One of our colleagues from the American Translators Association, Kristina Moeller, just shared a link to an interesting four-language online food dictionary (French, Spanish, German, English -- just up our alley). We quickly tested it with a few fancy food terms, and it appears to be quite accurate. As with every online resource, this is simply a glossary and not a painstakingly compiled dictionary, so take the results with a grain of salt. This is a good place to start if you do translations in the area of hospitality, travel,...
Nifty Online Tool to Frame Digital Pictures
Our web guru, Tom Gruber, is always on the lookout for new useful software that we can use and share with our colleagues. This free online tool, still in beta testing, is delightfully simple and effective. Try Clip Your Photos Framer --nothing to download, install, or learn. Simply upload an image and make it look professional/interesting/edgy/artsy (your choice) by adding one of a dozen or so digital "frames." This...
Report From the Front Lines of Interpretation
Fresh from a delicate interpretation assignment involving some private family and legal matters, Judy has been thinking about the interpreter training she has received and how it works in the real world. We wanted to share some of our thoughts about this particular situation, which shows that while we certainly have to uphold our ethical principles and our code of conduct, sometimes minor adjustments need to be made in order to achieve the best possible communication result.
Third person versus first person: It's widely known...
Translator Profile: Abigail Dahlberg, the "Trash Girl"
In our second translator profile (read the first one, about BJ Epstein and her process of getting a PhD in translation studies here), we are delighted to interview our wonderful colleague Abigail Dahlberg, a German->English translator specialized in waste management. Abigail hails from the UK and lives and works in Kansas City.
Translation Times: Is it OK if we call you the Trash Girl? We think that’s a fabulous,...
Royal Academy of Spain Publishes New Language Rules
The Royal Academy of Spain (RAE), which is the ultimate authority on the Spanish language, has recently finished one of its most ambitious projects to date: the publication of more than 4,000 pages of grammar rules, aiming to unify the Spanish language from Madrid to Tierra del Fuego. For the first time, the Spain-based institution has included details about the pecularities used spoken in all parts of Latin America. To achieve this, RAE worked with its dozens of sister organizations on the other side of the Atlantic for more...
Translation Industry Featured in Wall Street Journal Online
This morning, we were very excited to see that the Wall Street Journal's online edition had published a short profile about the translation and interpretation industry that has been several months in the making. Judy, who is profiled in the article, gave an in-depth interview to the WSJ, and while some of the information she discussed -- professional development, translator associations, difference between working for...
Value, not Price: A True Story
We've been lucky enough to receive lots of positive feedback from our wonderful direct customers, which we are always thrilled to get. We frequently talk to our colleagues about how direct clients need to feel that they are getting good value and that they oftentimes focus less on price. After all, if they can hire a contractor who gets done exactly what they need in the timeframe they need it, whether that service costs $x or $x plus 20% is oftentimes not that relevant.Case in point: a few days ago, one of our favorite customers...
Offline Data Security: Get a Shredder
As linguists who work with oftentimes highly confidential documents, we go to great lenghts to ensure the documents' online security, from encryption to secure e-mailing to back-up data, etc. However, it's the offline part of data security that's sometimes not taken as seriously. By this we mean the actual hard copies of the documents that you print out to proof the translation. We are firm believers that the only way to really correctly edit a translation is on paper: for some reason, your eyes catch mistakes on paper that...
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