Teresa Tang, a self-employed senior interpreter based in China, told Beijing Review only one out of every 10 translation agencies sign contracts with freelance translators and interpreters in the country. Tang, who received a master's degree in conference interpretation from MIIS in 1999, has logged more than 2,000 hours of simultaneous and consecutive interpretation over seven years.

"There is no guarantee of interpreters' interests without contracts," she said. "For example, the interpreter will suffer a loss if a conference is cancelled. It could also give rise to dispute over the quality of the translation."

Most demand for interpretation services in China comes from Beijing and Shanghai. Tang said the quality of services in Beijing is generally much better than in Shanghai due to the fact that the capital hosts more large official conferences that have higher service. Most of the interpretation work in Shanghai is business-related, and companies there tend to offer services at very low rates to stay competitive.

Oh, the misery

Compared to interpreters, translators are much more miserable and "given neither the time nor the money to do a good job, " said Eric Abrahamsen, a freelance literary translator in Beijing who also offers agent-type services for foreign publishers, literary agents and journalists.

The biggest problem for foreign publishers of Chinese literature is "a lack of information," Abrahamsen said. "Foreign publishers simply don't feel confident enough about choosing Chinese writers or books, and they often won't take the risk."

Cindy Carter, a freelance translator of Chinese literature and film since 1999, agrees.

"Literary translation is still a risky business," she said. "For every book deal, there are at least three or four other projects that fall through or fail to materialize. This can mean a lot of wasted effort on the part of the translator and agent."

For most of the translation agencies in China, literary translation accounts for fewer than 10 percent of their contracts, and they mainly focus on commercial and technical translations.

Apart from low translator fees, Carter said other downsides of the business include the limited number of Chinese books translated and published overseas, poor sales figures for Chinese literature in overseas markets and the long gap between the inception and the completion of a book project.

"All of these hurdles are related, " said Carter, who has translated more than 40 Chinese films, two novels and dozens of essays, short stories and scripts. "Taken together, they magnify the problem of selling, translating and publishing Chinese literature abroad."

In terms of film scripts and subtitle translations, Carter said young Chinese filmmakers are very conscientious about the importance of good translations and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort making sure their subtitles are perfect.

"For this reason, many independent Chinese features and documentaries boast better subtitles than big-budget co-productions or films made through the state studio system," she said.

Quality control

Without proper guidance and supervision, the Chinese market of translation services has lapsed into disordered competition between agencies of varying sizes and backgrounds.

China Translation and Publishing Corp. (CTPC), which was established in 1979, is one of the country's earliest translation agencies with an outstanding reputation. Most other agencies were founded in late 1990s.

According to a survey of translation agencies in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou by Beijing Language and Culture University in 2005, only 29 of 400 agencies in the capital had more than 100 part-time and full-time translators, while about 91 percent had less than 10. The percent was smaller in the other three cities.

The situation has scarcely changed in the past three years, according to TAC.

Jiang Xiaolin, Chairman of the official translation supplier for the Beijing Olympics, Beijing Yuanpei Century Translation Co. Ltd., said his firm's zero-mistake promise and sophisticated translation quality-control mechanisms distinguish it from smaller firms. Jiang's firm offers 24-hour workflow monitoring, a five-stage quality control system and a three-stage examination.

"Quality control should begin before a translator sits down to translate," Jiang said. "It's much easier than revising the final product."

Tougher supervision

The Translation Service Committee of the TAC was established in November 2002 to work out a series of standards and criteria for the industry. It has drafted criteria for translation and interpretation services and issued requirements for translation standards during the past several years.

It also has assessed the qualifications of nearly 100 translation agencies and granted them certificates of "Honest Services" since 2005. The committee has organized training courses based on industry standards for a dozen general managers of translation agencies nationwide in October 2006.

Still, many translation agencies have decided not to adopt TAC's tough standards.

"We don't use the standards for quality control TAC worked out because they are too general to be practicable," Jiang said. "TAC should and could play a more active role in regulating the industry."