I you ever wondered what a translation project manager does, this is the chance to know it. In the video below from Heriot-Watt University, meet Eva, a former student of the translation and interpreting course and a project manager from Sweden working in Britain. Eva tells us how she got her job and defines the skills and activities of a project manager. She says that although the job can be very repetitive, it is also very vibrant with lots of different thing goings on. She also gives advice to students of translation and interpreting preparing themselves to a career start. Don’t miss this interview:… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

We all know the Web is full of great sources to build a translation memory (TM). Of course, not every document available on the Web in two or more languages is reliable and worth integrating into a TM. But as soon as you have determined that the material is good for your purposes, you may want to store that material in your hard disk, and then you have another problem: How to make a TM out of it? There are many great solutions out there, and I just found another one reading Jost Zetzsche’s “Tool Kit” newsletter: YouAlign. This is simply an online document alignment solution designed to help those who need to quickly make a TM out of two texts with the same content in two languages.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

The Monterey Institute of International Studies posted a video on its YouTube channel with a dramatization of a trade negotiation between the U.S. and China. The video, titled “Interpretation: bridge or barrier?”, highlights dos and don’ts in consecutive interpreting, common problems facing consecutive interpreters as well as aspects of the highly contextual Chinese language. So, what we have here is a class on consecutive interpreting. Enjoy:… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

The Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) is an international nonprofit association whose member companies specialize in language services, translation services and language technology. GALA member companies worldwide include translation companies, localization service providers, globalization consultants, internationalization specialists, and language technology developers.

The Globalization and Localization Association encourages local communication as an indispensable component to a global strategy and promotes collaboration between all companies working in the translation, localization, internationalization, and globalization industry.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Last weekend I finally read Corinne McKay’s excellent book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. The book was conceived for fledgling translators and those who are thinking of pursuing a career in translation, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t informative and fun reading for established translators.

First of all, I like the direct, straight-to-the-point style of Corinne’s writing. This is the sort of book that is so direct it makes you feel addressed in a personal way. There you’ll certainly find answers to common questions about establishing a business in translation. The book covers just about every item you should think of before setting up your (home) translation office. For example: how to choose a computer system, how to set your rates, how to write an impressive resume,… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

This time of the year we usually get lots of (e-)mail from friends and family saying they wish us happy holidays, merry Christmas and a happy new year. I don’t particularly like messages that are not written by the sender himself/herself, but when people do take the time to write some nice words and say something personal – even if it’s not only to me, but also to lots of other people on their e-mail list, I do appreciate it. A lot. This year, personal happy-new-year messages convinced, me, once again, that this is the time of the year when there are so many good feelings floating in the air and being sent and received all over the world you could almost smell it. And it smells good!

It reminds me of a nice little British movie called “Love, Actually“. See below the first and the last scenes from the movie and see for yourself what I mean.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

December is really my favorite time of the year. Not because of my good clients who pay invoices much earlier than expected (it’s an interesting phenomenon that happened with at least four of my clients this month, maybe for bookkeeping reasons), but also because it’s Christmas time. Since December 1st, I’ve been listening to a lot of Christmas music. Of course I have Andrea Bocelli’s new best-seller Christmas album. Of course I love the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. And of course any Elvis Presley Christmas albums deserves a special place in my music collection. If you’re not a Christmas person, you should know that Christmas music can be cool. Just watch this video and you’ll get the idea:… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

If you want to have an overview of interpreting in a large international summit like the UN’s recent climate summit in Copenhagen (COP15), be sure to check the video below, featuring Norman Lusted, head of English Interpreter Section at the UN in Geneva. I can imagine how difficult it must have been to interpret during such an important round of negotiations with a heavy political and environmental impact for the world. I had much less stress translating texts for an NGO that campaigned during the summit. … [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

The last colours of autumn give way to winter wonderland | Photo: Fabio Said

42-15529728 | Photo: tinitoac

If you follow this translation blog, you may have asked why I haven’t updated it in the past weeks. (OK, maybe you don’t care, but I’ll tell you anyway … [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Yesterday, I went to the Frankfurt Book Fair. It was a first for me, and I had only one day, so I decided to choose the day with the best event schedule. Of course, what interested me more was the translation events held at the fair. (China being this year’s guest country was not important.) Here’s a report on my day at the fair:

6:45 – 9:27 - Because I live some 200km from Frankfurt, I had to make an effort and get up early to catch the train. It was an especially cold autumn day, so that was quite hard.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting piece about Google replacing dictionaries. Note the excellent observation made by Erin McKean, with whom I agree, although I must add that dictionaries are not at all obsolete for those who use them professionally. Dictionaries, both paper and digital ones, are a valuable source of information, but they have become just another source, whereas 16 years ago, when I started out as a translator, they were still the main source for terminology. Today, because of the urgency of most translation jobs, I rely more heavily on information sources that can be found within a few seconds, and only seldom resort to paper sources that make me leave the computer screen.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Here is a trick I learned that made my terminology searches a lot easier and quicker. I already knew Google Books and used it for a long time in a primitive way, so to speak. But then I found out about Google Books’ features that make it a really great resource for terminology searches. The trick is quite simple: if you have a Google account, you can build a digital “library” from books you find on Google Books. Whenever you find an interesting book, you can add it to your custom library, which automatically makes your books searchable. But that, of course, will only work if the books you select have preview capabilities, i.e. if they can be viewed entirely or with limitations. To check for yourself… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Here is an interesting podcast from the College of Charlston and the US National Museum of Language. The project is called “The Five Minute Linguist” and it was originally broadcast as a radio program (Talkin’ About Talk) in 2005. All episodes are stored on the project’s website, including their transcripts. The episode I picked up today is about the similarities and differences between Spanish and Portuguese. There are people who say they are different dialects of the same language. But are they really? Listen to the mp3 audio below and/or read its transcript.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

The following article was published last week on Economist.com. It basically argues against the European patent system, which places a heavy burden on companies because of, among other things, translation costs.
Smother of invention
European companies are suffering from an ineffective patent system

IN 1997 the European Patent Office (EPO) gave a patent to Massachusetts General Hospital for its use of nitric oxide to treat bronchoconstriction, a method often used for “blue baby” syndrome. Three gas companies—America’s Air Products, France’s Air Liquide and Germany’s Westfalen Gas—appealed against the grant of the patent. Mass General and its Swedish licensee, AGA, then launched actions for infringement in the Netherlands, France and Germany. In 2000 a Dutch court said the patent was partially valid, in 2003 a French court said its validity was questionable and in the same year a German court judged it valid. Then in 2004 the EPO revoked the patent entirely.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

TDK-Lambda, an electronics company, has put online a glossary of terms related to power supply and electronics. The monolingual, English-only glossary includes abbreviations and concepts, but unfortunately it does not include a search capability (the user can only browse the entries). All in all, it may be a helpful source of information for translators researching this subject matter. It can be viewed online or saved as a PDF file. Enjoy!… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Na última edição da revista on-line de tradução Jostrans foram publicados diversos artigos de interesse para tradutores e pesquisadores em tradução. Um deles é sobre o futuro da tradução com a web 2.0 e experiências de crowdsourcing, tradução colaborativa etc. Veja abaixo um resumo:

User-generated Translation: The future of translation in a Web 2.0 environment
Saverio Perrino, freelance translator

ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how translation activities can be carried out using available online tools. In Section 1 of this paper, I intend to illustrate how mass collaboration happens in the so-called Web 2.0 – a term coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2005 to describe a number of services which enable today’s Internet users to interact and share information efficiently.… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Here’s a good opportunity for those interested in a career as an interpreter:

Monterey Institute of International Studies

The Monterey Institute is pleased to announce a three day simultaneous interpreting intensive in Portuguese/English and Portuguese/Spanish taught by Professor Ewandro Magalhães in Brasilia, Brazil.

Full Course Description, including program and schedule (PDF)