The analogy is our go-to shortcut for understanding. Whenever we struggle to understand something for what it is, we look to replace it with an analogy or a metaphor. Shakespeare calls love "sunshine after rain" as a way to understand it precisely because love is so hard to understand by itself. Analogies and metaphors help us understand concepts by expressing them in different contexts. The technique is ancient, beautiful, and largely effective.
Except when it is not.
The market of metaphors and analogies is unregulated, and saying “X equals Y” is often employed to gain a rhetorical advantage rather than to elucidate an idea. Analogies are good tools for arguing your point because they frequently go unexamined. As long as they can superficially connect the two concepts, they pass. Analogies are often superficial and exaggerated, which makes them great for storytelling. However, this is also what often makes them undermine serious discussion.
This is one of the problems we are facing in localization.
Storytelling
When we talk about new tech, new challenges, or economic changes in the industry, we tell a story. To help tell it, we use metaphors and analogies. I am more guilty of this than just about anyone, and the previous issues of this Substack are packed to the brim with different comparisons and attempts to try to tell the story of our industry through my eyes. This is exactly the issue with analogies and metaphors: They are never neutral, they always construct a narrative.
So, when I sit down to write my analogies, I think I am explaining the truth through a different lens. In reality, I am crafting a narrative. The same is true of others when they try to explain what is happening with analogies. The result is that we are attempting to discuss what is happening in our industry by discussing what has happened elsewhere. The fatal flaw of this distortion is that every analogy has a hole, and there is no perfect match for what is happening here.
When an analogy is not a perfect match, it stops being a useful rhetorical tool because our readers/conversation partners have seen the hole in our logic. At this point, the analogy does not serve to convince the other person, so we use it merely to feel better about our own point. We focus on why our analogy "works"; they focus on why it doesn't.
Examples
I have seen an explosion in analogy-based argumentation recently as our industry has been discussing new technology. The common questions that analogies attempt to answer are “Will rates drop due to new translation tech? Is this precedented? Should service providers proactively lower their rates?”
Many people try to understand this question by looking at it through the lens of another service provider, such as a plumber or a hair stylist. Here is the analogy:
“Translation services becoming less expensive as they become more efficient does not make sense because plumbing services do not follow this pattern. You do not pay less when the plumber finishes the job quickly”. The argument then follows that you would also not pay less for your haircut because it was finished faster.
These analogies are accurate when comparing a single translation job to a single plumbing job or haircut, but here is the hole: Plumbing and Hair Cuts would be affected as larger markets if tech were to make the process much faster. Plumbers would do more jobs in a day and lower their prices to get more customers, as would barbers and hair stylists. As soon as a few providers began lowering their prices to capture more customers and succeeding at the new, lower rates, the market would follow. This is what is happening in translation.
This, in fact, is precedented in the technology sector. I used an analogy the other day that translation is very similar to web development. Now that tools like Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow exist, the cost of having a website has gone way down. Hiring an expert to work with these tools is a fraction of the cost of commissioning a website from scratch, and the outcome is viable for many businesses. That analogy has holes too, I am sure, but this goes to show that the “battle of analogies” does little to deliver us from opposing sides of an argument.
Another hole in the plumbing/haircut analogy is that there will always be a difference between physical markets and digital markets. Digital markets are influenced by global pricing, whereas physical service markets are not. If you live in San Francisco, you cannot get your toilet fixed or your hair cut at the rates of a plumber or barber in Santo Domingo.
But, if you could, you would. In digital markets like web design and translation, market averages are not protected by physical borders.
Post-Analysis in Physical Markets
The other story that is constructed by the plumber and barber analogies is that there is no “post-analysis pricing” in these industries. This means that the provider and the buyer both know the exact price before the job is begun. For the industries above, this is true. However, the story that post-analysis pricing does not exist in other markets is not true.
Billing after the job is finished (within a range) exists in many digital/data-based service industries, including consulting. But, it also exists in the physical world. The examples that come to mind are car repair services and hospital services. Just like all analogies, neither of these are perfect matches to the translation market. However, I see them lineup in this way:
Without the help of a professional, anyone can arrive at a “broken” translation. Machine translation will provide output that is not fully functional. When this pre-translation lands on the translator’s desk, it is like a car arriving at the shop for a tune-up. The client knows it is incomplete, but they don’t really know why. Someone who doesn’t know about cars may know that it is time for maintenance, but they don’t understand why. The buyer wants to walk away with a functional translation just as the motorist wants to drive away in a working car.
At the shop, the mechanics take a look and provide an estimate. Then, as they work and find other issues, they bill more hours and services. They don’t know exactly how much they will make when they start the job, and we don’t know exactly how much we are going to pay. Going over a car that is in great condition and just changing the oil will be very inexpensive, whereas if they find major issues it will turn into an expensive job. This is just like a translation.
I find this analogy works well in response to the idea that reviewing pre-translations warrants the same compensation as performing translations or edits. The argument is that it requires the same experience and expertise, and therefore merits the same compensation. It is true that it requires the same expertise, but compensation is based both on expertise AND on output in many markets. Mechanics use their expertise to see what is working properly and what is not, but then charge much more when there is something to fix. Doctors use their expertise to give you a diagnosis, but charge more to treat it.
Is this just?
The question that many of these analogies try to answer is also the most impossible- is what we are facing just? Are technological interventions that shake up the framework of a service industry fair and good? I don’t know the answer to this question, but I do know that the answer doesn’t matter.
The invisible hand of the market will drive prices down because buyers will always look to save money, and the pandora’s box of tech that allows this has already been opened. Wondering about the ethics of technological advancement is interesting, but it is hardly helpful. The market will adapt to the tech whether it is “just” or not.
In light of this, acting ethically involves working within the framework of this market. It is learning to surf the wave rather than trying to stand still until it passes, even though that is yet another flawed analogy. Acting ethically within this paradigm requires accepting that market forces are inevitable, or at least outside of our control, like gravity.
Incoming: Another flawed analogy!
If market forces are like gravity, we have two options:
Stay on the ground and shake our fists at the sky.
Develop the technology to defy gravity.
With actual gravity, we chose option number two. We have planes, helicopters, ropes, hang-gliders, and much more. With the metaphorical gravity (market forces), we can develop tools that allows us to navigate the force pulling prices down. We can use technology to keep us floating while outside forces try to pull us down.
That is a shitty analogy, just like all of them. But, it is the one that explains the story I believe. I welcome anyone to poke holes in it, as there surely are many. And, I encourage all of us in this conversation to be aware that our analogies will never tell the whole story. The more we are aware of that, the closer we can get to discussing the actual issues at hand.
Analogies are proxy language, and they often get in the way. On the other hand, AI is not an analogy. It is reality. So let's discuss it head on.