Translation Cartoons: Funny and Relevant

For those of you who haven't seen Alejandro Moreno-Ramos' hilarious translator-specific cartoons, featuring Mox and his cute turtle Mina, please see below for his interpretation of how capitalism works. We are both big fans of his work, so Alejandro, please keep up the excellent work!Be sure to visit Alejandro's blog to read more adventures. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words -- we are tempted to use these...

Free Screencasting Software: Ideal for Twitter

Our IT guardian angel, Tom Gruber, just told us about this nifty tool. We haven't used it yet, but it seems fantastic for creating short, high-qualtity screencasts. It's highly useful for Twitter -- you can create your own screencasts and share them with your followers. It's a web-based recorder, so you don't have to download anything. The tool is called Screenr and here's what it can do:Screenr, is probably the best web-based screencasting application for Windows, Mac and Linux machines. With Screenr, you can create HD-quality...

Free (Limited) Stuff from Microsoft

Computer giant Microsoft isn't exactly known for giving away free software, but for those of you who don't have an Office package and prefer to work with Open Office (free, open-source software, which we also use), here's your chance to use the new Office 2010 for free until October of next year. The software is still in beta testing, but it includes the updated version of all the classic favorites: Word, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. Of course, once you are done with the free version, you will probably be so...

Literary Translation Workshop in Banff, Canada

We recently came across this literary translation workshop in gorgeous Banff, Canada, which might be of great interest for our colleagues who work in the Holy Grail of translation: fiction and poetry. Click here for application details. The deadline to apply is February 19, 2010. The workshop will be held from June 6 through June 27. The cost is fairly high at $2853.90.Here is some information from the Banff International...

Translation in the News

We woke up to some excellent news. Our friend and colleague, fellow blogger Corinne McKay, who pens the excellent Thoughts on Translation, posted a link about another dear colleague, Abigail Dahlberg, who was profiled on the first page of the Los Angeles Times! We are so proud of her, and we've always thought that her specialization, which is German to English waste management, was incredibly interesting and relevant. We missed Abigail at this year's ATA conference, but clearly, she was well remembered by all; which resulted...

ATA's 50th Annual Conference: Looking Back

Just like every year, Judy headed to the very exciting American Translators Association conference at the end of October. This year marked the organization's 50th anniversary, so the conference was held where it all started: New York City. Dagmar wasn't able to attend as she recently represented the Austrian Interpreters' and Translators' Association (UNIVERSITAS), in her function as interm Secretary General, at the...

Marketing Idea of the Week

After Judy's Entrepreneurial Linguist presentation at the ATA's Annual Conference in NYC last week, she was approached by two very entrepreneurial linguists: Dutch<->English financial translators Annie Tadema and Astrid van der Weert, who run their team business out of Utrecht, the Netherlands. They gave Judy their very creative customer gift -- a USB stick embedded in a traditional Dutch wooden shoe, which is...

ATA Conference: Entrepreneurial Linguist Slides

A full recap of the outstanding 50th Annual American Translators Conference in New York City this past week is coming up shortly. In the meantime, we wanted to give attendees from Judy's Entrepreneurial Linguist session the link to where they can find the slides. Simply click here, where you will be able to download the PDF slides via Slideshare. You will also be able to watch the very funny video about pricing. Thanks for comi...