Do You Get What You Pay For?

Recently a good friend of ours asked us to recommend a translator from German into Ukranian. We gladly gave her the name of a linguist who is very well respected and well-known in the profession and serves on the board of a translation association. Our friend, who works for a large firm, obtained the quote from the translator (for a 150-page document), and, as was to be expected from a seasoned professional and for the size of the project, it was quite high. To compare prices and potentially save some money, the firm sought...

American Translators Association Get-Together: Vegas

Our first small get-together in Vienna earlier this month was fantastic, and we figured we'd do it again! As a member of the German Language Division (GLD) of the American Translators Association (ATA), I know many folks personally, but there's also a lot of virtual-only contact. In order to reverse that, I've been trying to meet as many fellow language professionals as I can. Next week, we are getting together in Las Vegas, my adopted hometown. We are meeting on Thursday, March 26, at 1 p.m. at Olives restaurant (one of my...

Unexpected Crisis Effect

There's been a lot of discussion in translation circles about how the economic crisis is affecting (or will affect, or has affected) all of us. We've now discovered a somewhat surprising effect: we are now translating more than ever for our clients, but we are translating a lot of the following: Internal memos to employees advising them how to save money Letters to customers announcing new services and emphasizing competitive advantages Internal seminars and presentations on pricing and how to maximize revenue Newsletters to...

Translation and Interpretation: Economic Outlook

Thanks to our colleague Céline Graciet over at Naked Translations for twittering about this very positive economic outlook for translators and interpreters in the U.S. It's a report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (United States Department of Labor). The great news in a nutshell: employment for translators and interpreters is projected to increase by 24% in the 2006 - 2016 decade. We like hearing something positive admid all the terrible economic news, and this is certainly something to cheer about. Read the entire detailed...

Thanks, Google: The Ten-Dollar Website

Last week, during my "Entrepreneurial Linguist" presentation in Vienna, I addressed the importance of having a website. Our web guru, IT superhero, and general guardian angel, Tom Gruber, did some research for us, and he came up with the following recommendation. Many of our fellow language professionals don’t have websites because they can be quite expensive. Google to the rescue! Thanks to the smart folks at Google who created Google Apps and Google Sites, you can register and manage a website for just $10 a year. While...

Fraud Alert: Wedding Interpretation Scam

One of our colleagues, Susanne Lenhart from Vienna, told us about a fraudulent inquiry she received recently, along with information on the scam details. We wanted to share this with our colleagues who might not have seen this one yet. It is sad news that scam artists are increasingly targeting interpreters for assistance in interpreting at a wedding. Sounds innocous enough, right? However, during the e-mail exchange that follows, they are trying to get you to wire money that you have received from the "client" (in the form...

Will Translate/Interpret for Food

All of us receive and come across hard-to-believe work "offers", and we had to sharee that one of our colleagues kindly sent us.It's quite difficult to top the chutzpah of this one. The European spice distributor Kotanyi (a very large and well-respected company) actually posted this piece of paper outside several classrooms at University of Vienna's Institute for Translation Studies looking for a language services provider....

German-English Airport/Aviation Glossary

Thanks to our colleague Mary Virginia Burke from the German-language division of the American Translators Association for sharing this fantastic bilingual glossary with us. We are avid collectors (and sharers!) of such glossaries, of which you can never have enough of. You never know when a project related to airports or aviation will come across your desk. The glossary also includes a link to very handy aviation-related abbreviations in both languages. Here's the li...

Spain's Prime Minister: It Starts with an "F"

For weekend amusement for Spanish speakers, we had to share this funny video which one of our Viennese translation professor friends pointed us to. It features Spain's Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, talking about the importance of Spanish tourism to Russia. He wants to say "fomentar" which means "to boost", but he ends up saying "follar", which, well, is the vulgar equivalent of "to copulate". It's a very short video, and although he doesn't miss a beat after his f-word (in both Spanish and English) mistake,...

Proz Pow-Wow in Vienna: Slideshow

Our Proz Pow-Wow in Vienna yesterday, March 5, was a very nice evening of information and ideas exchange. We appreciate everyone who joined us at Pulitzer in the 6th district. The place was very nice and modern, and they had a separate non-smoking room with laptop hook-ups and a projection screen. We can certainly recommend it for future events. The food was good, too! We had a good turnout and I am delighted to report...

Back It Up!

Yes, we know: you’ve probably heard this a gazillion times. Still, one can never emphasize enough how important data security is in our business. Other than the information in our heads, our data is the most valuable asset we have. So we better take really good care of it. We do daily backups of our business data at 11:00 p.m. every night. For that purpose, we use an external hard drive. 500 GB 3.5’’ external hard drives (the large ones with power supply) cost approximately EUR 60 and 320 GB/2.5’’ (the small ones without power...