Interpreters' Portrayal in Literature: Fail

Dagmar just read a book about a conference interpreter, the book’s clever title being “The Interpreter”, written by Suzanne Glass. According to her bio in the back of the book, the author is a former conference interpreter who is fluent in seven languages. That seems hard to believe, especially after reading certain German-language passages in the book. Here is an excerpt for the German speakers among us. This is from a letter quoted in the book: Aber nun setze ich mich hin und schriebe [sic] Dir. […] Ist es möglich dass es erst sieben oder acht Monate her ist? Es scheint doch wie ein Leben. There are quite a few mistakes in there. The last sentence doesn’t sound German at all. Suzanne Glass is really doing our profession a disservice here.

Having read about this book in an anthology about the image of interpreters and translators in literature, my curiosity was piqued, even though the back cover praises “a heady mix or romance and intrigue,” which would usually discourage me from reading it. While the author quite accurately describes the work of conference interpreter Dominique Green, this book has an unpleasant aftertaste. Dominique is described as “not having her own voice” – whatever that means – and this fact is attributed to her work. That is, of course, nonsense. I find it disturbing that Dominique eventually finds her own voice only through the miraculous love of a man. At the end of the day, the author probably just wanted to write a (barely interesting and sometimes cheesy) love story and her own profession just provided the logical background.

This book could’ve been a good opportunity for conveying a positive image of our profession. Too bad that was apparently not the author’s intention. For a detailed review of this book in German, please click here.

Vote for Your Favorite Language Blogs

We were delighted to hear that our colleague Emma Littner nominated our little blog for the Top 100 Language Blogs. Thanks, Emma!

The Top 100 Language Blogs list is compiled by the managers of a fantastic blog on language,s in several languages, Lexiophiles. We frequent the site for excellent insight into languages, and used their Top 100 Language Blog list last year to find our favorite blogs. There's a lot of talent out there in the translation world, and most of the blogs are fantastic (we link to our favorites on our blog roll to the left). It's wonderful that these blogs -- and the busy professionals behind them -- will be getting recognized.

We heard from the ranking's organizers that we are encouraged to put this button on our blog in case you would like to vote for us. We'd be honored and delighted, but please have a look at all the other contestants and vote for your favorites (you can vote for one in each category; ours is in the languages professionals group). Have fun, and if you decide to vote for us -- thank you! Voting starts today and concludes on July 28. Winners will be announced on July 30.

Speak English or Else

We subscribe to the very interesting listserv by the Interagency Language Roundtable, which is a federal agency that creates and shares information about language-related activities. They keep us up-to-date on highly relevant matters for our industry, including legislation developments on interpretation on the federal level. We highly recommend subscribing to their listserv here.

The listserv's most recent posting caught our attention:

Speak English well, or get a ticket
Truckers face hefty fine for breaking law that says they must be able to talk with police.

Tuscaloosa, Ala. —- Manuel Castillo was driving a truck through Alabama hauling onions from Georgia and left with a $500 ticket for something he didn't think he was doing: speaking English poorly.
Castillo, who was stopped on his way back to California, said he knows federal law requires him to be able to converse in English with an officer, but he thought his language skills were good enough to avoid a ticket. Still, Castillo said he plans to pay the maximum fine of $500 rather than return to Alabama to fight the ticket. "It just doesn't seem fair to be ticketed if I wasn't doing anything dangerous on the road," he said. Federal law requires that anyone with a commercial driver's license speak English well enough to talk with police. Authorities last year issued 25,230 tickets nationwide for violations. Now the federal government is trying to tighten the English requirement, saying the change is needed for safety reasons.
Read the full article.
It makes sense that commercial truckers need to be able to communicate with an officer in basic English when stopped on the road. However, getting a ticket for no other offense than being a "non-English speaker" is highly controversial (to put it mildly). The topic of English proficiency is hotly debated and doesn't have an easy answer-- what do the languages professionals think in this case? Who determines if the driver's English is good enough? The officer? How can she/he correctly assess language skills? Are there any discrimination issues? Would these drivers have the right to an interpreter? We'd love to hear your thoughts -- just leave a comment.

LinkedIn Translation Fiasco Makes the NYT

Our friend Jill Sommer sent us a note that the paper of record, the New York Times, just published an article about the fact that LinkedIn recently sent an e-mail to thousands of translators, essentially asking if they would help translate LinkedIn for free. This has been covered very widely in translation blogs and forums, and we certainly support the majority's viewpoint that professional translation services should not be available for free. It's disappointing to see that a major player like LinkedIn fails to take our profession seriously enough to compensate professional linguists for their services. We wonder if LinkedIn also sent an e-mail to attorneys, asking them to review some documents for free?

Read the NYT's excellent coverage, including a comment by Matthew Bennett, who started a LinkedIn groupd that hotly debated this issue, here.

Marketing Tip of the Week

One of our favorite marketing ideas of the year did not start out as one. When we bought a new laptop for Judy, we quickly realized that while it was a great deal ($499), it had a very glossy black surface, which nicely showed every fingerprint. Why the surface can't be matte is beyond us, but we digress. In an effort to solve the fingerprint-issue, we consulted our IT guru, technology guardian angel, and general genius, Tom Gruber. He suggested we buy a large sticker for the laptop and sent us to Schtickers.com.

The site offers inexpensive stickers, technically called laptop skins, completely tailored to your laptop's dimensions (you can even enter your make and model), which leads us to believe that most folks use this space as a marketing tool rather than a fingerprint-cover. Hence, rather than order a picture of, say, Judy's dog, we ordered a sticker that features the Twin Translations logo. It fit like a glove and cost around $30, shipping included.

The marketing effect:

• While sitting in the Lufthansa business class lounge at LAX (thanks, Dad!), Judy was working on her laptop (see picture). Later, during the flight, she got approached by someone from the lounge who inquired about translation services and they talked at length.
• While sitting in a coffeeshop with the laptop in Vegas, a very nice manager from IBM came over and asked what kind of company Twin Translations was. She asked for a card and said she needed translation services. Wow!

The bottom line: this is a good investment, especially if you work away from your house once in a while. It's a conversation starter as well, and you never know who you will meet. We'd love to know if you decided to get a sticker as well and what your experiences have been.

It's a Scam: Daimond Translations

Unfortunately, scams are becoming more and more prevalent in our industry. This morning, we received the following from a Gmail address; which lead us to hit the delete button immediately. However, we were curious and googled the sender's company name, and sure enough, there were widespread reports of scams.

We currently need German to Spanish Translators.If you"re interested
to work with us please contact us by e-mail as soon as possible.
Thanks
Donald
DAIMOND TRANSLATIONS
e-mail:daimondtrans@gmail.com
P:6462916552
F:1-414-345-2346

If you get this e-mail as well, please don't reply to it. As a matter of principle, we don't reply to non-serious inquiries coming from non-professional e-mail addresses, so this was an easy decision for us. This new trend in the profession is quite alarming to us, but it's fantastic that we have forums where we can communicate these happenings to others. Our colleague Jill Sommer just reported on a similar scam (perhaps the same individuals are behind it?) last week on her blog.

Good News: Optimism in the Industry

We would like to share some economic data that we received from the folks at GALA (Globalization and Localization Association). They recently completed their third quarterly survey among their members, and have sent us the results. While the realities of these challenging economic times have affected all of us in one way or another, it is nice to hear that the outlook is generally quite positive. Here are some highlights from the study:

A full 78 percent of respondents said they had been impacted by the downturn in the last three months (Feb – April), a marked increase from 57 percent who indicated they had been impacted in the previous February survey. Far fewer in North America felt a direct impact (55 percent) than Europe (83 percent) and Asia (85 percent).

However, the outlook is not nearly as grim. A full 30 percent of respondents anticipate an actual increase in demand in the next three months—way up from eight percent in the previous survey. And many more respondents are optimistic about the future (44 percent) than are not (15 percent).

Other findings include:

* More than 82 percent of respondents have not cut workforce as a result of the financial crisis. There have been other reactions by many LSPs, including reductions in overtime and outsourcing, wage reductions and salary freezes.
* More than half of respondents (53 percent) report lower revenue compared to three months ago.
* Forty-four percent of respondents are optimistic about the next 6 to 12 months, while 15 percent are not optimistic and 41 percent are unsure.
* Similar to the first quarter, more than half of respondents have not had any projects or contracts canceled due to the economic situation. But there is a lot more downward pressure on price and some projects have been delayed.

The Password Keeper: Free and Open Source Software

Not too long ago, it was still relatively simple to remember all your passwords for use online. These days, this is becoming increasingly more difficult. Between computer access data, multiple e-mail addresses, social profiles, Internet banking, postings everywhere from Craigs List to Proz.com — not to forget our PizzaHut password and all our blogging access data, we certainly can’t keep up. You don’t have to be an IT expert to know that you probably shouldn’t be using your dog’s name as a password for every account and keep it written down in the back of your day planner. We are certainly convinced that complicated passwords (with letters, special symbols, lower case mixed with upper case, etc.) are essential in today’s online data security. The question is: how do you remember all of them?

Our IT guru, programming genius and internet guardian angel, also known as Dagmar’s boyfriend, recommended we look into the completely free (open source) software called Keepass. Once downloaded, you can store all your access data and passwords for hundreds of accounts and profiles. All these are protected with a master password (which you should go to great lengths to remember). After you enter the master password, you will be able to see all your other stored access data, which is highly encrypted in accordance with the latest technology. For a master password, a recommendation is to pick an easy-to-remember word, but typing the corresponding letter to the left of it. For instance, “Andi” will become “Smfo”. For history buffs, passwords composed of historical figures and dates are a good choice, such as “Ludwig van Beethoven was born in 1770”, which could become “17LvB70”.

Seller Sets the Price

In almost all professional transactions (we are not talking about Morrocan spice markets or Mexican tianguis here), the seller sets the price, and it's a fact that contributes to the relatively smooth operation of the economy. In our business, the buyer frequently tries to set the price by saying: "Our budget for this translation project is $20o," to which we suggest a polite reply along the lines of "Thank you for that information. My price is XYZ."

Our friend Amybeth Hale, who pens the excellent Research Goddess blog, just told us about this fantastic video. This is what happens when the buyer tries to set the price. Would the marketplace still work? Enjoy!

Translation and the Catskills

Through our colleague Corinne McKay we just heard about a fantastic workshop that she is helping organize in the Catskills this August. It's mainly geared towards French<->English translators, but all other languages are welcome as well. The conference will be held August 21-23 in Maplecrest, NY (roughly three hours north of NYC). The main focus of the event will be writing skills in the target language and how freelance translators can succeed in their field. The line-up of presenters is top-notch and includes Chris Durban, Grant Hamilton and Ros Schwartz for French to English and Dominique Jonkers and François Lavallée for English to French. The small size of the conference and the gorgeous surroundings will make for quality time with fellow translators.

This might be a great alternative for those who are unable to make it to the ATA's 50th Annual Conference in New York City at the end of October.

For more information, please visit their site.