Language in Literature: Budapest by Chico Buarque

Last month, we wrote about a work of fiction that did the interpretation profession a disservice through inaccurate portrayals, and it made us think about how the translation and interpretation profession is generally portrayed in literature. One of our most loyal blog readers, Guillermo, suggested that we read "Budapest" by Brazilian author Chico Buarque. Guillermo refered to it as a masterpiece on language, so we...

An Entrepreneurial Year

Even though we've been running our business through its European sister company since 2002, Judy didn't join Dagmar in full-time entrepreneurship until last year. From 2003 until 2008, Judy worked full-time as an in-house translation department manager for a large e-commerce corporation and ran Twin Translations on the side. August 31, 2008, marked her last day in corporate America. Today, August 31, 2009, is the first anniversary of Judy's full-time entrepreneurship. A few thoughts:It's been an amazing year, even though we...

A Day Without the Internet

Last week, the wireless system in Judy's house in Vegas went down. Both the PC and the laptop weren't connecting to the internet. While we are software power users, occassional beta testers and feel very comfortable with anything HTML and e-commerce, hardware isn't our thing. After an hour or so disconnecting and connecting the modem, the router, and anything else that had a plug, Judy gave up. Well, a call to our cable...

Miss Universe 2009: Beauty and the Interpreter

Yes, we admit it: we occassionally watch Miss Universe (at the gym, while running). This year, Judy had an incentive, as she has two friends working at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, who put on the event (great job, guys!). When it came time for the dreadful final question phase (we won't get into the merit of the answers here), several contestants required an interpreter. First of all: our hats are off to an interpreter who's willing to stand in front of millions of people at a live TV show and interpret while being...

Not for Sale: Dealing with Self-Promotional Blog Comments

Those of us who write blogs have to determine a strategy for dealing with comments that readers leave. Most of the time, the comments section is what takes the blog entry to a new level , fueled by interesting insight our readers leave. We strongly believe that the comments section is a great forum for exchanging information and ideas with fellow linguists. However, we do moderate comments, which means that if a reader leaves a comment, it's not live on the site immediately. 99.9% of the time, we will approve the comment right...

Time-Saving Tip of the Week

This is a seemingly easy one, but we wonder: how many of us do it? Between the two of us, Judy is guilty of it. Are you? We are talking about immediately responding to any new e-mail message that comes in, thus decreasing the focus you might have had on a translation project. Should you? It depends. In time management classes, one learns to figure out if things are urgent/not urgent and important/not important. Almost all e-mails will have one characteristic from either category. In terms of e-mail answering while you are...

Money-Saving Tip of the Week

As small business owners in these challenging economic times, it makes sense to try to find ways to cut costs. We won't compromise the amount of time we spend on translations (our main cost being our labor), the quality of our dictionaries, nor the quality of the specialized softwares we use. That leaves relatively few items where money can be saved in low-overhead business like ours. However, there's always ways. This one is also good for the planet, which is wonderful -- we are all about saving the planet. It's a simple thing:...