Advance Search

Comparative Satisfaction among Freelance and Directlyemployed Irish-Language Translators

Kelly Bermúdez López
Universidad de Antioquia
Julián Domínguez Bustamante
Universidad de Antioquia
Diana Catalina Rodas Tamayo
Universidad de Antioquia
Keywords:
Copyright and Licensing:

Copyright (c) 2024 Ciencias Sociales y Educación

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article reports results of a survey of government-accredited Irish language translators. The survey addresses a particular cohort of minority language translators in a particular linguistic context, where institutional demand for translation is growing. The survey may also be a useful basis for further work on translator job satisfaction. Participants in this survey were passionate about translation and about the Irish language, but conditions of employment clearly affected their concerns and perspectives regarding their profession. All translators report a strong sense of pride in their work, but freelance participants’ perceptions of purpose and fairness in work, payment, colleagues, and job security compare poorly to those of their full-time public service colleagues. Freelancers report that they struggle to work together in the face of falling rates, with some accepting low-paying jobs that are against their own and their colleagues’ best interests. Many of the freelance participants feel threatened by technology, the potential for machine translation to replace human translators, and their powerlessness regarding translations being repurposed for machine translation training. Responses show a fearof falling translation quality, a lack of translation talent, and the lack of an audience for translation. Participants tend to be negative about domestic Irish language policy but see policy at the EU-level to be beneficial, with forthcoming changes presenting an opportunity for skilled translators.

PDF (Español)
PDF (Español)

References

  1. Abdallah, K. (2012). Translators in production networks. Reflections on agency, quality and ethics [tesis doctoral, University of Eastern Finland]. UEF//Repository. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-61-0609-0
  2. Arčan, M., Lane, C., Ó Droighneáin, E. y Buitelaar, P. (2016, mayo). IRIS: English- Irish machine translation system [ponencia]. LREC (Language Resources and Evaluation Conference), Portorož, Eslovenia. https://aclanthology.org/L16-1090/
  3. Arthur, M. B. (1994). The boundaryless career: A new perspective for organizational inquiry. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15(4), 295-306. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.4030150402
  4. Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters. (2018). Market survey report 2018. https://www.cbti-bkvt.org/es/documents/268
  5. Berardi, F. (2015). And: Phenomenology of the end. Semiotext(e).
  6. Bies, R. J. y Shapiro, D. L. (1988). Voice and justification: Their influence on procedural fairness judgements. Academy of Management Journal, 31(3), 676-685. https://doi.org/10.5465/256465
  7. Bureau of Labor Statistics of United States of America. (s.f.). Occupational employment statistics. May 2018. Consultado el 10 de junio de 2023. United States Department of Labor. Recuperado de https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm
  8. Cadwell, P., Castilho S., O’Brien S. y Mitchell, L. (2016). Human factors in machine translation and postediting among institutional translators. Translation Spaces, 5(2), 222-243. https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.5.2.04cad
  9. Central Statistics Office Ireland. (2017). Census 2016 summary results - part 1. https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/newsevents/documents/census2016summaryresultspart1/Census2016SummaryPart1.pdf
  10. Central Statistics Office Ireland. (2020, 4 de febrero). Monthly unemployment: January 2020. https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/mue/monthlyunemploymentjanuary2020/
  11. Chartered Institute of Linguists. (2017, mayo). 2016 UK translator survey. Final Report. Chartered Institute of Linguists. http://www.ciol.org.uk/sites/default/files/UKTS2016-Final-Report-Web.pdf
  12. Chesterman, A. (1997). Memes of translation: The spread of ideas in translation theory. John Benjamins.
  13. Courtney, J. y Phelan, M. (2019). Translators’ experiences of occupational stress and job satisfaction. The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research, 11(1), 100-113. http://www.trans-int.org/index.php/transint/article/view/848
  14. Cronin, M. (1996). Translating Ireland: Translation, languages, cultures. Cork University Press.
  15. Cronin, M. (2003). Translation and globalisation. Routledge.
  16. Dachs, B. (2018). The impact of new technologies on the labour market and the social economy. European Parliament’s Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA).
  17. Dam, H. V., y Zethsen, K. K. (2008). Translator status – a study of Danish company translators. The Translator, 14(1), 71-96. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2008.10799250
  18. Dam, H. V. y Zethsen, K. K. (2011). The status of professional business translators on the Danish market: A comparative study of company, agency and freelance translators. Meta, 56(4), 976-997. https://doi.org/10.7202/1011263ar
  19. Dam, H. V., y Zethsen, K. K. (2012). Translators in international organizations: A special breed of highstatus professionals? Danish EU translators as a case in point. The Sociological Turn in Translation and Interpreting Studies 7(2), 211-232. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.7.2.07dam
  20. Dam, H. V. y Zethsen, K. K. (2016). ‘I think it is a wonderful job’ On the solidity of the translation profession. Journal of Specialised Translation, (25), 174-187. http://www.jostrans.org/issue25/art_dam.php
  21. Defauw, A., Szoc, S., Vanallemeersch, T., Bardadym, A., Brabers, J., Everaert, F., Scholte, K., Van Winckel, K. y Van den Bogaert, J. (2019, 19-23 de agosto). Developing a neural machine translation system for Irish [ponencia]. The 2nd Workshop on Technologies for MT of Low Resource Languages (LoResMT), Dublín, Irlanda. https://aclanthology.org/W19-6806/
  22. do Carmo, F. (2018, 13-14 de abril). Does ‘time is money’ apply to translation? [ponencia]. XVI Symposium for Translation and Interpreting Studies KäTU2018. University of Turku, Finlandia.
  23. Dowling, M., Cassidy, L., Maguire, E., Lynn, T., Srivastava, A. K. y Judge, J. (2015, noviembre) Tapadóir: Developing a statistical machine translation engine and associated resources for Irish [ponencia]. 4th LRL Workshop: “Language Technologies in support of Less-Resourced Languages”. https://doras.dcu.ie/23605/1/LRLpaper.pdf
  24. Dowling, M., Lynn, T., Poncelas, A. y Way, A. (2018, 17-21 de marzo). SMT versus NMT: Preliminary comparisons for Irish [ponencia]. The 13th Conference of The Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, Dublin City University, Dublin, Irlanda. https://amtaweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AMTA_2018_Workshop_ Proceedings_LoResMT.pdf
  25. Eby, L. T., Butts, M. y Lockwood, A. (2003). Predictors of success in the era of the boundaryless career. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24(6), 689-708. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.214
  26. Comisión Europea. (2019, 4 de julio). Report from the Commission to the Council on the Union institutions’ progress towards the implementation of the gradual reduction of the Irish language derogation. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52019DC0318
  27. Dirección General de Políticas Internas de la UE. (2016, julio). Precarious employment in Europe: Patterns, trends and policy strategies. PE 587.285. European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2016/587285/IPOL_STU(2016)587285_EN.pdf
  28. Feenberg, A., y Callon, M. (2010). Critical theory of technology: An overview. In A. Feenberg y M. Callon, M. (eds.), Between Reason and Experience (pp. 67-82). MIT Press.
  29. Gaspari, F., Toral, A., Kumar Naskar, S., Groves, D., y Way, A. (2014, octubre). Perception vs reality: Measuring machine translation post-editing productivity [ponencia]. AMTA 2014. Third Workshop on Post-editing Technology and Practice (WPTP-3), Vancouver, Canadá. https://aclanthology.org/www.mt-archive.info/10/AMTA-2014-W2-TOC.htm
  30. Gattiker, U. E. y Larwood, L. (1986). Subjective career success: A study of managers and support personnel. Journal of Business and Psychology, 1(2), 78-94.
  31. Gentile, P. (2013). The status of conference interpreters: A global survey into the profession. Rivista internationale di tecnica della traduzione: International Journal of Translation, (15), 63-82. http://hdl.handle.net/10077/10608
  32. Guan, Y., Arthur, M. B., Khapova, S. N., Hall, R. J. y Lord, R. G. (2018). Career boundarylessness and career success: A review, integration and guide to future research. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 110(B), 390-402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2018.05.013
  33. Gutiérrez-Barbarrusa, T. (2016). The growth of precarious employment in Europe: Concepts, indicators and the effects of the global economic crisis. International Labour Review, 155(4), 477-508. https://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12049
  34. Jackson Barnett, J. (2000). Effects of Stem and Likert Response Option Reversals on Survey Internal Consistency: If You Feel the Need, There is a better Alternative to Using those Negatively Worded Stems. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 60(3), 361-370. https://doi.org/10.1177/00131640021970592
  35. Jemielity, D. (2018). Translation in intercultural business and economic environments. En S. Harding y O. Carbondell Cortés (eds.), The Routledge handbook of translation and culture (pp. 533-557). Routledge.
  36. Katan, D. (2009). Translation theory and professional practice: a global survey of the great divide. Hermes - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, (42), 111-153. https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v22i42.96849
  37. Katan, D. (2011). Occupation or profession: A survey of the translators’ world. En R. Sela-Sheffy y M. Shlesinger (eds.), Profession, identity and status: translators and interpreters as an occupational group (pp. 65-88). John Benjamins.
  38. Kelly, E., y Barrett, A., (2017). Atypical work and Ireland’s labour market collapse and recovery. The Economic and Social Review, 48(4), 463-488. https://www.esr.ie/article/view/823
  39. Kelly, N., DePalma, D. A. y Hegde, V. (2012). Voices from the freelance translator community (Report). Common Sense Advisory.
  40. Kemper, E. A., Stringfield, S. y Teddlie, C. (2003). Mixed methods sampling strategies in social science research. En A. Tashakkori y C. Teddlie (eds.), Handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioural research (pp. 273-296). Sage.
  41. Kenny, D. y Cronin, M. (1995). MA in Translation Studies. The Translator, 1(2), 241- 260. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.1995.10798960
  42. Koskinen, K. (2008). Translating institutions: An ethnographic study of EU translation. Routledge.
  43. Krifa. (2016). Job satisfaction index (Report). Happiness Research Institute.
  44. Lagoudaki, E. (2008). Expanding the possibilities of translation memory systems. [Tesis doctoral, University of London]. Repositorio Institucional. https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/7879
  45. Lynn, T., Ó Conaire, M. y Dunne, J. (2019). Country Profile Ireland. En ELRC white paper: Sustainable language data sharing to support language equality in multilingual Europe (pp. 92-97). European Language Resource Coordination. https://lr-coordination.eu/sites/default/files/Documents/ELRCWhitePaper.pdf
  46. Macey, W. H., Schneider, B., Barbera, K. M. y Young, S. A. (2011). Employee engagement: Tools for analysis, practice, and competitive advantage. John Wiley y Sons.
  47. Mac Mathúna, L. (2008). Linguistic change and standardization. En C. Nic Pháidín y S. Ó Cearnaigh (eds.), A new view of the Irish language (pp. 76–92). Cois Life.
  48. Mac Murchaidh, C. (2008). Current attitudes to Irish. En C. Nic Pháidín y S. Ó Cearnaigh (eds.), A new view of the Irish language (pp. 212–223). Cois Life.
  49. Massey, G. (2018, 6-7 de septiembre). T&I futures: Profiles, practices and processes [conferencia]. Yangtze River Delta Forum: Educating “Languages+” Professionals for International Organizations. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.24707.96803
  50. McKeown, T. (2015). What’s in a name? The value of ‘entrepreneurs’ compared to ‘self-employed’… but what about ‘freelancing’ or ‘ipro’? En A. Burke (ed.), The handbook of research on freelancing and self-employment (pp. 121-134). Senate Hall.
  51. Moorkens, J. (2017). Under pressure: Translation in times of austerity. Perspectives, 25(3), 464-477. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2017.1285331
  52. Moorkens, J. (2020). Comparative satisfaction among freelance and directly-employed Irish-language translators. The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research, 12(1), 55-73. http://doi.org/10.12807/ti.112201.2020.a04
  53. Moorkens, J. y Lewis, D. (2019a). Copyright and the reuse of translation as data. En Minako O’Hagan (ed.) The Routledge handbook of translation and technology (pp. 469–81). Routledge.
  54. Moorkens, J. y Lewis, D. (2019b). Research questions and a proposal for the future governance of translation data. Journal of Specialised Translation, (32), 2-25. https://www.jostrans.org/issue32/art_moorkens.pdf
  55. Moorkens, J. y O’Brien, S. (2017). Assessing user interface needs of post-editors of machine translation. En D. Kenny (ed.), Human issues in translation technology (pp. 109-130). Routledge.
  56. Ng, T. W. H. y Feldman, D. C. (2014). Subjective career success: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 85, 169-179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2014.06.001
  57. Nolan, B. (2012). The structure of modern Irish: A functional account. Equinox.
  58. Ó Giollagáin, C., Mac Donnacha, S. (2008). The Gaeltacht today. En C. Nic Pháidín y S. Ó Cearnaigh (eds.), A new view of the Irish language (pp. 108–119). Cois Life.
  59. Ó Riagáin, P. (2008). Irish Language Policy 1922-2007: Balancing maintenance and revival. En C. Nic Pháidín y S. Ó Cearnaigh (eds.), A new view of the Irish language (pp. 55–65). Cois Life.
  60. Office for National Statistics of United Kingdom. (2021, 20 de enero). SPPI: 7430000000: Translation & Interpretation Services. https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/k8xi/sppi
  61. Pielmeier, H. y O’Mara, P. (2020, enero). The state of the linguist supply chain: Translators and interpreters in 2020. CSA Research. https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4041721/Newsletter/The%20State%20of%20the%20Linguist%20Supply%20Chain%202020.pdf
  62. Pym, A., Grin, F., Sfreddo, C. y Chan, A. L. J. (2012). The status of the translation profession in the European Union. Studies on translation and multilingualism 7/2012. Publications Office of the European Union. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/4e126174-ea20-4338-a349-ea4a73e0d850
  63. Rodríguez-Castro, M. (2015a). Intrinsic and extrinsic sources of translator satisfaction: An empirical study. Entreculturas. Revista De Traducción Y Comunicación Intercultural, (7-8), 195-229. https://doi.org/10.24310/Entreculturasertci.vi7-8.11334
  64. Rodriguez-Castro, M. (2015b). Conceptual construct and empirical validation of a multifaceted instrument for translator satisfaction. The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research, 7(2), 30-50. http://www.trans-int.org/index.php/transint/article/view/435
  65. Ruel, E., Wagner, W. E. y Gillespie, B. J. (2015). The practice of survey research. Sage.
  66. Ruokonen, M. (2013). Studying translator status: Three points of view. En M. Eronen y M. Rodi-Risberg (eds.), Point of view as challenge. (pp. 327–338). Vakki Publications.
  67. Ruokonen, M. y Mäkisalo, J. (2018). Middling-status profession, high-status work: Finnish translators’ status perceptions in the light of their backgrounds, working conditions and job satisfaction. The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research, 10(1), 1-17. http://www.trans-int.org/index.php/transint/article/view/681
  68. Russell, H., O’Connell, P. J. y McGinnity, F. (2009). The impact of flexible working arrangements on work–life conflict and work pressure in Ireland. Gender, Work, and Organization, 16(1), 73-97. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0432.2008.00431.x
  69. Schäler, R. (2003, 20-21 de noviembre). Making a Business Case for Localisation [ponencia]. Translating and the Computer 25, Londres, Inglaterra. https://aclanthology.org/2003.tc-1.8/
  70. Setton, R. y Guo Liangliang, A. (2011). Attitudes to role, status and professional identity in interpreters and translators with Chinese in Shanghai and Taipei. En R. Sela-Sheffy y M. Shlesinger (eds.), Identity and status in the translational professions (pp. 89-117). John Benjamins.
  71. Shockley, K. M., Ureksoy, H., Rodopman, O. B., Poteat, L. F. y Dullaghan, T. R. (2015). Development of a new scale to measure subjective career success: A mixed-methods study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(1), 128-153. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.2046
  72. Stanworth, C. y Stanworth, J. (1995). The self-employed without employees – autonomous or atypical? Industrial Relations Journal, 26(3), 221-229. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2338.1995.tb00739.x
  73. Teague, P. (2016). Ireland and the ‘GIPS’ countries. En W. K. Roche, P. J. O’Connell y A. Prothero (eds.), Austerity and Recovery in Ireland: Europe ‘s Poster Child and the Great Recession (pp. 141-159). Oxford University Press.
  74. Tryuk, M. (2007). Community interpreting in Poland. En C. Wadensjö, B. E. Dimitrova y A-L. Nilsson (eds.), The Critical Link 4: Professionalisation of Interpreting in the Community (pp. 95-105). John Benjamins.
  75. Walsh, J. (2012). Language policy and language governance: a case-study of Irish language legislation. Language Policy, 11(4), 323-341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-012-9238-7
  76. Wynn, M. (2015). Organising freelancers: A hard case or a new opportunity? En A. Burke (ed.), The handbook of research on freelancing and self-employment (pp. 111-120). Senate Hall.
How to Cite
Bermúdez López, K., Domínguez Bustamante, J., & Rodas Tamayo, D. C. (2024). Comparative Satisfaction among Freelance and Directlyemployed Irish-Language Translators. Ciencias Sociales Y Educación, 12(24), 411-440. https://doi.org/10.22395/csye.v12n24a18

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Crossref
Scopus
Google Scholar
Europe PMC

Send mail to Author

Send Cancel

We are indexed in