![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
varjohaltia) wrote2012-11-03 02:27 pm
They're Just Words
First, some background. Finland has a fairly unique wacky language that's closely related to Estonian, distantly to Hungarian and scores of tiny languages in the former Soviet union, and that's pretty much it. A big part of the Finnish identity really is the language, Swedish-speaking minorities notwithstanding, and the language is brilliantly nuanced and expressive. There are only about 5 million Finnish speakers in this universe, but it's vibrant and not endangered.
Now, being a media market the size of a large city creates its own challenges. There are Finnish original works of great value, but a lot of content, be it TV-shows, books, comics, computer programs or movies have to be translated from their original foreign languages. Probably because of cost the traditional way of translating audio-visual media (AV) has been via subtitles, with the exception of children's programming which has been dubbed.
This has actually some nice benefits. First, the argument has been made that this contributes to the literacy of the population, as teens (and adults) wanting to follow their favorite TV shows have to read the dialogue. Second, it's argued that it helps with foreign language proficiency, since while reading the dialogue, it's playing out in the original foreign language. Third, it allows for much easier exposure to media from multiple sources — the language component in watching an Italian movie instead of an American one isn't a big deal since both are subtitled.
Finland also had a government broadcaster model, akin to the BBC, and akin to modern-day Britain, it's now a mix of government channels and private channels. (The Finnish censorship regime is its own fascinating chapter, but I shan't discuss it here.)I think it is a good model: documentaries, news programs, and programming people should see, rather than what they want to see, still have a chance. After all, television can have a role in creating and sustaining an informed and educated citizenry, as opposed to a merely brainwashed and entertained one.
The Fly in the Ointment
So here's how it used to work. You go to college, get your masters degree, and then work as a translator. You make a living wage, and produce translations which accurately convey the intent of the original material while using grammatically and stylistically good Finnish (thereby contributing to the vibrancy and survival of the language and culture.) Translators implicitly retain at least part of the intellectual property rights to their translations.
The new model with new media outlets, in this particular case some of the commercial channels and Netflix, have disrupted the traditional model. The outlets are multinationals, with no interest in nationalistic ideals. They want to get as many viewers for as low a cost as possible, and sell as many ads as they can, to make as much profit as they can.
Consequently, they don't hire these educated translators at going wages, but outsource translation to third parties. These third parties then typically outsource this once more, letting people work on independent contractor or freelancer basis, rather than actually hiring the translators. Formal education in the field is not required. Specifically, the amount of material translated per euro is the performance metric. So, short of people complaining about spelling mistakes or unreadable output, there is no benefit to putting thought or quality into the subtitles produced. Other ancillary factors such as timing or the emotional impact don't matter either. All rights belong to the company, so they can reuse, change, etc. the translations as they wish. Further, the deadlines and compensation is such that the freelance translators do not have any meaningful way to put thought into their work. The original staff employees with some of the commercial channels were offered work under the new model, and calculated that if they worked full time and produced (badly and haphazardly) about seven times the existing volume of material, they would earn a third of their earlier wages. The majority resigned and is looking for other work.
But you can go cheaper than that. So, in some instances people have found, in movies, subtitles produced by fan groups. This leads to a perverse copyright dilemma. The rights holder of the original content (NetFlix) is blatantly using someone else's creative work without attribution, permission, or compensation in clear violation of the law. However, since this is a civil matter, the original translators would have to bring suit, and since they didn't have the rights to translate the work in the first place, they can't do so because they would immediately (and successfully) be counter-sued if they were able to prove that they had produced this translation.
Less blatant is the attempt to crowdsource translations, letting people volunteer to produce them, or giving them token rewards.
Ok, And the Point Is?
Here we have a dilemma facing many occupations today, and the repercussions to society as a whole.
On one hand, it's perfectly reasonable to argue that people can now get access to more content for cheaper than before because one part of the cost of delivering the product has been reduced. (We'll leave aside the discussion of whether this actually powers the price to the consumer, or simply results in increased profits.) After all, if consumers of the media placed value on the quality of translations, wouldn't they steer their purchasing decisions towards higher quality? I don't think so. In the private sector, traditionally, it's been companies that have a clear idea of the value of their own brand (Disney) that have been willing to put resources into being known as the highest quality product, the distributor of mass produced content couldn't care less either way.
On the other hand, it's reasonable to argue that this is pushing a population of educated professionals into poverty, and will be detrimental to literacy, the survival of indigenous culture and the quality of the language. Further, since there's no living to be made in translation, what's the point of going to school for it, and if nobody's going to school for it, what's the point in research or education in the subject, and... well, in a few generations even if someone wanted to, the necessary infrastructure to produce educated, skilled translators is gone.
I don't have the answer. I don't like what's happening, and I'm not a believer in a magic "free market" force, but I also don't think that you can easily stuff that genie back into the bottle, nor that government bureaucracy regulating "cultural purity" will be the solution.
What bothers me about this a lot, however, are the parallels running through so many veins of Western life.
The quality of a product is not a virtue in itself, only inasmuch as it applies to the bottom line. Pride in one's work, and one's self worth, diminishes, leading to unhappy workers.
Compensation for white collar work falls, and more and more people are stuck in freelance and temporary jobs rather than a traditional employment with the kind of stability that would allow one to plan for families or help in case of catastrophic cases of illness. Also, transient workplaces lend themselves to much lesser socialization and meaningful social interaction at work. This decimates the concept of the middle class and a lot of the social structures around which Western societies are built.
Commoditization, Yeah!
A lot of creative content has been commoditized. As a hobbyist photographer I'm aware of the difficulty in that field. The days of a newspaper paying a photographer to go to places are over. Local freelancers are hired as cheaply as possible, and the content is syndicated; press reporters are given a camera and told to take pictures instead of paying a photographer. Instead of magazines paying photographers to cover themes or locations, they buy images off stock services. Flickr and sites like it offer amazing amounts of content, some of it good enough, either under free licensing or prices which would never support a working professional. Interns will happily spend their days looking for free content to use.
Similar to the illegal use of fan subs, large media companies are constantly caught using people's photos, blog content etc. without permission or compensation. Typically, once they receive a bill from the content owner, they quickly pay it, but for every photographer who catches the violation and knows their legal right and process to seek redress, there are likely hundreds if not thousands who are never the wiser. It's immoral, and a financially clear winner for the media companies.
Network design, X-ray analysis, architectural drafting, medical transcription... pretty much anything that doesn't require physically working on something local can be outsourced globally to the lowest bidder. Theoretically this means more for less for the consumer. It also means more call for educated professions and a higher standard of living for the employees in less developed parts of the world, a very real benefit on a global scale. But it also results in anguish and concern as to how one will carve out a living in a modern Western country. Basic service professions are seen as "entry-level" jobs and don't pay enough to reasonably live on. And there's nowhere to go.
As said, I don't have answers. But compared to the world my parents grew up in, I'm not liking it. The sense of community instead of individual greed, the sense of value in intangibles such as happiness, culture, education, civilization seem all to be slipping away. The trajectory of underemployed, alienated youths and aging retiring populations who are desperately seeking escape from soul-numbing mental slave labor isn't sustainable, so sooner or later, something's got to give.
no subject
no subject
I've mentioned in the past the translation of "Lord of the Rings." It was translated by three people (with degrees in translation or English philology, incidentally!) at least one of which was an author in her own right. The third person was specialized in poems, and did the poems and songs.
So, imagine translating someone's epic tale set in an imaginary world, with the mythos at least somewhat based on a foreign one — Finland didn't really share the central European / Celtic / Norse mythos. So you're trying to convey the sense of an imaginary place, with imaginary characters of imaginary races in imaginary towns...
They did a spectacular job, creating some new language in the process, co-opting existing words, translating things onomatopoetically, or making up new ones. The vocabulary they defined by doing this is the vocabulary that pretty much all Western fantasy — Role-playing games and novels alike — have used ever since. Not only that, but the translations are well written, so the books are no worse off than they were when they left Tolkien's pen. That's a pretty significant impact on a language.
And then there's Donald Duck :-)
no subject
Sadly (and this speaks to what you're talking about) I can't afford to hire three people to translate one book! I have been looking into translation services since my work is now sold in several countries in Europe, and Japan... but it just can't be done. To translate even one book would be a huge, high-risk gamble. :/
no subject
This is happening a lot in apps. They get machine-translated, or localized by sketchy operations. The app publisher doesn't know any better, until customers start to demand refunds or make fun of the ridiculous mistakes... and even then, a small publisher of a small app really has very little they can do, since they can't exactly hire a company to redo the whole thing for real money for a small market. (Or, in the case of FB, which I keep in Finnish partially for amusement value, the conjugations are either wrong or non-existent. It's tough to go into agglutinating languages.)
no subject
no subject
So, (leaving out the rest of the sentence for clarity, and just picking out the word "picture")
"You've been tagged in a picture" -> kuvassa
"Someone liked your picture" -> kuvastasi
"Someone tagged in your picture" -> kuvassasi
"Someone commented on your picture" -> kuvaasi
"Someone shared your picture" -> kuvasi
...etc :-) The messages all make sense despite the mis- or undeclined noun, because "like" and "picture" make it pretty obvious what happened, or "share" and "picture".
no subject
no subject
no subject