When the agency makes you do a voice-over with a bad translation.

Dear Colleagues,

The other day I was talking to some colleagues who do voice-overs for radio, television, and industrials. Soon, the conversation turned to those times when the interpreter gets the script for the voice-over or for a commercial just to learn that the original English text has been poorly translated.  Of course, depending on the client, and sometimes the accessibility of the director and producers of the piece, the interpreter can make some observations and request changes to the script so that the actual foreign language native-speaker can understand the commercial or the show.  There are cases when the producer requests a new translation before the shooting. This is the ideal situation.

However, many times when we bring this up, we face hostility from the agency and the production crew. We are often told that the script was sent to a translator, that it has been translated, and that…