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 link.

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, it's already made its way around the world.

It's proof that one language is certainly hard enough to handle (or proof of what he was really thinking about). I wonder how the Spanish->Russian interpreter handled this situation -- probably better than Zapatero!

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 that my presentation was interesting for our colleagues, who enriched the discussion with fantastic questions and anecdotes from their own business experiences, which made for a great interactive presentation. Thanks to everyone for their input and interest!

Congratulations to German-Danish translator Lise Smidth, who won Corinne McKay's book (which I highly recommend ) "How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator" in our raffle.

As promised, please click on this link for the entire presentation. Feel free to share it with any colleagues who might find it useful.

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 supply) cost around EUR 80. For the daily backup, we use one of the smaller hard drives in combination with the free backup tool EzBackitup.

It addition to that, Tom, our web guru, does another backup in larger intervals (in Dagy’s case, every 3 weeks) using another external hard drive, which he keeps at his downtown office. What might seem like an unnecessary precaution came in really handy the other day because the external hard drive we use for daily backups fell to the floor and died (RIP, dear hard-working hard drive). Since the computer was up and running, no data was lost, but hey, you never know! If push comes to shove, we’d much rather have a 3-week-old version of our data than none at all (addresses! translation memories! termbases! e-mails! accounting!). Just imagine: there might be a fire in the apartment or a burglary – you never know.

Another option is using Online Backup Services which run between EUR 5 and EUR 50 per month for 10 GB (which is approximately the amount of data we back up). Even Amazon offers backup services. In fact, there are many companies out there offering these services. Tim Borman has compiled a list (sorry, it’s in German) and he actually tested a few of them.

However, our IT guru recommends using two external hard drives (one for daily backups and one for backups in larger intervals) because it’s ultimately the cheaper option.

We’d love to hear what you use and what your experiences have been with backing up your data.

Language That Works

As translators, we many times keep an eye out for things that have been mistranslated or just don't work in the target language. We have to admit that we have an entire German-language website dedicated to translation mistakes. However, there are more examples of great translations out there than we acknowledge. This of course is related to the fact that many times things that are correct don't attract much attention as things that are blatantly wrong.

In the spirit of recognizing great work, we wanted to share the picture on the left with you. It was taking near the Austrian Airlines counter at Vienna International Airport. As you can see, it's composed of differnent languages, and it's easily understandable. We love how it communicates effecitively and clearly with a touch of international glamour -- who doesn't love languages, especially when they work together so well? Our hat is off to Austrian Airlines for coming up with a truly great piece of advertising and that's not only smart and effective, but also very memorable. Even for people who are not language geeks.

ATA GLD List Get-Together in Vienna

This Friday, February 27, marks the first get-together (that we know of) of German Language Division members of the American Translators Association (ATA) here in Vienna, Austria, where I am spending several weeks. We already have a small group, and we are meeting at Frank's (website in German only), conveniently located a few steps from Schwedenplatz (easily reached by subway). If you are not a regular reader of the GLD list or would simply like to hang out with fellow ATA members in Vienna, please e-mail us and let us know. We are meeting at 7 p.m.

Free Localization Webinar

A colleague and friend, chemical translator Karen Tkaczyk just told us about a free localization seminar that's being offered on February 28, 2009. We have attended several useful webinars in the past, so it might be worth checking it out. The webinars we attended virtually were held by another company (whose name escapes us), and lead to several sales calls from said company. Still, we learned something.

We are not familiar with the company offering this particular Webinar, but we hear there is quite a bit of useful information. Contuining education for free? We are in!

Details and registration information can be found here.

Fraud Warning: Small Businesses Targeted

The Latin Chamber of Commerce in Las Vegas just sent out an e-mail to all its members with a warning for all small businesses. Fraudulent letters are circulating on fake Small Business Administration (SBA) letterhead, asking small businesses to disclose bank information for tax purposes. Many of these scams are so obvious it's really not worth warning fellow linguists about, but this one appears to be harder to detect than most, so we wanted to post it here.

Here's the text of the press release as issued by the SBA. Please pass this on to fellow small business owners who might not know about it.

SBA Warns of Fraudulent Attempts to Obtain Bank Account Information from Small Businesses

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Small Business Administration issued a scam alert today to small businesses, warning them not to respond to letters falsely claiming to have been sent by the SBA asking for bank account information in order to qualify them for federal tax rebates.

The fraudulent letters were sent out with what appears to be an SBA letterhead to small businesses across the country, advising recipients that they may be eligible for a tax rebate under the Economic Stimulus Act, and that SBA is assessing their eligibility for such a rebate. The letter asks the small business to provide the name of its bank and account number.

These letters have not been sent by or authorized by the SBA, and all small businesses are strongly advised not to respond to them.

The scheme is similar in many ways to e-mail scams often referred to as “phishing” that seek personal data and financial account information that enables another party to access and individual’s bank accounts or to engage in identity theft.

The SBA is working with the SBA Office of Inspector General to investigate this matter. The Office of Inspector General asks that anyone who receives such a letter report it to the OIG Fraud Line at 1 (800) 767-0385, or e-mail at OIGHotline@sba.gov.

NITA Announces Health Care Interpreting Training

NITA, the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association, is proud to announce its Health Care Interpreting Training to be held in Reno, NV. Held on five Saturdays in March and April, this forty-hour professional development course is aimed at interpreters who want to break into the much-in-demand healthcare interpreting field. Topics covered include: Medical Terminology and Common Medical Problems, Sight Translation, Code of Ethics, Sight Interpretation, etc. Upon completion of the course, participants will receive a certificate of language proficiency, a certificate of completion, workbooks and materials for self-study, etc. The course includes snacks and refreshments and is held at St. Mary's Regional Hospital in Auditorium A.

Tracy Young, RN, BSA, MA, will be teaching the course. She has 18 years' experience as a medical interpreter and medical interpreter trainer. She is currently a trainer at the Bridging the Gap program in South Lake Tahoe, volunteers her interpreting services at the Renown Emergency Room, and works for several interpretation agencies for health care interpreting agencies.

The class is filling up fast, but if you live/work in northern Nevada or northern California, don't miss this opportunity to receieve a significant amount of professional development classes at a very affordable prices. As NITA is a non-profit organization, the cost for all five Saturdays is only $375. The discounted price for members of NITA, ATA, NCIHC, NAJIT is $325. To sign up for the class and get more information, please visit the NITA site or e-mail Tracy Young directly.

Twitter: Uncle, We Joined!

After several inspiring posts from fellow writers and translators, solid advice from our resident web guru, and informal input from an online marketing guru friend, we decided we could no longer stay away from one of the fastest-growing social networking tools on the planet: Twitter. January 1, 2009, marked our entry into the Twitter universe.

We already have profiles on LinkedIn, Xing, Projo, MiGente (and 25+ other professional and social networks), so we were a bit hesitant about adding to our online lives. So far, so good: the amount put into it has been minimal, and of course we have barely scratched the surface of all the cool Twitter apps and add-ons. We have really enjoyed interacting with fellow translators, small business owners, entrepreneurs, bloggers, travelers, etc., and have found the updates and exchanges quite fascinating. Many folks have started following us, and we have also discovered many great Twitterers to follow.

What have your experiences been so far? Has anyone had any fantastic experiences or even potential leads from Twitter? For now, we have linked this blog and one of our Facebook pages to Twitter, making it easier to update the "What are you doing now?" line (on one site versus two). We like the simple layout and the fact that it's an incredibly powerful tool that reaches millions of people in real time. Also, 140 characters is plenty, and we are happy to see that one of our favorite sites is getting a lot of use: www.tinyurl.com (Twitter converts links automatically to save space). At the moment, we are following Twitterquette to make sure we learn the ins and outs.

Be sure to follow us on Twitter (language_news)!