Amazing Tool: The Book

Spanish interpreting/translating students, check out this video from leerestademoda.com. You can minimize it, take notes and interpret, cover the subtitles an dstop it to interpret, translate it, use it for pronunciation practice, etc.
Everyone else, just enjoy it and start reading!


This reminded me of a very funny video about the same topic that adid the rounds a few years ago. This time is from Norway, so if you speak Norwegian, you can practise as above. Otherwise enjoy the subtitles!

Telephone Interpreting

An example of telephone interpreting.

Telephone interpreting at work from Voltaire on Vimeo.

The video below will give you an idea of the type of test candidates to European Institutions must undertake.


Finally a video on video interpreting.

Sustainability: Transcripts

For those of you who keep an eye on the blog, even during the holidays, here are some videos on sustainability.

The one above is a mockumentary about the plastic bag. It is narrated by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons, and shows California's plastic bag pollution situation.


The next collection of clips is from the movie Tapped, an award winning documentary. You can watch/download separate short segments and try to write the script and then translate it into your Target Language. It is very good practice and you may find some courses of interpreting/translating with subjects about translating multimedia materials. So get ready and learn more about our environment at the same time.

End of course

School's finished by rosao

Hi all. This week is the last week of our courses, Interpreting & Translating for international and local students. It's been a busy year but  most of us feel we could do with a few more weeks, in terms of learning. Nevertheless, we all need a break!

Enjoy the holiday, celebrate it with family and friends and find time to do some reading and listening not to go rusty!

Here are some links you may find useful:

• Thanks to Simon, this link tells us about the use of the apostrophe for plurals
• Sustainability is a big topic. Here is a great post that links sustainability and creativity
• On the topic of creativity, watch some of these videos and practise your listening,  note taking and translation skills
• You can start Keeping in Contact with colleagues
• 
  Go to Rolan's wiki and check his environment page. Look at the footprint calculator, dust storms' effect on health, and explore the rest of his pages
• Finally, translation students may want to explore Translator's CAT Tools. Wordfast has a free version. Why don't you download it and start learning how to use it? You'll be acquiring transferable skills useful for when you decide to upgrade and get a more professional CAT program.

Thanks for your course evaluations. They really help us teachers to get feedback on our delivery and how to improve it. It's been a pleasure teaching you all. Till next year. Have a great break and come back invigorated and ready for the challenge!

TED Translations & Style Manuals

Have you heard of TED? You may have had consecutive practice from one of its lectures. TED, a non-profit organisation, was originally started with people form the Technology, Education and Design world. Their aim was, and still is, to ideas worth spreading. You can read more about it here.


TED Open Translation Project is an attempt to try to have as many of its talks translated (subtitled) in as many languages as possible. To achieve this they use volunteer translators. Check their website for instructions on how they do it and the measures put in place to ensure quality. They encourage collaboration between translations, so it would be an ideal experience for those of you who are finishing the Translation Skills course or the Diploma of Interpreting and Translation.Why not try it? Give it a go!

In class we have been talking about style manuals and style sheets. Read TED's style guidelines. Notice how for each section there is a reason given to the particular style, tone and register chosen.

Sculpture by the Sea 3rd November 2010

Last week we went to see the outdoor exhibition Sculpture by the Sea. While we were there some of our students did a bit of interpreting practice. We also spoke to one of the locals who gave us an insight into what happens on the weeks proceeding the exhibition.

Listen to it on this video with photos from the day.

New RAE Orthography

Parramatta new cathedral: Can you spot the incongruency?

Consistency of style? Check the question above the picture and tell us what you think in comments.

We were talking about the new orthography changes to come after the 1-4 November meeting by academics of the Spanish language in its birthplace, San Millán de la Cogolla. Before we get the new Orthography by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española, you can check the forum discussions in proz and also know that you can find the old one in our wiki's sidebar.

photo © 2005 Toprural | more info (via: Wylio)

Lost in Translation

'Not exactly a direct English translation" by Matt Perreault
 
El baqueteado intérprete de Calderón is the latest post in Bootheando. In it we are reminded of the fact that, as usual, good news is no news, but bad news spread like fire. The story is the really bad interpretation done for the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon on a press conference with the US President, Barak Obama.
Use the articles below to do some translation work:

• Spanish article Torpe intérprete
• English article Mexican President Calderon Visit Marred By terrible Translation

There is a link to Brian Harris's blog post about a historic case of good (consecutive) interpreting:  the meeting between Franco and Hitler in Hendaya on October 23, 1940.  It's worth reading. Franco resisted Hitler's pressure to join him on the Axis.

Subtitles

 

If you are interested in learning about subtitles, listen to the following podcasts:

• Peter Templeton: Subtitles

  An interview with an editor of subtitles at SBS TV, Sydney

• Donna Tieri: Subtitler

  An interview with an subtitler of Italian/English at SBS TV, Sydney

   

Legal & Society: Sexual Harassment in the workplace

Have you heard the case of publicist Kristy Fraser-Kirk suing her employer, David Jones, for sexual harassment by a former chief executive, Mark McInnes?

Read the smh article and watch the video. Translating students can translate the article. Interpreting students, pause and interpret.

Colocaciones en español

Thanks to Bootheando for informing us about the links below. They are all in Spanish and deal with the topic of collocations in Spanish.
Bootheando  sigue inspirándonos con la publicación de un artículo sobre colocaciones con un par de enlace interesantes:

• DICE Diccionario de colocaciones del Español de la Universidad de la Coruña

• Enlace al blog de Alberto Bustos, que ha publicado un libro electronico en su Blog de Lengua Española bajo la  licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-No comercial-Sin obras derivadas 3.0. Ello quiere decir que podemos incrustarlo (embed) en nuestro blog o imprimirlo, siempre que lo usemos sin fines lucrativos.
  Palabras de bits, palabras de tinta

Sports Deportes

San Sebastian Triatlón 2010 by MiguelSicari

While translating a text comparing Australia & Argentina yesterday, we came across several sports we either had never heard of or we didn't know how to translate.

One of them was indoor soccer, which we thought was fulbito in Spanish. My sons play it and have told me it is also called fútbol sala, futsal o fútbol de salón. Do a small search and you'll find alternative terms in English, like five-a-side or six-a-side. 
I remember that ages ago in Spain fútbol was also called balompié. One of my brothers was  a great hand ball (balón mano)player, all my brothers did judo and we all played baloncesto and vóleibol, vólibol, or balonvolea in High School.

Other popular sports played in Spain are el bádminton, el tenis, el tenis de mesa, el golf. Some sports like el rugby, cricket, sófbol or el béisbol are not as popular as in English speaking countries.

What about traditional sports, like el deporte de equipo celta hurling? In Spain we have el tiro de barra aragonesa, the famous basque jai alai also called pelota vasca or cesta punta (zesta punta in Euskera), Argentina has el pato. There must be hundreds of vernacular sports particular to a region with matching names, only known by the people living in the area.

If you analise the Spanish terms for these sports (which were mostly invented in English speaking countries), there is a range of  ways in which they have been translated into Spanish. Some are left in English (rugby, hurling), others are spelt in Spanish (fútbol, bádminton) while others are translated into Spanish ( balompié, cesta punta from The basque/Euskera).

I leave you with the terms above to start a glossary of sport terms for your translating/interpreting  reference resources. We can also start a common glossary in our wiki. Visit it and add to it. But get up from that chair and run around the block or kick a ball in the back yard!

Don Quijote read on youtube... you can do it too!

Spanish students, do you want to take part in the reading of El Quijote on youtube? Visit the RAE youtube site and read the instructions.

You can listen to the first chapters, already uploaded in Galería de videos. Here is the first one:

Intérpretes: Preparación

Thanks to Bootheando for pointing out this very interesting video on how two Spanish interpreters prepare before a conference job. The conference is on emotional intelligence.

It is all in Spanish, sorry all of the Korean, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese students!

Toponyms Topónimos

Is it London o Londres, Cracovia o Kraków, Viena, o Wien?

We were talking about translation of geographical names and how there is a tendency to start using the names in their original language.

Spanish students can read this post in el blog de la lengua española, Nombres de ciudades extranjeras.

How to name places presents some problems in English too. Check out Wikipedia's own rules on the topic, Wikipedia's Naming Conventions.

Interpreting: 60 second lectures:

There is a new trend in online education: 60 second lectures or microlectures. They contain the essential message and go straight to the point without any excess of words, details or added concepts. Of course there is no room for a lot of depth and the lectures tend to be compact and dense.

I think they are ideal for you, interpreting students, to practise your note-taking skills.
Below is one I subscribed to via iTunes U. This microlecture is delivered by a professor of criminology and psychiatry, Adrian Raine Richard Perry. If you were given an interpreting job for such a professor, you would be advised to do research in those fields of knowledge. However, once you listen to this lecture, you will realise that interpreters must have a wide range of general knowledge (cultura general in Spanish) to better interpret it. The Merchant of Venice and some of its main characters are quoted to illustrate the main thesis of the lecture.

Listen to it once to get the gist of it. Listen a second and third time taking notes. If you find it very difficult, check this worksheet.

CAT Tools for Translating

CAT (Computer Aided Translation Tools) also know as TentT tools (translation environment tools) are tools that help translators create a memory of their translations.

If you are thinking of getting one, check this great site, Translation Training. There are short videos that compare 20 of the most popular tools. Watch them to find out more about the CAT tools available and what they do.

You can also check to see if any of them is free (with limitations, of course), for instance WordFast and download it at home to start learning how to use it.

A good book on it is A Translator's Toolbox by Jost Zetsche. You may be interested in subscribing to his free newsletter Tool Kit.
There are lots of translator forums, blogs and sites discussing these tools.

Other useful Software tools for translators:

Open source (free software applications):

• Okapi Framework

• tuxtrans:Linux for Translators
• CrowdSight &GlobalSight,
• Tradubi
• Software libre para traductores: tables compiled by a Spanish translator

Localization tools:

• Catalyst
• Passolo (part of Trados Studio)
Project Management and invoicing:

• Translation office 3000
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool :

• Abbyy Fine Reader
Machine Translation:

• Translate client for Google translate (free)
Searching tools:

• Xbench for Microsoft glossaries (free)
• Text Align
Training websites:

• Translatorstraining.com
• Proz.com
• Chartered Institute of linguists, UK

English Down Under

On the way to Chowder's Bay by Zhao Xiao













I have just discovered a great radio program about words, A Way with Words. I think you may be be interested in listening to their program on Australian English, English Down Under. Read the post first, it will help you with the listening. Read the comments too and feel free to post your own comment there or here !

Korean Interpreting Student

Today we will practise interpreting by watching this video of an interpreting student at Monterey Institute. At home, use the pause button and start interpreting!

How to Access free lectures, speeches, etc via iTunes U

Subtitles

Last week's sky from our classrooms

Have you ever wondered about subtitles? Who does this type of job? Is it a translator, interpreter. a linguist or just someone who speaks two languages fluently?

Listen to this interview with Peter Templeton, chief editor of Subtitling at SBS.

Health/Beauty: non-comedogenic skin products

We came across this term today: non-comedogenic. Do you know what it means?

Watch this video and you'll learn everything about it!
Take the opportunity of using it to practise your interpreting skills (using the pause button) and/or translating skills.

You can also just concentrate on the medical/cosmetic terminology, like hypoallergenic, non-comedogenic, water-based, clogging, break out, acne prone skin, etc.

A Translator

UN translator talks about her job and the skills required to do it.

• Check this very interesting discussion about translators as business people vs freelancers.

• Remember your dictionary project is due this week.
• Check the assignment page in our wiki bridginggap, week 10. You will be asked to translate some birth certificates. Good practice for your future jobs as translators.
  

Interpreters & Translators

Bootheando has published a very interesting post with the video below.

Those of you who can read Spanish* can check the post here. For the rest, a summary follows.

It's hard for many students to decide whether to become interpreters or translators. Toby Screech, a conference interpreter (AIIC accredited in English, Dutch, French and German) explains the main differences between interpreting and translating.
Watch the video and use it to practise your interpreting skills.

*Spanish speakers can also listen to this great radio program where three Spanish interpreters talk about their job. We are even taken to a school of interpreting in Spain.

Where are the Cockneys? Translated by Simon Wright

The winner of our first challenge to translate one post from bootheando is Simon Wright, who translated the post Donde está el Cockney? .

Read Simon's translation, Where are the Cockneys?, and think of the techniques he has used. What problems did he face? What choices were there for him? What were his final solutions and why?

Read the CVC article on jaifacan and the other links posted in bootheando.

Finally, check this out: Bootheando in australiano!

Keep watching this space for our next winner!

Online Diccionaries & Translation Memory Software Programs

What dictionary should I use? What online dictionary is better? Are there any software programs that we should invest in to help us in our translation jobs? What about glossaries?

All the questions above come from you, the students. The answers are not simple. It is up to each individual to chose the best tools for his/her job. But after consulting with some colleagues and checking the collection of links accumulated during the last few months, here is a preliminary list to give you a starting point:

Basic tools used by many of our students and teachers:

• electronic dictionaries


• Google: define searches.For example: define "attorney general"

Online dictionaries:

• DRAE, Diccionario de la Real Academia Española

• Oxford English Dictionary you have to subscribe


• Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (free)


• Collins


• wordIQ.com
• Diccionarios El País
• Diccionary reference
• My Language

Online glossaries:

• Lexicool.com


• IATE


• Termium
• Glosario internacional para el traductor Spanish
• kudoz glossaries
• proz (advanced search brings up different fields)
• google glossary search
• AltaVista-based glossary search (replace "keyword" at the end of the line by your search term and press Enter)
• Glosario internacional para el traductor (Spanish)
• Xlation
• Glossarist
• 1000 Dictionaries

Translation Memory Programs:

• Wordfast (free if you're not using it professionally)


• translatorstraining.com, where you'll find a list of the most popular ones
• MyMemory
• SDL TRADOS
  

Forums & language sites:

• cvc Instituto Cervantes Spanish
• wikilengua Spanish
• fundeuBBV Spanish
• Microsoft language portal
• proz
• Translators cafe

There are many other resources, check my link Web resources under dictionaries & search engines.

I have copied this page into our bridginggap wiki (dictionaries page). So feel free to add any resource to our list!

I hope this helps!

Place Names

Yesterday we were talking about geographical names in our translation class and today (while searching for a good translating forum) I came across this very interesting post on how to say the name of Equador in Spanish ( El Ecuador ).

The article is in Spanish, but I'm writing this post in English in case our Korean or Mandarin students check the blog. When in doubt about how to say the name of a country in any particular language, one of the things you can do is to check dictionaries, forums and sources from the target language. As the article says, one of the indicators of correctness of a term is USE by educated people in that country.

Online Terms

• To follow up from our previous post, have a look at this fantastic post from Sue Waters (one of the best know educational bloggers) A Glossary to DEMYSTIFY the jargon of the online world. You will learn about some of the web2.0 platforms we are using and other ones that are very popular and practical, not only for personal use, but also for professional networking, professional development and even business management.
• A new podcast has been added to Let's Talk. This time is a casual conversation at coffee break in which three teachers talk about insurance. Good for interpreting listening practice, note taking, glossary work, etc. Don't forget to check the worksheet.

Web 2.0 & IT

Last week we had a first look at our interpreting/translating blog. Some of you may have never thought of the Internet as part of interpreting or translating training.

Read this post by the author of the interpreting blog bootheando (can you explain the title?):
Los términos de la Web 2.0.

Translate it into Spanish (350 words). We will publish the best translation for students of languages other than Spanish (SLOTS!).

Welcome to our blog!

A warm welcome to the new Semester 2 Interpreting & Translating students!

Check the Introduction to this blog and read the first few posts (in archives on the right sidebar): January (1), February (7, etc.

To help you familiarise yourselves with navigating the blog, podcasting blogs and wikis, open this worksheet (word doc version). You can save it (to type the answers) or print it (to handwrite the answers) in order to answer the questions.

Hints to start the new semester

One of the things you can start doing form your first week into the new semester is make a point of visiting the college library and study centre.

Check this fun video on libraries.


You can also learn new study strategies from unexpected sources. Have a lookat this clip from the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, which tells you how to avoid the problem of forgetting a memory stick by using Google Docs. Enjoy it!

Spain got in!

Can't help it! Spain got into the final at the World Cup for the first time ever!. I don't follow soccer, but I'm surrounded by all these guys who do, one of whom had the determination to watch the cup live in South Africa (see Spanish-flag-wrapped boy on the left).

Read all about it on the ABC article Spanish deserving of final berth.

Some say it is going to have a positive effect on the country, which is going a terrible economic crisis*. Read the BBC Mundo Spanish article by Lorena Arroyo.
*Back from Spain, where some of my relatives and friends have just received hefty cuts in their salaries as public servants.

English, the new disesase?

This would be very difficult to interpret. You can try translating it, though...

Hav a look at the macmillan dictionary blog where I found the video above. There are very interesting articles on English variations, like South African English (very topical!)

Police Interpreting

We have looked at an exammple of the type of dialogue we could encounter at a police station.

To get an idea of how a police interview is conducted and the language associated with it, you can visit this post about the Australian Police interview with Dr Mohammed Haneef. It has a link to the full transcript (be careful, it is a 17.10 MB file!)of the second interview . You can access smaller segments of the transcript within the post.

Practise interpreting the English into your Target Language.

Asylum Seekers and Refugees

"Refugeee Camp"

While we are working on the topic of migration, we have come across asylum seekers and refugees. Read this article from the local paper that prompted our interest.

Check this very clear definitions of the different types of asylum seekers, refuges and more.
Check the Australian Immigration Fact Sheet on Refugees

There are several organisations in Sydney that help asylum seekers and refugees and have a volunteer program:
Asylum Seekers Centre

• Jesuit Refugee Service
• Refugee Council of Australia
• STARTTS

This is the video we were talking about in class of a former Afghan refugee, Riz Wakil, who got a a personal surfing lesson with Tony Abbott thanks to the bidding of the lobby group Get up:

TAFE Event Management Flash Mob Dance

Those clever folk at TAFE NSW - Sydney Institute used social media to build a team of students to flash mob/dance at Central station last week, it could easily go viral.

Ultimo TAFE events management students last week held a flash mob event at Central Station.
The event was a great success, with over 100 dancers making their move to help raise money for Westmead Medical Research Foundation & 'The Move Movement".

Some of the people involved were Urban Dance Centre and choreographer Nikki Britton. The YouTube clip was filmed by Randwick TAFE screen and media students, produced and edited by Janusz Dareck.

Tweet, retweet, blog or anything else; they deserve our enthusiastic support for this brilliant effort!

Take the opportunity to listen to this podcast with some Event Management students from Loftus TAFE who helped organise last year's Green Light for Green Skills conference held by the TAFE NSW Managers Association.

Survey

Hi all,

The end of the course in very close! I would appreciate students in the two classes I'm in charge of to complete the survey below. It will helop us, teachers, improve our teaching delivery and thus improve the courses.

IS Diploma of I & T K2

Translation Skills (Spanish/Korean)

Listening Practice

Interpreters need to hone up their listening skills. Many of you have learnt English from American teachers, so when confronted with dialogue spoken with an Australian accent you are finding it a bit difficult to follow.
Below I'm listing the Let's Talk podcasts that are more conversational or challenging, as opposed to very clear interviews. Remember to look at the worksheets to get more out of the listening.

• Coffee Break, TAFE teachers having a cuppa
• Stress, TAFE teachers coffee break conversation
  
• Sculpture by the Sea, some English accents here
• Event Management, young Australian TAFE Students
• Nikki, architecture student
• Unity, TAFE CGVE students and teachers

From other pocasting blogs:

• Archie the Sheepman
• More real conversations by Mark White
• s.m.h. multimedia news
• abc radio Conversations with Richard Fidler
• AUSIT recordings
• Live from... interviews with members of the public
  

,

Interpreting Videos

A simple search with "interpreting" brings up a wealth of videos that illustrate different aspects of interpreting.
Check the videos below.
The first is an amazing simultaneous interpreter doing an interpreting job in a TV program where the guest is Oscar de la Renta.


The second video is an example of consecutive interpreting done in Argentina (English<>Spanish) during an interview with Roger Waters (Pink Floyd).


The last one is a history of interpreting in Brussels for European Institutions since 1952. It shows the different types of interpreting that can be used according to different situations (whispering, simultaneous, consecutive, one way, two way) and how things have changed from having only two interpreters to the present need for interpreters for 23 different languages!


I have left a permanent link, Interpreting Training Videos, within Useful links/Interpreting links on the right side-bar.

Changes in the SOL

Windy Field










Check the Department of Immigration, What's New? Recent Changes in General Skilled Migration.

If you have any further questions after the Ultimo institute broadcast about the changes, check the website above for answers, phone the 1300 numbers given on their website and/or contact your migration agent.

Library Pocasts: Interpreting Practice

St George TAFE Library staff have been producing podcasts with information about the library services and instructions on how to use different technology and library facilities. Although they are specifically talking about St George college, most of what they say can be applied to any college library and many other libraries in Australia. Their instructions on how to use technology are also general.

Some of their podcasts are in Languages Other Than English (LOTE), so they are great practice for interpreting students.

These are some of the podcasts:

• English: Internet searching
  

• English: Library etiquette
  
• EnglishUsing TAFEcat

• Cantonese: SES username and password

• Cantonese: Plagiarism

• Arabic: Copyright

Mandarin: SeS username and password

Spanish: How to borrow from St George Library

Spanish: Off campus services

Complete List of Multilingual Podcasts

International Students

Attribution: "Exams_by_Majeed"

I distributed some istudents magazines today. If you didn't get one, you can access them online:


istudent magazine. Check their article avoiding scams. It will help you revise your consumer affairs/fair trading topic.



They provide a classified section, in case you want to advertise something you'd like to sell/buy. For that purpose, you can access the Gum Tree, which has a lot more items listed.

Check also freecycle.org for free items!

Good luck to those studnets undertaking their interpreting exams this week!

Heath Issues

Attribution: "Phagocytosis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis"


















We had an interesting presentation on eating disorders today (thanks Arum) and I thought you may be interested in further exploring health issues.
Check the following links and worksheets:
Better Health Obesity -worksheet Obesity
Better Health Skin Cancer-worksheet Skin Cancer
BMI Calculator. You just enter your height and weight and it'll tell you your BMI and if it's healthy or not.
Health quizzes

And talking about health and fashion, did you know that Spain decided to ban models that are too thin?. Read about it in the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC7news. After reading the articles, you can answer these questions:
What triggered the ban?
What's BMI?
What BMI should a model have to be allowed to participate in fashion parades in Spain?
What's the average height, weight and BMI of a runway model?
What are the arguments for and against?

Check the meanings of gaunt, emaciated and wan. You can find many dictionaries on the Internet (just write dictionary into Google). One of them is the Merrian-Webster.

For extra listening practice, you can listen to some ESOL student podcasts on the St George TAFE Health Expo 2006. They interview doctors and health staff about different health topics. The links to all their podcasts are here.

Insurance

This weeks' topic for our intensive Interpreter's course is insurance.

Watch the BTN epidsode on this topic and try and do the activitiy worksheet .

Visit the links to the Insurance Council of Australia and read the ASIC insurance fact sheet.

Housing: Renting

What architectural style of house is the one in the picture?

We have been talking about housing and many of the topics related to it, like advantages and disadvantages of buying a house, renting or renovating.

Today' s paper has an interesting article on renting, In the fight to snare a rental property a CV is the weapon of choice. Read it and discuss it's content with your classmates and teachers.

Check this BTN episode from 11/03/08 Rental Squeeze. There are 4 separate sections. Watch all of them. You can always read/print the script to help you with vocabulary and understanding the content.

Listen to the podcast Vince: Building and do the worksheet provided. It will help you undersatnd the building process in Australia.

MyLanguage Website

One of the useful websites listed in our wiki websites document is MyLanguage. It was created by seven State Libraries to provide information in more than 60 languages and on many topics.

It also has links to government bodies, dictionaries, thesaurus, news, and up to six million information links!
This is a video about it in English. You can visit this Youtube page to watch it in different languages. Good for your interpreting and translating skills.

Podcasts: Interpreting

Hi all,

A reminder for all our interpreting students about our Podcasting blog, Let's talk.

You will find interviews that will help you with the topics studied during your interpreting courses.

If you go back and listen to older podcasts, you can listen to a variety of Sydneysiders who speak with a variety of accents about a great many topics.

Most of the recordings are supplemented by a worksheet to give you extra help and practice with the listening, vocabulary, etc.

Remember that you can subscribe to this podcast through itunes and download it onto your ipod.

Have fun!

Medicine: The Virtual Body

"Saline Dreams (painting) "






I came across this very good site that will help you learn the main parts of the human body and what they do. It's called the Virtual Body. The advantage for translators and interpreters is that you can view it in different languages. This site gives you a choice between Spanish and English:

• El Cuerpo Virtual & The Virtual Body
  

Sentence structure & Tuteo

We all know that it is not possible to always translate from one language to another and keep exactly the same word order. Lat week in class we talked about different degrees of correspondence in proverbs and sayings. We could look at different degrees of correspondence in sentence structure.

Compare these sentences:

La mesa es grande The table is big

Pareces cansado

You look tired

Es muy bonita tu casa

Your house is very nice

The degree of correspondence is different for all three sentences. In Spanish we can change the order of a sentence to achieve different effects.

I came across this interesting article on "tuteo".

Ethics of the Tanslator Question 1

Add a sticky to this board with a brief answer to the ethical question posed. At this stage we are just brainstorming for possible issues in the question. Please refer to the Code of ethics before answering.
Click on post a sticky (bottom of the board) and then double click and follow the instructions.

Ethics of Translators: Intervention

An interesting issue in translation ethics is that of intervention. Translator sues boss over sexist translation is a poignant example of intervention (in this case ideological as well as linguistic).

For a more academic point of view, check the video series by Anthony Pym on the same topic. He gave a talk on the ethics of translators at the conference Profession, Identity and Status Translators and Interpreters as an Occupational Group (March 15-19-09, Tel Aviv University & Bar Ilan University). The focus was on Intervention.

Watch the video and answer the questions on this quiz (which is a trial for this quiz maker)

Ethics of Translators » Make A Quiz

TN Translator Notes

Sometimes a translator needs to address the reader about his translation. It could be a technical explanation of the translating approach, explanation of acronyms, etc. We can do this by using a translator note, TN.

TNs are marked by bolding the terms, using [square brackets] and numbering when a footnote is required. Like this example from Elisa Pinto Olivera:

Which is addressed by a NT footnote, marked like this:

Writing NTs is one of the technical skills needed by translators. NTs shouldn't' be overused, neither under-used, but should always be clearly marked as translators' notes. Notice how Elisa Pinto Olivera has included an explanation of how she annotates her NTs at the beginning of her translation.

Some ethical issues may arise from the fact that we can find a document like this one online!
You can write your thoughts in this post's comments.


Not all translators follow the same style of TN, have a look at this slightly different method.

Chile Earthquake: Science Translation

English>Spanish
Visit this article, Why the Chile earthquake aftershock was so big, from the Technology & Science section of msnbc. It is a good opportunity for you to translate a more scientific text.

Spanish>English
Leed y traducid el artículo Pasarán meses antes de saber por qué fallaron los edificios más afectados por el sismo, El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile, martes 9 de marzo de 2010.

A medida que traduzcáis, podéis ir compilando un glosario de términos asociados con terremotos.

Interpreting: Health-Type 1 Diabetes

We are studying topics related to Health. Listen to an interview with a young Sydneysider, Miguel, talking about Type 1 diabetes.

You will find the podcast and suggested practice in our podcasting blog, Let's Talk.

For more health information and worksheets on different subtopics (obesity, skin cancer, etc) visit this post form my ESOL blogs, Health Expo 2007.

Unidades decimales

We were talking about how to write different numerical expression in numbers. Check the side bar of our wiki for several links that show how it's done different countries.

The Spanish Bulletin, Boletin Oficial del Estado (BOE) has published today a royal decree regulating the writing and naming of symbols for legal measurement units.

Below is an summary in Spanish:

Este texto está en el CAPÍTULO III “Reglas de escritura de los símbolos y nombres de las unidades, de expresión de los valores de las magnitudes y para la formación de los múltiplos y submúltiplos decimales de las unidades del SI” del anexo del Real Decreto 2032/2009, de 30 de diciembre, por el que se establecen las unidades legales de medida. El annexo es la corrección de errores y erratas.

Los decimales son con coma, normalmente se usa el punto para las unidades de millar y la coma para los decimales. Ejemplo: 3.987,56

Cuando expresas porcentajes conviene dejar un espacio entre el número y el símbolo %.

Así 3,5 % expresa el 3,5 por ciento, o lo que es lo mismo el 0,035 en tanto por uno.

Pero como se ve en el texto que sigue parece que lo correcto es no usar puntos:

“ El símbolo utilizado para separar la parte entera de su parte decimal se denomina «separador decimal». El símbolo del separador decimal es la coma, en la propia línea de escritura. Si el número está comprendido entre +1 y −1, el separador decimal va siempre precedido de un cero.

Los números con muchas cifras pueden repartirse en grupos de tres cifras separadas por un espacio, a fin de facilitar la lectura. Estos grupos no se separan nunca por puntos ni por comas. En los números de una tabla, el formato no debe variar en una misma columna.”

Translation Theory Class

Korean & Spanish Translation Skills students will be having joined sessions every Thursday. Some of the sessions will be run by Luciano other by Rosa, with Luciano's invaluable input!

• Today we would like you to look at the NAATI website (permanent link on the right sidebar). Explore some of its links to become familiar with it, which you may have done already, and complete the activity sheet your teacher will hand out.
  
• Have look at the NAATI Translator Test and start thinking of questions for Luciano's presentation on it at a later stage.
• Go to Luciano's SCE wiki (sidebar link) and explore it. Then have a look at the first post of this blog and try to answer the question about the picture in it.
• Check the T&I link in Luciano's wiki. Have a look at the resources already there.
• Visit our forum and write your answer to our first topic.
• Visit our new wiki, bridginggap, and ask me to invite you to join it. There is already some work for you to do.
• Write any suggestions for the forum or this blog in comments below

Text Types

Knowing how texts work in English is a useful skill for translators and interpreters doing sight translations. If you want to explore the differences between the most common text types (genres) in written English, visit the module Text Evaluation and genre Writing, prepared by the Department of Education NSW.