Who Wants to Go to Summer School?

Translators and interpreters are always learning and improving their skills, so there's no reason to not continue doing so during the summer -- well, there are a few reasons, but we digress. This summer, UC San Diego-Extension's Certificate for Spanish/English Translation and Interpretation program (all online), where Judy teaches, offers a variety of classes that might be of interest for both beginning and more advanced interpreters and translators.

Introduction to Interpretation (no prerequisites, starts July 1) is a five-week course delivered via Blackboard (an online learning platform). Every week, students will access customized, pre-recorded PPT presentations with audio, which last approximately 2-3 hours per week. Students complete assignments every week, including weekly quizzes, and learn about all basic aspects of interpreting. The PPT presentations include dozens of exercises with original content. Students are only graded on one actual interpreting assignment (the final exam), as this class is meant for beginners.

Introduction to Translation (no prerequisites, starts August 5) is a five-week course that teaches newcomers to the profession the basics of translation, and introduces them to a strategic way to approach translations. This course is ideal for those who want to find out if this profession is for them. Judy will share the realities of our profession without sugar-coating the challenges translators face. Students will submit two graded translations and many exercises.

Strategic Branding & Marketing for Interpreters and Translators (several prerequisites, starts July 1) is a ten-week course where Judy teaches everything she knows about marketing your services as a translator and/or interpreter. The course follows the same format as the other classes and includes easy-to-use information on marketing to agencies and direct clients, social media, networking, outreach, public relations, etc.

To view all classes in the certificate program, please have a look at this link. Our lovely colleague and federally certified court interpreter Jennifer de la Cruz also teaches in the program, and she's a very popular instructor! Be sure to have a look at her classes, too. Happy summer!

Record Speechpool Videos, Get a Book

Record to win!

We still have several copies of one of the best T&I books currently on the market, Found in Translation by Nataly Kelly and Jost Zetzsche (generously donated by co-author Nataly Kelly of Smartling), to give away on this blog. In our quest for ever-clever (or not) ways to give these away, we just thought of something. We would like to have this little giveaway benefit of our favorite interpreting tools: Speechpool. If you have not yet heard about Speechpool, you are in for a treat. Have a look at our initial blog posting about the site here. 

It's a free website (free to you, but not free to run; more on that later) for interpreters to practice interpreting -- in 19 languages! It's an entirely collaborative effort, as it's interpreters recording speeches for interpreters. Between the two of us, we've recorded more than 40 videos in German and English (Spanish coming soon), and it's addictive and fun. We also routinely use Speechpool to practice our own interpreting, as there are only so many TED talks and political speeches one can interpret before craving different topics, voices, accents and speaking styles.

Speechpool just celebrated its first anniversary, and we hope it stays around for a long time. The effort was initially funded by the UK NNI (National Network for Interpreting), but at this point, founder Sophie Llewellyn Smith pays everything out of her own pocket, so she's looking for donations. We don't want to make this a donation-based giveaway, but if you can, please donate here (we did).

Rather, we will give one copy of Found in Translation (shipping included to wherever you live) to the first three colleagues who upload at least two videos to Speechpool (it's easy; you record on YouTube, and the site explains everything very clearly).

Here are  few basic rules (boring but necessary):

• The videos must be new, so that means they have to be posted to the site after June 10, 2014. 
• Sorry, existing videos don't qualify.
• Each video must be at least five minutes long. 
• You must record at least two videos to qualify.
• The videos must be in a language we either speak or somewhat understand: Spanish, English, German, Dutch, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian or Greek (Dagy speaks baby Greek).
• First come, first serve! Post the Speechpool link in the comments section, and after we check out the videos, you get your book. 
• The first three people with two videos each that meet the criteria win.
• One book per person.
• We have a total of three books to give away.
• Have fun and good luck!

The best part: even if you don't win, you will either have discovered a new resource, will have fun recording a video to help this collaborative effort, or both. Enjoy!

Here's to Speechpool and to giveaways!

UNIVERSITAS Turns 60: Time to Celebrate!

No, we are not turning 60 yet (for a while), even though our combined age certainly exceeds 60. This round birthday is all about UNIVERSITAS Austria, the Austrian Interpreters' and Translators' Association, and such a big birthday just has to be celebrated, so here's some information about the festivities that will take place in gorgeous Vienna, Austria, on September 26 and 27. We are delighted to be part of the festivities (Dagy is the secretary general of the organization) and will give a presentation on social media for translators and interpreters during the professional development part of the weekend. But don't worry: there will be plenty of time to take a city tour, celebrate, and have fun with your fellow translators and interpreters. There is also a very creative video contest (information in German) that you might want to check out.

Nataly Kelly. Image courtesy of Smartling.

The event's fantastic keynote speaker will be industry insider Nataly Kelly, co-author of Found in Translation and VP of Marketing at technology company Smartling. She has given presentations at the Library of Congress, Google, Apple, Microsoft and everywhere in between, so we will be in for a treat! Her speech will be interpreted into German. The rest of the program is varied and top-notch and includes presentations on MemoQ, interpreting 2.0, audiovisual translation, misused words in EU translations, and much more.

There will be plenty of time for networking, delicious Austrian meals, and of course coffee and cake! The evening event will be held at the beautiful Vienna City Hall on September 26 at 8 p.m. Incredibly enough, the first day, including Nataly Kelly's keynote, is completely free for everyone (sign-up required). The second day is very affordable at EUR 60 even for non-members!

The program is available in German here. We look forward to seeing you there! Happy birthday to UNIVERSITAS Austria and here's to at least 60 more years! The 50-year anniversary party was a huge success and was still talked about many years after, so the bar has been set quite high. See you there?

Song Lyrics, Translated

Happy Friday, dear readers! We recently heard about a cool translation project that's currently underway -- translating English-language lyrics of songs into other languages, which is quite a challenging undertaking. Have a look at this here. 

The site currently features two very impressive videos (original recordings of the translated lyrics). The idea is to translate one famous American or British song into Spanish, Italian and French every two months. Readers can vote for the song that they would like to get translated. Next up: Bohemian Rhapsody (quite a challenge). Our colleague Pablo Muñoz also recently wrote about this very cool initiative here. Pablo is working on this project with Liam Curley of Smoke & Croak, a British company that specializes in website localization.

Now, we'd like to issue a challenge: Could they translate some of our favorite Luis Miguel songs into English? I bet that would be a lot of fun!

The Veiled Interpreting Booth

As a follow-up to this week's raffle (congratulations to our winner Marina Meier!), we wanted to share the story behind what we've been calling "the veiled booth."

This set-up is good enough, if far from ideal.

A few months ago, Judy had a conference interpreting assignment at a large Vegas hotel. The number of attendees was well in excess of 5,000, and interpreting services were provided in six different languages using table-top booths, which are less than ideal (fine, that's an understatement). The interpreting console was quite odd and Judy hadn't seen a set-up like this in a long time. For instance, there was a stand-alone microphone with an on/off button, but not the traditional cough button. However, here in the US, conference interpreters learn how to roll with the punches, and the set-up was functional and there were plenty of technicians to ensure good sound. Even though the interpreting conditions were far from ideal, the first day went quite well. We had individual screens on the tables that showed live footage of the

Just outside the booth: it's a party!

speakers, but not of the videos or any PowerPoint slides, but we could see that through the main window of the booth, so it worked. However, this event also featured a DJ, so it was very challenging to get the audio feed through the headset with the hip-hop music at full blast, and we usually could not hear ourselves interpret. So the conditions were difficult, but certainly not impossible.

Judy did notice that a lot of the relatively rowdy attendees were unsure of what these table-top booths were for, and kept on walking up to us to ask us questions and to try to plug in their cell phones, which was incredibly distracting. The event organizers must have noticed that, because the second day of the event, we came back to find "the veiled booth."

Say hello to the veiled tabletop booths!

It sure seems like the event organizers decided to section off the sides of the booth that was open to the ballroom. This seemed like a good idea because it would prevent attendees from wandering into the interpreting booths. However, what we can't figure out is the black veil that's securely fastened to the front and the sides of the booths via very strong velcro strips (and many of them). We were basically stuck without a way to see the stage. We did have the aforementioned screens, but we could not see any videos or PowerPoints that the presenters were showing (and there were quite a lot). In order to interpret those, we had to get up, headset and all, and try to stretch our necks to see. This made our work very difficult indeed, but we persevered. We couldn't find the conference organizers to have a conversation about the veiled booths, so we just worked with what we had. The show must go on.

What do you think, dear colleagues? Would you have been able to work with this? We'd also love to hear about any challenging situations that you have run into at conferences. Please leave a comment and share your experiences!

What Is This? Enter to Win!

A few weeks ago, our friend and colleague Nataly Kelly, co-author (with our also friend and colleague Jost Zetzsche) of the marvelous book Found in Translation, donated several copies of the book to us. We will be raffling them off here on the blog, and tried to come up with a clever way to select a winner. 

In the past, we have done this by having readers identify who is who (we are, after all, twins) in a picture, having readers guess where a particular picture was taken, and a variety of other things. We haven't yet run out of ideas, so here's our latest one: Have a look at the picture below and tell us what it is that you are looking at. We realize it's a bit challenging, so here are two hints:

1. It does have to do with either translation or interpretation.
2. Judy tried to work here.

The book (standard shipping included to wherever you happen to live) will belong to the first person (timestamp) to guess correctly. Simply submit your entry (one per person, please) leaving a comment.

Good luck! We love raffles! And yes, we willl raffle off more copies of Found in Translation very soon.

Top Language Lovers: Voting Phase

We can't believe it's already been a year, but time flies, doesn't it? We recently received a notification that this blog had been nominated for Lexiophile's Top 100 Language Lovers competition. We are very honored to have won this category (language professionals blogs) before, so if you enjoy our blog and would like to vote for us, we'd very much appreciate it. You can vote for this blog (or a variety of other fantastic blogs written by our friends and colleagues) here. The list is alphabetical, so if you'd like to vote for us, please scroll down until you see "Translation Times." There are so many great blogs to choose from!

The official voting button.

In addition, Judy's Twitter feed (she's @language_news) was also nominated in the Twitter category, and to our astonishment, she has more than 7,000 followers! If you enjoy what she shares on her feed, you can vote for it here. 

As past winners, we know that winners do not receive any monetary reward, but you do get bragging rights and Lexiophiles makes a lovely donation to a charity in the winners' name, which we think is just fantastic. 

Voting is open now and continues through June 9th. Winners will be announced on June 12. The final results will  be based on votes (50%) and evaulations by the Lexiophiles staff (50%). In addition to the Twitter and language professionals blog category, there are also a variety of other categories that need your vote, including best Facebook page, best YouTube channel, and best language learning blogs.

Translation Cartoons: Tina and Mouse

http://www.tina-and-mouse.com/

A few weeks ago, we received an e-mail from Elena de Terán Bleiberg, a lovely colleague in Spain who is both a medical doctor and a translator. Oh, and she's a cartoonist, too, one who chooses a female translator as the progagonist of her very attratively drawn minimalist cartoons. Her sidekick is a cute little mouse, who is also quite wise and has some good insight. His or her name (we are not sure!) is simply Mouse, hence the title of the cartoons "Tina and Mouse." We are particularly fond of the lead character's name, as one of our dearest friends is also named Tina. 

Elena has worked in the translation industry in a variety of roles (freelancer, project manager, editor, third-party reviewer, director of medical translation services, etc.) since 1991, and she's published more than 40 Tina and Mouse cartoons in 2013 and 2014. Be sure to check out her blog. We haven't been this excited about translation cartoons since we discovered the great Mox, who seems to be on a bit of a hiatus at the moment.

We immediately fell in love with them and wanted to share them with all our readers! Have a look at all of them here. 

Webinar on Web 2.0 for Translators (German)

On June 4 and June 11, Dagy will present two one-hour webinars (in German) that are all about social media for translators. She will show you how to use social media to promote your services, get a solid online footprint, and attract more clients. This webinar is organized by the German association BDUE and should be a lot of fun! Dagy has a lot of experience addressing these topics, and she will help you overcome any technology-related fears that you might have. Have you wondered if blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are for you and how you can get the most out of these tools? Dagy will tell you how, and here's more good news: you don't need to have any programming or advanced IT skills at all. If you can send an e-mail with an attachment or download your digital pictures from your camera, then you are ready to use social media to promote your business! Of course, the very best part of marketing via social media is that the vast majority of it is completely free (other than the cost of your time). 

Please remember that these two webinars (one hour of introductory information on June 4 and one hour of advanced techniques on June 11) will be presented entirely in German. This blog post is in English because, well, our entire blog is in English.

There are still some slots left, so sign up here. 

Recommended Reading: 101 Things a Translator Needs to Know

We recently received our review copy of "101 Things a Translator Needs to Know," and evey though our reading lists are quite long, we had to read this one first (we devoured it in one sitting). Thanks to one of the authors, Chris Durban, for sending the copy. The short review is: we like it. A lot. Go read it.

It's on the bookshelf! Picture by Judy.

This nifty little book (it has no page numbers, but it appears to be roughly 200 pages) is published by the WLF Think Tank, which is an ad hoc group of highly experienced translators (who have more than 500 years' experience between them). Many great working professionals contributed to this book, and they include our colleagues Nick Rosenthal, Janet Fraser, Ros Schwartz, Terry Oliver, Steve Dyson, and many others. The book is lovingly illustrated by talented illustrator Catherine Anne Hiley, and we are very fond of her work, with the exception of some drawings that just don't work well in black and white (including the drawing of a prism). Her work is clever and engaging, and every single one of the 101 things (or tips) comes with its own little drawing. It's a great idea that really draws the reader in.

The 101 things every translator needs to know consist of very short and concise bits of information -- consider it the Cliff Notes of our industry. We've long emphasized the importance of being brief and concise for maximum effect on readers, and this book truly pulls that off. The advice is short (roughly half a page each), spot-on, gives you plenty of food for thought, and is quite wise. Even the titles are very witty and engaging.

Here are some of our favorites (yes, it's hard to choose just a few):

#17: Hallmarks of a good translation

#23: Beware of sharks 

#34: When to say no

#49: Professionals v amateurs

#50: Don't bury your head in the sand. 

#88: The customer is always right. Or is she? Note: We love the consistent use of the female pronoun.

#96: Be transparent.

#101: Rules are made to be broken

This is most certainly a book that belongs on every translator's shelf. You can buy yours here. It is worth every penny of the $20.56 cover price.