| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: How often do you work with source documents of poor quality (illegible, faint, handwritten) ? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How often do you work with source documents of poor quality (illegible, faint, handwritten) ?".
View the poll results »
| | | | Tim Drayton 
Cyprus
Local time: 09:26
Turkish to English
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| Fairly often | Dec 24, 2012 |
It goes with the territory of being a legal translator, in my opinion.
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I try to avoid them because I'm losing my vision. I can usually make out faint PDFs if the text is typed or printed, but I rarely attempt to figure out handwriting. I usually tell the client that I'm "booked" - and it's true that I almost never have down time between assignments. Financially, it doesn't make sense to spend my time trying to puzzle out things I can't see to read.
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| Rarely nowadays | Dec 24, 2012 |
but quite often when I was registered as a sworn translator...
| | | | Chun Un
Macau
Member (2007)
English to Chinese
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| Quite often actually... | Dec 24, 2012 |
e.g. doctor's handwritten notes... 
| | | | Allison Wright (X)
Portugal
Local time: 07:26
I have got so used to receiving decent, digitally editable documents that occasionally I have slipped up and accepted a job based on a PDF preview, only to discover that the PDF is "dead" afterwards. It is very annoying to have to print something out - and deal with all those additional neck movements. Roll on the day when I have two monitors in front of me!
Years of making tables and forms look decent using Wordperfect 4.2 (remember that, anyone?) make the minimal layout task not too oner... See more I have got so used to receiving decent, digitally editable documents that occasionally I have slipped up and accepted a job based on a PDF preview, only to discover that the PDF is "dead" afterwards. It is very annoying to have to print something out - and deal with all those additional neck movements. Roll on the day when I have two monitors in front of me!
Years of making tables and forms look decent using Wordperfect 4.2 (remember that, anyone?) make the minimal layout task not too onerous, but it is definitely not my preferred modus operandi. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Reed James
Chile
Local time: 02:26
Member (2005)
Spanish to English
| On a weekly basis | Dec 24, 2012 |
I have learned to cope with this type of text. I recommend using magnifying glass software. There are several programs on the market, and they help quite a bit. If the text is simply undecipherable, one can always write [Illegible]
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Tina Vonhof (X)
Canada
Local time: 00:26
Dutch to English
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| Fairly often | Dec 24, 2012 |
Nothing is so frustrating as asking the (private) client for a better scan and then not getting a reply for days and days, so I can't move on. It isn't just that I need to be able to read it but I need to attach that scan to my certified translation, so it needs to look legible for the ultimate receiver, i.e., the immigration authorities, a university, etc.
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:26
Hebrew to English
...isn't always "poor". I quite enjoy doing handwritten documents, as long as they don't resemble a child's overused "etch a sketch".
Poorly scanned/faxed dead PDFs are the bane of my life. I usually reject them, but on occasion I have accepted projects that I have come to regret.
| | | | Dave Bindon
Greece
Local time: 09:26
Greek to English
In memoriam | Most of the time | Dec 24, 2012 |
I hardly ever get a clean, editable text (maybe twice a year).
Most of my work is medical (with lots of handwriting) or legal (pdf files of poor scans of faxed copies of court judgements etc.)
I charge extra when there's a lot of handwriting but I accept pdfs as standard.
I'm currently working on a ~35,000 word petition to the Supreme Court which is a 'dead' pdf. I have some decent OCR software which has managed to convert a lot of it into something usabl... See more I hardly ever get a clean, editable text (maybe twice a year).
Most of my work is medical (with lots of handwriting) or legal (pdf files of poor scans of faxed copies of court judgements etc.)
I charge extra when there's a lot of handwriting but I accept pdfs as standard.
I'm currently working on a ~35,000 word petition to the Supreme Court which is a 'dead' pdf. I have some decent OCR software which has managed to convert a lot of it into something usable, but it's far from perfect and almost useless for CAT. Thankfully, this software does the OCR conversion directly from the dead pdf, so there's no need to print the document and then scan the pages individually. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Robert Forstag
United States
Local time: 02:26
Spanish to English
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And the possibility of having to do so serves as a reminder to always check the documents you receive before starting work on a project. If documents are difficult to read, then readable replacements should be requested. If such replacement is not possible, then some additional charge is in order. I also charge a premium for any handwritten material.
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| Video with horrible audio, beyond salvage | Dec 24, 2012 |
I've described the entire situation on this page.
However now and then they still come up. Can't help it... I simply must say no.
I had one case where I was asked to do whatever was possible (not much!) on a 20-min video recorded outdoors with live audio (interviews). Then the client (as she told me) gathered eight people, some of them who had been present a... See more I've described the entire situation on this page.
However now and then they still come up. Can't help it... I simply must say no.
I had one case where I was asked to do whatever was possible (not much!) on a 20-min video recorded outdoors with live audio (interviews). Then the client (as she told me) gathered eight people, some of them who had been present at the events, and they spent nine hours trying to decypher what those people had said, to fill in my gaps and have me translate and subtitle it. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:26
Russian to English
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In memoriam | Rarely, but get help from a useful contact | Dec 25, 2012 |
If I can't decipher the Russian handwriting myself, I have a useful contact who can sometimes help out (I pay him for it, of course). It is particularly useful that his mother and sister are both doctors, so they can help too if it's in that field (Russian doctors' handwriting is just as notoriously bad as that of our doctors). In return, I sometimes proofread documents he has translated into English.
| | | | | One challenging case | Dec 25, 2012 |
I once attempte to decipher a copy of a letter from the Portuguese ambassdor to the U.S., addressed to Thomas Jefferson. It was faint, there were a lot of flourishes that we don't see today, the words were very close together, and of course some of the words themselves were quite different. It had historical significance, so I made the effort, but it took me a couple of days to piece it together.
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