Smartling Can’t Translate its Own Website, but its CEO Questions My Use of English Plurals

First, some background: Many moons ago, I ran across a tweet by a translation company called Smartling proudly announcing the launch of its website in Spanish. I visited said Spanish website and was mildly surprised to discover that it was actually in English (“English” is technical jargon we translation geeks use for “not in Spanish”). This little vignette came to mind this past week when I detailed my hilarious encounter with a Pinterest employee who insisted that a mangled blog post in Spanish announcing its crowdsourced translation effort was written by “professional translators.” When given evidence to the contrary, she finally confessed that she had used her mother to translate the text. This rollicking anecdote closed with a two-sentence comparison between this incident and the aforementioned “Case of the Smartling Website that was in Spanish Except that it was in English.” There the incident would have ended, except that Smartling’s CEO—a Yeti with the whitest, most translucent mane I have ever spied on an earthly creature a pale, blond chap by the name of Jack Welde—decided to correct me in a jargony comment. His main arguments were that: 1) his company does not do crowdsourced post-editing and 2) that crowdsourcing gives him gigantic brain boners. To which I replied that 1) his company most certainly does do crowdsourced post-editing and 2) crowdsourced translation makes me a sad panda because of the abundant evidence that it provides subpar results.

This is Jack Welde, struggling to stand
out against the background

This prompted another onslaught by the now very frenzied and irate woodland creature. I now reproduce it with snide interstitial remarks written by yours truly (because it’s my blog and I do what I want):

Nope, incorrect again. I'll try to keep my response less "jargon-filled", so you can follow.

Douchy and passive-aggressive, but I’ll let it slide. Go on, Johannes.

1) I've never said we do "post-editing". As a professional translator, you certainly know that the term "post-editing" generally means human editing over machine translation, which is not what we do. You've chosen "jargon" that you hope will be provocative with your readers, even if 100% incorrect.

The following quotes are taken from Smartling’s website, Jack-O’-Lantern. You add caveats that machine translation is not as good as human translation (to which I must parenthetically add: “DUH!”) but then proceed to gush to your clients that “MT is a great way to see the power of your new language site, and might jump-start your professional or crowdsourced translation effort. You can choose specific parts of your site / app to be machine translated… MT can be a valid choice for some organizations.” In the previous paragraph, you state that “our platform integrates with several popular MT services, so you can create a fully SEO compatible site in minutes.” I don’t know, Jackie-Chan, but that sounds a lot like you’re enabling crowdsourced post-editing to me.

2) We didn't fail to translate our own website.

Beg to differ, Jackeroo. A company that does website translations and is not capable of translating its own website can be accurately described as a “web-translation company that failed to translate its own website.” I think this is irrefutable. However, I suspect you have taken too many Tony Robbins courses and now you think you can play mind tricks on inferior minds. Well, you have forgotten that to play Jedi mind tricks, YOU HAVE TO BE A FLIPPING JEDI!

If you announce to the world that you have published the Spanish-language version of your website and it turns out to be in English, you have failed. The Big “F.” FUBAR. Fracasado. Finito. Something in German that is bad and starts with “f”.  

You were clever enough to snap a screenshot almost a year ago that showed some English on our Spanish home page. We had made some last minute changes to our English copy, and the Spanish translation was not yet complete. So we had a choice of 1) delaying the launch, 2) using poor quality MT, temporarily, or 3) leaving it in English for the short period of time before it was fully translated by the professional translators. We chose to launch, and I would make the same decision today. It wasn't a big deal, and the translation was completed quickly and professionally, and was deployed via or software immediately upon completion. Most importantly, this "incident" certainly has not hurt our growth as a company.

Beg to differ again. Your analysis of your own brilliant decision making is deceptive, Jack-in-the-Box. My recollection of the incident is slightly different: I followed a link to your homepage announcing a Spanish-language version, I saw what a piece of crap it was, and then I tweeted a snarky tweet about it, as is my wont. Since all you tech start-ups spend more time monitoring Twitter than actually working on your core competencies, one of your employees asked what the problem was and then immediately fixed it on the run.

That is different from your version, Jack-a-rino. You didn’t make a conscious decision to publish a crappy website. You pushed out a crappy website translation because that is what your company basically does. Because translation for you is an afterthought. It is the excuse for vacuuming up all that yummy venture capitalist cash and buying your little toys. Your company’s mission could just as easily be copywriting or raising pet rocks or teaching math to Austrian midget horses. People and companies like you work in reverse to inventors. Innovators see a problem and engineer a solution. Edison saw darkness and dreamed a light bulb. You see a fad for crowdsourcing and say: “How can I get the Jack-Dog some of that action? Woof!” As long as the business plan has “social media” and “website” and “crowdsourcing” somewhere on page one, you get a foot in the door. The core mission of the matter is what you solve (or make up) after you have the funding in your bank account.

Of course, the “incident” as you describe it (why use scare quotes?) is not the end of the world. However, allow me to break down your decision flowchart as follows: a) I run a company that translates websites; b) I launch my own company’s website in another language; c) the version of my website in Spanish is actually in English.

Faced with this daunting challenge, your options, as you describe them, were as follows: “1) delaying the launch, 2) using poor quality MT, temporarily, or 3) leaving it in English for the short period of time before it was fully translated by the professional translators.”

Seriously, what would Henry Ford do? Let’s imagine that the prototype of the Model-T lacked wheels. Imagine Ford’s decision tree looked like this: 1) delay the launch of the Model-T; 2) replace it temporarily with a horse; or 3) leave it without wheels for a short period of time hoping the customers won’t notice. And then imagine that Ford decided to choose option 3 and tell potential customers that if the car had wheels, they would be driving through the countryside. Finally, imagine that some schmuck on the street walked by and said: “Ha! Old Man Ford’s mechanical carriages don’t have wheels!” And then imagine that Ford berated the slack-jawed yokel who had the gall to point out something that obvious.

What would you do if you were Ford’s investor and he described his options the way you just described yours. Would you: 1) give him a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the nuts?; 2) knock his teeth out with a baseball bat?; or 3) suspend all future injections of cash into a failed business?

I am sure that 1 and 2 would be tempting, but on the whole— given the polite customs of the early 20^th century—the investor would choose 3 and swiftly fly away.

Dude, you run a company that translates websites and yet your own Spanish website isn’t in bleeping Spanish! And then you claim that unprofessional crowds can do it just as well! By what possible measurement? By your own? By the criterion of a company that translates websites and isn’t capable of translating its own website?

My melanin-deprived homey, do you really fail to grasp the beautiful, tender irony of the entire anecdote? Do you really want to engage in a flame war with a random blogger when the evidence of incompetence would make most responsible businessmen run into a corner to cry like a 12-year-old girl?

3) As I said in my prior comment, many of our customers use professional translators to perform translation -- translators like yourself (although you seem pretty angry, and not much fun to work with...)

Does that mean you’re not going to hire me, Jackie-O? My dream was always to work for a fly-by-night tech start-up that probably won’t be around six months from now… (Sob!)

Seriously, Jumping-Jack-Flash, I’m a barrelful of laughs. And you, my Polar-bear-colored friend, are hilarious too. If we could only hook up, we would create a rocking comedy duo: The Translator Who Stared at Websites and The Crowdsourcing Snowman (did I mention that Jack is disturbingly, almost supernaturally, white? I swear to God that if I didn’t believe in goblins I would have trouble sleeping after incurring the anger of this elfin woodland creature).

My chromatically challenged friend is, after all, a garden variety sociopath. A sane man would have realized that the “Spanish website that was actually in English” is just an embarrassing episode and would have let sleeping dogs lie, suppressing the memory with alcohol. A sociopath, in contrast, decides to engage in an angry polemic with the passerby who pointed out that English and Spanish are, when all is said and done, not the same language. But there is not even a hint of embarrassment in Jack’s discussion of his company’s goof. The L10N Web 2.0 companies are so divorced from reality that a CEO seizes upon overwhelming evidence of his own incompetence as an opportunity to teach the world the beauties of crowdsourcing.

And then he nimbly shifts from defense and boldly goes on the offense.

Are you saying that you are a better translator than every other professional translator? I guess the citizens of Web 2.0 only deserve the quality you personally can provide?

This is what is known as a non sequitur, Hit-the-Road-Jack. Look it up. It is also a tried-and-true rhetorical trick lifted straight from the playbook of a five-year-old child. When someone lands a verbal zinger, you scrunch up your nose like a snot-head and go: “I know what you are, but what am I?” It is a classic, though.

Your argument is tired, Miguel.

It is not an argument, Action Jack-Son. It is a piece of empirical evidence. Empirical evidence is the basis for an argument, but it is not an argument in itself. An argument is something akin to “you are an albino cretin because of A, B and C.” The merits of the argument would depend upon the way in which A, B and C prove the proposition that you are, indeed, an albino cretin. Empirical evidence, on the contrary, can only be refuted by denying that the evidence is real or that it actually happened, which you have not done. You have just fabricated a counter-fairy tale, cast a few aspersions, mumbled some conspiracy theories about the UN and Microsoft, and called it a refutation of an argument.

You are the equivalent of the Microsoft software engineer who claimed that open-source software wouldn't work because only professional software developers working at Microsoft could produce high quality software.

And you, Jack-o’-nine-tails, are the translation world’s equivalent of the Bush Administration. It’s like we’re still living in 2007. Why is the “Mission Accomplished” sign so outrageous? Because the mission wasn’t accomplished and thousands of people were still going to die! It was, in fact, the opposite of accomplished. It was like… not accomplished! Just like your Spanish homepage wasn’t in Spanish, but in English, which is a whole other language from Spanish.

Why is the “heckuva a job, Brownie” so outrageous? Because Brownie wasn’t doing a heck of a job and thousands of people were going to suffer!

The fact is there is plenty of work for professional translators, especially the good ones. And Smartling is delighted to work with some of the best translators in the business;

Really? Because the quality of your website’s translation indicates otherwise (but that will be the topic of another blog post I’m writing). Your website is a literal translation that does not sound very much like Spanish, but rather like a bad transcription of corporate jargon dictated through a bad cell phone connection.

we respect their craft and the high quality work they do.

Yes, every one of your comments drips respect. This takes us to the next paragraph, your Nessun Dorma of dill-holiness:

PS: Since you love to point out errors in other people's work, your headline on this blog is inaccurate. From your own narrative above, it sounds like only one employee's mother may have been asked to assist with translation. And yet your headline says "Pinterest Uses Employees' Moms" -- in English, the use of the word "Moms", as well as the the apostrophe after the "s", means that more than one employee's mother was used for translation. But that seems to be inaccurate, from your own story. Were you just trying to be provocative with your headline? Or do you lack the basic understanding of plurals in English (which would make me question your ability as a professional translator)? Should I take a screen shot?

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Hugh Jack-Man. (If you had edited out this paragraph, you would have saved yourself this public response. I even gave you a chance to rewrite the comment, remember? But you insisted. So here you go.) Sticks and stones, my man. Sticks and stones… Passive aggressiveness is not an attractive trait, especially in a man.

This really is the non plus ultra of entitlement. Faced with undeniable evidence of your own incompetence, your decide to go on the attack and question another professional’s competence. But no defense is better than a good offense.

Miguel, anytime you want to have a real, honest, non-sensational discussion about the merits of professional translation vs. crowd translation (and even MT in limited cases) -- and the best ways to manage the translation process -- I'd be happy to have that discussion. In the meantime, try to be cool.

If this is a morsel of this serious dialog, you can store it, Jack-meister (OK, I admit it, I ran out of “Jacks”). I can get more stimulating debate from the homeless dude panhandling on my corner who constantly warns me that the Queen of England has bad “joo joo.”


Miguel Llorens is a freelance financial translator based in Madrid who works from Spanish into English. He is specialized in equity research, economics, accounting, and investment strategy. He has worked as a translator for Goldman Sachs, the US Government's Open Source Center, and H.B.O. International, as well as many small-and-medium-sized brokerages and asset management companies operating in Spain. To contact him, visit his website and write to the address listed there. Feel free to join his LinkedIn network or to follow him on Twitter.