Are We Missing Something?

Have you been receiving strange, unsolicited job applications, even if you are just a one-person business and are not looking to hire? We've received a large amount of these lately, and we are curious to hear whether our dear fellow linguists have also received these messages. We've been getting junk mail/spam by supposed translators who supposedly want to collaborate with us. These messages are all quite unprofessional, come from free e-mail addresses and are full of grammar and spelling mistakes. All these message do have a résumé attached, making them seem somewhat legitimate at first glance. However, common sense and a quick Google search tell us that the schools where the alleged linguists studied do not exist and that the positions these folks have allegedly held sound less than believable. 

So, sure, we hit the delete button. But the question remains: who are these people? What do they want from us? Scammers look for a way to make money, so perhaps these folks really think someone will hire them and they can do a Google translate job and then charge for a translation? Perhaps. In that case, though, they'd be better off contacting unsuspecting small businesses. Why would they e-mail professional "colleagues" who can see that these folks are impostors in 30 seconds? Very odd. If we were scammers, we wouldn't try to scam the folks who know the particular business model really well. It's analogous to a seller of fake purses contacting Gucci and trying to sell them fake Gucci purses. Or are we completely missing something here? (It's happened before.) Any thoughts, readers? 

For your Friday entertainment, here are excerpts from applications/résumés. Enjoy!

I am a super organized and responsible person, what you would call a perfectionist, always looking after the details and things to be perfectly executed and for yesterday. I love the follow up of every issue already on the way/began and have them done. I am very good at setting up meetings and a scheduled time-table. I am looking for a position, where I can work on full time basis, from home. I am a highly motivated woman, very energetic, organized, responsible and with a keen ability to multitask. I learn fast and like to learn new things. I love debate and discussion.  

I do translation in the following areas: Business Letters; Tenders; Biddings; Contracts & Agreements; Brochures; Handbooks; User´s Manuals; Training material; Technical areas; Catalogues; Software applications; Articles; General letters & texts.

  

My rates are flexible according to the turnaround time, specialization involved and also for large volume of short texts. I am also available to work after-hours at no extra charges.

A ♥ for Language Blogs: Thank You!

Last month, we encouraged fellow bloggers to share lists of their favorite blogs and asked them to title the blog post "A ♥ for Language Blogs." The idea was to discover new blogs to add to all our RSS feeds. On Twitter, this is called Follow Friday, but on the blogging side, we don't really have a similar tool. Hence our little initiative.We were overwhelmed by the response. Our techie guru made a graphic showing you who participated and how we are all connected (click on the image to enlarge it). We'd like to thank everyone who participated. We discovered a lot of fantastic new blogs; we have some reading to catch up on!

As promised, we've randomly chosen two winners who will receive a copy of our book. We tried to get Judy's dog, Luna, to point to a blog on a print-out of the image, but her paws are too big, so Judy rolled the dice (it's Vegas, baby!) and the dice landed on: Catherine Translates (Catherine Jan) and Linguist Blog (Alexandra Milcic Radovanovic). Congratulations, Catherine and Alexandra! We will be contacting you to get your mailing addresses. 

Certificate Program in Localization: University of Washington

 We recently reserved this information about a certificate program in localization at the University of Washington. It looks interesting, so if you have been thinking about obtaining formal localization training, read on! For any questions about the program, please contact the University of Washington. 

The University of Washington Professional & Continuing Education is offering a Certificate program in Localization which provides an overview of and practical experience with this rapidly growing field through a 3-course, 9-month program. The courses are offered in the evening and can be taken in the classroom as well as online. They provide a strong foundation in terms of concepts and tools, engineering practices, and project management. Students gain valuable practical experience, hear from guest speakers working in the industry, research and use current translation & localization tools, as well as delve into both the engineering and the project management side. The classroom section is a traditional offering while the online section uses AdobeConnect to allow online students to hear the instructor live, see the instructor’s presentation, and interact with the class via chat. Online sessions are also recorded.

General program areas include linguistics & translation, business norms & cultural issues, user-interface design, formatting, project workflow & roles and an overview of the technology & tools. In addition, the program includes guest speakers and a panel of practitioners some of whom graduated from the program to talk about their career and what is needed to get a job in the field. Specific consideration is given to topics such as alphabets & scripts, character encoding, text processing, graphical representation of text, spelling variants for different countries where the same language is spoken, cultural appropriateness, language translations, symbols, aesthetics, local content as well as customs considerations.

Past students have come from diverse backgrounds, including foreign language learners, translators, software testers, technical writers, linguistics, software developers, project managers, and localization engineers.

The program has an advisory board which includes UW faculty & staff, as well as industry representatives from Microsoft, Lionbridge, Adobe, Getty Images, Google, MultiLingual Magazine, Adaquest, and several others. Students who complete all three courses receive a Certificate from UW Professional & Continuing Education. From a career perspective we can also attest to the fact that students who enrolled in the program received both internships & jobs soon after completing the program. These positions included companies such as Microsoft, Real Networks, Amazon.com, SDL, Big Fish, Nintendo, Übermind, and Moravia.

Applications are now being accepted for the program starting October 5, 2011. Additional program details and course descriptions can be found here:

http://www.pce.uw.edu/prog.aspx?id=6040

Summer Book Discount: Entrepreneurial Linguist

We hope everyone is having a great summer! We've been spending time together in Vienna. We are working hard, but the year's hottest days sure are a distraction. We are tempted to head to the pool with a good book, but we have resisted (at least this week). Speaking of books -- we just received a 20% discount code on our book, The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation and we wanted to pass it along to our wonderful readers. The book has been very-well received by readers and reviewers around the world and has sold some 1,500 copies since it was published last year.

There's no catch and you don't need to sign up for anything. Simply enter code BIG305 when you are ready to check-out. This code is only available on Lulu.com and not valid on Amazon. To purchase, please click here.

The Complaint Club

We recently hired a contractor for a professional service (not related to translation). This person happened to be an acquaintance of ours and we were familiar with his work -- let's just say he's a graphic designer (he's not). Last week, we received a phone call from him that made us decide that we wouldn't work with him again. Why? Ready for some tough love? Read on. 

He called during our workday to ask us to help him with some profession-specific problems that we cannot solve. Still, we took time out of our day to give him some pointers. They were difficult issues, but that's what we are paying him for. In addition, we think it's simply unprofessional to take the clients' time in situations like these. His main concerns were things that he should have foreseen before accepting the project. The conversation revealed that he simply wasn't ready to deal with some details related to the project, which didn't exactly make us feel warm and fuzzy. The bottom line: As the client, we don't want to hear about a contractor's business issues (unless his computer dies and our files are lost). That's what colleagues and friends are for. We've always strongly advocated having a "complaint club" and not complaining to your clients  -- unless it is a very specific question that only the client can answer, of course. Now that we were on the receiving end of the contractor's complaints, we feel even stronger about the need for a complaint club. Let us explain.

Choose two of three colleagues whom you like and feel very comfortable with. Friends are fine, too, but they should probably understand your business. Then, ask them if they'd like to be your complaint club. It's a small, exclusive club of people you can call when you need to vent, simply want to talk, or need solid advice on how to solve a business-related problem. We have a complaint club, too. In addition to the two of us, it has three honorary members, and those are the folks we call for advice and help. Naturally, we don't call our clients to vent or complain, but you'd be surprised how many people do (including this morning's contractor). Your clients don't care about whatever issues might arise during the translation process. They pay us to translate, interpret, copywrite and to solve their problems. Think about it: do you want your lawyer to call you to complain that she is unable to upload a large file to her system? Venting and asking for advice is important, healthy, and part of any business -- but choose your complaint club wisely. We think a big part of the professionalization of our profession is presenting ourselves as what we are: independent service providers who can tackle difficult issues. 

Who's in your complaint club? We'd love to hear about it!

Oddball Scam

The e-mail that we received this week has scam written all over it.  The tell-tale signs include the Hotmail address of the sender, lack of e-mail signature, vague details about the actual project, grammar and punctuation mistakes, etc. We saw the red flags immediately, including some funny stuff, like the sender wanting us to print, bind and deliver thousands of pamphlets to Germany -- hilarious, right? Here's the e-mail:

Hello,

My name is Charles B whittaker, an executive Managing Director and the Western Region Leader at Frank Crystal & Company. I got a contract, in which I am needing help in translation. The project is about translating the attached document I sent you to a Germany language, print them out in thousands of copies, bind them in form of pamphlets and to deliver them to our company in Germany.  I will need your help in the translation. Please, let me know how this will work out, and email me the total price we are paying you for the translation. I want you to know as well, we are needing the assignment done on or before August 20th. I attached the document, sent to you in MS and PDF files. Please, kindly acknowledge my proposal, and get back to me as soon as possible. 

Sincerely, Charles.

We dug a bit deeper. The company Charles claims to work for, Frank Crystal & Company, does indeed exist, and we bet they are not happy that their company name is being used in this way. They are an important insurance brokerage firm in the U.S. While one can never be 100% sure that a scam is a scam until one has actually been scammed, we'll go out on a limb (not really) and say this is a scam. However, how is it a scam? Is it the classic scam where they will assign the project, offer to pay ahead of time, then send too much money and ask for us to wire the difference back (that's an old one, and turns out the initial wire was not legit)?

We took a quick look at the attachment (always dangerous), and a Google search with the first paragraph of the text yielded what we expected: the text was taken, verbatim, from this website.  It is crystal-clear to us that this is a hilarious scam, but we are puzzled as to how this scam could potentially work for the scammers.

Any ideas, readers? Have you heard about this one? We'd love to hear from you.

Upcoming Fall Conferences and Webinars

Time flies - it's already July! That means that the conference season is almost upon us. Time for a short list of U.S.-based events that you might or might not have heard about.

XIX FIT (International Federation of Translators) World Congress in San Francisco, CA. This international federation of translators and interpreters has more than 100 member associations around the world. This congress is rarely held in the U.S., so this is a fantastic opportunity. Dates: August 1-4, 2011.

Translate in the Catskills in Maplecrest, NY. Organized by translation industry guru Chris Durban and held in the scenic Catskills, this new seminar is back by popular demand. Now in its second year, "Style in Translation" will focus on polishing translator's writing skills in their target language. Some workshops focus on the French/English language pair, but it's all about writing -- all language combinations are welcome. Dates: August 12-14, 2011.

AAIT (Atlanta Association of Interpreters and Translators) 5th Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. This year marks the organization's 30th anniversary and its 5th conference, so there is a lot to celebrate! This year's topic is "Industry Transformation and Trends." Held at the Doubletree Hotel, this two-day conference will feature several well-known speakers, including Marcela Jenney and one Jenner twin. Have a look at the program here. Dates: September 24-25, 2011.

eCPD webinars -- worldwide. Organized and hosted by our wonderful colleagues Lucy Brooks and Sarah Dillon, eCPD webinars are a great way to get professional development without leaving the house. The fall schedule includes a fantastic line-up, including Note-Taking for Interpreters on September 1, Working as a Literary Translator on September 13, Pricing Strategies for Translators on October 17, which Judy is quite excited to present, Nataly Kelly's Getting Started with Telephone Interpreting on October 26, and about a dozen other high-level workshops. Cost is very reasonable, and all you need is an internet connection -- accessing the webinar after you've registered is a breeze.

ATA 52nd Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. So we might be a little biased,  but this is our favorite conference of the year. Not only do we get to meet up with all our friends and colleagues, enjoy dinner and drinks together, but we also attend dozens of interesting seminars and workshops. See you in Boston?

Keep It Short

As entrepreneurs, the only resource we have is our time. We know this is not the first time you've heard this, but it's important that we use our time efficiently. One of our favorite -- yet very simple -- strategies is to write short business e-mails. Whenever we can, we try to keep them to no more than three paragraphs, and we use pre-written templates whenever we can. Think about it: with the amount of e-mail that gets sent these days, we could spend all day just answering e-mail, and that wouldn't be very good for our business.

Dagy is infinitely better at this than Judy, who tends to be a bit more verbose. However, we both try to keep it short. This not only save us time, but also benefits our clients and colleagues, who are also quite busy. After all, who wants to have to scroll down when reading an e-mail? In addition, as translators, we are also writers, so we might as well demonstrate our abilities by writing concise and to-the-point messages. Looking for another way to get the most out of your time when writing e-mail? Become a faster typist. There are a lot of great online programs that will help you do just that. To find out your current speed, try TypingTest. 

A ♥ for Language Blogs

We've been thinking about how we find new blogs, especially language blogs, and in particular those written by fellow translators and interpreters. We hear about them at conferences, read about them on Lexiophiles, and find them via Twitter.  New blog owners also e-mail us to let us know they've launched a blog. Sometimes they ask us to add their blog to our blogroll, which we gladly do after a few months of following that particular blog. In terms of spreading the word about blogs we like, we have our handy blogroll, but what else is there? On Twitter, we have #followfriday, and for the blogosphere, we thought we'd do the following.

Below is a list (with links) of 10 of our favorite language blogs, in no particular order, followed by a brief description. We'll then ask our blogging readers to do the same on their blogs (don't forget to link to the blogs so everyone can find them!) and title the blog entry A ♥ for Language Blogs. The idea behind this exercise is to spread the word about new blogs that we all benefit from reading. Because we like raffles, we'll raffle off one of our books to anyone who does a blog posting. In a few weeks, we'll do a Google search for A ♥ for Language Blogs and choose a winner (randomly). How does that sound? Are you in?  By the way: there are significantly more than 10 blogs that we love, but we just chose the top 10 that we feel engage us the most. 

1. Thoughts on Translation: Our wonderful friend and colleague Corinne McKay, who lives in Colorado, pens beautifully written articles about our industry. Highly interactive with lots of comments.

2. Mox's Blog: We really enjoy Alejandro Moreno-Ramos' hilarious cartoons about the world of translation and interpreting. He sees the funny side in our business, and we are huge fans of Mox, the underpaid translator, and Mina, the smarty-pants turtle. Alejandro is both a translator and a cartoonist.

3. About Translation: Italian translator Riccardo Schiaffino has been blogging for a long time, and his comments and insight are a very worthwhile read. He's also based in Colorado, where he also teaches translation.

4. Translate This!: Our friend Michael Wahlster, who is based in Southern California, is a true language blog pioneer. His blog has been around since 2003, and he frequently blogs about technology.

5. Musings from an overworked translator: A very busy German-to-English translator, our friend Jill Sommer runs one of the most popular language blogs. She's always generous with her insight. Our favorite blog post is the one about certified translations for the U.S. market.

6. Separated by a common language: American linguist Lynne Murphy, who lives and teaches in the U.K., provides priceless insight into the differences between American and British English.

7. Brave new words: Globetrotting linguist B.J. Epstein hails from Chicago, lived in Sweden for many years, and now teaches at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. We met her in Vienna a few years ago, and really enjoy her posts, especially those about literary translation.

8. Translation Tribulations: Our colleague Kevin Lossner, based in Germany, is one of our few cyberfriends we have not met (we will try to change that soon). We particularly enjoy his insightful posts on translation technology, and Kevin is a witty and gifted writer.

9. There's something about translation: Sarah Dillon, who's Irish and lives in Australia, runs one of the most beautifully designed blogs we've ever seen. While she doesn't post as frequently as others, her posts are a great read. She's an expert on all things web 2.0.

10. Words to good effect: A newcomer to our list of favorite blogs! Marian Dougan lives in Glasgow, Scotland, and Judy had the pleasure of meeting her a few weeks ago. Thoughtful, thought-provoking posts. 

Dancing Translators

The most fun Judy has had on a dancefloor in quite a while took place during the ITI Scottish Network's wonderful three-day summer meeting in Stirling, Scotland, where she was lucky enough to be the guest speaker. The program included a Scottish ceilidh, which is much more than a dance. Judy had been a tiny bit afraid of the ceilidh -- yes, there's some anxiety when one must perform unknown dances -- that turned out to be completely unfounded. The very fun and talented live band gave easy instructions, and one needs no experience to do this. Who knew it would end up on YouTube, though? Watch us dance! This specific dance is called the Shetland Wedding Reel, and Judy is wearing a black and orange kimono-style dress (and high heels, for some reason). Keep an eye out for the tall male dancer -- he's fantastic, and he's wearing a traditional Scottish kilt. Enjoy!