Links

Sep 15 2011
Corinne McKay

Some interesting links

If you’re looking for some coffee-break reading, here are a few suggestions:

From Get Rich Slowly, Eight little-known facts about the Roth IRA. I consider myself reasonably financially literate and I have to say that many of these were news to me.
From Spanish to English translator Lisa Carter on Milliver’s Travels, Becoming location independent. Lisa and her partner (both freelancers based in Ottawa, Canada) are experimenting with a three-month move to Costa Rica (insert sigh of jealousy here!). This post talks mostly about their technology setup, which is very interesting.
From Duct Tape Marketing, 5 ways to use the Internet to drive people off the Internet, with some great observations about mixing in-person and online networking.

And finally, a reminder: if you’re planning to attend this year’s American Translators Association annual conference (October 26-29 in Boston), don’t miss the early bird deadline on September 23!

Aug 30 2011
Corinne McKay

I know that Thoughts on Translation has been a little quiet lately, but I’ve been trying to implement some of my own advice (isn’t that always the hardest thing to do!) and write for other people’s sites as well. The ever-dynamic Jost Zetzsche invited me to write a guest article for his online newsletter The Tool Kit, and I decided to repurpose my presentation from April’s ATA Translation Company Division mid-year conference on 10 ways to raise your profile in the translation industry. Thanks to Jost for this awesome opportunity, and let me know if you have any feedback on the article!

Tomorrow (Wednesday 8/31) morning, my guest post on self-publishing for translators will run on Lisa Carter’s blog Intralingo: a culture of language and thought. I’ll post the permalink to the article as soon as it’s up! Thanks to Lisa for asking me to write about a topic that I haven’t covered much on my own blog; it was a good chance to distill my thoughts on the world of self-publishing and how translators can make better use of it.

Jun 30 2011
Corinne McKay

A few random updates

Thoughts on Translation is winding down for vacation, and will be on hiatus until mid-July. A few updates on previously-mentioned issues:

Back in March I wrote a post about options for home office phone service. I switched my office line to Vonage Lite (since discontinued by Vonage and repackaged as the US and Canada 300 plan) and I’m quite happy with it. The sound quality is good, my office line now has its own voicemail, I can forward my office calls to another number and I’ve had no outages. The only issues I’ve discovered are that for reasons unknown, the Vonage line cuts in and out if my land line rings while I am talking on the Vonage line, and the Vonage line’s voicemail indicator is not completely reliable. I always get an e-mail when I have a new voicemail, but the stuttered dial tone and flashing modem light indicators periodically malfunction.
Speaking of Translation’s book launch webinar went well! Eve Bodeux interviewed me about the new edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator and Michelle Bradley managed the technical aspects with aplomb! If you missed the webinar (or you’re just dying to hear it again!) you can listen to the recording free of charge. Visit SoT’s Listen! page for the link.
Speaking of which, if you feel like educating yourself in the comfort of your own office (or maybe procrastinating!), the Listen! page also has the archives of the Speaking of Translation podcast. And really, where else will you find a wrapup of the 2008 ATA conference?

May 03 2011
Corinne McKay

ATA-TCD wrapup

I just returned from the mid-year conference of the American Translators Association Translation Company Division, which was held this past weekend in Washington, DC. This was without a doubt one of the best conferences I’ve attended; huge kudos to TCD Administrator Rina Ne’eman and Assistant Administrator Grant Hamilton for their incredible work to organize the event!

The theme of this conference was “10”; as in 10 presentations with each presentation covering 10 tips/strategies/predictions related to the translation industry. The sessions were so good that I’m going to devote an individual post to the ones I attended, and if you’re interested in following the conference buzz on Twitter, search for the hashtag #TCDinDC. For the moment, here are some of the most interesting websites that I learned about:

From Michael Wahlster: the Flash-based presentation tool Prezi. Michael’s presentation on technology tips was outstanding from the content point of view but it was also visually stunning; he used Prezi to create a visual map of his presentation and he then zoomed in and out of various images, quotes and screenshots throughout it. As someone in the audience said, “No more death by bullet points!!”
From Grant Hamilton: his new book Les trucs d’anglais qu’on a oublié de vous enseigner (Stuff about English they forgot to teach you). This book is aimed at French-speakers who want to learn more about English idioms and phraseology, but it looks just as valuable for French to English translators!
Two from Renato Beninnatto: How did I miss Google’s April Fool’s Day prank, Gmail Motion? This is almost too funny for words (my favorite is “to send, lick a stamp and place it down”). But more amazing is the fact that a group of Georgia Tech researchers brought Gmail Motion to life by hacking an XBox Kinect to control Gmail through American Sign Language. Renato also mesmerized the audience with this public service advertisement about language access, produced by the Texas Association of Healthcare Interpreters and Translators. Honorable mention if you can guess what language the non-English speakers are using! This video is so powerful because it truly gives English speakers an insight into what non-English speakers experience in our country every day. As the parent of a young child, I was sitting in the audience thinking “That could have been me in Bosnia, Moldova, Brazil, etc.” Wow!

Thanks to everyone for a great conference, with more posts coming soon!

Mar 11 2011
Corinne McKay

Some interesting links

I’ve been really enjoying the string of comments on my last post. Thanks to everyone for your insightful tips and observations, which I’m looking forward to using as inspiration for many more posts! The reader community is what makes this blog so much fun to write, and I really appreciate your time and thoughtful comments.

To round out the week, here are some interesting links from around the web:

Riccardo Schiaffino is officially The Person Who Knows Everything About Translation Technology. I asked him for suggestions on how to post my international development glossaries on my blog and/or website (a long-term project that’s been hanging out in my brain for a while), and he sent me this link to AgEdWeb’s online glossary generator. This online tool lets you use a tab-delimited Word or Notepad glossary to create an HTML glossary with a hyperlinked letter index: like this. I’m looking forward to trying this in the next couple of weeks!
Speaking of NGOs, here’s a very creative awareness-raising campaign by UNICEF. UNICEF created “landmine” stickers that look like pavement or flooring on the sticky side; when placed sticky side-up, they stick to pedestrians’ shoes and the non-sticky side informs the person that they could have been maimed or killed by a similarly innocuous-looking landmine in a war-affected country.
Completely not translation-related but just cool: from the Freakonomics blog, a story about a blind man who has taught himself to echolocate using tongue clicks. This technique works well enough that Daniel Kish, the subject of the story, can ride his bike in the road and precisely locate objects as small as one inch in diameter. In addition, Kish’s foundation helps other blind people learn echolocation so that they can live independently and (no joke) even go skateboarding.
Sarah Dillon wrote a very thorough and balanced review of Chris Durban’s Book The Prosperous Translator. Both the review and the book are highly recommended reading!
‘Tis the season to think about taxes, and Get Rich Slowly has a helpful post on checking the status of your tax refund online, plus some additional information about why getting a refund doesn’t make great financial sense.
Michelle Rafter has a very useful post on 10 ways writers can get the most out of Twitter; I think that all of these apply to translators too. One thing I really like about Twitter is that it can be one-way; I would be reluctant to ask a potential client to connect on LinkedIn, but I have no hesitation about following them on Twitter.

And with that, have a great weekend!