Translation Memory is the gravy on top of the translation business, the fat of the translation land, the easy money, the cherry on top…. So who gets the cherry? (Go to 5:58 in “The Fighting 69 and 1 Half,” an old Warner Bros cartoon on YouTube, to see how these things can wind up.) Moral of the story: Never bring live steel to vendor meetings.
Thanks to the vast amount of data now being translated, and the ease with which existing translation can be automatically aligned into translation memory text strings, the power and reach of translation memory technology into every nook and cranny of a domain mean that the bigger a translation memory, the better. So an industry-specific translation memory better than a client-specific one. But if you want a [...]

I’ve watched enough Star Trek over the years to know that all the best ideas come from space opera, which just goes to show that you translators are square in the cross-sights of a professional death ray from a vast conspiracy of Science Fiction hacks.
It’s not just that some Sci-Fi writers are good at predicting the future. The prognostication powers of some ink-stained SF wretch staring at a half blank page through a half empty bottle of Stoli are actually quite limited.   Cory Doctorow says, “Science fiction writers don’t predict the future (except accidentally), but if they’re very good, they may manage to predict the present.”
And that’s the problem for you translators. These SF guys pick up on all the memes and ideas floating around in the meme echo-chamber (aka the Republic of Letters) and [...]

The DEA is seeking Ebonic translators to help interpret drug investigation wiretapped conversations, and that has got some people stirred up. Ebonics, a.k.a. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), is one of 114 languages that DEA agents require to understand in order to conduct investigations in the southeastern US.
AP reports that the Drug Enforcement Administration recently sent memos asking a bunch of language service providers for nine translators in the Southeast who are fluent in Ebonics. We were not contacted.
Linguist Robert Williams started calling AAVE “Ebonics” (combining “ebony” and “phonics”) in 1975, and the term saw some use in scholarly circles, but the concept really took off after The Oakland School Board decided “to denote and recognize the primary language (or sociolect or ethnolect) of African American children attending school, and thereby to [...]

Back when I was calling in my stories from the telephone booth, I was also learning about the care and feeding of editors. They like a hook, something to make the story you pitch seem fresh and newsworthy. So what’s an intrepid reporter supposed to do when he wants to rehash some three-year-old study on bad medical interpreting practice? Regular readers will know that this little topic is my top choice for serious axe-grinding.
OK. But still no hook. How about this… Kids’ doctors avoid professional translation. 1000 days later, has anything changed?
Hmmm. Weak. It will just have to do…
This from UPI, “U.S. pediatricians use family members instead of professional translators with non-English-speaking patients, says a new study. [At least it was new back in April 2007.]
“Seventy percent of physicians surveyed said they use the patient’s bilingual [...]

A few months ago I wrote about Maya Hess and her big “Red T” education effort. Maya has set up a page on Facebook. “The Red T raises awareness of the plight of translators and interpreters working in conflict zones, detention camps, and prisons,” she says.
Maya believes that the profession is under siege, and “its practitioners face extreme distrust.” Her advocacy is driven by years of interpretation for national security and law enforcement.
“In Iraq, while interpreting between troops and local populations, interpreters wear face masks to avoid being recognized, denounced as traitors, tortured, or killed when they return to their communities. In Afghanistan, letters are slid under translators’ doors threatening the execution of their families. In the United States, linguists for alleged and convicted terrorists have been accused/convicted of aiding [...]

Translation: IBM has announced the creation of an open-source project around its Translation Manager/2 (TM/2) software and named it OpenTM2. The project’s aim is to promote open standards like Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) in the translation and localization industry, and to develop an open source translation platform based on such standards. To achieve this, IBM is cooperating with the Localisation Industry Standards Association (LISA), which oversees TMX spec development.
A reference implementation of a fully open translation environment is available to integrate the OpenTM2 CAT system with the free Joomla CMS and the equally free GlobalSight translation management system by Welocalize. OpenTM2 for Windows is released and available to download free of charge.
Don DePalma in Global Watchtower said that translator preferences include translation memories unattached to competitors’ apron strings, so this one [...]

Are you a CTP? That’s “Certified Translation Professional” to industry insiders. And I guess you’ve got to be pretty inside, because I just heard about it while trolling for blog fodder on this lazy Friday afternoon.
“The Certified Translation Professional (CTP) Program is a 100% online based translator training and certification program which can be completed in 3-5 months.
“Being certified can give you credibility when approaching new clients or applying for new projects. The CTP is now the #1 most popular and respected online translation certification program in the industry.”
Right. Reminds me of when I first came to NYC during the last “not so great” recession in 1980. Spent months looking for work, wore out a lot of shoe leather, and polished a lot of doorknobs, as the Germans say. But hell, [...]