Aside from my fulltime job, I'm also translating romance books for the largest (if not the only) fiction book publisher in Indonesia. It's a very low-paid job, but like other freelance translators, I keep it because 1) the materials are fun to translate and 2) the company's name looks good on your resume. I'm thinking of reconsidering my options after what happened yesterday though.
For some reason, very few people can write my surname correctly. The last letter has always been written as 'n' instead of 'm', and I have had to go through lengthy processes of modifying my birth certificate and ID card because of that stupid mistake. When my first translation was published, my surname was again spelled wrongly in the translator credit. I've kindly corrected the company on that and my editor has promised that it wouldn't happen again. But they only got it right for one book, and the latest trilogy I translated has my name wrong in all three books. Maybe for them it's not a big deal, since it's only a difference of one letter, but for me this "small" mistake can be fatal, because there are people who have "Buntaran" as their surnames, and if any one of them shares my first name, they can be mistaken as the translator of those books. I emailed my editor this morning on the issue, but she hasn't replied. I'm not really surprised, since she normally ignores my mails until I ask her if she got them. Speaks volumes on how much they value their translators. Maybe for them, we're not different from hundreds of faceless workers in Nike factory. There are so many people working for them...why they should worry about trivial things like getting their translators' names right in the credits???
Fun or not, if they continue disregarding freelance workers, I'm done.
1 comment:
You're right. It speaks volumes and I don't blame you one bit.
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