Earlier this month I went to a conference on legal translation in Lisbon, held at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. I hadn’t been to a Tradulinguas conference before, and knew nothing about the company, so admit to being a little apprehensive about taking a leap into the relative unknown. What swayed me was that it offered a great opportunity to spend a few days brushing up on my Portuguese in Lisbon, as well as a chance to meet up with other translators specialising in law, including several I knew already.

The conference’s focus was very much international, with sessions delivered in English, Portuguese or French. The speakers were not afraid to be controversial and stimulate debate about legal translation at the coalface, including the background, skills, depth of knowledge, research methodology and/or qualifications a translator specialising in this area ’should’ have. A key theme was the role of comparative law, since countries’ legal systems are rarely directly comparable, even if they follow the same legal tradition and use the same language.

I was both surprised and impressed at the strength of opinion expressed in the sessions. It was great to see so many attendees speak up, giving the sessions a lovely interactive feel. But I do wish that the sessions had kept more to a traditional ‘answers at the end’ format, as some speakers weren’t able to finish their presentations due to the sheer number of questions from the audience while they were in full flow.

Highlights of the conference for me were:

- Ingemar Strandvick’s and Professor Klaus-Dieter Borchardt’s opening sessions on multilingual law-making and legal translation in the European Union and Community Law. Professor Borchardt’s publication ‘The ABC of European Union law’ is available from the Publications Office of the European Union.

- Dr Pommer’s session on comparative law and its quest for a legal ‘meta language’ to facilitate international cooperation and harmonisation: is law a global discourse?  Comparability vs. translatability: does translation always have to mean equivalence?

- Ana Soares’s presentation (in Portuguese) on the Portuguese legal system compared with the legal system of England and Wales.

- Juliette Scott’s session on DIY corpora in legal translation – her ‘NIFTY’ approach.

- Véronique Sauron’s session on online resources for legal translators, and mostly importantly how to use them quickly and effectively, identifying reliable sources.

- Filipe Carrera’s interactive session on networking and what it really means. Filipe is clearly a highly experienced speaker and his session got the message across without being cheesy.

Oh, and the weather was fabulous! More information on the conference, including speaker bios and abstracts can be found here: http://www.tradulinguas.com/conf-juridica/

Image courtesy of World Travel Guide 2010ikoniхудожник на икониИкони на светци

Over the past 6 months or so I’ve experimented with the Swordfish II Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) program; this post is a brief walkthrough of its main features.

Flexibility: The main attraction of Swordfish for me was that it’s cross-platform, so I can use it on a Windows PC and on a Mac (or on the Linux operating system). This degree of flexibility is hard to come by on the CAT tools market, and in my opinion is Swordfish’s main selling point. The only slight snag is that, although you can use the same licence across more than one computer, you have to disable and enable it each time (unlike with open source cross-platform programs such as OmegaT, for example). This is fine in principle, but you need to be good at remembering to disable the licence on your desktop PC before venturing out to work within Swordfish on your laptop!

File formats: Swordfish can handle an impressive range of different file formats very competently, including Trados .ttx files. It works by converting these file formats to ‘XLIFF’ format (an open standard) before opening the file within the Swordfish editing environment. The documents are converted back to their original format once you’ve completed the translation and are ready to proofread the final version. This also means I can convert a PowerPoint file, for example, to XLIFF in Swordfish, start working on it in Swordfish and come back to it later within another program that supports the XLIFF format (e.g. MemoQ). This adds an additional layer of flexibility and interoperability.

Layout: The interface is clean and extremely easy to find your way around, even if you don’t have time to read the (short) user manual back-to-back before starting to use it. Like in other programs, the Translation Memory database and terminology database results are displayed in a right-hand column as you type. A click on a term (or keyboard shortcut) will simply add it to your translation. You also have the option to have several TM and terminology databases open at the same time.

Terminology search integration: One of the features I like most about Swordfish, and which I haven’t seen offered to the same extent by any other CAT tool, is its integration of search tools such as Linguee, IATE and Termium Plus, which you can search while translating (provided you’re connected to the internet) without having to open a separate browser. This feature is fully customisable for the language combinations you work with, and is so useful that I tend to have Swordfish open just for this even if I’m using another CAT tool for a particular job. Like some other programs, Google Translate is also integrated, should you want to search its corpora during your first draft.

Downsides: Swordfish can be slow in moving between segments compared with other programs of its capabilities. The QA function is up there with the best programs of its kind but again tends to run slower than I’d like. The ‘concordance’ function can take far too long to load if your Translation Memory databases are sizeable. Also, the ‘create database’ function doesn’t differentiate between a Translation Memory database and a terminology database, so you need to ensure you give meaningful names to your databases (e.g. _TM/Term) in order to find them again.

Verdict: The PC version of Swordfish could certainly run a lot faster than it does, but the program does offer a very great deal for its relatively small price tag, and I think it has the edge on cross-platform interoperability. Its integration of the main online terminology search tools makes it feel like a ‘translator’s translation tool’. The support offered is also extremely responsive, in my experience.

Swordfish is can be downloaded as a 30-day free trial. See www.maxprograms.com for more screenshots and details.ови услуги

Image courtesy of Wired magazine

The Institute of Translation and Interpreting will hold its General Meeting this Saturday (13 November). I urge all ITI members to attend if they can, or to vote by proxy if they haven’t already done so*. There are a number of important motions to be voted on, and I’m sure it will be a lively meeting. In my view, what many of these motions reflect is the need for greater professionalism and transparency in ITI as a membership organisation, which is a good thing. I want to be part of a professional body which represents real-life practising translators and interpreters, and which is represented by real-life practising translators and interpreters.

I intend to speak up at the meeting, but in advance of that I’d like to share some things I would like to see ITI introduce:

a) Greater transparency. The primary aim of this would be for ITI’s members, whose subscriptions sustain it, to have better knowledge of how their membership fees are being used.

b) Ensuring ITI’s leadership is similarly transparent, and that Council and Chairman are a visible team who members feel they can approach and who can be relied upon to represent their interests. Since the Chairman and Council represent members’ interests (without whom, of course, there would be no ITI at all), it is essential that they are able to interact freely with other ITI members as part of a two-way dialogue.

c)  Following on b), I’d like to see a permanently-available (perhaps on the website), clear  description of network coordinator, committee member, committee chairman, Council member and ITI Chairman roles. It doesn’t have to be lengthy, but should at least tell members what the roles involve, and how much time they would typically require. This would help members to decide whether to volunteer for them in future.

d) In order to ensure that these voluntary roles are performed by the best possible people for the job, drawing on the wide-ranging skills of ITI’s membership, I’d like to see a slightly more formal application process for roles, in addition to incentivising them (financially) where appropriate. This could involve advertising vacancies, for which a standard ITI application template could be distributed. This would seek to emulate the procedures used by other professional bodies, and I hope that with the new Equality and Diversity Committee in place, a new and transparent process will eventually emerge.

The ‘incentivising’ bit I sneakily slipped into my final point is a perhaps an audacious and controversial wish, but there is so much talent within ITI and I think it is currently underused and underrepresented. What proportion of that talent is unable to find a way to contribute because they are put off by the amount of uncompensated time they might have to give up? It’s not just that the roles (primarily that of Chairman) appear so cumbersome to members that’s the problem – I can’t imagine many freelance translators or interpreters earning a decent crust falling over themselves to sacrifice a large chunk of that income to act as Chairman, a vital and hugely time-consuming role, on a voluntary basis (or in return for ‘token’ money). I don’t think it’s money-obsessed to say this, it’s simply a practical observation based on the reality of the situation. I believe that practising translators can and should be able to be accommodated in order to sit on committees, on Council, and as Chairman alongside their normal work commitments. We should not rely on academic members and retired members to fill these roles. If proper financial compensation is what it takes to draw from a broad spectrum of the wisest people in the industry in this role, I believe that dismissing this idea altogether would be a serious misjudgement.

The topic of the role played by professional associations in their professional communities is so broad and open-ended that a single blog post will never begin to cover it. There is so much more to say, and I look forward to the discussions on Saturday! But for now my closing thoughts are these: what we as 21^st Century translation and interpreting professionals need is a professional association that accurately represents us, supports us in our careers, and projects a positive image of our profession. If we really want to promote and strengthen translation and interpreting as professions then we must walk-the-walk and talk-the-talk.

* 11 November (tomorrow) is the deadline for receipt by the ITI office of proxy forms.

Last Saturday I attended the CIOL Centenary Members’ Day in London. This was my first CIOL Members’ Day, despite having been a member for about 7 years. There were lots of great speakers, but the two talks that attracted me most were Professor David Crystal HonFCIL on ‘Languages: Past, Present and Future’ and Michael Benis FCIL on ‘Translators or Consultant Linguists?’

I’ve heard Michael touch on this idea of ‘consultant linguists’ before (and FWIW I think it’s something we should all be considering), but in this blog post I want to focus on an observation Michael made during his presentation: we have a talent leakage in the UK translation and interpreting industry.

As a profession we seem to lose a higher than average number of talented, hardworking people, at a time when translation needs are sharply increasing. It’s true that fewer people are studying languages at school and university right now, but I’d be surprised if the impact of this was already so apparent.

Why? Does it matter? Do we have an image problem? If so, how do we change it? We want the best talents to seriously consider a long-term career in our industry, don’t we? How can we stop them leaving, assuming we think there’s a good reason to get them to stay?

The first leakages might occur at undergraduate or postgraduate university level, or later on, after a stint as a project manager. Project manager frequently choose not to move into translation itself. What is clear is that they are finding their skills are better rewarded (financially or otherwise) in other/related industries.

One reason could be that there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and it often starts at school. Language students often decide to aim for a career outside the profession because a message filters through that studying language(s) is a ‘useful asset’, rather than something to base a career on. As Helen Campbell FCIL from the EC’s DG for Interpretation said in her talk (‘Training Translators and Interpreters in the Next Ten Years’) last Saturday, the very real shortage of high-calibre English mother tongue translators says otherwise. Even at university level the myth still circulates that there’s no real ‘career’ (or decent income) to be had in translation, so students start to think of a broader career portfolio.

But what about those who do make it as far as the beginnings of a career in translation? We accept that not everyone who starts out in translation and interpreting will want to stay forever and ever, but I think there’s a definite pattern emerging. In this talk, Michael suggested that these professionals feel that their talents and skills are not rewarded in the industry, and that there’s no clear career progression. Or perhaps they think the industry is not forward-looking or modernising enough to accommodate them? So they look to related professions, where they find exactly the same skills they used as translation professionals are much more highly regarded and remunerated.

How can we reverse this? We have 2 major professional associations in the UK, and they do their bit, right? If we take the example of the few client <-> linguist events that do exist, these are rather one-way, usually with a panel of translation companies at the front of a room taking questions from the floor (the budding/established freelance translators). We need to press for more visibility and a more active role for translators, not passiveness and invisibility (hence Michael’s use of ‘consultant linguist’), and this means being better communicators as a professional group and getting ourselves out there. Why don’t more translators and interpreters attend industry trade fairs, for example, to show the outside world what we’re made of?

I dare to suggest that perhaps there’s also too much inward-looking negativity out there in our industry. We often complain about how difficult it is to succeed as a freelance translator, how standards are falling, how so many translation companies pay unacceptable rates, how we’re the little guys against the big corporations. This victim mentality is not helpful, in my opinion, and it’s seriously off-putting to new entrants to the profession. We don’t want to deny that to make a living as a professional translator or interpreter requires a lot of hard work and dedication, but what career worth having doesn’t require a bit of hard graft?

It’s still only July and like many of you, by this stage of the year the extent of my forward planning goes about as far as fantasising about my much-needed summer holiday next week. Life post-holiday is quite low down on my priority list right now, but there have been a couple of events which have caught my eye recently. I’m pleased to report that I’ve managed to muster the energy to reach for my pen to mark them in my diary now, as I’m sure the dates will have crept up before we know it:

The first, on 25th September, is the Chartered Institute of Linguists Members’ Day in Bloomsbury, London. The programme consists of a series of seminars with titles including ‘Translators or Consultant Linguists?’ and ‘Training Translators and Interpreters in the Next Ten Years’, and will finish off with a lecture by my favourite linguist, Professor David Crystal OBE HonFCIL.

The second is a webinar entitled ‘Specialising in legal translation’ by Ricardo Martinez of City University, a good one for those of us who specialise in legal translation. The webinar itself is run by eCPD Webinars. After ITI’s first webinar yesterday morning, in collaboration with eCPD Webinars, it seems that this training format is something translators and interpreters want to see more of, and I hope it will continue to grow.

The third is Portsmouth University’s 10th annual translation conference; this time entitled ‘Translating Multimodalities’. I attended this conference for the first time last year, after intending to go for years, and was not disappointed. As a translator ‘at the coal face’ I rarely get a chance to discuss the slightly more theoretical aspects of translation or explore other areas of work with languages, and this conference allows me to do that without offering up too many abstract theories.  Take a look for yourself here: http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/academic/slas/conferences/translationconference/

Alex runs Translator Tips, where you can download a free marketing ebooklet, or buy Alex’s ebook How to Earn $80,000+ Per Year as a Freelance Translator (the headline is designed to get your attention – admit it, it worked, didn’t it).

I’m really glad Alex decided to make a comeback.  I’m not sure whether he intends to update his ezine format by continuing to publish his content on his blog, but I certainly hope so.

Portsmouth Spinnaker Tower, courtesy of virtualtourist.com

Last month I spent a Saturday down in Portsmouth at the university’s Ninth Translation Conference, entitled ‘The Translator as Writer’. It’s incredible that I’ve never made it to the event before now, as I’ve always noticed the high calibre of speakers every year (a combination of practitioners and academics), and I’m pleased to say that having finally made it this year, the event lived up to my expectations.

It seemed to me that the event had a very similar theme to other translation conferences I’ve attended in the past 12 months: the translator beginning to take a more strategic and proactive role in the text (aka the product) production process and to bring other skills they offer to table in their role as intermediaries between cultures and as professional writers.

Here are some of my takeaways from the event:

Jody Byrne’s plenary lecture on technical translation:

* The traditional distinctions between the work of translators and writers are rapidly fading

* Technical translators have traditionally not been viewed as needing or possessing excellent writing skills in the same way as translators of more ‘creative’ types of text have been, but this is changing

* Customer expectations of technical translators are changing: technical expertise is often needed as well, with the translator assuming a greater role in the overall usability of a document.

Practical workshop by Fiona Harris on localising and editing press releases for the EU:

* EU press releases translated into English often need to be extensively edited and localised to ensure they are relevant to the everyday life of the people in the target country

* In the case of the UK, the press releases need to appeal to a British audience. For example, they are often adapted for a Eurosceptic press, in order to get the best coverage.

Luc van Doorslaer’s lecture on translation and journalism:

* Globalisation tends to emerase /emquestions of translation in the news media

* Fast communication needs do not pay attention to translation and will rather tend to make it invisible.

* Through this reduction in multilingual diversity, the world is often falsely conceived as being monolingual.

* National image-building in the media: do the media express or create cultural proximity? Reconstruction of a constructed reality?

Neil Bartlett’s inspirational keynote address on ‘Inspiration’:

* How can a translator facilitate the ‘breathing’ of a sentence?

Denise Merkle’s lecture on translating and expert writing in translator training:

* There are misconceptions among some translation students about what translation actually involves

* Many translation students have poor reading and writing skills, and tend to read less in general (I am still not convinced of this myself – is this measurable?)

* How do we define quality?:  a lot of LSPs focus mainly on their quality procedures in their promotional material. For example many make a lot of their Quality Assurance (QA) procedures and turnaround times, competitive rates etc., rather than selling the quality of the writing they are offering.

On the last point, I have since wondered how much of this was a sign of the times, where businesses in just about every line of work seem to be placing great emphasis on procedural aspects such as safety and reliability, sometimes over and above their actual product offering. I’m curious about why this might be. Do we live in such a complaint-fearing world that we feel we must set out these types of parameters to armour us against any risk of grievance? Are we not confident enough to place a bigger emphasis on selling the quality of the product we are offering, and to be able to defend it?

I’ve written a replica of that case study for my blog:

Job title:

Freelance Translator

Languages:

French, Spanish and Portuguese (into English)

Company/location:

My cosy home office in London!

Background:

I translate from French, Spanish and Portuguese into English (my mother tongue). I started off by doing a BA in French and Spanish at Cardiff University, then went on to do an MA in Translation and Linguistics (Spanish and Portuguese) at Westminster University in London.

After my studies I managed to get a job as an in-house translator, and this gave me the opportunity to really hone my language skills. However, after a few years I decided that freelancing was for me and so I launched a new career beyond cubicle life.

A typical day for me:

I’ll usually be at my desk quite early in the morning, since my commute only involves a short walk to my desk! I often start my day in the same way as most other people, by checking my emails. There may be urgent requests from clients that I need to respond to. I will also typically do some reading of industry-specific newsletters and foreign press or listen to podcasts in my source languages. When I start working on a translation project, I will need to consult with the client for any background references and will need to carry out my own research into the subject matter and terminology. The finished product will then need to be thoroughly edited and proofread before delivery to the client.

Working from home, I get to manage my own workload, but I generally try to work a standard 8 hour day, although I sometimes need to work evenings and weekends to complete urgent or large jobs.

What’s the best thing about your job?

Without a doubt, being my own boss!

So you want to be a professional translator?

You’ll need excellent writing skills in your mother tongue and of course fluency in the languages you translate from. You’ll also need to acquire sound knowledge of one or two specialist fields, for example medicine, law, IT, engineering or physics. I work mainly in the fields of law and marketing, so I need to maintain my knowledge in these areas through ongoing training.

You’ll also need to bear in mind that if you’re freelance, you’re effectively running your own mini-business, so take some time to check out what that entails.

*Psst! If you’re tempted by translation but would like to have a taster before committing, I notice that London Metropolitan University are hosting a Taster Day for Linguists as Mediators, through the UK National Network for Translation.

Attendees of the event who are new to my blog may be interested in reading a little more about how I got into translation, as just one example of how a freelance translator begins their career. Well, if you’re wondering, read on…

For me, translating freelance was something I’d aimed for since starting my MA in Translation and Linguistics at Westminster University over six years ago. Completing the course 9 months later, I realised that freelancing lark would require planning, careful consideration and funds (not to mention paying off various bills and loans). So, quite early on I started looking for in-house translation jobs in London, eventually accepting a job as a full-time in-house translator in the public sector. My plan was to stay in this job for about a year, save up and then launch my freelance translation business.

I remember that I was fairly overly confident about my abilities as a translator at that stage, despite not having much real-world experience of it. Embarrassing to think about it now! A year passed quickly and I realised that I still had a long way to go before I felt ready to go it alone, both in terms of my translation skills and my ability to run a business. I still felt that I was much more suited to freelancing than to cubicle life in a rather uninspiring air-conditioned office, but the value of what I was learning was too great to just ditch it so quickly. I decided to set myself a target of at least 3 years in the job, and then to go for it freelance.

So, apart from translating diligently, squirrelling away my pennies, making my escape plan and daydreaming about a fantasy life as a freelance translator, what else was I doing during those years? Well, because I was serious about becoming freelance, and felt that if I put my mind to it and got support from the right people I could really make a go of it, I spent a lot of my evenings online researching how others were doing it, what sort of hardware/software/ancillary skills I might need for my business etc. Like many translators, I did regular voluntary translations in my spare time in order to hone my translation skills. I joined several ITI groups, and started reading the e-group threads after work. I attended steadily more ITI and CIOL events (networking is a long-term activity so I thought it best to get started on that ASAP), and I started a blog. I had been reading other translation blogs, and realised that I was gaining so much from reading about the experiences of other translators that I wanted to contribute something of my own. This led to more networking and becoming part of a dialogue with other translators in order to share our experiences.

Eventually, I felt the time was right to finally go freelance. If anything, though, I felt even more terrified at the prospect of freelancing at that point than I did when I graduated years before, when I was blissfully ignorant about what it involved! But I was still determined to do it, and resolute that in-house translation was not for me at that point in my life. I needed something to make me take the plunge, but I also needed a security blanket. So, I hatched another plan. I started attending a TESOL course for 3 hours each evening after work to qualify to teach English as a foreign language – a sort of back-up plan just in case freelancing didn’t work out, or if it took a lot longer than expected to get going. I also sat the ITI exam to become a qualified member (MITI).

Happily, I passed both the TESOL course and the ITI exam and no longer had any excuses to put off going freelance. The next thing I needed was the ITI’s Professional Support Group course, as after years in the public sector I was still seriously lacking any business skills. So, one week after leaving my in-house job for good I started the PSG course and was at my new desk in my home office. I got a short-term part-time teaching job in central London to help pay the bills, and also some locum teaching and private tuition in Business English. By October 2008 (6 months after going freelance), I was finding it too difficult to fit all this in with what was by then a full-time translation workload and felt secure enough to stop the teaching altogether.

I think it’s fair to say that each freelance translator will have taken a slightly different route, and the length of time it takes to get to the point where you’re earning a decent full-time income with regular, valued customers will vary considerably (depending on your language combinations, experience, marketing material, and often just sheer good luck). However, hearing how other people did it and how long it took them is one of the best ways of getting a realistic picture of what to aim for. I started my career in-house, and I’m not suggesting that’s what everyone ’should’ do. However, I do think that however you do it, careful planning is one of the best routes to a successful, sustainable freelance career. Running your own business is very fulfilling but can be scary, and so ultimately, the crucial qualities are determination and the ability to be brave when it’s needed!

]]> http://blog.philippahammond.net/2009/10/22/getting-into-translation/feed/ 1 http://blog.philippahammond.net/2009/06/24/translation-tips-from-the-iti-style-matters-translation-workshop-perth/ http://blog.philippahammond.net/2009/06/24/translation-tips-from-the-iti-style-matters-translation-workshop-perth/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:27:00 +0000 philippa http://blog.philippahammond.net/?p=369 Last weekend I attended a translation workshop organised by ITI Scotland and led by Ros Schwartz and Chris Durban. This was a great opportunity to get top writing tips from some of the best in the business, and the event was very well attended (despite the considerable distance for those of us travelling from southern England!).

The event was particularly useful for translators working on creative texts, such as marketing copy, but most of the tips provided can be universally applied to other specialist fields.

Here are my take-aways from the event:

Top tips:

• Remember that as a translator you’re also a professional writer
• Trust your instincts
• Imagine yourself as an actor, giving the text a voice
• If you’re struggling, look at each paragraph in turn and break them down to establish what each is talking about
• Careful of ‘translationease‘ such as the phrase ‘in terms of’ – look for ways to re-word this
• When editing, remember to keep the text snappy by pruning superfluous words (particularly applies to Latinate languages)
• Always take a break before the final read-through of your translation
• Try printing out the text in a different font for your proofread, to create distance and objectivity
• Try reading your translation aloud, paying attention to rhythm
• Invest in a style guide
  
• Four eyes are better than two!

Book recommendations:

• Stephen King ‘On Writing’
• William Zinsser ‘On Writing Well’
• Jack Lynch ‘Online Usage and Style Guide’
• The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market (Perfect Paperback)

One thing that particularly struck me during the group activity was that as translators we have a reputation for getting obsessive and overzealous about what we perceive to be mistakes in a text, but which may simply be a newer term, or a term used by a particular industry. The way I see it, our role is to be linguists observing language and how it changes, not prescriptive grammatarians. Each industry tends to have its own dialect, and sometimes our role is also about speaking our clients’ language.

Happy writing!