them to make informed professional decisions. Taking an active role in a professional association often proves to be an emancipating experience – and also a step towards becoming an active citizen. Someone who has experience in how small democratic organizations are run will be better informed about taking an active role as a citizen. In the case of an international professional association, the experience can be particularly enriching.
  
States and local governments grant important privileges to associations and other nonprofits (tax exempt status, sometimes tax breaks for financial backers, free access to municipal facilities, funds, free promotion in local newspapers, etc.) because these nonprofits play a vital role in enabling collective action, creating social cohesion, etc. As a safeguard against the abuse of these privileges, governments impose external checks and require internal checks and balances.
  
The first set of external checks is imposed when the organization is registered. Only when the registration has been fully approved by the authorities does the organization obtain a legal personality. Tax authorities and banks (or other financial service providers such as PayPal) require proof that the organization has obtained a legal personality to issue a tax number or to open an account. Without a tax number or a bank account registered in the name of the organization, the organization can only function in a rather limited way, since regular governmental oversight is not yet in place. This limitation usually applies to all kinds of income-generating activities, including services provided in exchange of membership fees (there can be no paid service without an invoice, and no invoice without a tax number). Obtaining a tax exempt status usually requires further, even stricter checks – for which the full registration of the organization is only one of the prerequisites.
  
Once legal personality and the association/nonprofit status are obtained, authorities monitor the organization on a regular (often yearly or quarterly) basis. The external checks include monitoring the formal compliance of the bylaws with the relevant regulations as well as financial reporting obligations.
  
The internal checks and balances are set forth in the bylaws (which cannot be changed by the board of directors alone, only with the general assembly’s approval). These internal checks and balances include elections as well as publishing the financial reports to members – who understand much better than external auditors what certain projects or items cover. (External auditors can much better check formal compliance.) The financial report put forward by the treasurer needs to be approved by the general assembly of the association.
  
Internal and external checks and balances are complementary. Members and potential members rely extensively on external checks. If an organization is called an “association,” members and potential members take for granted that its registration has been fully approved by the authorities, it has obtained a legal personality, it has a tax number, it has bank accounts registered in the name of the association, etc. They assume that the possibility of financial checks by the tax authorities guarantees that the financial reporting obligations of the association are duly met.
  
Authorities, in turn, count on the general assembly of the association to ensure transparency, and if necessary, to exert pressure on the board of directors and the various committees to this end. Committees report their project spendings, the board provides a detailed list of costs related to representing the association, etc. Members of the association, whose membership fee is used to pay these expenses, are thus informed of how their money was spent and can question certain decisions. The verification and acceptance of the financial balance is a key part of the annual general assembly (and always precedes elections in election years).
  
To inspire further trust from members and potential members, many nonprofits voluntarily undertake external financial audits to prove their transparency. The results – as well as all relevant data – are readily available to members and potential members. This helps existing and potential members avoid the dilemma of whether they should risk the accusation of being distrustful or somehow acting in “bad faith” by asking for information that they are entitled to have access to. Likewise, national and local governments are obligated to publish key financial data for transparency and to answer questions from the public. This transparency facilitates the succession of power – without which the democratic functioning of the structure remains an illusion.
  
Setting up proper checks and balances in a professional association is a challenge that is crucial for its success but which many have ignored. Especially in the early days of an association, personal ties, charismatic leaders, a shared sense of mission and enthusiasm may lead the organizers and members to overlook many of the principles guaranteeing checks and balances. But, just like new nations that intend to establish democratic states, professional associations must have the vision to set up solid structures that go beyond personalities, friendships, and the fleeting emotions that impelled the creation of a new entity. Power cannot remain in the hands of the founding elite, but must be embodied in the structure and practices of the association, refracted through a myriad of intersecting, overlapping, balancing interests and perspectives. Functioning without external controls, such as formal government authorization to operate or financial oversight from tax authorities and auditors, undermines the legality of a professional association. Functioning without internal controls, such as transparency in the flow of information among the board, committees and members, shared decision making, or elections, endangers the association’s legitimacy in the eyes of its constituency. Officers holding power in a professional association cannot flaunt the need for checks and balances for long without being questioned by the authorities and its members. When such questions are finally raised, it is a healthy sign that those in power should welcome if they are truly committed to the association’s success and longevity.


Replaced by Machines

“The pilot is the last line of defence when things go catastrophically wrong. In January 2009 an Airbus A320 hit a flock of geese over New York City. With no power, the captain, Chesley Sullenberger, had to weigh up a number of options and act quickly. Using his extensive flying experience and knowledge of the plane’s handling qualities he elected to ditch the aircraft in the Hudson River. The 150 passengers were not saved by computers or any other automated system. They were saved by the two pilots – the very components that techno-enthusiasts claim can be replaced by computers and ground controllers.”
http://www.airnewslive.net/five-common-reasons-airliner-disasters/

  
You see, the claim that humans can be replaced by machines is not made only in the T&I industry. I recently went to Panera Bread (a fast-food chain, though much more healthful than McDonald’s) and placed my order on a tablet that was docked not too far from the entrance. The sign by the tablets claimed that this would expedite my order. A little further inside were actual people taking orders behind a counter, for those customers unable or unwilling to use the tablet. I felt guilty for using the tablet and promised myself to place my order with a person next time, even if that means having to wait in line. I refuse to use a machine and contribute to making a person lose his/her job just to save a couple of minutes.
  
Last year on a trip to Boston I had to rent a car at a very late hour because my flight had arrived late. Most rental car desks at the airport were closed. I saw that in a couple of them there were machines which you could use to rent a car, without the help of a person. In fact I saw something similar on TV a few weeks ago, in a commercial claiming that now you can rent a car even if you don’t feel like talking to a person. So not only was that ad discouraging human contact (all right, maybe one is anti-social and really doesn’t want to talk to anyone; fine) but it was also suggesting that it’s OK to replace a human being with a machine.
  
However, when that machine breaks, who are you going to call? You are going to call the specialists, the ones that know how to rent you a car, the ones that know how to land a plane even when things go wrong, and the ones that can recognize immediately why a machine translation may be nonsensical and even deadly (numerous are the examples we’ve seen of bad medical translations produced by a machine, such as incorrectly translated directions for taking medication; and don’t even get me started on how many translation errors I’ve corrected in aircraft specs and assembly instructions).
  
So those that still think they can save money with machine translation should probably do a more detailed cost analysis and take into account the cost of fixing what will be broken. Because chances are, something—or many things—will be broken. One of the most important things that will be broken—and that will be really difficult to fix—is the reader’s/user’s trust. The other day I was reading an article in Deleátur (the journal published by the Union of Spanish Editors) on the importance of proofreaders and editors and on the negative impact of language errors found on websites (http://www.uniondecorrectores.org/img/web/docs/deleatur_0.pdf). The article referenced another article, published on the BBC website, which claimed that bad spelling on English websites costs the UK millions of pounds and that errors on websites can reduce online sales by up to 50% (the author went on to explain how this was measured). So we are making people all the more redundant, and for what? For the better? Are we really saving money or are we wasting more money and time? Because when I saw that the order wizard on that tablet at Panera Bread did not ask me whether I wanted chips or bread or an apple with my sandwich (you have to pick one of the three to get with your order), I realized that I had to go talk to a person, for which I’d have to wait in line, which of course would defeat the purpose of the tablet. And I was afraid to use the machine to rent a car at the airport in Boston because what would happen if it charged my credit card but didn’t give me a key? So I chose to go to the only desk that was open at that hour and where someone capable of a meaningful dialogue was present (well, as meaningful as a dialogue can be at 2 a.m.).
  
But are humans useful only for debugging and fixing what’s broken, used only as a safety measure? Numerous articles have been written on why humans cannot be replaced; many of them by translators, explaining why translations should be done by humans and giving innumerable examples of bad translations and the damage that they have caused companies and individuals. Many articles have also been written by business people claiming that a company can save money by using machine translation. In fact I recently read one on the IAPTI (International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters) LinkedIn group. Think about it: somebody who isn’t a translator published a blog post in a translators’ group, claiming that it’s a good idea to use machine translation instead of a real translator. It’s not the first time I see this. In fact a few years ago in one of my talks at a translators’ conference I talked about “infiltrators”, who come to our conferences and our online groups and try to sell us the idea that machines are better/more productive/more cost-effective for translation, that machines are preferable to us translators, and that the smart thing for us to do is embrace post-editing because allegedly it’s the future and it’s inevitable. The nerve!
  
In any case, I don’t mean to go on and on about why translation must be done by professional translators and not by machine pseudo-translation. Like I said, a lot has been written already. This is a more general reflection on the “evolution” of several professions and the tendency to modernize them by reducing or eliminating human interaction and involvement. No, I am not a Luddite nor do I know of any engineers-Luddites; I am very much in favor of technology but only when it is appropriate and actually contributes to progress and quality, without causing harm.

Starting out in translation? Find a mentor!

I was reading one of Kevin Lossner’s blog posts from 2010, titled “No Monkeys!”. He gives 12 pieces of advice—a twelve-step program, as he calls it—for those getting started in the translation business. All of it is great advice and I think everyone should follow it, newbie or not; however, there is one point on which I’d like to expand to impress upon any new translator coming across this blog how important it is to follow.
  
“Find a mentor. This one is not optional. Most twelve-step programs involve a sponsor, usually one who has struggled with the same issues in the past. In our movement we offer more latitude: you don’t have to seek out a recovering monkey as your mentor. You can also work under the watchful eye of someone who got things right the first or second time.”
  
When I did my traineeship at the European Commission’s Translation Service fourteen years ago I had a mentor. “The Godfather”, they called him (I still laugh at this). All trainees had a godfather. Mine was a walking encyclopedia, a Greek translator from Alexandria, Egypt, who taught me a lot; though it would be fair to say that most Greek translators in the technical/scientific translation unit of the DGT (Directorate-General for Translation) went out of their way to teach me translation methods as applied in the EU. Business practices I learned on my own and from other freelancers later on; it is difficult to learn the tricks of the trade and how to handle your own projects, do your own marketing, and interact with clients from non-freelancers.
  
Finding a mentor “is not optional,” says Kevin Lossner. It really shouldn’t be. Having a mentor will make your life so much easier. It will save you time and mistakes. Sure, after hours of looking for good online FR-EN dictionaries you may come across Termium and proudly celebrate your discovery when you realize what a gem it is; or you can skip to celebrating a FR-EN job well done after your mentor saved you those hours by telling you from the start “Make sure to use Termium, it’s an excellent resource, here’s the link.” Or he can save you the embarrassment (and perhaps the legal trouble) of finding out that Google Translate is not reliable and could not care less about the confidentiality of the document you need to translate by explaining to you how it is being developed and how it works. (I am assuming that all seasoned translators know about the dangers of using Google Translate. If not, please read on this topic, e.g. article Confidentiality and Google Translate.)
  
What should you notexpect to learn from a mentor? How to translate! You should already know how to do that. Comparative stylistics and translation techniques should be well engraved on your brain by now. Expect to learn things you’re not exposed to in your translation studies. Use your traineeship to learn how to run your own business.
  
So what should you learn from a mentor?
  1. Research: how to do research on the topic of the text you’re translating, what resources to use. Resources include paper and/or online dictionaries in your language pair(s) and field(s), online encyclopedias (Wikipedia is the most popular one but please use it with caution—some colleagues and I had a blast with some outrageous errors in several Greek Wikipedia articles, and then didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the Greek entries machine-translated from the English ones. Your mentor will tell you which resources are reliable, which ones should be used with caution, and which ones should be avoided), journals with articles in your field(s), websites on the subject matter of your texts (could be a section of the Airbus website if you’re translating about airplanes, or the online Health Library of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute if you’re translating the medical records of cancer patients and need to know more about cancer).
  2. Proofreading. I wrote previously that you shouldn’t expect to learn how to translate because you should already know that before starting your traineeship. Proofreading, on the other hand, is a different story. How many of us who formally studied translation were taught how to proofread a text? How many learned how to edit a translation? And how many of us learned in our studies the difference between proofreading and editing? Sure, we knew how to use the Track Changes feature in Word, but were we shown what to change and what not to touch, what constitutes an error and what is simply a matter of personal preference and style? Were we taught how to charge for proofreading and editing and how to determine our rate? These are all things that your mentor can help you with.
  3. CAT tools. There are several: MemoQ, OmegaT, Wordfast, SDL Trados, among others. Should you use any of these? Which one is more user-friendly? Would the tool of your choice work on your MAC? Are the more expensive ones better? How do you answer to a client that might ask for a discount due to repeated terms as calculated by the CAT tool? These are questions your mentor can help you answer. See which tool he uses, if any. Watch him use it. Get your hands on it (don’t get nervous if your mentor is standing right over your head while you use it; many of us are very picky about what goes into our translation memories), or perhaps you can just use a trial version. How about voice-recognition software? Perhaps you’ve heard of Dragon Naturally Speaking. Is it available in your language? If your mentor uses it, take a shot at it and see whether it increases your productivity or not.
  4. Project lifecycle. A good mentor will give you exposure to the entire lifecycle of a project, including a translation request, a PO (purchase order), acceptance or rejection of a project in the beginning, and delivery of a project in the end. Look at a request with your mentor: sometimes (quite often, actually) requests are incomplete and make it impossible to judge whether we can take on the project or not. Sometimes a client will ask me if I can translate a text of X thousand words by such and such date, without telling me the subject field and sometimes without even telling me the language pair! Your mentor will tell you what to look for in a request before you jump into accepting it. He will also tell you when to say no. Look at some POs. What information do they contain? Does the client need the translator to sign an NDA? What is an NDA? Should you always sign it?
  5. E-mails. All projects involve some correspondence between the translator and the client. Sometimes communication takes place over the phone but most often it is done by e-mail. The speed and convenience of e-mail communication does not mean that your e-mails can be sloppy. Shadow your mentor when she replies to a client: watch how she addresses the client, how careful she is with punctuation, what register she uses (which of course may vary from one client to the next, but not by much, a client is a client, and even if you’ve worked with him for a while and are on friendly terms, you wouldn’t use the same register as with your nephew), how she re-reads her e-mail before hitting Send to make sure it is linguistically and semantically correct, knowing the bad impression a message with errors written by a language professional would make. I’m stating the obvious, I know, but unfortunately I’ve seen too many e-mails full of spelling and grammar errors, even some e-mails starting with “Hey there,…”, to omit this point.
  6. Invoices.At the end of a project or at the end of the month you’ll have to send an invoice in order to get paid for your work. It is surprising how many posts we see in online forums by new translators asking how to write an invoice. I don’t know why so many university translation programs don’t dedicate a lesson or two to this. Ask your mentor to show you a couple of old invoices. Make a note of the information they include. Ask her to let you write the next invoice. Ask her also to tell you about different payment methods.
  7. Project-management tools. By this I don’t mean any complex software that a full-time PM might use. But whether you like project management or not, you’ll have to manage your own projects, so you’ll have to find a way to organize your work. There is software you can buy or you may opt for an Excel file or plain old paper and pencil. I use a weekly planner—which is always open in front of me—to write project names and deadlines, and an Excel sheet to write all my project details such as client, project number and/or PO number, project name, number of words, rate, total price, assignment date, and delivery date. These details come in very handy when it’s time to write invoices, that way I don’t have to look for this information in POs and e-mails. After I send my invoice for a project I write the date on that sheet, as well as the payment due date. After I receive payment, I mark the date of payment and move that project (that Excel line) to another sheet of the Excel file. You may use one or a combination of these and/or other tools. See what your mentor uses and ask for her advice on how to organize your first projects.
  8. Translation portals. You don’t have to ask your mentor which translation portal/site to join (I wouldn’t recommend them, except for Stridonium if you work with German and qualify to join) but do ask her to tell you everything she knows about them (hopefully she will know about them), including which ones to avoid—or at least which sections of them to avoid. You may have heard of ProZ.com, translatorscafe.com, peopleperhour.com (this last one is not just for translators but for freelancers in general, and I would stay away from it unless you want to work for a month to make enough to buy a sandwich). ProZ.com used to be a great resource for the first few years after it was launched—which happened to coincide with my first years in the business and I cannot deny that it helped me immensely. Unfortunately it has changed focus from serving the interests of translators to serving the interests of big translation companies that seek lower prices and treat translation as a commodity. So this site should be used with caution, if used at all. I would avoid the jobs section like the plague. The forum archives can be very useful, though for any new questions you might want to ask, I would opt for translators’ groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. Ask your mentor to recommend some translators’ groups; they can be general or language-specific or domain-specific. For example, I am a member of the following groups on LinkedIn: International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters, Applied Linguistics, Polyglot-Multilingual Professionals, Aviation Network, International Aviation Professionals, Aircraft Maintenance and Manufacturing, Boston Interpreters, IMIA – International Medical Interpreters Association, and Translation & Localization Professionals Worldwide, among others; and the following groups/pages on Facebook: International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters, Certified Medical and Healthcare Interpreters UNITE!, The League of Extraordinary Translators, South Florida Business Owners Networking Group, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Interpreting and translation forum, ESA – European Space Agency, Translation Journal, Interpreting the World, etc. Of course some of these may not apply to you (I have aerospace engineering background and translate for aircraft manufacturers, hence the aviation-related groups); your mentor, who is working in the same language pair(s) and probably also in the same field(s) will be the best person to recommend the most helpful groups for you.
  9. Associations. It is a very good idea to join a professional association. Look into local associations (e.g. NETA if you live in New England in the USA, Société française des traducteurs (SFT) if you live in France, etc.) and domain-specific ones (e.g. IMIA if you are a medical interpreter and/or translator). Ask your mentor which associations she is a member of, what she has gained from her membership, what the mission of those associations is and how they are contributing to the profession.
 Where to find a mentor:
There are plenty of translators’ groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. I mentioned some above but there are many others. Join some. Actually join many; later on you can unsubscribe from the ones you don’t find interesting or useful. Browse some old discussions, learn from them, start participating, make connections. Introduce yourself, say that you’re a new translator and that you’re looking for a mentor. Try to find a mentor that lives in your area so that you can work at her office (even if it is a home office and even if you do so only once or twice a week) and so that you can practice all the points mentioned above, i.e. shadowing her while she e-mails a client to accept/reject a project, see in person how she uses a CAT tool so you can learn quickly, have her watch you write an invoice, etc. If that is not possible, you can still take advantage of a traineeship by finding a mentor willing to spend some time explaining things to you over the phone, by e-mail, skype, etc., guiding you as you take your first steps as a freelance translator.

Using Cloud Solutions for Translation: Yes or No?

We read about the benefits of using the cloud for work—using cloud applications and storage, for example. What we don’t see are warnings of the risks. You have to look for these specifically; the information doesn’t come to you as do the claimed benefits. This morning I got yet another e-mail from my web hosting service, encouraging me to use their new cloud storage, and I am tired of receiving iCloud notifications on my phone when I specifically chose not to use that service. So I’d like to share some things I learned in a graduate course on cloud computing at Boston University a couple of years ago, including some essential information from “Cloud Computing, A Practical Approach” by Anthony T. Velte, Toby J. Velte, and Robert Elsenpeter, to explain why using the cloud may not be such a good idea, at least for our work.
  
  
First of all, we should understand that cloud computing is not for everyone and it is not for everything. Just because it’s there and offers some benefits doesn’t mean we should use it.  According to the author, whether or not we should use cloud computing depends on a number of factors, including whether our data is regulated. Is our data—i.e. the original texts we translate and our translations—regulated? Well, the original text is not even our data, it is the client’s. And our translations are different-language equivalents of someone else’s data. So even if it is not regulated by the client, it’s still not our data to share.
  
Now I could just stop the blog here. It is not our data, we simply do not have permission to store it on third-party equipment or manipulate it with third-party applications. End of story. But for the curious, I’ll give some more information.
  
What does “using the cloud” really mean? What would we use exactly? What is the cloud?
  
Based on conversations I’ve had with colleagues, many see the cloud as something obscure, something abstract, pretty much like a real cloud without a specific shape or form, something up there, hard to conceive, something shared by many or by all. Actually it is something very specific and definitely not abstract.
  
These are the three major implementations of cloud computing:
1.  Compute Clouds
2.  Cloud Storage
3.  Cloud Applications
  
Compute clouds allow us to access applications and on-demand computing resources maintained on a provider’s equipment; examples are Amazon’s EC2 and Google App Engine. (On demand resources means that you don’t have to have the infrastructure on your own equipment and run the code; the resources are on someone else’s equipment and you use and pay for them only when you need them.)
  
Cloud storage is the most popular implementation. It allows us to maintain our files on a cloud-storage vendor’s equipment. (This is what my website hosting service keeps bothering me about. I am not interested, thank you very much.)
  
Cloud applications are similar to compute clouds in that they allow us to use applications maintained on a provider’s equipment; the difference with compute clouds is that cloud applications use software that rely on cloud infrastructure, i.e. they depend on the infrastructure of the Internet itself. Examples are Skype (peer-to-peer computing), MySpace or YouTube (web applications, delivered to users via a browser), and Google Apps (Software as a Service – SaaS).
  
Let’s consider the translation of a medical record. I won’t even go into discussing the habit of some translators to ask terminology questions on sites like AmateurZ (aka PrAdZ, SuckZ, etc.) and include the patient’s name, because that is simply beyond me. It is inconsiderate, unacceptable, inconceivable! But that’s another story. Let’s focus on the cloud. So let’s say that you want to store the translation on some backup directory you have on the cloud, i.e. on someone else’s equipment, or translate a few sentences with an online translation tool or a CAT tool that uses a shared memory stored on a cloud server (requiring you to also save your translation in the shared memory). What is the problem with that? From the horse’s mouth (the horse is Velte et al.):
  

“If you want to use cloud computing and post data covered by Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act (HIPAA) on it, you are out of luck. Well, let’s rephrase that—if you want to put HIPAA data on a cloud, you shouldn’t. That’s sensitive healthcare information and the fact that HIPAA data could commingle on a server with another organization’s data will likely get the attention of an observant HIPAA auditor.”

No matter how much cloud giants like Google and Microsoft try to reassure us that the data placed on a cloud are safe, all it takes is one tiny breach to let sensitive data loose. And of course this raises another question: if the data is let loose, who is liable?
  
According to the authors: “If you have data that is regulated—like HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley—you are well advised to be very careful in your plans to place data on a cloud. After all, if you have posted a customer’s financial data and there’s a breach, will they go after the cloud provider or you? […] It is probably best to avoid a painful fine, flesh-eating lawyers, and possible jail time.” Note that jail time can be 1 to 10 years for HIPAA and up to 20 years for Sarbanes-Oxley data. I won’t mention the financial penalties because I’d like to spare you the heart attack, but if you’d like to know about them, I refer you to this book, page 26.
  
Even if the customer considers going after the cloud provider too, chances are the cloud provider has already foreseen this possibility and has made sure to absolve itself of any responsibility in its agreement with you. If you want to know Google’s attitude towards confidentiality, I refer you to a couple of old blog posts of mine, “Confidentiality and Gmail” and “Confidentiality and Google Translate” where you’ll see that by accepting Google Translate’s terms of service we grant Google permission to use our content to improve its services.
  
I’m not saying that cloud providers like Google are after you. And not all applications are like Google Translate which wants to gain something from your translations. In fact the big vendors have strict security measures. What I am saying is that you should not count on the cloud provider to protect or respect the confidentiality of your data or your client’s data. In spite of the provider’s security measures, you are responsible for keeping your data secure.
  
So the cloud provider is not after you. But you know what? Someone else is. Take a guess. Going once, going twice….
  
Hackers! Yes, hackers can cause a lot of damage if they get access to your data or your client’s data. They can get access to the company trade secrets you translated and sell them to the company’s competitor. They can get access to a company’s proprietary information and threaten to disclose it if they don’t receive a very generous sum. There are too many scenarios to list. Use your imagination and know that these things do happen. And on a not-so-funny note, when I took a “certified hacker” course (wait, let me explain, I worked as a software quality engineer for a while, where testing the quality of software products also meant testing security, and to test security you need to know how to break the software, hence the course, paid for by the company.) I was shocked to learn that some hackers do it for …fun! Just because they can and just because they want to test themselves. This too happens. You don’t want them knocking on your door and telling  you “you either pay me 20,000 dollars and you get all those financial records back or pay 100,000 dollars in fines for confidentiality breach”. It sounds far-fetched and maybe it doesn’t happen often, but it can happen. Hackers are mostly after larger corporations, not individual translators; on the other hand, when they hack into data stored on a cloud, they care more about the data than about who put it there.
  
What does all this mean? Should we never store data on a provider’s cloud or use cloud services?
  
Not necessarily. If you want to store data on a provider’s cloud, one thing you can do is encrypt it. Look for programs like TrueCrypt (www.truecrypt.org) to do this. That way, if someone gets access to your data, they won’t be able to read it.
  
Another important thing you should consider is to look for paid services instead of services funded by advertising. When it comes to free cloud services, Velte et al. point out that they “are most likely to rummage through your data looking to assemble user profiles that can be used for marketing or other purposes. No company can provide you with free tangible goods or services and stay in business for long. They have to make money somehow, right?”
  
Last but not least, always, ALWAYS read carefully your agreement with any cloud service provider. Make sure you understand the privacy and security implications of using said service and that you understand and agree with the terms of service.
  
Now, what if you are working in a translation team and need to exchange terminology databases or translation memories? It may be convenient to use a cloud service, but is it safe? And what if you don’t have a say in this, what if your client does not provide an in-house server but wants you to use a cloud-based service/application? In that case using a cloud service may actually be a good idea and make your team’s work easier. But what about confidentiality? Well, if your client is the one that requested you to use that service and is coordinating the workflow, then you are not liable if the cloud provider’s security measures are breached (though it’s a good idea to double-check with the client anyway). If you are using a cloud solution for a project for a direct client, then you may want to follow the above advice and look for a paid service and read the user agreement very carefully. Tell your client that you are using a cloud service and make sure he gives you permission in writing. Most end clients don’t care about the details of your process, they don’t care if you’re using such and such CAT tool or terminology-management tool, but when using a cloud service it is advisable (read: advantageous to you, in terms of liability) to have your client’s permission.
  
So to the original question, “Using cloud solutions: yes or no?”, my answer is this:
  
– If you don’t need them, don’t use them.
  
– If they increase your efficiency or generally improve your work process, use them but make sure your client knows and make sure you agree with the terms of service. It is safer to use a paid service.
  
– For storage, if it makes sense for you to store sensitive data (your own data, not a client’s) on a cloud, encrypt it first.
  
And keep in mind that you don’t have to follow the crowd; just because many people use a certain cloud service doesn’t make it any safer. Consider your own needs and the sensitivity of your data; that is, your clients’ data.


A transatlantic flight and a movie

I’d wanted to watch “The fault in our stars” since it came out in theaters but I didn’t have the chance. It came out during my big move to another state. Actually, to be honest I avoided the chance. Because to watch this movie you don’t need a “chance”, you need time, time to prepare mentally, because you know it’s a movie that will make you cry, a movie that will bring back memories that are difficult to handle if you’ve had the chance –or rather the privilege- to work with terminal-cancer patients (the reason why it is a privilege requires a long explanation –and I’d like to give it when I have the chance / the time / the mental preparation to pour my heart out).
  
A few days ago on my long flight from Miami to Frankfurt, it was one of the movies offered on board. The stewardess passed by to offer drinks; I asked for white wine. Whatever helps, you know. I hit Play. It turned out to be an amazing movie from beginning to end, there was not a single second that you’d have wanted to hit Fast Forward. You wanted to watch every single moment carefully, breathe it in, feel how it feels; and the movie captures wonderfully how it feels. We medical interpreters working with cancer patients have an idea how it feels but it’s incomplete. We see it inside the hospital walls, but what happens outside those walls we can only imagine – unless we have a friend or relative with cancer (which is my case – and based on the statistics, it is the case for many of us).
  
Towards the end of the movie it was impossible to hold back the tears. I knew this was going to happen. I have never shed a tear in the hospital – it’s part of the job to be tough. But this time I was off duty and I was many thousands of feet over the Atlantic; so I let it out. When the guy next to me woke up (probably from all my sniffing) and saw me in that pathetic Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer state, he laughed. And then I started laughing too. We chatted for a bit while my movie was paused right before the final and really painful moment. Then he went back to sleep and I hit Play and went back to my crying and my excessive tissue consumption.
  
When the movie ended I took a few minutes to pull myself together, just like I always take a few minutes in silence after every appointment/interpreting assignment at the hospital. I know how to do this, it is second nature by now. And then I put on another movie, “Quand j’étais chanteur” with Gérard Depardieu, a comedy. And what a comedian this guy is! I burst into laughter when he started singing “je ne suis qu’une petite fille” (I’m just a little girl) with such pizazz! I laughed so hard I woke up my neighbor again. And I continued to watch, the movie went on just like life goes on, but the laughter had some traces of sadness, “leftovers” from the previous movie, just like our days go on with traces and memories of those hospital moments that we have the privilege to live, those moments in the lives of cancer patients that we have the privilege to share.

A special person

I was sitting by the pool a few days ago, working on my “You’re a Greek, stop looking like milk” mission, when another resident of my building came and sat next to me. He was blond and his skin was even whiter than mine. He started talking to me in Spanish; it turned out he was Cuban. When I said I was Greek he said I didn’t look Greek, that I didn’t look like anything, that I could be anything (Should I throw him in the water or should I ignore him?, I thought). I said “Well, you must have thought I was Hispanic, otherwise you wouldn’t have spoken to me in Spanish.” He said that was the only language he knew. He had been in the US for more than fourteen years but he’d been able not only to get by but to work in a hospital even with his very limited English.
  
After we talked for a while about things of little importance (he was telling me that his tanning accelerator didn’t have any effect, I said I use Coppertone because the smell brings back beautiful memories of my childhood in Greece), he told me about his life. He said he had just moved to the building and that he lived with his mother and his sister, who was a special little girl, “es una niña especial”. I smiled and tried to register this. Whenever I’m not 100% sure about the meaning of something someone says to me, I just smile a little and in those first few seconds I’m racing through my brain’s dictionaries and corpuses to see what it could possibly mean. After discarding the possibility that he just loves his sister so much that at the first mention of her he says she’s a special person, I realized he meant she was a child with special needs. Thank goodness I had only smiled, any other reaction would have been inappropriate and maybe even offensive (think “Oh, what’s so special about her?”, even if said with the best of intentions or out of plain curiosity).
  
He went on talking but at that moment I had already drifted away in virtual dictionaries and sunk into the Spanish depository in my head, trying to remember if I’d ever heard or read “niño especial” with that meaning. I could only find “persona con necesidades especiales”. I couldn’t wait to go back upstairs and write to my Spanish friends to ask if this term is commonly used to refer to a mentally or physically handicapped person. Of course I wasn’t going to interrupt the conversation or my mission! I jumped from dictionary to dictionary in my brain, in the other languages I know. I stopped at French for a while, then moved on to Greek and parked there. I tried several terms, several synonyms of special, periphrastic and paraphrastic equivalents. Nothing. Was it an Americanism of Spanish speakers? “A special girl.” I smiled again, although the man had long moved on to a different topic.
  
Eventually I joined him again in the conversation but went back to that special term again and again that day and the next, smiling at the sweetness of it and of those it describes or should describe, and wished that it replaced all other equivalents in all languages and all dialects and all registers and all situations.

Uses and abuses of “heroes”

In the last thirteen years or so, since September 11, 2001 to be precise, the frequency of use of the word “hero” has increased exponentially. (Ouch, listen to me, “the frequency of use has increased exponentially”… I thought I’d left my engineering self in the past…)
  
Yes, those firefighters were heroes but after that, whenever someone does a good deed, he’s called a hero. A guy climbs up a tree to bring down a cat that has been stuck there for two hours, and he’s a hero. I’m not making this up, the cat story was on the news a couple of years ago. A calf fell into a pit in Flagstaff, Arizona and the policeman that pulled it out was called a hero on the Flagstaff local news. The people that survived the Boston marathon bombing last year were also called heroes; the ones that got injured were greater heroes than the others –the plain heroes. It seems to me that the word “hero” has replaced less extravagant characterizations such as “brave” or “courageous” or “admirable”. For some reason, the first person that comes to my mind when I hear this word is Manolis Glezos, who climbed up the Acropolis and tore down the swastika back in 1941, when the Nazis had entered Athens. That is a hero. To equate bringing down the Nazi flag from the Acropolis with bringing down a cat from a tree is just absurd.

Of course we don’t have go to back to a war to look for heroes. There are many among us. I am a member of the Facebook group “Living Donors Online”. Yesterday a member wrote:
“Hi all, just donated a kidney to my cousin 2 hours ago! I feel hopeful my gift can make the recipient better”.

Another member replied:
“You are a true hero. I can’t wait until I donate on July 15.. Hang in there, get well and keep us posted.”

And then another member said:
“Welcome to the real life super heroes club, bro. Speedy recovery.”

Now these are heroes. Super heroes indeed.  Giving life, looking forward to taking out part of themselves to offer it to someone else. These are heroes. Let’s use the word where it is appropriate and deserved.