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Why people don’t follow instructions and what to do about it, was the subject of one of the best presentations at the recent ELIA conference in Barcelona by Marco Neves, of the Eurologos agency in Lisbon. His approach wasn’t to wag his finger at lazy, miscreant translators, but rather to look for ways to make it easier for both sides to get things right. Not surprisingly, he found that the main reason we find it difficult to follow instructions is that they are often difficult to follow. Keeping instructions short and simple is essential if translators are to take any notice of them. How many times have we been sent pages of long-winded, badly written guidelines, only to stop reading after the third or fourth paragraph full of demands ranging from the obvious to the impractical and just get on with the job? Instructions should also be proportionate. There is no point in expecting a translator to read endless paragraphs in order to work on a translation that represents only half an hour of actual work.
