Language Blog Translation Times: July 2017

Personal Document Translation: What If I Can't Read Something?

The last post of the month is about a topic that's not very glamorous, but can be quite lucrative: personal document translation. Oftentimes, linguists shy away from it because dealing with non-businesses can be time-consuming and it's happened more than once that you don't get paid. We avoid this by kindly asking for pre-payment for personal document translations. We've translated hundreds of documents for dozen...

Interpreting: Spanglish Example of the Month

As many English<->Spanish interpreters know, especially those of us who work in the US, interpreting Spanglish and anglicized versions of Spanish words can be a signficant challenge. Many non-English speakers do speak enough English to throw English terms into their Spanish-language speech, which makes things interesting, to say the very least. Even if you live and work in an area where you are surrounded...

Interpreting Profanity in Court

Interpreting in court is not for the faint of heart. During the course of their careers, judicial interpreters will hear and interpret many things, and sometimes those things can be disturbing. One of the hardest things for some newcomers to court interpreting to master is the fact that they have to interpret everything that is being said, even if it's difficult, offensive, heartbreaking, incorrect, etc. Judy trains...

About us

We (Judy and Dagmar Jenner) are a pair of identical translating and interpreting twins working in Spanish, German, English, and French (Dagmar only). We were born in Austria, grew up in a bilingual household in Mexico City, and run our translation, interpreting and copywriting business, Twin Translations, from Vegas and Vienna (Austria). In this blog, we dispense (useful) tips and tricks on how to run a translation and interpreting business. We frequently share what we know with fellow linguists via our "The Entrepreneurial Linguist" workshop. The "Entrepreneurial Linguist" book has sold more than 5,000 copies and is available on www.lulu.com. Judy pens the monthly "Entrepreneurial Linguist" column for the American Translators Association's Chronicle and also serves as a spokesperson for the ATA. She holds an MBA in marketing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Dagmar has a graduate degree in French, an undergraduate translation degree and a graduate degree in French and Spanish conference interpreting from the University of Vienna. She is the president of UNIVERSITAS Austria Interpreters' and Translators' Association and is an accredited freelance conference interpreter for the institutions of the European Union, where she works in the German booth. Judy is a federally certified Spanish court interpreter, a master-level certified Spanish court interpreter in Nevada, a certified Spanish court interpreter in California, a registered German court interpreter in Nevada, and a past president of the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association, and serves as the organization's professional development committee. She also teaches in the University of California San Diego's Extension translation and interpreting certificate program.