False Friends

A List of False Friends (a.k.a. false cognates) in Spanish. Alphabetized for your convenience.

Translating the company newsletter

Today I was assigned to translate some articles from the company newsletter. A little over 4000 words. I expect to finish it tomorrow.

The company newsletter presents its own unique challenges. There is very little repeated text, so my translation memory is not particularly useful. My glossary does come in handy, though.

One thing that I do appreciate about this assignment is that I get to learn and add new terms for my glossary. Like CAP. As in:

• Common Agricultural Policy = Política Agrícola Común.
• Identity preserved = Identidad Preservada.

Self-portrait

Jo-Hanna worked on an article...

Last week, I spent some time working on an article related to translation. Yesterday, I finished writing it up, revised it, and submitted it. Today, I am checking potential responses and stressing about it. When I thought up the ideas for the article, I took it for granted that it was going to get published. After all, writing is easy, right?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Unlike my posts, my article had to have a point. I had to make sure I listed my references, because I had no intention of being accused of plagiarism. Will the editor think it was written by a twelve-year-old?

I face rejection more often than I would like to admit. I know better than to take it personally. That doesn't stop me, though.

Translators and Volunteering

I have registered as a translator for Kidlink. I strongly recommend aspiring translators volunteer their services to charitable organizations. Not only do you get experience and samples for your translation portfolio, but you also get to make a contribution to the community.

A few guidelines for volunteering your services as a translator or interpreter:

1. After you are done, submit an invoice for your services, along with a big note reading something like "SERVICES PROVIDED PRO BONO AS CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTION. NO MONEY EXCHANGED FOR THIS SERVICE". It sounds really cold and calculating, but come tax time, it comes in handy. And just because you are providing your services for free, it does not mean they do not have a value.
2. As eager as you may be for the experience, choose the recipients of your services carefully. Make sure it is a cause you can feel good about supporting. For example, some time ago, I contemplated volunteering my services to an environmental organization. However, after visiting their website, it became clear that it had a political stand I did not feel comfortable supporting.

Is it bananas? Or plantains?

WARNING: I'll try to keep the contents of this post somewhat relevant to the main goals of my blog (translation, generally). If I fail miserably, I apologize.

Today, I went with a couple of co-wokers to La Mexicana, a local Mexican grocery store/restaurant. Co-worker #1 was hunting for ingredients to make mole, Co-worker #2 is a cooking expert, and I was tagging along. I ended up going home with a package of mole (wish me luck!), a single green plantain (suitable for plaintain fritters, also known as tostones), a can of pigeon peas and a jar of sofrito (to make arroz con gandules).

One of the better methods of learning a language is to immerse yourself in the culture. Spending time abroad (a significant amount of time interacting with the locals) is one of the better ways. However, if this is not practical due to money and/or time constraints, there are other ways. Perhaps visiting an ethnic store or two. Grocery stores really offer you some very interesting glimpses into a culture that you cannot get from a book.

Examples:

• The contents of the magazine stand. Spanish-language tabloids appear obsessed with true crime ("She poisoned her children and then killed herself!") and not so much with celebrities.
• So many parts of a cow are considered good eatin'. Tongue, anyone?
• Plátano stands for two completely different types of produce in, say, Puerto Rico (plantains) and Mexico (bananas). Keep this in mind if you are localizing a cookbook.
• Passion fruit juice is appreciated enough to be produced and sold; just look for the words parcha if in a Puerto Rican place or maracuyá if in a Mexican one.

Sometimes I am not so busy

Today at the day job, there was little need for my translation skills. This is par for the course. Sometimes, I translate all day long, and sometimes I go days without translating anything more complicated than an e-mail. I prefer the former. Hours can fly by when I am translating.

Spanish language has its own page

Visit La Página del Idioma Español for the word of the day, fora, a link to a dictionary from the Real Academia Española, a conjugating tool and more.

In addition to everything I just mentioned, this site featured an article on the training of translators and interpreters in the United States. Of particular interest was how the translators' program at the University of Nebraska in Kearney is featured in this article.

This article makes me feel glad I had the opportunity to spend the first twenty-something years of my life in Puerto Rico, a Spanish-speaking country, while at the same time, get plenty of exposure to American culture and the English language through books, school, television, etc. For this dual-language experience I am very grateful.

Bite your Tongue!

The Centro Virtual Cervantes (Cervantes Virtual Center) has a section in its website called Morderse la Lengua (literally, "bite your tongue"), a humorous look at the crimes perpetrated against the Spanish language. Check it out for a good chuckle, but hopefully, you will not find yourself as an example.

Interested in interpreting for the court?

I finished my homework from the previous post. Yay!

Every so often, I think about making my skills more marketable in my town, and I consider becoming an interpreter. If you want more information on the Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination, check out their Examinee Handbook.

I have homework

I need to finish this translation from work. I only have 11 pages to do today. It sounds like a lot, but most of the text in the source materials occupies only one third of the page. Because I am working from a hard copy, I can't do a word count.

Converting units

The other day, I was translating some proposals with distances measured in feet. The intended audience was Latin American. In other words: convert those measures to the metric system.

In general, for unit conversion, I prefer using my old calculator from college (I am really dating myself, because I bought it new!). Back then, as an engineering major, its programming capabilities really came in handy. Nowadays, I just like keeping it nearby for its unit conversion feature.

However, I just happened to leave my calculator in the backpack I no longer carried. So I had no choice but to look for unit-converting tools. There are several sites dedicated to this. As far as the actual unit conversion function, they perform well. Choosing the one I liked to use was more subjective. Some pages were done in color combinations that hurt my eyes. Others were tricky to use. I found the MegaConverter2 to be my favorite one.

Translation Notes (another blog)

Are you bilingual? Legal translator (EN-SP-FR-PORT) Julio Angel Juncal has twin blogs in English and Spanish.

I must specify how I found it. I was searching for other translators' blogs, and I came across his. I looked at it, said to myself, "cool", posted a comment about a reference book, and moved on.

Flash-forward. Just to amuse myself, I did another search on "jo-hanna" to see what I would find. Lo and behold, I found that not only did he reply to my comment, he wrote a post (in Spanish) about it.

I am famous! OK, I need perspective. Just a little (very little) famous.

Fun with Optical Recognition

Funny how things work. Yesterday, I whined about the expense involved in my ATA membership and how I hoped I would benefit. That same evening, I found the most recent issue of the ATA's Chronicle had arrived. And it was full of advice that was actually (gasp!) helpful.

Today I started the translation of yet another report. The good news is that this time the PDF converting program (ScanSoft) actually worked. For the most part, anyway. Acopio became acoplo; cafetal became cacillas. And my favorite one: cartón became carbón. At least it keeps things interesting.

This investment will pay off, right?

I promised myself I would write in this blog everyday, even if I have nothing brilliant to say. Why, you may ask? To develop discipline.

I wish I could say I am going to use the payment from my last job on something fun like a vacation or designer shoes. Instead, I went to the American Translators Association (ATA) website and renewed my membership. The remaining money will probably be used to pay my cellular phone bills or a credit card bill.

The membership fee is no small amount. However, it carries great benefits, such as a subscription to the Chronicle, discounted fees on insurance and web hosting, a mentorship program. I hope this investment in my career pays off, because otherwise, it is going to be the most expensive magazine subscription ever. The truth is, what I get out of my ATA membership is what I put into it.

Similar to my college education. But that is another post.

Surprisingly Challenging Word (SCW) of the Day: Vibrant

At the day job, I am currently juggling multiple projects. One of my assigned projects entailed doing some research to verify that "Chilean nitrate" is indeed the same thing as "nitrato chileno".

At another point, I was asked to translate a sentence that read something like this*:

It leads to more vibrant plant life.

It probably should have been "It leads to a more vibrant plant life.", but nobody has asked me to correct the English version. More to the point, what did the original writer mean with "a vibrant plant life"? I tried at first to translate it as vida vegetal vibrante, but that sounded off. I had to resort to consulting my trusted dictionary and ended up translating it as "vital".

My translation work is full of situations like this: words that appear to be simple, but that require a little research to translate. The Surprisingly Challenging Word of the Day.

Sometimes, a quick peek at the dictionary is enough. Other times, I must visit proZ.com to find out if anybody has thought to include the offending term in his/her glossary. If that doesn't work, I do a search on Google or Yahoo! The point is not the hard work involved. The point is that this happens with common words. We are not talking about the more specialized terms such as maracuyá (passion fruit) or "windrows" (I usually translate this as siembra en hileras). We are talking about "e.g." or "i.e.". I had trouble retaining those in my mind, so I had to flag the corresponding pages in my dictionary.

Disclaimer: I am working from memory here. While I did not make up the original sentence, it is entirely possible I am quoting it wrong.

Aerobics for Translators

Remember my post from earlier this week, about how I was expecting payment for a job? The waiting is over. The check from the agency has arrived.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s day. As such, I am not required to go to my day job today.

I have been told that for telecommuters, the first thing to go is personal hygiene. If I manage to get sufficient work as a freelancer to do this full-time, the second thing to go (because the first thing to go would be housekeeping) could be my waistline. Granted, my day job has minimal physical requirements. But at least the trips to the photocopier/somebody's office at the other side of the building/the supply closet provide a form of physical activity. Looking back at my last freelance assignment (proofreading a translated operations manual), I recall staying in my chair for hours on end, only getting up to take the clothes out of the dryer or making coffee.

Then again, who knows. When I am in the house with little or nothing to do, I can pretty much eat anything that isn't bolted down (and a few things that are not). But if I am on deadline and the clock is ticking away, I slip into a different state of consciousness. I even (gasp!) forget to eat.

Check on me in five years. Hopefully, I will have achieved my goal of becoming a full-time freelance translator but without suffering this poor woman's fate.

The CAT lady (not talking about felines)

A long time ago, shortly after the Stone Age but before today, I joined proZ. At first, I used it only to look up terms that didn't turn up in WordReference. Later on, I started exploring other areas. Back then, they had a section called CATfight, where you could compare and rate different computer-aided translation (CAT) programs, such as TRADOS, MetaTexis, Wordfast, and Deja Vu.

At the time, I had been employed for about a year at the nonprofit that is still my employer. I did all of my translation work the old-fashioned way: armed only with a few dictionaries and reference books, hard copies of previous translations, and a big strong cup of coffee. I had heard of websites that would do a crude translation, often with humorous or just plain bizarre results, but I had never heard of CAT tools. That is not surprising. CAT tools are not sold in the aisles of Best Buy, next to the screen savers and the Windows upgrades.

I went ahead and downloaded trial versions of the aforementioned programs, figuring one of those would increase my productivity at work:

1. TRADOS: I think this was the first program I downloaded. I suspect this may have affected my impressions, because I hated, hated, HATED it. The formatting tags drove me batty. I uninstalled it and moved on. Later on, when I got my first assignment as a freelancer, I purchased version 6.5. After all, since so many translators use TRADOS, and so many of the jobs posted at the proz.com job board required TRADOS, I absolutely had to have it, right? And so, without reading this article, I went ahead and bought it. Do I regret it? No. TRADOS is a very powerful tool once you bother to read the accompanying documentation and take the time to learn it. However, it was naive of me to assume that this purchase would be followed by customers falling from the skies.


2. Wordfast: Like TRADOS, at first it eluded me. Not only that, but it wreaked havoc with my word-processing program. My own difficulties aside, Wordfast has fans due to its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. At the time I downloaded it, it was available for free. Currently, it costs 180 euros (roughly $216.61 USD), a steal compared to the cost of other tools.


3. MetaTexis: I can't remember my experience with MetaTexis. Didn't like it, moved on to the next one on the list.


4. Deja Vu a.k.a. DVX: This was the winner. Its Professional version was available as a demo. I found it rather easy to learn. Once the 30-day trial period expired, I convinced my boss to purchase the Standard version. The Standard version lacks some of the features that hooked me in, such as the AutoPropagate for repeated segments, and AutoCorrect, which would have come in handy for all those time I type hte instead of the, or verificaci[on instead of verificación (that pesky Spanish keyboard!) However, I still can build a translation memory by aligning an original text and its translation, or prepare a glossary by using the Lexicon tool.


5. SDLX: SDLX is made by the same company that makes TRADOS. Or more accurately, the company that makes SDLX acquired the company that makes TRADOS. A few years after getting DVX for my office, I downloaded a trial version of SDLX. I found it very similar to DVX and relatively easy to use. Although I did not recommend my employer purchase it, nor did I buy it myself, I can see myself buying it in the future.

The headshot challenge and an open letter

I submitted both my contact information and a link to this blog to the Translation Directory. Hopefully, that will put my name out there to people who need translators.

I have also been doing some research on things I can do to improve my blog. Among the easiest to do would be to add my picture, in order to increase my credibility. Now the challenge is to find an appropriate picture of myself.

I might be worrying over nothing. Nobody will (or should) give me an assignment based upon how beautiful I may or may not look in a picture. You want a perfect mannequin for your product, go to a modeling agency. You want quality translation work, contact me. However, a little voice inside my head insists that a prospective client will look at my picture and just say, "mmm... no."

I should send a letter to that little voice:

Dear little voice:

I have listened to your input on how ugly I look. I appreciate your feedback on every aspect of my life, from the professional to the personal.

However, it has come to my attention that frankly, you are not actually very helfpful. If you ever have any actually useful advice, I would be more than happy to listen. In the meantime, please abstain from issuing opinions.

Sincerely, Jo-Hanna C. Goettsche Translations

TRADOS/SDL Blog

I came across a blog dedicated to TRADOS and SDL. According to blogger Luis Lopes himself,

I will be mostly posting about interesting solutions to problems that occur in my daily work in the Support Department at TRADOS / SDL and which might be interesting for a wide range of people that use TRADOS Tools.

Most (OK, all) of his postings go right over my head in their technicality, but others may find them helpful.

Coming Attractions: my own experiences with TRADOS. Refreshments will not be provided.

Casting a net

I got a reply from the entity who posted the assignment. I am cautiously optimistic. It would be fantastic if I got the assignment. It is in an area I am familiar with, and I feel confident in my ability to do a good job. Now all I have to do is convince them!

The Translation Maven

In my efforts to jazz up my blog, I did a search on other bloggers/translators. Allow me to present to you Translation Maven. Some of his posts include links to poor translations and what happens when greeting card companies get it right when it comes to creating Spanish-language cards... and when they get it wrong. Of course, I inmediately left a comment on his page, saying how much I liked it.

Not much translation happened today at the day job. I did work on an alignment file using my trusty
Déjà Vu X.

I just submitted my resume for consideration for a translation job that seemed up my alley. My fingers are crossed. If I get the assignment, I can expect it to consume every free minute I have. If I don´t get the assignment, I will continue doing my best to improve my skills as a translator.

Naked Translations (oh my!)

Earlier today, during one of my visits to the forums in proZ.com, I stumbled across Naked Translations.

I have not had time to peruse this blog. But I can say that Céline Graciet, its creator, has set the bar high.

For starters, it has both English and French versions. You might be surprised at how few web pages exist in , so it does behoove a translator to make his or her presence in the WWW a bilingual experience.

Second, the name! Oui, the name! It's a provocative name, to say the least. I had no trouble remembering it, so I did not have to resort to writing it on my hand. Not only that, but there is a logic to it

Stripping a text bare to reveal its mechanisms, its internal logic and its meaning to then transfer it into another language as faithfully as possible while using appropriate terminology and style

The comments in Céline's page from her clients (glowing references!) make me wonder about the role my own website can play in my career. Is it sophisticated enough? I know a good website does not need bells and whistles to do its job, but does it look like I skimmed "How to Create a Website" in fifteen minutes? Does it represent my skills, experience, etc. adequately? And when will I get around to creating a version in Spanish?

Some of the perils of translation...

Work went OK today. I am expecting payment on a freelance assignment (proofreading of an operations manual) I did a few months ago. So I am constantly checking to see whether the check has arrived.

The day job's tasks included the translation from Spanish into English of a document (most of the work I do is from English into Spanish, as Spanish is my native language). This is otherwise unremarkable, except for a few issues:
1) I am working off a PDF file that is pretty hard to read. Even my fabulous "convert PDF to RTF" software doesn't work. And of course, this renders Déjá Vu X (my translation program) useless.
2) Run-on sentences and fragments do not make for fun reading, nor for fun translating. I say no more, as I know the person who wrote the report.

I am still somewhat paranoid as to what to include in a blog. I have come across some articles about other bloggers who lost their jobs for including too much information. I try to proceed with caution on my writing. But it is a slippery line. On one side, I am not stupid enough to release company secrets or proprietary information. On the other hand, as fun as it may seem to vent about some co-workers' habit of drinking the last cup of coffee and leaving 2 ml left in the coffee pot, without bothering to brew a fresh batch... let's not go there*

*That has never happened. My co-workers are responsible coffee drinkers!

Opening Ceremonies

So starts my blog.

Hello and welcome.

Today was a quiet day, not much to do. The highlight was going out for a mocha and a toasted bagel at a nearby coffeehouse.

The lowlight? Realizing that I did not:

• balance the checkbook
• straighten out the kid´s room
• straighten out the master bedroom
• work on some stuff from work