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Quality or speed: that is the question. The big problem for professional translators nowadays is that our clients want both. We are required, on a daily basis, to try to do the impossible, to square the circle, to attempt to maintain a satisfactory degree of accuracy and style while meeting deadlines that at times can only be described as sadistic. Levels of translator stress have gradually risen, though sadly they have not been accompanied by a commensurate rise in translation rates. I cannot help but wonder, as I glance nervously at the clock, how we have ended up in this sorry state of calendarial bondage, in which we would hardly be surprised to hear an indignant client remark, in the immortal words of Louis XIV: 'I almost had to wait!'
The culprit is clear: technological progress, particularly in the last 20 years. Things have not always been like this. Quite recently, no further back than the 1980s, if a client living more than 50 km away wanted a translation delivered on the same day the only options would have been to dictate the text over the telephone or to send it by telegram or courier, an exorbitant solution in all cases. Otherwise, the document would have been delivered by conventional mail. The translator could relax in the knowledge that he or she had the whole day available to finish a job, not just the morning, while the client would simply have to accept the natural barrier of distance and wait - yes, wait - until at least the next day.
In fact, until the mid-eighties the entire translation process was enviably sedate, as the only option commonly available was to make a hand-written draft followed by a neat typed version. Most translation service users were willing to accept that this procedure would take some time in view of the combination of intellectual and manual effort it involved. Then the PC and the fax machine appeared on the scene, rapidly becoming ubiquitous, and the translator's existence started its inexorable slide towards complexity and haste. With the introduction of the fax - now barely used but the latest thing 20 years ago - translations could be sent anywhere, any time, even...