Interpreting & Translating Courses at Petersham TAFE, 2104

Breaking News!
Diploma of Translating and Diploma of Interpreting in the Smart and Skilled 2014 NSW Skills List

Petersham TAFE is offering Interpreting and Translating courses in Korean, Mandarin (Interpreting), Chinese (Translating) and Spanish.
Our courses are Diploma of Translating 11698, Diploma of Interpreting 11692 and Advanced Diploma of Interpreting 11693.
Please check our wiki for information on how to apply for one of our courses.
To get an idea about what we do, watch this video where Marjorie, a 2012 Interpreting student, tells you about her Diploma of Interpreting course.

Translate from Image to Image

Helping a student find background materials for an Ethics assignment I came across some very interesting resources. One of them was a slide show on professional liability. It was published by a member of MiTiN, the equivalent to our AUSIT in Michigan.

The other thing that I thought may interest you is this entry in the MiTiN blog, When experience is your only dictionary. I hope you enjoy it and keep it in mind when we next meet after the holidays and I give you a problematic text to translate.
Have a good break!

Literary Translation

 'Brooke Westcott window' by Shaggy check info on him!
The last teaching week of our course has been dedicated to a brief look at literary translation. We explored a few ideas on how to approach this type of translation, amongst them was the idea of keeping an eye on web pages like:

• PEN American Center
• Check PEN's very interesting slam section for 2 different versions of the same text
• Check ALTA's guides, in particular Breaking into Print (PDF)
• Check web book pages to find books written on literary translation
• Practice your translation skills and then compare your work to that of other translations of the same text. You can find many in websites like Words Without Borders. They often publish the source texts as well as the translation.
• Check for university/college courses on literary translation, creative writing and theories of translation in general

Translating Official Documents

For the next two weeks we will be dealing with the translation of official documents. You can supplement the knowledge from our notes, discussions and practice with this relevant blog post from Corinne McKay, an ATA certified French-English translator.

Do not forget to check her webpage for an example of fee setting and client-translator communication and payment/delivery process.

Please read all the comments. There is a very interesting debate on whether it is a good idea to replicate stamps, logos form the original. It can be seen as an attempt to forge a document!

Don't forget to check the permanent links on the right, especially this one with models of Traduccion Jurada.

Translator at work...

Check this very funny video created by a group of Spanish translators (which makes it a very reliable source!).

Enjoy it!

Translation Competition 2

Check this Spanish blog post by Olli in La Paradoja de Chosmky (the picture above is linked to the blog) about how to keep (financial) track of your jobs. It is very clear and practical. He uses an Excel 2010 template which he has adapted to his needs.

I am opening a competition aimed mainly at the Spanish Translating Diploma students, but students from the Interpreting Diploma are welcome to participate too. You have to translate Olli's post into English.  The best translation will be published in this blog so that all Interpreting and Translating students can read it and incorporate its information into the work done as part of the Small Business Financial Management unit of competency.

Ánimo y al toro!


PS One of the subscribers to La paradoja de Chomsky is one of our 2011 Translating students!

Prepare to Translate or Interpret

Today we were talking about one of our units of competency, Prepare to translate and interpret and some of its elements referred to research, glossaries, innovative ways of dealing with possible language difficulties, etc.

Here you have a great example of research triggered by casual conversation amongst colleagues while having tapas: Marchando una de calamares by Clara Guelbenzu in Bootheando. Notice how she says that she was trying to dilucidar el asunto: clarify and illustrate the point in question.

Alpacas in Ecuador by Philippe Lavoie

Why don't you try doing the same for your last assignments*?  La Posada Oveja Negra had us discussing the differences between llamas (Lama glama), alpacas (Vicugna pacos), vicuñas (Vicugna vicugna) and guanacos (from the Quechua huanaco), which are all South American camelids.  Do a bit of  research to clarify and illustrate the main differences amongst these camelids.

We also worked very hard to find the exact meaning of this passage: Mantienen los residuos no reciclables por uso en la propiedad por debajo de  una onza diaria por persona. If you read La Posada's website, you'll find this sentence which confirms your understanding of it:
"We produce less than one ounce of non-recyclable trash daily per person!"

*I'll be curious to see what you find out about the music policy in Nazi Europe and DWIs. 

Sexism in the Spanish language?

Should we accept the generic use of the grammatical masculine gender in Spanish words to include both males & females OR should we start using alternatives that ensure women's visiblility?

El trabajador debe exigir sus derechos OR El trabajador y la trabajadora....


Todos tenemos sentimientos, OR Las personas tenemos sentimientos   
Todos los ciudadanos OR Toda la ciudadanía
Los niños vendrán a clase con ropa comoda OR L@s niñ@s vendrán a clase con ropa cómoda

These and many more questions are the subject of a great article by Ignacio Bosque (miembro de la RAE y catedrático de la Universidad Complutense) that I found by chance yesterday, International Women's Day.  Bosque writes about linguistic sexism, perceived and real, in the Spanish language and what different organisations are doing about it. The article has been supported by many academics of the RAE. All translators should read it, not only to be aware of the issues, but also to avoid over-correcting linguistic sexist practice.

Translation, traduccion.

I have been forwarding interesting blog posts on translation to a couple of students I'm friends with in facebook, and I thought everyone else may be interested, so here they go:

• El Gascón Jurado publishes a link in Spanish to Traducciones de leyes españolas por el ministerio de Justicia
• Legally yours from Spain writes in depth about the same legal translations recently published by the Spanish Ministry of Justice and he does it in English. Read his analysis of the different styles used by  the translators of those documents. 
• La paradoja de Chomsky publishes a very interesting post,¿Dónde me apunto para ser traductor?, about what it really means to be a translator as opposed to knowing two languages and thinking that this qualifies anyone as a professional translator. Read the comments, they are all great!

What is TED Talks?

If you are new to TED Talks, watch this video. Notice that they've already created captions in Spanish (from Mexico, was that you Ailin?), Portuguese, Polish and English. They've been done via the Open Translation Project. Have you joined yet?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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!).

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".

Translating-Spanish Links

Acentuacion Updated-Blog de lengua
Acentuacion
obsolete A Amautacuna de Historia

Aula.int
A State of Mind

Biblioteca Digital Mundial

Biblioteca Nacional Expanola
Blog de Yuste

Casa del traductor

Cervantes Virtual

CVC Cervantes

Cervantes: Comunidades hispanohablantes en Australia

Conjugador Reverso

Cuadernos Cervantes

DET Spanish translated documents

Diccionario CLAVE
Diccionarios El Pais

Diccionario técnico inglés-españolDocuTradSo
El taller del traductor
Elisa Farina Translation & Transcreation
Estudiantes de Traducción e Interpretación
Expliciatacion
Horacio R. Dal Dosso
Humor y juegos, adjetivos de sentimiento
Jenni Lukac's Translation & Editing Blog

Laboratorio del Languaje

Langmates
La paradoja de Chomsky
La prueba de lo ajeno
La Linterna del traductor
Letras de sastre
Localización y testeo con Curri 
Martine Fernandez
N. de T.
NT Translator & Localiser
Ogoino personal Translator website

Ortografia,reglas y ejercicios
Patricia Lluberas
Periodicos del Mundo
Portal lingüístico de Microsoft

Real Academia Espanola
Revision de traducciones
Sé lo que traducistes
Spanish Translation

Subtitulos

Sworn Translations
Teaching about Computers and Translations
Tecnicas de Traduccion aplicadas a adaptacion cinematografica
Terminómetro
Trabalú
Traducción a [primera] vista 
Traduccion e Identidad latinoamericana
Traducir: Apuntes
Traducir&Co
TRANS revista de traductología  
Trusted Translations 

Universidad de Alcala_Biblioteca

Wikilengua