| Many mediocre translators earning high salaries |
| Last Updated(Beijing Time):2006-04-01 14:55 |
|
Despite government-issued payment guidelines, the pay scales of part-time translators vary widely in Shanghai's booming translation market.
The pay variations confused employers and part-time job takers, foreign language experts said.
"A big problem is that payment and translation quality don't match," said Lu Gusun, dean of Fudan University's college of foreign languages and literature and vice director of the Translator's Association of Shanghai.
"While many unqualified translators are over-paid, some real good translation and interpretation professionals are under-paid," Lu said.
A part-time job payment guideline issued by the Shanghai Labor and Social Security Bureau this year suggested the average payment non-professional Chinese-English translation was 120 yuan (US$14.80) for 1,000 Chinese characters.
However, actual payment for 1,000 general Chinese-English translation might range from 30 yuan to 250 yuan in the city. That means some people can earn nearly 10 times more than others doing the same work.
The price for one day of conference interpretation also differed from 2,000 yuan to 7,000 yuan, compared with the 4,500-yuan suggested by government guidelines.
Huang Yongmin, vice dean at Fudan's foreign languages and literature department, said that the problem lies in the public's misunderstanding of the profession.
"Many employers don't have any idea about what a qualified translator is. So long as the conference can keep going, they have no way to check out the translation quality," Huang said.
Besides, some employers don't care about the translation quality at all. The just regard conference interpreters or translated English documents as decorations, said Feng Chao, a graduate of Beijing International Studies University's interpretation department.
That leaves room for unqualified translators to take the position and leads to unwarranted pricing, several language professors said. |
|
|
