"Although we enjoyed great growth in numbers, the quality of translation is not good enough," Guo said.
Because the translation companies pay relatively low salaries to employees and set low recruitment standards, there is cutthroat price competition among the companies for their services.
"For example, an important tender document may need six to 12 months' preparation, but translators are given only several days to translate the document into another language, so the quality is usually inferior," Guo said.
The China Translation Industry Annual Report estimated that by 2015, the annual output of China's language services will reach 260 billion yuan ($41.8 billion), providing 2 million jobs. But by the end of 2010, there were only 27,000 certificated translators across the country.
"Adding the translators working for government institutions, the number of qualified translators across China is merely 560,000, less than 10 percent of the total number of translators currently working in China," said Yang Yingzi, acting director of the National Translation Test and Appraisal Center under the China International Publishing Group.
The center is in charge of the China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters, a test established in 2003 to evaluate translators' proficiency qualification. But there is no compulsive regulation that requires companies to hire only translators who are accredited by the test.
"The lack of uniform standard for translators result in spotty quality of translators, but the good sign is that more and more people are taking CATTI, and more and more companies are using the test as their recruitment requirement or preferred qualifications," Yang said.
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