Introduction to Translation Starts 3/31

The new quarter at UC-San Diego starts next Tuesday, and Judy is delighted to be teaching two classes. If you are interested in taking these online courses, which are part of the English/Spanish Translation and Interpretation Certificate, read on and sign up! All classes are offered on the highly sophisticated,  but user-friendly online learning platform Blackboard.

1.) Introduction to Translation: This five-week online course will introduce you to the basics of translation and give you lots of practical information. There's very little theory here. This course will teach you what to expect in the world of professional translation and will give you the building blocks you need to decide if translation is for you. There are two graded translations during the course and plenty of other exercises. No prerequisites.

2.) Strategic Branding and Marketing for Translators and Interpreters: This ten-week online course will give new interpreters and translators (and experienced ones, too!) the tools they need to successfully market their services and make a living in this highly rewarding, but also competitive industry. Most universities don't teach their T&I students anything about marketing, but UC-San Diego is leading the way to give graduates of the certificate these essential skills. Each week includes a PowerPoint with audio lecture on a variety of topics, such as online marketing, offline marketing, website, etc. This class has several prerequisites, so please make sure you are eligible to take it by checking the course program here. 

If you have any questions about these classes, Judy will be happy to answer them here. Just leave a comment below.

Improve Any Translation: Do This

Today's post is part of the "Quick Posts" series, which are entries you should be able to read in five minutes or less and that give you specific advice that you can implement very quickly.

We oftentimes get this question from students: How do I improve my second translation draft?

Here are a few ideas:

• Deadline permitting: sleep on it. We are huge believers in negotiating deadlines that allow us to sleep on our second drafts. Translations are always better when you have more time.
• Print out the translation. Read it on paper. We are tree huggers, but sorry, dear trees. Try to print on recycled paper, though.

After you've done that, read each and every single sentence individually and ask yourself the following questions:

• Does this make sense? If not, what can you do about it?
• Does this sound translated? If yes, what can you do about it?
• Does this sound idiomatic?  If not, what can you do about it?
• Would someone who doesn't see the source text understand the target?  If not, what can you do about it?

We hope you have enjoyed today's Quick Post. We'd love to hear from you, too. Just leave a comment below.

2-Day Court Interpretation Bootcamp: Vegas 3/28 + 3/29

Image: Linkedin.com

If you are looking for top-notch instruction to hone your court interpretation skills -- and perhaps to prepare for the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination in July -- you might enjoy this workshop in sunny Vegas next week. While the Nevada Interpreters and Translators Association (NITA), of which Judy is the proud past president, is not organizing the event, the organization is helping promote this two-day workshop here in Vegas presented by well-known interpreter trainer  and federally certified English/Spanish interpreter Alfonso Villaseñor.

Record your renditions!

This might also be ideal for court interpreters in colder climates (pretty much most of the country), as it's currently in the low 80s in Vegas. You might want to combine a trip to Vegas (affordable hotels in the newly hip downtown) with a top-notch professional development opportunity. And for the record, and as always, we are not getting paid to promote this event. Rather, Judy will attend this workshop herself. While Alfonso Villaseñor does not have a website where you can read more about his workshops, please rest assured that he's a fantastic trainer with a lot of experience. His style is also quite unique, and we've both had the pleasure to hear him present at an ATA conference. As opposed to many interpreter trainers and courses targets at those court interpreters preparing for big exams, Alfonso focuses on technique rather on the simply memorizing terminology, which we think is a fantastic idea.

So here's the link to NITA's website, where you can find more information about this event. It's coming up -- next week! The cost is $500 for two days, and it appears to be well worth it.

If you have any questions, please be sure to contact Alfonso Villaseñor directly by clicking here. Note: this workshop is language-neutral.

The Community Interpreter: Salinas, California

It's a great pleasure to announce a fantastic professional development opportunity to our readers and colleagues. Judy has trained with both the fantastic workshop leaders and highly recommends them! Tracy Young is the founding president of NITA, a long-time trainer for Bridging the Gap and Connecting Worlds, and also a registered nurse (plus a certified medical interpreter, of course). Katharine Allen is a graduate of the newly renamed Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (formerly the Monterey Institute of International Studies, MIIS) MIIS) and the co-president of InterpretAmerica. She has given many workshops across the country. Both Tracy and Katharine are highly dynamic speakers with several train-the-trainer workshops under their belts. Their styles are very similar in the sense that they use the Socratic method more often than not -- and their hands-on exercises are fantastic. Judy is a graduate of Tracy's fall 2009 Connecting Worlds workshop, where she learned much of what she knows about medical interpreting. Katharine has given several workshops for NITA, including a popular afternoon of simultaneous interpretation and another one of note-taking. You can't go wrong with these two trainers! Ah, we are so excited about this workshop that it even seems like they are paying us - but we assure you they are not. We are merely posting this as a courtesy to everyone, and because top-notch professional development is always worth it, but sometimes hard to find (there are a lot of pseudo-qualified trainers out there, but we digress).

The Community Interpreter (TCI) is a 40-hour workshop for medical and community interpreters that's required to take the natioanal interpreter certification exams for medical interpreting. It is the only 40-hour training course in the US that specifically teaches community interpreting. It was developed by industry leader Marjory Bancroft of Cross-Cultural Communications. TCI goes a bit beyond Bridging the Gap and Connecting Worlds, and the curriculum looks fantastic. Participants who wish to receive the certificate of training at the end must be tested for language proficiency (the fee is included in the total price). Note: this workshop is language-neutral.

The workshop will be held at Natividad Medical Center in Salinas, CA, during the last week of April. For additional information and to sign up, please visit the website. 

Job Posting: Full-Time Localization Specialists

As most readers know, full-time in-house positions in our industry are quite rare. Judy is one of the dying breed of translators who actually had an in-house position for many years, but prefers to work for herself. 

However, there is much to say for the stability and regular income of an in-house position, and these jobs can also really help hone your translation skills, as you can really focus on translation without having to spend time on other things (marketing, accounting, etc.). That said, there were a lot of meetings that Judy used to have to go to, and not all were productive. But we digress. One of the challenges with the requirements for these positions is that employers mostly want highly experienced linguists, and chances are that these highly experienced linguists already work for themselves (statistically and anecdotally). And it's pretty darn hard to convince established self-employed linguists to go to an office every day and sit in a cubicle, even if the job is very cool. Which leaves the less experienced linguists, who tend to be younger and more interested in a steady job so they can start building their careers. But of course they don't tend to have much experience, creating quite a dilemma. There's no easy solution to this, but this is an issue that Judy ran into frequently when trying to recruit linguists with experience for her in-house team years ago: she just couldn't get experienced people to apply. Now, on to the job posting, we promise!

We just saw these positions announced on one of the listservs of the American Translator Association, where a lovely colleague posted it for all to see. We wanted to share it with all readers here, but want to emphasize that we do not know the company nor do we have any additional information.

There are several jobs for localization specialists, and they are all located in Bellevue, Washington (gorgeous Seattle, basically). Motiga is a company that produced games, which sounds quite fun to us, even though the only game we were ever allowed to play as kids was Pacman at the arcade.

Localization Specialist, German

Localization Specialist, Spanish

Localization Specialist, French

We had a look at Motiga's website and got the impression that it would be a great place to work, but as we said, we don't know anyone there (nor is anyone paying us to post this). For further information, please click on the link above. Best of luck! We'd love to hear if one of our readers gets one of these positions.

Recommended Reading: Marketing Cookbook for Translators

Perhaps the best cookbook we own?

This post marks the return of our recommended reading series, and this is the first book we recommend for 2015. As we've done for many years, we like to recommend good books to our readers. Our rules for reviewing books are simple: we receive quite a few unsolicited books, and even solicited books don't guarantee a review. In general, we see no point in writing unflattering reviews, so we generally don't review books we would not recommend. We did receive a (very welcome) copy of The Marketing Cookbook for Translators by our colleague Tess Whitty (English<->Swedish translator), who lives in Utah, and here's the short version: we like it. Go read it, especially if you are a beginning translator.

Now, here's the longer review. In general, we think the market for self-published books in the T&I industry is getting a bit saturated. Some of the books that have hit the market lately aren't particularly useful, but Tess' book sure is, because it focuses on a very specific area that's particularly challenging and scary to many newcomers (and even advanced translators): marketing. It can all seem a bit daunting when you go out into the big world of translation and try to leave your mark, acquire clients, and earn a living. While there already is a lot of information out there on how to market your services, as far as we know, there previously hadn't been an entire handy-dandy book that focused just on marketing. Now we have one. Reading this book is infinitely easier and more convenient than trying to compile the information from multiple sources such as blogs, newsletters, etc.

We really liked the clever idea of structuring the book like a cookbook, and the entire theme is quite cute and well executed. The book is divided into eight chapters with witty names such as Your Pantry, Appetizers, Side Dishes, etc. Then the individual sections are aptly called Recipes (of which there are 25). Tess' style is clear, easy to read, and direct and insightful. We particularly like Recipe 8, which focuses on the ever-important topic of the website, and includes solid SEO (search engine optimization) advice. We also like the easy-to-locate resources sections that are included for additional reading throughout the book. 

Many readers might recognize Tess from her very active involvement in the ATA and her fantastic podcast called Marketing Tips for Translators (for which Judy has been interviewed). With this book, she's given our industry newcomers a solid guide to marketing their services. No recipe is ever truly foolproof, but with this book, Tess has given you all the right ingredients and plenty of good tips to set you on the right path. However, the hard work is still up to you.

Here's some purchasing information for the book. It will make a great addition to any translator's collection. And for the record, Judy's copy lives in her office, but was only posing on the cookbook shelf for the picture.