Clients who think they know best

I have mentioned problems with translation clients before, here and here. Recently an agency sent me a short adverting text for a big Spanish company. It began:

Solo recurriendo a ABC podrás estar seguro de que …

I put:

Only with ABC can you be sure that …

As usual I offered several versions. The client came back proposing a mixture of two versions and with a minor change I accepted it. But I noticed too that the paragraph now began:

Only with ABC you can be sure that …

The adverb inversion had been ‘corrected’ to the usual order with the subject before the verb. I corrected it properly and mentioned the matter to the agency. The correspondence (translated) was as follows:

In this change (can you), the client has ‘corrected’ something that was already right. It’s important to see what the client’s doing. There’s something strange in English. In certain situations there is what we call inversion, with the verb before the subject. The client has seen this and ‘corrected’ it off his own bat. If he hadn’t come back with the query about the versions, he would have published it with the error but seemingly as our work.

The answer came back from the agency

I understand your correction but the client prefers:

Only with ABC you can be sure…

Would it be grammatically correct??

I replied

No. it isn’t correct.

http://www.eslmonster.com/article/inversion-of-the-verb-after-certain-adverbs

It could be:

Only ABC gives you the assurance/certainty that …

I don’t know what they finally went for.

(Note: The name ABC is a placeholder. The client is not the newspaper ABC.)

Comments

[Michael Dixon]

Hi Harvey

At the end of the day, clients actually do know best, even when they are wrong... . I think this is very difficult concept for most translators to grasp, but at the end of the day the client is buying the translation and has every right to include the terms and phrases they wish. This grates against most translators' sense of professional pride, of course, as it should, but as we told a client recently: If you want to use the term X instead of Y, please go ahead. It's your translation. We've already told you on numerous occasions that Y is incorrect, but it's your decision.

The client is perfectly free to do this, just as we are all free to purchase shoes that look terrible on us, or to ignore the advice of a builder, for example.

Such clients, however, should be viewed with caution with regard to future translations, the scope of the work to be carried out for them should be clearly delimited and the final responsibility clearly defined. If not, they can have the translator running round in circles only to later claim that the translator "made a mistake".

[Peter Harvey]

Of course a client can have whatever he wants but there's a difference between, for example, wanting a particular date format or using standard terminology and changing something because they think it's right when it isn't. If something goes out with my name on it I insist on control of the final version, which is not to be altered in any way.