Here is an interesting article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on IBM’s new English>Arabic translation software and hardware, with an interesting comment from ATA public relations guru Kevin Hendzel. I actually found the most disturbing part of the article to be the statistic that of 1,000 employees at the newly constructed U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, only 33 speak Arabic and only 6 of those are fluent. Here’s a thought: what about allocating some of the $75 million that the Pentagon spent on translation research last year for foreign language education? Just a thought!
Links
It's not just Facebook…
Here’s a post from the blog of Canadian communications consultant Deborah Zanke, dealing with poorly done translations at 5-star resorts in Cuba (which are understandably popular with Canadians at this time of year). She poses the question of whether these translations should be criticized if the resort staff’s spoken English is excellent, and also highlights efforts to ban “Chinglish” ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Blogging about my book; Google alerts
Freelance Translators From Scratch is running a number of interesting posts about my book
How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Although the book has been out for about a year and a half (and I’m brainstorming about the second edition!) it seems to have gathered a lot of momentum lately; maybe everyone who’s in love with someone bilingual is buying it for Valentine’s Day? Yesterday was actually its highest Amazon sales rank ever, in the 14,000s, meaning that it was the 14,000th most popular book out of the several million on Amazon, and #80 in its category, Job Hunting and Career Guides. At any rate, thanks to the Freelance Translators From Scratch for these articles!
A tip to go along with this: I found out about these posts because I have a Google Alert on my name. Someone in the local freelancers’ group I’m in turned me on to Google Alerts, which she called “a clipping service for the Web, but it’s free!” Of course, unless you add some additional identifiers to your name, such as “Corinne McKay translator” or “Corinne McKay book” (in my case I also have an Alert on my book title) you get alerted to the electronic goings-on of everyone else with your name. Personally I enjoy keeping tabs on the world’s other Corinne McKays as they go about their business selling real estate in Massachusetts or coaching volleyball teams in the Yukon (no, really!); but maybe that’s just me!
The grass is always greener…
As translators, I think we often feel that we have toughest job in the document workflow; we don’t get to choose what to write, but we have to make the translation sound at least as good as the original and deal with issues like cultural connotations, idioms and untranslatable linguistic tricks.
On the other hand, here’s an insight into what it feels like to be on the other side of the translation fence; a hilarious post by well-known author Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries, the Heather Wells series) describing the experience of receiving copies of her translated books in the mail and not even being able to figure out which of her books she’s looking at.
A helpful post on translation client ratings
About Translation’s most recent post is an excellent summary of translation client rating services. These forums, which are either e-mail lists or websites, can help both beginning and established translators determine whether a translation client is a reliable payer. Definitely worth a visit!