tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59427510171222805992008-08-20T22:27:56.692-05:00Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-10036800299908445522008-08-14T22:32:00.005-05:002008-08-20T22:27:56.707-05:00

5. Gregory Rabassa (1922– ) (OK, you've probably heard of Rabassa.) Rabassa is a second-generation Cuban American who is currently a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and a winner of the National Medal of Arts and the National Book Award for Translation. He is a highly regarded translator of numerous works from Spanish and Portuguese into English, including Gabriel García Márquez’s One

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-3193530130189041892008-08-04T12:20:00.002-05:002008-08-04T12:51:26.598-05:00

Here's the latest thing that's got that bonnet bee of mine buzzing: when translation agencies spam their vendors (i.e. freelance translators). There are two kinds of agency spam. The first type, the lesser evil, is when project managers send out mass e-mails looking for someone to take a given job. There are a couple of problems with this. First, while it is efficient for the agency and for the

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-8745636968412167832008-07-23T01:43:00.002-05:002008-07-23T01:50:29.538-05:00

Very little research is done into the political and social attitudes of American translators. Anecdotally I've always had the impression that most of us lean Democratic politically and progressive socially. Here is an interesting link that backs this up: Huffington Post FundRace 2008 Based on this search, American translators have donated $12,281 to Republican candidates and $104,132 to

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-28320595035588119162008-07-21T15:24:00.000-05:002008-07-21T15:25:14.521-05:00

I just finished grading a bunch of translation tests and I’m irritated that some of these translators were willing to waste their time on these tests. Two of the translators in particular had me ranting and raving. One took a medical translation test (into English) and did not know that “kalium” is not an element in English (it should be “potassium”). I would give them a little credit (although

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-73993101267490440742008-07-16T10:55:00.005-05:002008-07-16T11:39:20.993-05:00

I often get asked by friends and acquaintances what languages I'm teaching my kids. I always say, "English, of course." And then when the list doesn't continue, my conversational partner is inevitably disoriented and confused. After all, I speak a couple of languages: why wouldn't I want my kids to speak them, too? First, a disclaimer. My background is in second-language acquisition, linguistics

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-37634274463027328052008-07-13T00:13:00.000-05:002008-07-13T00:14:20.339-05:00

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean annual gross wage for translators and/or interpreters is $41,690. According to the ATA compensation survey for 2007, the average gross earnings for translators and/or interpreters is more like $60,423. What’s with the discrepancy? Apparently the BLS statistics come from surveys sent to companies about their employees, so these are

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-44395563234763589992008-07-10T15:22:00.002-05:002008-07-10T15:24:30.400-05:00

This is a fascinating item you have got to read: The Tort of Negligent Translation. Needless to say, conservative bloggers are going haywire over this--but not over the issues of nuance in translation, which is fundamentally what is going on here.

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-64155040504690292772008-06-28T00:14:00.003-05:002008-06-28T00:18:02.066-05:00

In a recent post, ThoughtsOnTranslation gave some terrific tips for freelance translators to grow their businesses, translators who are at the make or break point of being able to live off their translation work. One of her suggestions got me thinking. She wisely suggests making sure you’re never late with a job and also researching and proofreading it carefully. But there’s something else that

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-6482296341231803892008-06-22T15:13:00.003-05:002008-06-22T15:21:01.385-05:00

The last time I found myself stuck with unpaid invoices from a translation agency that had gone bankrupt was about five months after 9/11. Even though the translation industry in the United States is apparently not in any particular recession right now (the weak dollar is pulling translation work from abroad into the United States), last month an agency I have worked for for years has gone

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-19958940932910092932008-06-13T21:19:00.000-05:002008-06-13T21:20:33.607-05:00

I don’t know about other translators, but I have the occasional superstition when I work. Through either a miracle or clever business negotiations I recently received about twice my normal per word rate on a job. This doesn’t happen as often as I like, but it happens often enough that I’ve noticed I have a superstition about these jobs: I work extra hard on them because I’m being paid more per

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-52400986183060418732008-06-11T23:44:00.002-05:002008-06-11T23:48:56.101-05:00

The nature of translation is always a hot topic of discussion on translator blogs and at conferences, etc. There’s a little swirl of discussion about this underway right now on Yndigo and GITS. One thing that should perhaps be more overt in the conversation is the notion of the translator as mercenary. Professional translators translate for money. I don’t know how many go home from a long day

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-32260317216116673772008-06-08T14:53:00.002-05:002008-06-08T15:18:48.213-05:00

I have often railed here against book reviews in the New York Times (NYT) and elsewhere that summarize a translation with a trivial adverb ("lovingly," "thoughtfully," "jarringly"), which is a hallmark a reviewer who hasn't the faintest idea how to review the translation per se but nonetheless feels a need to comment on the translation. These kinds of reviews are all too common, and reviewers

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-41039850231866837122008-06-08T11:12:00.002-05:002008-06-08T11:13:02.589-05:00

Got a call from a large agency at 7:22 a.m. on a Sunday morning today. That is just wrong.

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-72916411592586456612008-06-06T11:53:00.001-05:002008-06-06T11:56:48.348-05:00

I have a controversial point to make here, so hear me out. I have a friend who’s a lawyer. He does not proofread his own documents. He doesn’t even type; his clients don’t want to pay his hourly rate for typing. He just dictates, which is faster, and his secretary does the typing. This lawyer friend of mine’s time is valuable. He has years of education and years of experience. I have more years

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-18122158606466625852008-05-30T16:21:00.000-05:002008-05-30T16:22:03.394-05:00

Greed For translators this usually means saying yes to too much work or to something just because the agency is offering you one or two more cents a word. It occasionally means putting off your life because an extremely lucrative offer has come your way. I can recall not wanting to go over to a friend’s house for dinner because I had the chance to make a week’s worth of income if I just stayed

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-56532187775528696452008-05-22T16:05:00.003-05:002008-05-22T21:10:12.232-05:00

Dear Translation Agencies of the World: Here are the Top 10 irritants that you, knowingly or unknowingly, do to freelance translators the world over. Could you please learn from this list and improve? 1. Phantom Jobs. Stop contacting translators with the promise of a large future job or jobs when the work hasn’t even been officially placed with you. Either you have a job to place, or you don’t

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-76654227861178142002008-05-18T23:12:00.002-05:002008-05-18T23:43:56.681-05:00

The United States is an interesting country for a variety of reasons, not least because of its names (America, U.S., USA, etc.). It's a plural country in most languages, but in U.S. English it takes a singular verb. The demonym "American" is a bit controversial since North and South America are also full of "Americans," too, though in a different sense, yet English lacks a term such as Spanish "

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-59559214117678325252008-05-06T22:26:00.005-05:002008-05-06T22:34:07.612-05:00

Today I received a PO in which the target language was “American.” In this case, it was a Swedish agency, but I’ve seen the same phenomenon from other Europeans in the past. But the Scandinavians are particularly and notoriously bad about this. Far too frequently they call British English “English” and American English “American,” which is ridiculous. “American” is not a language! Eons ago I

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-89026094554381234822008-05-04T23:29:00.001-05:002008-05-04T23:30:57.009-05:00

In the May 3, 2008, New York Times Book Review, several translated novels were reviewed. As is standard for the New York Times Book Review, most of the reviewers have given the translators of these novels an adverb, or adjective. For example, Howard Goldblatt's translation of Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out was deemed "fluent and elegant" translation. Julia Lovell’s translation of Yan

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-7889032933850911222008-04-30T18:12:00.002-05:002008-04-30T18:16:27.825-05:00

There is no such thing as a style guide or grammar book that says that the split infinitive should be avoided. Yet, there is a widespread belief that prohibitions against the split infinitive are copious, as this Language Log post explores When was the last time you actually read a style guide or grammar book? How much do you really know about grammar, usage, punctuation, and style? Do you use

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-35702391654675764742008-04-28T15:11:00.006-05:002008-04-28T16:03:21.193-05:00

So I was reading this article on CNET, which is actually a great Web site for tech news and reviews with splotches of geek humor mixed in, all about how it sucks to be your own IT person. And I realized reading this article that most translators, self-employed ones, end up being their own tech people, too. One of the most important skills in being a self-employed translator probably lies in the

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-75876367921390611592008-04-22T15:29:00.000-05:002008-04-22T15:30:04.181-05:00

Here is a topic appropriate for today that few translation blogs ever mention: translation is one of the greenest jobs out there. I’m talking specifically about self-employed translators. Translators who work in office buildings for agencies or other companies obviously can do their part to reduce their carbon footprint, consumption of resources, and waste output, but self-employed translators

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-28575226175243504892008-04-17T21:21:00.002-05:002008-04-17T21:53:29.594-05:00

I got an inquiry the other day from one of the big agencies I work for. It is the perfect example of another big waste of translators’ time. The agency starts out by saying, "Hi! How are you? I have a new job opportunity for you! We are trying to impress this new client of ours, and so we’re trying to place this job with our best linguists possible! Obviously, we think that’s you! If you could

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-30248579509088988292008-04-11T23:10:00.001-05:002008-04-11T23:10:39.941-05:00

At a dinner party I once shocked someone by explaining that a translator cannot simply produce an exact equivalent of the source text in the target language. She said, “Why not? Why don’t you just translate what it says?” So I explained that there really wasn’t any such thing as an exact equivalent. For example, in French you might introduce yourself by saying, “Je m’appelle X.” How would you

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5942751017122280599.post-39534929385846684932008-04-08T16:20:00.000-05:002008-04-08T16:21:03.417-05:00

Here is a pet peeve of mine. This has happened 4 times in the last couple of weeks! An agency contacts me and says they have, let’s say for example, a 15,000 word medical translation from one of my source languages into English. Then they invariably want to know what I would charge and when I could get it back to them. So, I let them know about my rates and I check my schedule to see when I’m

Masked Translatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01930652371980240478noreply@blogger.com