Sep 1st, 2005 | Literary Translation, NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Translation | No Comments
By Nina Scott
The May General Meeting held a cornucopia of delights for literary lovers, and lovers of language, in the form of a panel discussion among three of NCTA’s “transliterati.” In a talk moderated by Translorial editor Steve Goldstein, literary translators Anne Milano Appel, Alison Anderson, and Olivia Sears shared their insights about language, writing, poetry, and the business of translation.
All three of the panelists hold extremely strong literary credentials. Anne Milano Appel has been a full-time Italian/English translator since 1996; her recent nonfiction translation of Stefano Bortolussi’s Head Above Water won the 2003 Northern California Book Award for translation. Alison Anderson is not only a literary translator, but also a published novelist, whose most recent novel, Darwin’s Wink, was published last fall. She has just completed a translation of Ensemble, C’est Tout, by best-selling French author Anna Gavalda. Olivia Sears is a poet as well as a translator of Italian poetry. She is the founder of both Two Lines, an annual journal of new, international literature in translation, and the non-profit Center for the Art of Translation (CAT), which promotes translation as a bridge between cultures.
The session got off on a high note at the very beginning with the reading of a press notice from that very morning announcing that the prestigious Man Booker organization in Britain had inaugurated a new, $28,000 award for literary translation. With spirits thus suitably raised among both the panelists and the audience, the discussion began in earnest with a look at the kinds of qualifications that are required for literary translation. First and foremost: a love of books and reading, and a “feel” for language.
Building relationships
“It’s like trying to figure out a crossword puzzle,” said Anne, a former library director before becoming a translator. “You have to have a feel for literature and language to begin with … it’s about finding the right word, and hearing the text breathe.”Being exposed to a second culture at a young age was more an advantage than a true requirement, the panelists agreed. Anne shared that she grew up having her maternal grandmother speak to her in Italian and recalls she would always answer her grandmother in English. She feels this experience gave her an advantage, adding, “you can’t have language without culture”—a notion not disputed by the other panelists, who nonetheless came to their second languages a bit later. Olivia, whose specialty is Italian Renaissance poetry, didn’t grow up immersed in foreign languages and didn’t touch Italian until college. She says, “I didn’t know the culture and it was not in my blood so I had to work at it.”
That work includes developing a relationship with the author, if possible, if he or she is still alive—and even if not! And not just for relatively straightforward issues of terminology, either. For Alison, translating gives her the chance to get “… into the heart and soul of the author,” which allows her to participate in his creativity.” Similarly for Anne: “You have to get into the mind of the author. Most authors are flattered if you’re interested.”
How do authors and translators find each other? There rarely seems to be a fixed pattern, although networking, writing proposals to publishing houses, and oftentimes sheer determination, helps. As does, at times, serendipity, as when a delayed airplane flight allowed Alison to read a book she might otherwise not have read. When she later contacted the publisher about the book’s translation rights, the publisher offered Alison another, larger translation project on the spot!
The translation of poetry is a special type of literary translation; it is the very subject for which Robert Frost penned the immortal phrase “lost in translation.” While it is not a prerequisite to be a novelist in order to translate fiction, it is almost indispensable that one be a poet if one is to translate poetry. Olivia cited one exception to this, but it was the exception that proved the rule. This is understandable when one considers that poetry translation brings with it a host of special challenges, from meter to register to that perennial bugaboo, rhyme. “Translating rhyme is especially difficult because it makes poetry hard to access,” commented Olivia.
Considering the audiences
When asked about where fidelity lies—to the source text, the author, or the reader—the panelists had a variety of insights. Anne, for example, found herself translating plays differently than prose. Once, when translating a play, she found the process “too stiff” but tried to hear how it sounded in the source text so as to be as true to it as possible. Alison tends to try to improve language where appropriate: “I will do it if it’s unclear, for example, or if it seems like it needs to be broken into smaller sentences.” Other topics the panelists addressed included pay rates (“Decent money is possible with commercial projects,” commented Olivia; “Don’t quit your day job!,” said Alison), credits and copyrights, and book recommendations. At the end of the session, a lively question-and-answer period ended with Steve posing one final question for the audience to consider:
How can we get Oprah to do a show on translation and translators?
Sep 1st, 2005 | Agencies, Interviews, Medical Translation, NCTA Info, Translation | No Comments
By Michael Schubert
Monique Rivas is the CEO of NCTA corporate member LUZ, Inc., a global translation services company with headquarters in San Francisco and a production facility in Buenos Aires. Along with partner Sanford Wright, Monique co-founded the company in 1994, when both individuals saw an opportunity to fill a need that was not being met by the marketplace: namely, providing comprehensive translation support for large-scale projects in the life science industries. “Luz” means “light” in Spanish, and it symbolizes the founders’ desire to create a transparent approach to translation service offerings.
Did you grow up bilingually?
Monique Rivas: I am a third-generation Mexican-American and grew up speaking both Spanish and English. But a foreign language can get quite diluted by the time it makes its way down to the third generation, so I did see a need for advanced language studies. I earned a degree in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College (in Los Angeles, near Pasadena) with a minor in Spanish.
Describe LUZ: type of business, areas of specialization, number of employees …
LUZ translates into about 35 languages—about 80 to 90 percent of our business is from English—with an exclusive focus on life science industries, specifically medical devices, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals. Since most of our clients are affected by the European Union’s regulations, we have seen increased activity in Eastern and Central European languages. These clients must have their materials translated into the new EU languages; this is no longer a voluntary marketing decision but a necessity for compliance with the In-Vitro Diagnostic Directive and Medical Device Directive. Our market is a highly regulated industry.
To handle this, we have 25 full-time employees and work with 1,500 to 2,000 freelance translators, depending on the workload. Our focus of large-scale medical devices can generate quite a bit of volume. Our San Francisco office handles sales, while the Buenos Aires office focuses on production—translation and desktop publishing.
Is there an advantage to being located in the Bay Area?
Yes! Sanford and I considered the Bay Area to be the ideal place for our business, both because of the biotech centers here and for the proximity to leading universities. We do much of our recruiting at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, and the University of California, San Francisco.
Will the new stem cell research center to open in San Francisco be a boon to your business?
That is still to be determined. Research and development industries have less of a need for translations; most of our business is generated from the tried-and-true industries. The stem cell research center could be helpful as a resource or recruiting center, however.
Has it been your experience that most of your clients understand the importance of quality translation and budget accordingly, or do you have to engage in a lot of client education?
Since we provide services to highly regulated industries, our clients inherently buy quality at two levels: the translation work product and, equally important, consistency of internal production/QA.
Which industry-specific software do you use in-house?
For translation memory, we use TRADOS and SDLX. For Web globalization, we use Idiom’s WorldServer. We have also developed an internal translation management system called Aurora, as well as a suite of TM automation tools.
How has the Internet changed the translation business?
The Internet has changed the business in two ways: Linguists have become more technologically savvy, and the Internet has allowed pharmaceutical companies to expand their business, which in turn has expanded ours.
How do you see your business in five years?
We want to be the industry-recognized number-one provider of life science translations and the best place to work in the industry. Every quarter we measure how much closer we are to that goal.
May 1st, 2005 | NCTA Info, NCTA Members, Reports | No Comments
By Catherine Theilen-Burke, with database assistance from Brigitte Reich
We often try to define ourselves as an organization: Who are we? What is our mission? What are our individual interests and passions? In this two-part series, prompted by a recent flurry of emails in our online discussion group, we’ll tackle something far simpler: Where do we live? And why, for those of us who no longer reside in Northern California, do we choose to keep up our NCTA membership? In September, we’ll look at our overseas contingent. To start us off, though, Catherine Theilen-Burke examines our all-American diaspora.
A somewhat surprising one out of four NCTA members lives outside of Northern California. Here’s how we break down: of our nearly 500 individual members, 459 live in the United States and 28 overseas. Of our domestic membership, 416 live in California, and 43 out of state.Within California, 363 live in Northern California, and 53 live in Central and Southern California. Within Northern California, 337 live in the Bay Area and 26 in the Sacramento region. And finally, within the Bay Area, 98 live in San Francisco, 94 in the East Bay, 21 in Marin, 40 in the South Bay, 60 on the Peninsula, and 24 in Sonoma.
Long-time Northern California resident Maren Mentor, who recently moved to rural Pennsylvania, provided an insight into NCTA membership. “I consider NCTA the most active ATA chapter, have made many personal and professional friends over the years, and appreciate member benefits such as the email list and Translorial,” she says. Maren has maintained her ties with her NCTA friends and says that the more inclusive and active the email list, the better. Her work for translation companies does not reflect the economic situation in her current region, which is “rural, economically depressed, and monocultural.” Maren’s situation demonstrates that translators are expanding their possibilities of where they can live, even taking advantage of places where a good standard of living need not depend solely on the performance of the local economy.
Chantal Wilford, a resident of Colorado, has kept ties for similar reasons. “I’ve kept my membership because the association is active, and appears to be known and respected by other translators in the U.S. I’ve come to know, recognize, and respect many of our members and I continue to get work from people who find me via NCTA’s online referral database.” For Chantal, the concept of an online community is attractive; getting to know members over a period of time is rewarding and the business contacts useful. The Entre Nous French online discussion group is particularly active, with members putting out queries and generating responses on a regular basis. The brainstorming initiated by these queries offers lessons in approaching material that is often difficult to decipher.
Steve Vitek is another NCTA member who no longer lives in Northern California, having moved to Virginia a few years back. He wrote about his experience in an earlier Translorial article entitled “Home is Where You Hook up your Modem.” Steve’s reasons for moving involved quality-of-life issues for himself and his family, who are now thriving in a seaside area that he says is not so different from Northern California—except in terms of the cost of living. Fortunately, he has kept virtually all of the clients he had here in Northern California; another indication that in our electronically connected age, location doesn’t really matter if you can consistently deliver quality work on time and have a good relationship with your clients.
NCTA is represented in the Great Northwest by several members, including, among others, George Fowler and the recently relocated Tony and Sylvie Roder. George resides in Spokane, Washington, where he is currently on the board of directors of fellow-ATA chapter Northwest Translators and Interpreters Association. After living in the Asia Pacific region for more than three decades and working for most of that period in the commercial banking sector, George comes to translation with related experience in four Asian langugages. George joined NCTA when he first started translating in view of the correlation between his language specialties and the translation needs of the large ethnic Asian population of the Northern California area covered by NCTA. As with others, George cites a diverse membership as being a powerful benefit of belonging to organizations such as NCTA.
To paraphrase one of our most inventive linguists, Dr. Seuss, “From here to there, from there to here, NCTA translators are everywhere!”
Feb 1st, 2005 | NCTA Info, Reports | No Comments
By Catherine Theilen Burke
In an effort to raise the visibility of our association while helping out a worthy cause, a group of NCTA translators assembled at the studios of KQED on the evening of December 1, 2004 to take pledges for the public TV station in conjunction with its annual pledge drive. It was a productive, and fun, night for all.
Pledge night at KQED is, in fact, extremely well organized and participating is a pleasure. Our first activity, upon arrival and meeting our group members, was to eat a delicious dinner donated by a local Chinese restaurant, all while getting to know each other better. Languages represented by our group were Bulgarian, German, Farsi/Dari, Finnish, French, and Japanese. We then watched a video outlining procedures for answering the phones and filling out pledge forms.
After our training and an outline of the evening’s schedule, we filed into a large room with banks of bright lights and rows of seats with telephone consoles. On a blackboard was written the number of minutes remaining until the first pledge break, giving us time to settle down and review our page of instructions and the list of gifts people would receive for making a pledge.
Answering the phones during the pledge drive was quite easy. The forms were clear and callers were, for the most part, familiar with the system. In between the pledge breaks we mostly socialized, joking and coaching each other on telephone etiquette and engaging in shop talk.
Meeting other people was also easy, as we had a shared set of tasks and we had some good laughs accomplishing them. Translators who are pulled away from their desks and deadlines like to have a good time when they get together.
We were happy to be able to promote awareness of NCTA in the name of a good cause. Thank you to Brigitte Minault-Reich for organizing this fun and productive NCTA event. We look forward to other members joining us in volunteering for the next NCTA KQED pledge night.
Feb 1st, 2005 | Conferences, Localization, NCTA Info, Reports | No Comments
By Michael Metzger
The year 2003 saw a series of conferences, seminars, and workshops in the localization industry and I watched them all carefully to see what they had to offer. One event, the Localization World conference held in Seattle, caught my attention and excitement as the program seemed to round up all of my “pet interests:” terminology roundtable, localization metrics initiative, tools presentations … what more could I ask for?
When I learned in Spring 2004 that the Localization World conference was coming to San Francisco, there was no doubt in my mind that we, the NCTA, needed to be there. Who else but translation professionals could make a positive contribution to such an event with industry insight and experience? Is it not true that no matter how lofty the terms become to describe this industry, it always begins with translation?
The plan was simple: NCTA, representing the translation and interpretation industry, would become our profession’s ambassador through our contributions to the conference’s programs. We would realize the vision, excitedly debated at ATA conferences: a public relations promotion of the trade, an outreach to end clients whom translators usually never meet – in short, a way of putting a human face on this service called translation.
But this was just the idea; what had to follow was contacting the organizers and hoping this idea would fall on receptive ears. And in Donna Parish from Multilingual Computing and Ulrich Hennes from Localization Institute, we found people with the vision to match ours. Over the course of several months we shaped a proposal that could only spell success: NCTA would become an official participating sponsor of the event, contributing with workshops and individual sessions. We would furthermore represent the translation industry with a fully staffed table throughout the event with one clear objective: to engage conference attendees in professional discussion, and to educate and inform them about the work of translators. At the same time, NCTA would participate in the planning of the program with a seat on the advisory committee of the conference.
Our contributions were all extremely well-received, from the workshops, to the “standing room only” session with Christoph Niedermair and Sabine Hathaway, to Frank Dietz’s presentation on game localization and Anna Schlegel’s coordination of round-the-clock volunteers for the NCTA table.
Next year’s conference will be back in Seattle. We hope another local group will step in and represent our trade!
Feb 1st, 2005 | Continuing Ed., NCTA Info | No Comments
By Carolina Arrigoni-Shea
How many times have you embarked on time-consuming terminology research to translate a project for client XYZ, only to find three months later that your “nature-fueled memory chip,” bombarded by a wide range of topics and assignments, is not able to retrieve the required vocabulary when client XYZ gives you project No. 2? I recently participated in a Wordfast Workshop for Beginners offered by NCTA and I would like to share some thoughts with colleagues who may have not yet tried their hand at computer-aided translation (CAT).
Wordfast is a translation memory program compatible with PC, Mac, and Linux platforms that allows you to work more efficiently and save quite a bit of time. The beauty of this tool is that it is truly user-friendly, and acquiring it will not cause severe damage to your bank account.
After the four-hour hands-on workshop, I went back home and was able to immediately put basic Wordfast functions to use on the translation of a technical manual. As you work, Wordfast’s translation memory tracks your translation choices and creates your own personal glossary. When translation segments begin to repeat themselves, the software will automatically provide you with the target language options you have previously fed into the memory. !Fantástico!
My one piece of advice is to sign up for an introductory workshop. Many of us have probably considered enhancing our professional arsenal by utilizing translation software. However, it is hard to find the time to try out the products on the market – let alone learn how to use them! A workshop gives you the opportunity to do just that, benefiting from interaction with experienced instructors and greatly reducing your learning curve. (An added bonus of attending the Wordfast workshop was that NCTA kindly negotiated a special discounted licensing rate for participants.)
Increased speed and consistency of terminology are two of the more important benefits of CAT tools. Wordfast, additionally, supports MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and several of the most common file formats we come across in our business. This flexibility, plus its ease of use, makes Wordfast a particularly attractive option for those of us who are new to the world of computer-aided translation.
Workshop tips
- Bring your own gear, whether it is yours, borrowed, or rented.
- If you are a hopeless desktop romantic, make sure you “test drive” the laptop you will use. The smaller-size keyboard and touchpad/trackball mouse can be challenging at first.
- Download all required materials beforehand and confirm they are “operational.”
- Read, or at least browse, workshop materials in advance to familiarize yourself with the terminology and the topic.
- Arrive early and have fun!
Feb 1st, 2005 | ATA, Conferences, Interpretation, NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Reports, Translation | No Comments
By Naomi Baer
It’s been a busy fall for NCTA, and several presentations on various members’ activities were given at the General Meeting in December. Tetu Hirai, Merav Rozenblum, and Celine Detraz all reported on their experiences at the ATA Conference held in Toronto in October, passing along highlights from presentations they attended and describing how they focused their time at the conference.
Tetu found that networking with other translators and agencies was especially useful to him, as was as a talk entitled “Digital Voice Recorder-Assisted Consecutive Interpretation,” in which a new technology was introduced that uses interpreter-controlled recording and playback devices to allow interpreters to free themselves from note-taking, and thus interpret simultaneously from their recording.
Céline had also attended this talk, and told us that she found it helpful to be exposed to new technologies in the industry. As a second-time attendee at the conference, she felt that she was better able to focus on the events that would be specific to her current needs. A highlight for her was being able to connect with colleagues and re-connect with the translation community after having been less involved after the birth of her child. She was particularly happy to have increased contact with NCTA, through other members attending the conference, and found that the conference was motivational for her both in her work and in her desire to be more active in the translation community.
A couple of other sessions as well stood out for Celine: “Internet Privacy for the Small or Home Office Environment,” where resources for addressing spam and spyware were discussed (see http://www.jill-sommer.com/en/presentation2.htm for details), and the session, “Self-Assessment and Quality in Simultaneous Interpreting.”
Merav, as a third-time conference attendee, also found it easier to focus her participation on those sessions of specific interest to her, and particularly enjoyed meeting colleagues and giving her own workshop on the Hebrew language. Other highlights for her were Peter Less’s talk on his experiences as an interpreter at the Nuremberg trials after WWII (read more in the ATA Chronicle’s September issue), the Literary Translation Division Café, and a talk by the first publisher of a Spanglish dictionary.
In local news, Michael Metzger reported on NCTA’s recent participation in the Localization World Conference in San Francisco, where workshops were given by Tuomas Kostiainen and Jost Zetzsche, and a panel presentation included participation by Sabine Hathaway and Christopher Niedermair. An NCTA table was maintained throughout the conference, where potential translation clients could stop by to learn about our organization and referral database, as well as pick up material from the ATA on how to go about getting high quality translations.
One of the biggest changes for NCTA this year has been our new website, and Laura Blijleven-Bergmans showed us how to use some of the site’s main features, including online renewals, updates of translator profiles, workshop registration, translator searches, and accessing the Translorial archive.
The meeting wrapped up with a chance to network as everyone helped with the end-of-year mailing, including ballots and candidate statements for the February 2005 election, along with renewal notices.
Feb 1st, 2005 | NCTA Info | No Comments
By Michael Schubert
As good translators, let us first clarify the terminology: newsgroup, message board, bulletin board, listserv, or mailing list? All of these terms are commonly used interchangeably, despite distinctions of interface and transmission protocol. What the NCTA maintains are properly called mailing lists. To the uninitiated, a mailing list may suggest a one-way conduit for announcements, reminders, or advertising. The reality of our mailing lists, however, is that they are open, email-based exchanges of professional questions and answers, commentaries, and insights. For this reason, I prefer to call them online forums.
The NCTA hosts three online forums:
In addition, NCTA Board member, Publications Director (the force behind Translorial) and all-around dynamo Yves Avérous has created TransMUG (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug), a private mailing list for translators using the Macintosh platform.
Now that we’ve established what the NCTA online forums are, the next question is, What are they good for?
A great deal! A successful online forum is inclusive enough to be beneficial, yet exclusive enough to be pertinent. NCTA-Members brings together people who represent a great diversity but share a common profession and ties to a common locality. Cibertertulia, EntreNous, and TransMUG further refine this community based on language combination or computer operating system. Topics naturally include terminology queries, linguistic discussions, agency referrals, and computer advice on issues specific to multilingual users, but the scope is much broader than that. I have personally benefited from online discussions covering everything from international currency exchange to pricing models for various file formats and where to find quality home office furniture in the Bay Area.
While I believe the most important function of our online forums is to establish and sustain a sense of community among local translators and interpreters, remember that the lofty does not obscure the worldly: jobs are frequently posted to our forums, and I’m certainly not alone in tracing more than one lucrative client relationship to a posting on the NCTA online forum.
Our online forums are open to all NCTA members. You can choose to receive individual mails as they are posted, daily digests or no mail whatsoever—settings you can adjust as often as you like to suit your schedule and preferences. Currently, only about 40 percent of NCTA members take advantage of this member benefit, and so our message to the “silent majority” is: join the conversation!
To preview recent subject threads and see monthly statistics on volume, refer to the links provided above. To join, contact me at listmaster@ncta.org. See you online!
“For those of us who don’t have the time to network in person, [the online forum] is the lifeline of an organization – we can ask questions, contribute thought, and read what’s going on in the professional lives of the other members. As an agency owner, I find it to be a great tool to find the right resources.”
-Dagmar Dolatschko, founder and president of NCTA corporate member Peritus Precision Translations, Inc. (San Carlos)
Feb 1st, 2005 | Agencies, Arabic, French, Interviews, NCTA Info | No Comments
By Anna Schlegel
NCTA Corporate Member Loq-Man Translations was founded in 1995 by Tarek Dachraoui and his colleague Natalie Mann. The agency provides expertise in all languages, with a special emphasis on Arabic, French, and English, offering translation, interpretation, localization, technical editing, copywriting, page design, production support, ongoing quality control, and consulting. A native of Tunisia, Tarek holds a B.A. in English Literature, a B.A. in Linguistics and an M.A. in Translation and interpreting from the Institut Bourguiba in Tunis, Tunisia.
Where did you grow up?
TAREK DACHRAOUI: I was born and raised in and around Tunis, in a multilingual and multicultural environment in which Arabic, French, and Italian were “de rigueur.” After high school I spent a year as an exchange student in the U.S. in a small, remote, and snowy town in upstate New York. A career in linguistics and languages seemed most natural to me, and once back in Tunisia I pursued my language studies. After a quick stop at the Ecole Superieure d’Interpretes et de Traducteurs in Paris, I headed to Moscow for a year to learn Russian, with the incredible thought that I might one day be able to read Dostoyevsky in the original (of course, that never worked). I then lived in Rome for four years, where I worked at a European Economic Commission agency coordinating different programs between the Italian government, the FAO, and different regional organizations.
How did you start your business?
I hate cubicles and ties. Starting my own business seemed the most logical thing to do when I moved to the Bay Area!
Have you seen an increase of work due to the political developments of these past couple of years?
We have definitely seen an increase in demand for our services based on recent political developments. As one might guess, there is currently a very high demand for quality translations from Arabic into English and vice versa. We have been working with federal agencies and local governments as well as the private sector.
Where is your work, and your translator pool, based?
Our office is based in Richmond, and we try as much as possible to employ local translators. However, our network extends beyond the state and the country. We regularly get job orders from outside the U.S., and so we work with translators and interpreters in Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, as well. Of course, the jobs are assigned in connection with the project and the destination of the finished product. For the last four to five years, we have been providing our services in France, the UK, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Finland, among others. We just finished a large job that is going to Spain.
Describe the translator that you love to work with.
Quality and time are of the essence for every competitive business, and translation is no different when it comes to these considerations. We want to work with translators who can deliver what they promise; who don’t get in over their heads with high volumes of work or subject content that they aren’t comfortable with.
We want our translators and interpreters to be naturally inquisitive; who keep up-to-date about current events, and who read the news and specialized magazines and reviews. Not people who feel they “know it all,” and who are never wrong. We believe that translation is an art – it is a professional art, and as such, it is demands constant learning.
We are always very responsive to our translators’needs. We help them extensively; we provide glossaries when we have them, and set reasonable deadlines. We want our translators to feel comfortable while working with us and in doing their work.
What are the challenges of the Arabic language in the US market?
We spend lots of time and energy educating our clients about translation in general, and the Arabic language in particular. Many people are not aware that Arabs do not speak the same language they use to read or write. Arabs speak “colloquial Arabic,” which is not written and differs from one country to another. They use Modern Standard Arabic to write and read. However, it is a language taught in school and, of course, the higher your education is, the better you master the language.
There are also other technical aspects. Arabic is a bidirectional language. In bidirectional scripts, the text is written from right to left, while embedded numbers or segments of text in western scripts (Latin-based ones such as English or French) are written from left to right. Furthermore, languages that use the Arabic script have special ligature and shaping features which add a level of complexity in their display and printing that do not apply to other European and Asian languages. Because of these factors, most clients do not have a good understanding of how to support bidirectional languages. We spend lots of time explaining these special features to our clients and helping them set their operating systems and applications.
Feb 1st, 2005 | French, Interviews, Literary Translation, NCTA Info, NCTA Members, Translation | No Comments
Interview by Michael Schubert
NCTA member Alison Anderson leads a triple life as a novelist, French-to-English literary translator, and employee of the French consulate in San Francisco. After growing up in the eastern United States, she moved to Switzerland as a teenager. There she earned a degree in French and Russian literature and later an M.A. from the University of Geneva School of Translation and Interpretation. Widely traveled, she has taught English in Greece and Croatia and also lived in France.
After two decades abroad, she returned to the United States, finally settling in the Bay Area in 1987. Her first novel, Hidden Latitudes, was published in 1996 and named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle. She is a recent NEA grant recipient for literary translations (works of Christian Bobin), and her published translations include Onitsha by JMG Le Clezio and a comprehensive history of the Surrealist movement. Alison’s latest novel, set in Mauritius, is entitled Darwin’s Wink and has just been published by St. Martin’s Press. Alison’s association with the NCTA goes back to 1988.
You’ve cited your travels as inspiration for your novels – specifically, your sailing trip to Mexico for your first novel, Hidden Latitudes, your trips to Mauritius for Darwin’s Wink, and your time in Greece for your novel-in-progress, The Road to the Island. Can you elaborate on how travel inspires you?
ALISON ANDERSON: Travel heightens the senses and attunes you to the exotic. It makes you more aware of the people who surround you, even if you don’t speak their language. Travel opens your imagination.
Are language and culture important plot elements in your fictional work?
Not in Hidden Latitudes, since it’s set on a desert island! They are more important in Darwin’s Wink, because Mauritius is a melting pot of many different cultures. I had to reflect these historic and cultural differences. The Road to the Island is more homogeneous, about a Greek-American woman who goes to Greece to research her family history.
Is your multilingualism and your experience as a translator always present in your thoughts as you write? Do you imagine how people of different cultures will understand your words or how translators will render them?
First of all, I came to writing through translation; it was the confidence I developed through manipulating other people’s words which gave me the strength to try it on my own. As far as incorporating my knowledge of languages into my own fiction, in The Road to the Island, I am aware in writing the dialogs that the people are actually speaking Greek and I imagine this dialog in Greek and “translate” it. The same was true for French in Darwin’s Wink. But I don’t imagine or worry about the job of some future translator when I am writing in English!
Tell us about your career as a translator.
I translate almost exclusively literature now. After I earned my M.A., I began doing general translation work. I tested for the United Nations, but they weren’t hiring. I did various other jobs before finding my way to literary translation. My first translation, of La place by Annie Ernaux, was not accepted by the publishers, but they thought enough of my work to steal my rendering of the title! (The British translation, which they ended up using, had been called Positions; it was published in America under my title, A Man’s Place). My next experiences were better: two books on sailing for Sheridan House. In a nice instance of serendipity, it was through them that I found the agent for my first novel. Since then I’ve translated a number of art books, several novels (I’m most proud of Onitsha, which is a beautiful autobiographical novel about Africa), and am currently working on two more novels, one a fictional biography of the great Egyptian singer Oum Kalthum.
Do your writing and translation careers compete with or complement each other?
Complement. Of course, they sometimes compete for time, but they complement each other in their methodology. I devote roughly equal amounts of time to both translating and writing, though that can vary depending on my specific projects. My travels, my knowledge of foreign languages, and my experience with different cultures have all helped my careers in both writing and translation.
Sep 1st, 2004 | Business Tools, NCTA Info, Web services | No Comments
By Yves Avérous, Publications Director
If you are not a subscriber to the NCTA Members mailing list, you are missing out big time! Some members could not be bothered by the registration process with Yahoo! Groups or were taken aback by the nature and/or volume of messages sent by the list. First, there are ways to minimize your privacy risk—even though it is minimal with Yahoo!, and second, you can turn off the flow of messages while keeping access to the thousands of valuable emails kept archived on the list site. Here is a sample of the information exchanged this past Summer.
Resources—Among the countless links exchanged on the list, two are particularly worth repeating since bad payers remain a sad reality: the Payment Practices list, www.trwenterprises.com/payment_practices.htm, and the Translation Client Review list, www.tcrlist.com. Read more on the site in the May messages. Also, in August, members shared the content of the cover letters they use to certify their translations to their clients—valuable information both for novices and seasoned professionals.
Terminology—It’s amazing how some itsy-bitsy words can generate big threads. Now I know what “Vo Bo” means. Jobs—More than 20 jobs were posted, of different kinds, for many languages, during the May-August period, an average of 7 per month. And we can do much better with a little help: we are close to 500 members, individual and corporate, with barely more than 200 on the list, and much fewer contributing. I was particularly impressed by the response to a new interpretation graduate who obtained two job leads shortly after posting to the list!
Events—We were alerted by fellow members of an international translation conference in Barcelona, a seminar in Rome, a meeting in Palo Alto to do business in Bavaria, and cruise opportunities during this Fall’s FIT conference in Finland. Interpreters were also informed through this channel of NAJIT’s latest Spanish examination.
Tech help—Advice comes in handy on the list, too, especially since we now have a programmer posting utilities, like a convenient word counting macro currently tucked in the Files section.
Community—And the list would not be such a great online forum without its literary and other cultural exchanges.
