Native speakers and language direction

Stepan Konev wrote:

I have never seen this mixed approach. In most cases people either believe that nobody should be allowed translating into a non-native language, or believe that you can't find so many native translators to cover all your in-house needs and they accept translating into a non-native language as a standard practice. But not both. What you describe sounds really weird to me.
*Generally speaking (not your specific case):
My guess is that you compare your former in-house experience with your present freelance experience. Am I right? If so, then availability and accessibility could be the culprit. Unlike freelance translators who you can reach out almost 24/7, it is not that easy to bring a native, say Japanese, in-house translator from Japan to a remote site in the Russian High North for example.

[Edited at 2022-05-04 18:44 GMT]

Gerard Barry wrote:

Hi all,

As a native English speaker, I'm always only "allowed" translate into my native tongue (from German). Yet in several in-house jobs I've had, many (or in some cases most) of my colleagues were native German speakers translating into English, i.e. into their second language. Why is it that I can't translate into German but the Germans can translate into English? Don't get me wrong: I don't want to translate into German as I would find it too difficult and my German ex-colleagues did a good job translating into English but I still wonder why there is a double standard here. Does anyone have any thoughts/experiences in this regard?

.... It still kind of annoys me though that I probably wouldn't be hired for an English to German translation job (if I wanted it).

Tom in London wrote:
Many Germans probably think their English is perfect

Baran Keki wrote:

I can understand why Turks are translating into English as no American or British medical professional will ever take an interest in learning Turkish to become a Turkish to English medical translator (or in any other field of specialization), but for the life of me I can't understand why Germans allow non-natives to translate into English when there must be thousands upon thousands of native English speakers translating from German and specialized in every conceivable subject matter, and not to mention the fact that a good deal of them are already based in Germany.
I don't think availability has anything to do with this. The only explanation would be that Germans are 'easy to deal with' as far as rates are concerned, compared to Brits or Americans, and making good use of DeepL.

Baran Keki wrote:
there must be thousands upon thousands of native English speakers translating from German and specialized in every conceivable subject matter

Matthias Brombach wrote:
Technical manuals written in "English" by native speakers of Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Danish, Swedish, etc. are almost my main earner. The problem here is not necessarily their sometimes odd English, but the fact that most of them as pure translators do not understand the technical concepts they translate.

Baran Keki wrote: So do you mean to say that non-native English speaker 'translators' are given the task of writing technical manuals? That sounds a bit weird.

Matthias Brombach wrote:
... but translating, let's say from Chinese into English, not done by the writers, but by non-native speakers of English, hired by an agency in e.g. China or India. And yes, sometimes engineers (Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Japanese, German etc.) translate (write) their manuals directly into what they consider English, with nearly the same result, when they don't master the fundamental phrases to express their instructions clearly, consistently and without synonyms.