Sep 1st, 2006 | NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Reports, Voiceover | No Comments
By Raffaella Buschiazzo
Spring flowers in bloom means it’s time for our May General Meeting. This year’s session had at its core two presentations that couldn’t have been more different: a talk on the important business of insurance products for Association members, and a panel discussion on the wide and interesting world of voiceover. Add some lucky door prize winners, and you’ve got a successful meeting.
As it has become a staple of our regular meetings, NCTA’s new member orientation opened up our spring General Meeting. NCTA Membership Director Naomi Baer opened the proceedings by answering questions and helping our new members find out more about the Association. The gathering also served as a pre-meeting networking session, where new members could get to know experienced NCTA-ers.
NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainen opened the General Meeting at 1:30 p.m. with a few announcements of upcoming events. Then he introduced Mr. Myron Gomes from Mutual of Omaha who provided us with extremely helpful information on disability income insurance and other benefit products that Mutual of Omaha offers to NCTA members at discounted membership rates. For our members, it was a chance to learn about this type of insurance policy without having to spend the time and energy to research it on their own.
Voiceover Panel Discussion
The core of the meeting was a panel discussion on voiceover presented by David Sweet-Cordero, Francisco Hulse, and Ines Swaney, and moderated by NCTA Events Director Raffaella Buschiazzo. The three speakers introduced us to a specialized world within our profession that involves not merely translation and interpretation, but acting skills as well! In addition to presenting practical examples, the speakers offered excellent tips that would prove invaluable to any of our colleagues who wish to try their hand at this specialty.
David Sweet-Cordero is the owner of InterCultura, an agency that specializes in multilingual media production including video, voiceover, and translation. He currently combines work as both a voiceover talent and a producer. David opened the discussion by explaining what voiceover is and what kinds of projects and applications it is used for. He talked about the qualifications needed for voiceover work, the market for this specialty, and trends and directions in the voiceover industry. As both an actor and producer, he offered a unique perspective on the two roles.
The panel continued with Francisco Hulse, interpreter and translator of Spanish and English, who successfully stumbled into voiceover work in the late ‘90s. Francisco is a member of SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, and AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. In addition to telling us all about the expectations producers have of actors at the microphone, along with many tricks of the trade, he also provided us with important information on SAG and AFTRA—including how to join, what to expect as a member of these unions, and pros and cons of belonging to them.
Francisco also brought some recorded excerpts of his advertising work for us to listen to. These were perfect examples of exactly what voiceover means, and how a voiceover talent must be trained not just to speak a foreign language well but also to play a role. As Francisco pointed out, many skills are required at the same time. He is a translator-interpreter-actor who needs to adapt the tone of his voice again and again until the producer is satisfied.
Our third presenter, Ines Swaney, enjoys a variety of assignments resulting from her work as a Spanish translator, interpreter, and voiceover talent. She is also a columnist for Intercambios, the quarterly publication of ATA’s Spanish Language Division. Ines particularly likes sharing anecdotes of the adventures that she has encountered in the language field, along with personal experiences and suggestions for those who want to get started in the field.
Lucky Members
Even after a twenty-minute question and answer session, people were fascinated and eager to learn more. For that, we had our three talented speakers to thank: they presented the subject from all the important angles, answered questions with practical tips and examples, and kept us engaged with funny and illuminating anecdotes. The panel discussion had a very sweet end: Tuomas gave each of the three panelists a box of chocolates, a simple gesture to let them know how much NCTA appreciates the input and time that they give to the association. Thank you again David, Francisco, and Ines!
At the end of the meeting, five door prizes were drawn. Karin Seeman, Kathleen Davis, and Luis Salvago-Toledo held the lucky numbers to win AnyCount Software, a word-, character-, and line counting software package, donated by www.AnyCount.com. Jessica Bazzoli won Translation Office 3000, administrative and accounting applications for freelance translators donated by www.translation3000.com. Ines Swaney won a framed original artwork print by conservationist Betsy Fowler.
Another NCTA General Meeting ended with delicious refreshments and relaxed networking, where old members enjoyed chatting with new ones, all sharing in the camaraderie of a profession like no other!
May 1st, 2006 | NCTA Info, NCTA Members, Reports | No Comments
Two remembrances
By Tony Roder and Bernie Bierman
Long-time NCTA and ATA member Robert Addis passed away at the end of 2005, after a half-century in translation. Two people who knew him well—colleagues Tony Roder and Bernie Bierman—share with us their memories of this giant in the field. Our thanks to his widow, Louise, for providing biographical information.
Robert Lester Addis was intrigued by foreign languages from a very early age. His mother taught high school French and encouraged his interest in that language. During his high school years, he spent many hours listening to shortwave broadcasts from Europe.
After high school, he attended Yale on a scholarship to study foreign languages but almost immediately after Pearl Harbor enlisted in the Army. He was sent to Stanford to a special forces language training program and subsequently to Europe. There, he served as a German and French broadcaster for Radio Luxembourg after it was captured by the Allied Forces.
After the war, Robert completed his B.A. at Yale, tried out the corporate world, spent several years in the U.S. Foreign Service, and finally returned to Stanford for Post Graduate studies. After a few years of freelance writing and translation, he founded Ad-Ex Translations in 1957 and proceeded to make a career out of his love of language. He was always concerned with translation quality; he encouraged good translators and paid them well, and promptly. He became interested in ATA and eventually encouraged the formation of a California Chapter in 1963.
An early mentor
Robert Addis was my first client, and it was he who encouraged me to become active in translators’ associations.
In the 1960s, after I started working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and was asked to translate papers in French or Romanian, I was referred to Bob, who at that time was operating a translation business from his house in Menlo Park. I visited him there (no e-mail attachments in those days), appreciating his gracious welcome, his courtly manner, his erudition. He tactfully initiated me in the mysteries of the profession, and cautioned me about its pitfalls.
Subsequently, he invited me to join ATA and wrote the recommendation which the association required at the time. I bear him a debt of gratitude for that. I eventually also joined NCTA, and while I was on its board, I spoke to him on occasion about his interest in, and support of, our local activities. We last met a few years ago, at a nostalgic lunch with his East Coast partner.
Bob Addis has been a keystone of my career in translation and I grieve his absence.TR
A pioneer in the business
With the death of Robert Addis, we have lost another one of an ever-shrinking group of so-called “translator-merchants,” men and women who were active translators throughout their lives, but also combined their language skills and talents with business acumen to establish prosperous and durable translation service companies.
Mr. Addis, who translated from Russian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, was openly contemptuous of those who made comparisons between translation and other professions, and especially of organizations that attempted to apply parameters to translation that perhaps worked well for other professions but were totally foreign to translation. “Translation sits in its own category and does not withstand comparisons to other professions,” he often said and wrote.
As a businessman, he was an avid believer in advertising and never hesitated to spend money on it. He advertised anywhere and everywhere he believed he could get business: newspapers, magazines, professional journals, radio, direct mail (and eventually Internet) and any other medium that could deliver his message. He was always in the vanguard of adopting new technology, although he drew the line at so-called translation-aids tools, which in his view were an anathema to the process of translation.
Mr. Addis joined the American Translators Association in 1960 and very soon became involved in its development. In 1963, he established ATA’s second chapter, the California Chapter (“CalChapATA”). He produced an endless flurry of little newsletters called “CalChap Notes” and served a term as ATA’s Vice-President. In 1972, he became editor of the then-newsletter of the ATA called “ATA Notes” and promptly re-named it the ATA Chronicle. Although his editorship lasted only three issues, the name ATA Chronicle continued on and even outlived him.
Mr. Addis’ approach to the business of translation was predicated on providing the highest quality of writing and communication, and every translation, whether done by him or one of his in-house associates or a member of his far-flung staff of freelance translators, went through an arduous editing and verification process. And it was this process and his unwavering belief that quality translation was a valuable and unique communications product, that led him to demand—and get—some of the most handsome fees known to the industry at the time.
But what Mr. Addis was incapable of doing was to hold back the tide of change that began to affect the world of industrial translation, and particularly the U.S. translation market in the very late 1990s and at the turn of the century. The “globalization”—or “Internetization” or “Wal-Martization”—of translation had impacted what had once been his impregnable translation fortress. But he continued to survive until advancing age and ill health closed the doors on a long, successful, and remarkable career. BB
May 1st, 2006 | Business Tools, NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Reference, Reports, Web services | No Comments
By Raffaella Bushiazzo
On February 11th, the NCTA General Meeting was held for the first time at the Mechanic’s Institute Library, where in the past we have traditionally held our workshops. Whether because of the cozy wood-paneled room or the anticipation of meeting new board members, the meeting was well-attended and successful.
NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainen opened the General Meeting with a few announcements of upcoming events.He then gave the final vote counts for the annual board election, and introduced newly elected board members Andrea Wells, Song White, and Stafford Hemmer, and re-elected board members Evan Geisinger and Naomi Baer. A heartfelt thank you went to outgoing Treasurer Barbara Guggemos, Webmaster Brigitte Reich, and Membership Director Tetu Hirai for all the work that they had done for the Association. It was a real pleasure working with people as professional and reliable as they are! Dear Barbara, Brigitte, and Tetu, thank you again from all of us.
Advanced Search
The highlight of the meeting was a panel discussion on advanced Internet search techniques and news gathering strategies, presented by Scott Gatz, Yahoo! Senior Director of Personalization Services, Tom Corbett, and Yves Avérous, NCTA Vice President in charge of Publications and founder of TransMUG, who moderated the panel as well.
Tom Corbett, a Healthcare Information Technology Specialist who is now applying his healthcare industry knowledge to the world of translation and localization, gave us an introduction to advanced search and provided useful tips. He also warned us of multiple dangers on the Internet such as false endorsements, rumors about false news, self-promotion, surveillance, and vandals who modify the information available on normally reliable news sources like Wikipedia.
He also suggested three websites that help translators make better searches: www.ohiotranslators.org/research.htm, where one can download a presentation by Chemali & Sommer held at the annual ATA Conference; www.lai.com/companion.html, a good site for translators’ search tools; and www.searchenginewatch.com, which allows you to find more detailed information about particular search engines.
Yves Avérous added more advanced search tips specifically for translation professionals. He gave us a few hints for terminology mining: try to guess your source term translation and verify your assumption in websites written in the target language; compare the number of results obtained by different possible translations; enter the source word that you want to translate and look it up in pages that are written in the target language; identify the word context in web pages written in the source language, then translate the context terms and enter their translation in a query made in target language pages.
RSS feeds and blogs
The panel continued with our third presenter, Scott Gatz. Among his many accomplishments, Scott has introduced My Yahoo!, opening the entire Web to millions of homepages. Scott presented the concept of RSS, Really Simple Syndication. This was developed to deal with the huge amount of information on the Web. It is a family of web feed formats used for web syndication, where live information from one section of a website is made available for other sites to incorporate. This allows users to create their own dashboard; a personalized web page like My Yahoo!, where they receive web feeds coming straight from the sites they choose. My Yahoo! was the first portal to provide users with a personalized page for receiving RSS feeds but today other sites offer a similar free service. And then there are the popular newsfeed aggregators like Bloglines, or the standalone newsreader applications for users who wish to keep their updates.
With all these solutions, there is no need to visit the sites containing information that you want to access multiple times a day, because you can automatically receive their content directly on your personalized page or your newsfeed aggregator. Millions of sites are now supporting RSS; their homepages present a little orange RSS icon that you can add to your method of collection. There are already more than 10,000 sites displaying the orange Yahoo! RSS icon. If you click on that icon, the site will be added automatically to your personalized page in My Yahoo!. The RSS concept not only saves time and makes it easy to manage a huge amount of information but also reduces spam because you get updates without providing an email address.
Yves concluded this interesting presentation by explaining the differences between the old and the current perception of blogs. Until not so long ago blogs were limited to personal usage, whereas today a blog is seen as a platform to instantaneously spread articles and information. For instance, under www.proz.com/forums translators can subscribe to several feeds, each on a very specific subject, and receive the content on their personalized page.
Finally, there is the wiki concept. A wiki is a collaborative site, ideal for virtual teams. Someone posts one article and somebody else can complete it. From there, the concept can build eventually to its most famous illustration: the free online, multilingual, encyclopedia Wikipedia.
On a lighter note
At the end of the panel there was a drawing to win two books: Yahoo Hack went to the youngest member in the audience, Ajita Sherer, and Google Hacks went to NCTA member Sjamsir Sjarif.
The official General Meeting ended with refreshments and networking. Tuomas invited everybody to join the board members at a nearby Hunan restaurant to celebrate the Chinese New Year together, sharing delicious dishes. Our afternoon ended watching the long parade on Market Street to welcome the Year of the Dog.
May 1st, 2006 | Interviews, NCTA Info, NCTA Members | No Comments
By Anna Schlegel
Born in Amsterdam and a resident of the U.S. since 1997, Laura Blijleven-Bergmans is currently a Localization Lead at Google. She is an ATA-accredited translator, living and working in San Francisco since obtaining her M.A. in English Language and Literature in 1997. Laura worked as a freelance Dutch translator for five years, and then switched to project management for Crimson Translations. In December 2004 she was hired by Google where she runs the Linguist Program and language quality initiatives.
How did you get involved in localization?
LAURA BLIJLEVEN-BERGMANS: My major was English, with an emphasis on translation training. I was therefore considered a licensed translator in the Netherlands upon graduation. I initially worked at a PR agency when I came to the U.S., but writing the occasional press release didn’t satisfy my love for language. Plus, I had a hard time adjusting to two weeks vacation per year. I landed a large translation project in 1998 that allowed me to make it my day job, and I then worked as a freelance translator for five years.
Describe your ideal translator.
When I work with translators as a project manager, I like people who try to think from my perspective. For instance, I encourage people to raise questions rather than try to guess something they just can’t know (like an acronym made up by the client). But please do some research first to make sure the answer isn’t out there on the web (there are several … ahem … useful search engines out there). And when you do send your list of questions, always try to formulate questions/options in such a way that the project manager can make an informed decision (this is especially nice at 8 PM when you are frantically trying to make a deadline and can’t get ahold of your translator). I also like it when people pick up the phone every once in a while and get to know each other. In my current job I am in the lucky position that I get all my linguists in a room together once a month for a meeting. Face-to-face contact really works wonders, and I would have enjoyed this when I was a freelance translator dealing with two-dimensional project managers all day.
What is a typical localization day like at Google?
Hard question. Not a lot of days tend to be typical. A few things that are likely to keep me busy on any given day are: lots of Dutch review; working with our translation vendor to improve processes and quality; running projects with my linguists to clean up legacy content, especially in some of the smaller languages (I recently hired people for Slovak, Greek, and Hebrew); delicious free gourmet lunch; preparing and tracking weekly/quarterly goals; training other groups in the company (reviewers, writers, product managers) about what our team does and how to work with us; and working on our internal website and other tools.
What is Google’s mandate on localization?
Google places a lot of emphasis on internationalization. As you may know, the site exists in 120+ languages. Many of these, like Quechua, Scots Gaelic, and Swahili have been translated by volunteers. And this is how localization really started at Google: people all over the world started using the search engine because the logarithmic search was pretty much language-independent (aside from issues like stemming in languages such as Russian or Czech). The company, a small startup at the time, decided to just let people sign up and create a translated interface if they wanted to, and this took off pretty quickly. Of course this is a solution that works well only for small, easily updated content like the main site. The rest is done by various vendors, and we are currently expanding the number of languages that we translate our core products into. AdWords was just launched in Thai, and Gmail is up to 38 languages. It all comes down to our mission to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
What localization processes do you think could be improved in corporations?
I have found that companies don’t think ahead and don’t create easily localizable English content. This includes issues like string concatenation, interface sizing, and general lack of customizability. Our localization and international team are making progress—the Japanese version of Google Local has more features than the U.S. one— but we are definitely not done educating every last engineer and UI designer.
May 1st, 2006 | Agencies, Interviews, NCTA Info, NCTA Members | No Comments
By Steve Goldstein
Newly elected NCTA board member Song White is the cofounder of White Song, a translation firm that focuses on multilingual and multicultural communications, particularly in Chinese language and culture. The company currently offers translations in Korean, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Italian.
What is the story of the name: both yours, and your company’s?
SONG WHITE: My parents gave my first name when I was born. Song is one of the volumes of the book, The Book of Odes. The Book of Odes is a famous ancient Chinese poetry book from around 700 B.C. My parents named their children after the names of the volumes in the book. The volume “Song” is the collection of songs sung in the religious ceremonies in the temples. My last name is my husband’s last name which I adopted when we married. When the company was started, we thought of several names. When we reversed my name to White Song, we found it had a strong sound in the market and decided on it.
How do you keep up with the terminology issues in emerging and constantly evolving industries such as biotechnology, computers, and others?
Between our contacts in many different industries and the niche expertise of our translators, we’ve been able to keep current on the latest terminology of our clients. When a better term is developed and should replace the term we currently use, we go through a change control process to apply the new term.
As your company’s specialization is in Chinese, do you have trouble attracting work in your other language pairs? Why should a client with a Finnish-English job come to White Song?
Lowering the translation cost is the first reason a client would come to us. Regardless of the language, translation processes are similar. Asking questions and educating the prospect with information on how to cut translation costs helps clients evaluate their decision, revise their source language material, and be confident in their investment in translation. This process itself, costing the client no service fee, already has saved the client a large portion of upfront cost.
Our process is another reason clients come to us. We adhere to our processes in translations for software, for websites, and for marketing material. Those processes, again, regardless of language, allow us to provide quality work for our clients.
Technical know-how is another reason clients come to us. With the growth of the Internet, our expertise in search engine optimization helps us win clients who need their foreign language website to be optimized for these engines. We also consistently educate ourselves to keep up with the most current technology.
What is the most satisfying part of owning an agency? The most difficult?
I mostly enjoy the teamwork. Completing a job with the team members’ professionalism and initiative is the most rewarding part. Balancing my business responsibilities and my translation responsibilities is sometimes challenging.
How has new technology changed or affected the way translators or interpreters do their jobs?
New technologies improve the productivity and quality of translation. Online dictionaries, delivery over the Internet, translation memory, and search engines have become indispensable due to recenttechnology advancements.
New technologies also provide more options for translators conducting business worldwide, from invoicing to getting paid, from checking the reputation of a client to marketing a translation service.
Finally, new technologies cut the cost of doing international business. Agencies can submit a bid request online and receive many responses promptly. Translators can upload the translation to a client’s site without using an expensive express delivery service. And interpreters can use VOIP (an Internet telephone service) to perform a phone conference interpretation without running up a large phone bill on international calls.
Our ever-more “globalizing” world encompasses multinational, multicultural, and multilingual environments. At the same time, English seems to be moving inexorably towards becoming the world’s lingua franca. If this is the case, would a futuristic scenario require a) more and more translators, or b) simply that everyone on the planet know English?
The need for more translators will grow, as globalization requires more and more interfaces among different languages and cultural groups. I believe the growth of the need for multinational, multicultural, and multilingual interfaces will outpace the speed of people mastering English.
It will be a long time before everyone knows English. The ability of a language to prevail as a global language depends on a variety of factors, among them political, economical, and technological forces. English has gained its momentum due to these forces, and many people will try to learn English as long as these forces support that. Any factors that change those forces, however, may change the course of the language—although they will not change the need for interfacing with other languages and cultural groups.
How will the world of translation be different 10 years from now?
The Internet has improved the world of translation in the past ten years. I believe the next thing is wireless technology. In upcoming years, you will be able to use translation services through your cell phone, or network with associates or locate a translator with any number of different types of handheld devices.
Feb 1st, 2006 | Business, NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings | No Comments
By Rafaella Bushiazzo
December is traditionally the first occasion for members back from the ATA Conference to report on what they have seen. Candidates for the Board of Directors are also introduced, and awards given. This past December, the General Meeting also featured a useful presentation on invoicing software.
After general announcements regarding upcoming events, candidates for NCTA Board elections were introduced: Andrea Wells, Evan Geisinger, Naomi Baer, Song White, and Stafford Hemmer. All are professional translators and interpreters eager to share their own skills and time with the Association. The introductions were followed by an awards ceremony for three NCTA members: Stacey Ramirez, Juliet Viola, and Michael Metzger.
Stacey, as Translorial’s Advertising Manager, has succeeded in increasing the volume of advertising in our publication in just over a year on the job. Juliet, our long-time NCTA Administrator—the person that new members contact first—is NCTA’s “Institutional Memory,” the soul of the organization who so often helps board members with information and thoughtful advice. And last but not least, Michael, our former two-term NCTA President and Ad Manager and Webmaster before that, has devoted immeasurable time and effort to the Association. All three were rewarded for their extraordinary volunteer service; Juliet and Stacey with a year of free NCTA membership and Michael with an honorary Lifetime membership. The organization thanks you once again for all your great work and looks forward to your continued involvement with NCTA!
ATA Conference Report
The afternoon continued with a panel discussion about the 46th ATA Annual Conference in Seattle in November. Three attendees shared their personal experiences with the audience.
For Tatyana Neronova, a Russian-English interpreter, it was her first time at the conference and served as a wonderful introduction to the organization. She spent a lot of time participating in the activities of the Slavic division, where she was made to feel at home. She participated in several sessions, met many interesting people working for important institutions, and had promising contacts with several agencies. Despite all the activities that kept her very busy, Tatyana found time to volunteer at the NCTA table!
Ayano Hattori, a Japanese-English translator, was also a newbie at the ATA Conference. She attended several business and computer technology lectures and participated in some social events with the very active Japanese division. She told us about the Job Market Place, a table where attendees can leave their business cards and resumes in order to be contacted by companies and translation agencies. Ayano met many friendly people, learned a lot, and said she felt that the conference was definitely worth attending.
The last comments were from Shayesteh Zarrabi, a Farsi-English translator, who also attended for the first time. Shayesteh was representing Accent on Languages, the translation agency for which she currently works. She found the sessions to be very useful, particularly the Déjà Vu and TRADOS workshops. The only detail that she would like to see improved is the size of the conference rooms, which are now too small for the size of the crowds attending the lectures. She concluded by encouraging translators and interpreters to visit the booths set up by translation companies and to use this opportunity to establish contacts for the future. Other members in the audience shared their own recollections of the ATA Conference and added useful information, insights, and perspectives.
Invoicing tools presentation
After a very encouraging report on the financial situation of the association by our Treasurer Barbara Guggemos, the General Meeting continued with a presentation of the most-used invoicing programs for freelance translators. The subject raised so much interest among the audience that it is likely that NCTA will organize a workshop on this theme. NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainen, and English-Finnish translator, presented Quickbooks, Basic Edition 2003. Among other features, Tuomas likes the way the program creates invoices and enters them into the program’s bookkeeping functions at the same time.
Next, Christine Lemor-Drake, a English-French translator, showed us Customer Pro-File, a friendly and inexpenive invoicing system that runs on both the PC and Mac. In addition to invoicing in multiple languages, it features other built-in modules including Client Manager, Report Center, Event Scheduler, Expense Tracker, Money Converter, and others.
Finally, Tetu Hirai, a Japanese-English translator, presented PractiCount & Invoice, the Standard Version. This program not only generates invoices but can also count words and characters, including Asian ones. It allows the user to exclude numerals and to change the settings according to personal needs.
The General Meeting ended with a festive mailing party that gave us the opportunity to network and have fun all together while sticking stamps and envelopes!
Dec 1st, 2005 | Mentoring, NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Reports | No Comments
By Naomi Baer
NCTA’s General Meetings are always an excellent opportunity for networking, learning, and enjoying pleasant camaraderie with colleagues in the translation and interpreting community. September’s event was no exception, especially with our featured workshop on “Building Successful Mentoring Relationships,”presented by guest speaker Courtney Searls-Ridge.
First and foremost, it was heartening to note that attendance at the meeting was nicely enriched by the presence a of number of people visiting all the way from Southern California, as well as by the faces of non-member T&I professionals interested in learning about the association.
The afternoon kicked off as usual with an informative New Member Orientation session, offered by Tetu Hirai, our Membership Director. While those new to NCTA learned about our services and activities, others engaged in lively conversation over refreshments prepared by Raffaella Buschiazzo, our Events Director. At about 1:30 p.m., the meeting was called to order by NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainen, who, along with Vice President Yves Averous, made the latest association announcements.
With that, we were then treated to a highly informative and very engaging presentation by Ms. Searls-Ridge, chair of ATA’s Mentoring Program, who joined us from Seattle to present her workshop on successful mentoring practices for translators and interpreters. The seminar was packed with information, not only for newcomers, but also for those ready to share some of their experience with newer members of the translation community.
A New, Structured Program
Before the Mentoring Program was founded, many ATA chapters - including NCTA - were instrumental in creating opportunities for informal mentoring, because of close contact among members and the proximity of experienced translators who could give advice to people entering the profession. About ten years ago, Ms. Searls-Ridge told the group, ATA decided it was time to set up a more formal program and began experimenting with formats that might work for such a diverse and widespread membership. The program is now structured as a mentee-driven activity, where members interested in receiving mentoring are responsible for finding a mentor and structuring the relationship. The orientation workshops that ATA provides help potential mentees and mentors build the skills that make such relationships successful.
Ms. Searls-Ridge led the group through several exercises and asked us to think about our past experiences with mentoring, whether formal or informal. In small groups, we talked about what those experiences had meant to us and - so that we might begin to understand what motivates mentors to contribute their time - how those experiences might also have been fulfilling for our mentors.
She then reviewed the four-step process for establishing a mentoring relationship: planning, building and negotiating a relationship, developing the relationship itself, and ending the relationship after a fixed time. A relationship of one year is recommended, working on about three goals per year. Ms. Searls-Ridge also recommends a mid-year review, which allows mentees to set new goals at that point.
After some discussion of how to go about finding a mentor, Ms. Searls-Ridge discussed issues that are useful to talk about early on, including asking your mentor to offer criticism in the ways you receive it best, discussing what kind of confidentiality you both should expect from each other, and identifying development activities you could work on together.
Possible activities were discussed, and audience members contributed numerous suggestions: shadowing your mentor in his or her work for a day, role playing on negotiations for a new translation project, co-authoring an article, getting feedback on a sample translation, and discussing life/work balance strategies.
Mentors Wanted
The presentation included ample information for potential mentors as well, with a separate book of exercises and advice. Ms. Searls-Ridge discussed skills important to the mentor side of the relationship, such as active listening, maintaining boundaries with your mentee, and strategies for handling differences of opinion.
For those who weren’t able to make it to this workshop, ATA runs mentoring orientation workshops throughout the year in different locations, as well as at the ATA Conference each year. Check the organization’s website for scheduling information: http://www.atanet.org/Mentor/
For those of you who did attend, we’d be interested to hear how things go if you do start working with a mentor or mentee. Write to us at editor@ncta.org and let us know if you’d be interested in telling us about your experiences.
As participants said their good-byes after the meeting, business cards were exchanged with great enthusiasm. Mentor, mentee, or neither … relationships are waiting to be built. See you at our next General Meeting!
Dec 1st, 2005 | Interviews, Localization, NCTA Info, NCTA Members, Translation | No Comments
By Anna Schlegel
Silvia Campos is an International Web Manager at VeriSign, a company that delivers intelligent infrastructure services. A native of Brazil who has been living in the Bay Area for the past eight years, she has more than five years of experience in the localization industry: as a translator, as a project manager for a translation agency, and now on the client side with VeriSign. Silvia is fluent in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, and she is now learning French. She has a master’s degree in business from San Francisco State University.
What are the responsibilities of an “International Web Manager”?
SILVIA CAMPOS: My job is to manage the ongoing maintenance and production of content for our international websites as well as translations, vendor and stakeholder relationships, and in-house reviews. I work with cross-functional teams (content partners, design, legal, developers, engineers, and QA) to implement site changes across our websites. When working with the different teams I need to ensure that the site gets built according to specification, on time, and on budget. I am also responsible for analyzing site traffic and data, evaluating user surveys, and participating in user testing. Finally, I need to make sure that we integrate the corporate brand strategy on the international sites through both visual and messaging.
Where does your passion for languages come from?
I always liked languages, but I guess it really started when I moved to the U.S. in 1997. I was living in a hotel for international students, a type of residence common in San Francisco. There, I met people from all over the world and thus was exposed to numerous languages and cultures. I was fascinated by them: all the differences and the common ways of life of my fellow international friends. Learning languages, visiting countries, and experiencing the different cultures became my passion.
How did you get your start in the translation business?
I started teaching Portuguese to Americans and doing occasional translations. These became more frequent and more complex, and because of my medical background I began doing a lot of medical translations. I was also doing voiceover work and interpretation. I landed a job at a dotcom company as a full-time translator, but later my responsibilities increased and I became the localization project manager.
Please describe your ideal translator and localization manager.
My ideal translator is reliable, available, flexible, and up to date on current issues. He or she is passionate about languages and cultures and is a native speaker of the target language. The ideal project manager is always on top of things, is detail oriented, has great interpersonal skills, and is pleasant to work with. Additionally, he or she is fluent in at least two languages.
Do you find that language - and language professionals - are becoming more important and visible in U.S. Companies?
Absolutely. As the Internet became popular over the past decade, local companies in many countries started to create their own sites offering products and services in the local language. This gave them an edge over U.S. companies; they had broken the language barrier. But as American companies began to see the need for localized sites, the importance of language professionals in this country grew drastically. Today, we know that a U.S. company wishing to succeed in other cultures must offer its products and services - as well as its website - in the target country’s language.
How does English influence other language localization?
The high-technology industry and the Internet are relatively new, so many of the terms pertaining to these fields were created in the U.S. and never translated, making the English language pretty common in a lot of the localized materials. In addition, a lot of times companies don’t translate product and service names because of corporate branding policies that dictate that names must remain the same; sometimes they even keep acronyms that don’t mean anything in a foreign language.
What are the major challenges facing corporations today?
Companies face challenges at all levels: from the day-to-day management of localization requests to the coordination of strategic localization initiatives. These days, it is no longer acceptable to offer older versions of products in foreign markets; the Internet-connected buyer is well informed and wants the latest version of products that are being sold in the company’s home market. Because of that, companies now must keep up with the demand for accurate and up-to-date information in all the markets in which they offer products - a huge and expensive effort. Conversely, in order to be competitive in foreign markets, companies need to reduce their globalization costs, but without affecting the quality of their localized content. It is a delicate balancing act.
What was the most difficult translation challenge you’ve faced in your own work?
It was probably when I first started as a translator. I had to localize a collection of children’s books to Brazilian Portuguese, and I was given a very tight deadline. There were a lot of words not found in the dictionaries, words that only children and parents know about. For a starter, it was a tough one.
What you are reading now about the localization field?
I’m reading Business Without Borders by Donald A. DePalma.
Dec 1st, 2005 | Agencies, Interviews, NCTA Info, Translation | No Comments
By Michael Schubert
Mariam Nayiny holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales in Geneva and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Geneva. She began her career as a journalist and was on assignment in New York at the time of the 1979 revolution in her native Iran. Her decision to remain in the U.S. prompted her career change. Mariam worked initially for the United Nations Development Program while freelancing as a translator of French and Farsi into English, then later as a translator, interpreter, and project manager for Berlitz Translations and other companies in New York and San Francisco before founding IDEM Translations, Inc. (http://www.idemtranslations.com/) in 1983.
Explain the meaning of your company’s name.
MARIAM NAYINY: Idem is Latin and means “the same.” It is used routinely in French and I assumed it was common here as well, like the equivalent terms ditto or ibidem. Actually, the name creates curiosity about our company, so it’s not a bad thing. It signifies our striving to create translations that are replicas of the originals.
What motivations led to your company’s founding? Who were the founders and how large was your team?
My language combinations were not ideal to sustain me in the freelance world. The Farsi business died after the Iranian hostage crisis, and in French I was competing against so many others and did not have the technical language skills. Translation was what I knew best, and I did not want to be employed by others, so starting my own company was the logical conclusion. At the time, I was freelancing for Berlitz in San Francisco. I notified the director of my intentions so there would be no conflict of interest. She not only encouraged me but actually joined my new company and remained my partner for 17 years. We started with just the two of us, a typewriter and a home office - no outside financing.
How large is your staff today and how many freelancers do you work with?
We are still small, with an in-house staff of seven. We regularly work with 160 translators and have a database of 500 who are pre-qualified (resume, three references, and a test translation) and ready to be called upon if the volume exceeds our present capacity. Generally, we try to use our established team and introduce new, screened candidates gradually.
Were there strategic considerations for choosing the Bay Area?
No, quite honestly. San Francisco is where I was, so that’s where the company began. When I moved to Palo Alto in 1988, the company moved with me.
What was the business character of the region before the high-tech boom?
In San Francisco, we had both traditional and established clients, mostly in the financial sector. When we moved to Palo Alto, we shifted much more into high technology; even the legal and litigation work we did had a high-tech basis. Software localization already dominated the local industry by 1988.
In addition to your Palo Alto headquarters, IDEM has an office in Madrid. How is your European office distinguished from your U.S. headquarters?
We had a highly valued project manager in Palo Alto who returned to Madrid after two years here. We continued working with her there, eventually opening a production center. The Madrid office is beneficial for us not only for the human connections it gives us in Europe, but also for the time zone advantage as we work transatlantically, across two continents. However, all of our operations are still centralized in Palo Alto.
Tell us about the fields and language combinations that make up your core business.
We have accounts in the health care industry (biotech, pharmaceutical, medical devices) and the IT sector, and we have recently become the preferred vendor for some major retailers. 80 percent of our work is conducted in the EU languages, in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese for Latin America, and in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
And Farsi?
Farsi has become an “exotic language.”The volume of work we have in exotic languages is small and non-technical.
Which CAT tools do you use in-house?
Trados is our main tool. We have no problem with translators using other tools, as long as they are compatible.
Have clients responded favorably to the “My Account” section of your website?
Yes, and our regular clients are all on it. Some of them use it not only for up- and downloading, but as a repository for previous work. We keep the documentation online for at least two years. It is also a great place for our translators and editors. We can define scaled access levels for the various roles: clients see only the final documents, which they can approve; editors see only the files they need for their work. Automatic notifications are sent to us whenever there is activity. It behaves like an FTP site but is more intelligent. It maintains all the documentation with the proper references in the existing format, manages revisions, and protects the original versions against changes.
What is the most satisfying part of IDEM?
The thing that we are most proud of is that we give the same weight to both translators and clients. Our philosophy does not say that the client is the boss - the translator is equally important and gets the same respect. If one of the two has to give, it is not the translator. Most of us come from that background, so we have a respect for our colleagues.
Sep 1st, 2005 | NCTA Events, NCTA Info | No Comments
By Raffaella Buschiazzo
When we left San Francisco at mid-morning Sunday the 26th of June, it was foggy, of course. I kept telling myself that by the time we got to Coyote Point Park in San Mateo County, the spot we had chosen for the picnic, the fog would have disappeared, but nothing happened for a long while. We were worried. Then suddenly, right before San Mateo, the fog left room for a nice sunny day and at that point we knew that we could enjoy our NCTA picnic without the need to dress for a winter camp in Alaska!
We arrived at the aptly named Eucalyptus Picnic Area # 1 and started exploring the surroundings. The location is pretty, in a grove of the trees on top of a gentle hill facing a green golf course at the foot of the coast range on one side, and a small harbor on the Bay side.
When the first NCTA members began arriving around one, the charcoal was ready to cook the delicious ribs that Marianne Pripps had brought, along with our humble sausages. That is how the feast started. We wrapped mushrooms and other vegetables in aluminum foil and put everything on the grill. This is the way I prefer to cook: checking the fire from time to time, with a glass of wine in my hand, chatting in very good company. There is nothing better and easier.
We had a taste of France when Sonia Murray and her husband and son arrived, bringing with them her famous homemade pâté, made from a family recipe that we all appreciated very much. When Tatyana Neronova and her family joined us, we all moved to a big table under the trees, not far from our barbecue but sheltered from the sun that was getting very warm. Later, Tetu Hirai arrived with the perfect summer dessert: fruit salad with grenola and soy yoghurt. Delicious!
The picnic lasted all afternoon, with comings and goings, and good food and good moods. It was once again a successful NCTA event, where people had an opportunity to meet, socialize, and share the ups and downs of the translator’s life, all in a very pleasant atmosphere.
So next time you feel lonely and uninspired in front of the screen—or elated at finding the perfect translation for that tricky word—just think of the next NCTA event, when you will be able to meet the people who understand your travails and triumphs! See you at the next one!
