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...]

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...]

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...]

Lapsus translinguae, a translation blog run by English to Spanish translator Ivette Camargo López (which is, by the way, listed on my translation links page), is featuring a long interview with Renato Beninatto, the brain behind Common Sense Advisory. The interview’s topics give much food for thought. If you’re a translator or project manager working for a translation agency, this is a highly recommended reading. I highlight the redefinition of translation quality:

I realized that “Translation, Editing and Proofing” (TEP) is like a dogma in the language services industry. People + organizations + companies + schools, they all learn this concept that a translator does the job, somebody else reviews the job (another translator reviews the job), then you do a final check, and then you… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

This week, a conference was held in Brussels to discuss the role of translation within the European Union. The conference targeted mostly literary translation, but also translation of official documents for communication within EU institutions. Here’s an excerpt fro euronews:… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

A little bit of client education: the ATA has a nice PDF brochure titled “Translation: Getting it right (A guide to buying translations)” with very brief but useful tips for translation clients. The document addresses some myths involving translation and translators, translation software, and bilingualism, and also discusses the very frank and very important question every translator client should ask himself: “Does it really need to be translated?”

Here are some excerpts (click to enlarge):

Download the full PDF document from the ATA server.

For other language versions, visit the ATA website

For those interested in information about client payment behavior within the translation industry, this document found on Google Docs may contain valuable infos. It’s a collection of data gathered about things like credit, risk management, late payment etc., as well many links to related websites, including online forums dealing with client payment issues in the translation industry.

Link:
Client Payment Behavior

SFT – Syndicat National des Traducteurs Professionnels has just published the preliminary results of a survey it did among nearly 1.000 professional translators in France. The survey included items such as rate per word, subjects of specialization, CAT tools, education, working hours devoted to translation, and much more. This is a very interesting document not only for translators living in France, but also for every professional translator who wants to have an overall picture of our business. Highly recommended reading (in French).… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Here’s an article published yesterday on BusinessWeek.com:… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Interesting news published yesterday on Times Online:
From The Sunday Times
August 10, 2008

Brussels puts out English mayday
Marie Woolf, Whitehall Editor

The British are so bad at foreign languages that the European commission has had to recruit linguists from Spain and Greece to translate documents into English.

Internal commission memos show the standard of Britons who apply to be European Union translators is so dismal that Brussels is taking emergency steps to fill the linguistic gap, including posting recruitment ads on YouTube, the video-sharing website.

While other countries have pass rates regularly nearing 100% of those who take EU translation tests, as few as 20% of British applicants pass.

Brussels rules state that translators into English should have the language… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

From CNNMoney.com:
Found in translation: Avoiding multilingual gaffes

How a small translation company helps big brands avoid global mishaps.By Malika Zouhali-Worrall

Last Updated: July 14, 2008: 9:58 AM EDT

(Fortune Small Business) — When it comes to naming their products, many large U.S. companies have veered dangerously close to international embarrassment.

Take the pharmaceutical giant that wanted to call a new weight-loss pill “Tegro.” It sounds harmless enough in English, but in French the word is phonetically identical to t’es gros, or “you are fat.”

Then there was the name for a global technology training system that sounded exactly like the Korean for “porn movie.” Not to mention the HIV medication whose German name could easily be mistaken for “foolish love.”

Luckily… [Read more...] [Leia mais...]

Common Sense Advisory, a research and consulting firm, has published interesting information and statistical data on the international translation market. How is the market divided into in terms of region and country? Who are the world’s biggest big translation companies and how much do they make? To check out the answers to these and other questions, follow this link

I recently came across this very interesting UNESCO recommendation:
Recommendation on the Legal Protection of Translators and Translations and the Practical Means to improve the Status of Translators

22 November 1976

The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, meeting in Nairobi from 26 October to 30 November 1976, at its nineteenth session,

Considering that translation promotes understanding between peoples and co-operation among nations by facilitating the dissemination of [Read more...] [Leia mais...]