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cover-4We decided to create Yourtranslator back in November 2011. Back then, developing a professional website wasn’t that easy or commonplace, and collaborative ventures among translators and other professionals were at their nascent stage in Greece.
Yourtranslator started as a collective website, with an amateur logo and design inspired by our friends’ ideas, and our own. Our blog was there almost from the very start and has always been an important part of our effort. We soon evolved into a company and upgraded our website, this time with the help of professionals.
A catastrophic financial crisis, a global pandemic and many changes in our personal and family lives later, we’re still standing. With many of the same loyal and dear customers and many of the same invaluable collaborators, but also with many new faces and challenges. With the same values –high quality, fair treatment of our translators, a friendly and professional customer service–, much more experience and plenty more experiences, both negative, but mostly positive, and, above all, with the same eagerness to do our best, and more . For all of you who have stood by us with your trust and your hard work for the past decade.

Thank you!

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Ήταν Νοέμβρης του 2011 όταν αποφασίσαμε να δημιουργήσουμε το Yourtranslator. Τότε δεν ήταν τόσο εύκολο ούτε τόσο διαδεδομένο να φτιάξει κανείς επαγγελματική ιστοσελίδα και τα συνεργατικά σχήματα μεταφραστών/μεταφραστριών και άλλων επαγγελματιών στην Ελλάδα ηταν στα σπάργανα. Ξεκίνησε σαν μια ομαδική σελίδα, με λογότυπο και ιδέες δικές μας και άλλων, πάντα ερασιτεχνικές, αλλά και με το μπλογκ μας, που έπαιζε εξαρχής σημαντικό ρόλο σ’αυτή την προσπάθεια. Σύντομα εξελιχθήκαμε σε εταιρεία και, μερικά χρόνια αργότερα, αναβαθμίσαμε την ιστοσελίδα και το προφίλ μας με τη βοήθεια επαγγελματιών.
Μια καταστροφική οικονομική κρίση, μια παγκόσμια πανδημία και πολλές προσωπικές εξελίξεις και οικογενειακές…διευρύνσεις μετά, είμαστε ακόμα εδώ. Με πολλούς από τους ίδιους πιστούς κι αγαπημένους πελάτες και πολλούς από τους ίδιους ανεκτίμητους συνεργάτες, αλλά και με πολλές νέες προκλήσεις και νέα πρόσωπα. Με τις ίδιες αξίες –ποιότητα, δίκαιη μεταχείριση των συνεργατών μας, φιλική εξυπηρέτηση κι επαγγελματισμός–, πολύ περισσότερη πείρα και εμπειρίες, θετικές περισσότερες από αρνητικές, αλλά κυρίως, με την ίδια όρεξη να κάνουμε το καλύτερο δυνατό, και κάτι παραπάνω. Για όλους εσάς που μας στηρίζετε αυτή τη δεκαετία με την εμπιστοσύνη σας και με τη σκληρή δουλειά σας.

Σας ευχαριστούμε!

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Being translators ourselves, we love watching movies with translators as the main characters, as they’re not very easy to come across. We also feel that they help lend visibility to translation and translators in general, which is something that our industry desperately needs.

If you haven’t watched the trailer yet, the movie is about the translation of a bestseller and it’s actually inspired by the process of translation of Dan Brown’s novel. The aim is to have a best-selling book appear simultaneously in various countries and so the translators are gathered into a luxurious bunker of sorts where they have to finish their translations with no contact with the outside world in order to avoid leaks. Nevertheless, soon enough, the 10 first pages are leaked and a ransom is requested, pushing the publisher to the extremes in his effort to find the culprit.

As you may have guessed already, the plot is much more about bestsellers, the commercial aspects of writing and publishing, and greed, than it is about translation. This article is not meant to be an actual review of the movie, but will rather focus on the translation-related aspects of the plot. If you’re looking for a more traditional review, we found this one on Hollywood reporter quite accurate.

So here are our main outtakes from the movie:

It’s not really about translation

Sure, the movie is called The translators and almost all the main characters are indeed translators, but translation itself is actually quite secondary to the plot. The main focus of the action is a bestselling book and the lengths its publisher will go to for commercial gain rather than translation itself. That is probably to be expected from a thriller, but it was a tiny bit disappointing. On top of that, the translators often seem like caricatures, largely based on stereotypes of their respective countries –the leftist Greek, the depressed Dane, the cocky Italian– rather than fully developed characters.

It does touch lightly on the significance of multilingualism

This is not a very profound movie; all its main themes are dealt with quite superficially around the thriller plot. However, one of the most tense scenes of the movie (tiny spoiler alert) involves the translators speaking to each other in various, less spoken, languages to avoid being understood. They switch and translate between languages to make sure everyone understands, as they don’t all share a common third language other than English and French. That scene is rather powerful for a language geek, because it does bring into focus the beauty of multilingualism, as well as the unique advantages it offers. It also underlines the significance of translation in international communication, which we are all for!

It does portray translation as a holistic process (especially of literary translation)

One of the things we rather liked about how the actual process of translation is portrayed in the movie is that, apart from a laptop, the manuscript and a dictionary (only one dictionary? Come on!), the translators are given access to a library supposedly containing books on all subjects of human knowledge. This is a nice touch, given that many people actually think that translation is simply about looking for words in a dictionary and writing them down. Translation is so much more than words; and it’s indeed very often that you have to delve into lengthy books and articles on a specific subject to be able to translate just one small word. However, ask any translator and we bet they will agree that today it’s close to impossible to translate without the Internet, like the characters are asked to! We’re so used to having this easy access to a trove of information that it would be quite challenging to translate without it.

To sum it up, if you’re looking for something light and entertaining to watch while in lockdown (or even out of it), go ahead and watch The translators. It ticks most of the boxes if a quick-paced thriller is what you’re after. Just don’t expect to find too many insights or original thinking about translation in there. Still, we’ll admit that having a film called the translators shown across the world makes us smile–translators for the win!