Sep 1st, 2004 | NCTA Info | No Comments
We have our own domain on the Web. Check out NCTA’s home page at www.ncta.org. There you will find information about our organization, a selection of past articles from Translorial, and other helpful information. From our home page there is a link to The Translator’s Home Companion, or you can go directly to www.lai.com/companion.html. As a benefit of membership, NCTA maintains three free mailing lists:
NCTA-Members@yahoogroups.com, for general-interest discussions and exchanges of information;
EntreNous@yahoogroups.com, for francophones and those interested in the French language;
CiberTertulia@yahoogroups.com, for Spanish-speakers and those interested in the Spanish language.
These lists are available only to NCTA members and will not accept messages from non-subscribers. For further information, visit the NCTA website at www.ncta.org/html/list.html. For a free subscription to any of these lists, e-mail a request to listmaster@ncta.org. If you are a subscriber and have not recently received any list mail, write to the listmaster and complain.
Sep 1st, 2004 | Business Tools, NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Reports | No Comments
The TransMUG list is a private mailing list created by members of the Northern California Translators Association and aimed at translators using the Mac platform, to discuss and share experiences and solutions pertaining to their profession.
Last Spring, the group managed to meet once a month until work and private schedules started conflicting at the eve of summertime. As Fall is upon us, the group will meet again at the occasion of our General Meeting, on Saturday, September 18 at noon, at the Three Dollar Bill Café, on the ground floor of The Center, one hour prior to the start of the NCTA gathering that will unfold three floors above.
Please refer to directions given for the General Meeting to come join us. And if you are not a “transmugger” yet, visit us on the Web at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug/ and subscribe! Y.A.
Sep 1st, 2004 | Business Services, NCTA Info, Web services | No Comments
As a general arrangement with Mac User Groups—extended here to the entire NCTA membership— O’Reilly, a Bay Area publisher or technology books, is offering a 20% discount on O’Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, Pragmatic Bookshelf, and Syngress books and O’Reilly conferences. You need only use code DSUG. You can find all their titles at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/. Another benefit for you, is the availability of review books: find a book relevant to our profession that you would like to discover and critique among their new and upcoming titles at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/new.html. Contact Yves Avérous at publications@ncta.org, and allow at least four weeks for shipping. Below are two titles that you might find interesting. O’Reilly has a web page for tips and suggestions on writing book reviews at http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html. Your review will be published on the TransMUG and/or NCTA Members lists.
OpenOffice.org Writer—This handy reference to using Writer, the word processor that comes with OpenOffice.org, is the open source alternative to Microsoft Word. You’ll learn how to write, edit, and review documents; use templates and styles effectively; control page layout; insert, edit, and create graphics; and much more—even how to make a smooth transition from Word. With the complete office suite included on a CD, this book makes using Writer an easy decision.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/openoffice/. Chapter 2, “Writing, Editing, and Reviewing Documents,” is available online:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/openoffice/chapter/index.html
The Spam Letters—From the man behind TheSpamLetters.com comes a collection of brilliant and entertaining correspondence with the people who send out mass junk emailings (a.k.a. spam). Compiled from the nearly 200 entries written by Jonathan Land, “The Spam Letters” taunts, prods, and parodies the faceless salespeople in your inbox, giving you a chuckle at their expense. If you hate spam, you’ll love “The Spam Letters.” http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/1593270321/
News & Tips from O’Reilly
PDF Hacks author Sid Steward posted a reduced-size file of The 9/11 Commission Report, with added bookmarks, and front-page HTML portal within hours of the report’s release. His upcoming book will reveal his many tricks.
21.5 Things You Can Do with Office 2004—Rather than covering all the new features of the software suite, Giles Turnbull shows you 21 and a half things you didn’t know your could do in Office. http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2004/08/03/ms_office.html.
May 1st, 2004 | ATA, Continuing Ed., NCTA Info, NCTA Meetings, Opinion | No Comments
By Tuomas Kostiainen
As you probably know by now, ATA’s continuing education requirement took effect at the beginning of this year. All ATA-certified translators need to accrue 20 Continuing Education (CE) points during each three-year period, with a maximum of 10 points per year, in order to maintain their certification. For further information, see ATA’s website at http://www.atanet.org/certification_change.htm.
This new requirement provides NCTA with an opportunity to organize more workshops, since more people are likely to participate in them, but it also means that we’ll have an even greater obligation to organize workshops and other educational events so that our members have as many different options as possible available to fulfill the requirement. Naturally, this wider selection of offerings will also benefit all the non-certified members. You don’t have to be a certified translator in order to enjoy the increasing selection of our workshops. After all, the point of CE points is not to collect points for points’ sake but to learn and become a better translator.
Obviously, the easiest way to fulfill the CE requirement is to attend the ATA Annual Conference two out of three years. You can earn 10 points with each annual conference, which means that two conferences in three years would be enough. Unfortunately, the cost can be relatively high, particularly if the conference locations happen to be far away.
However, the CE requirement doesn’t have to break your bank, since the credit grid also offers many other, less costly options. As an example, I wanted to show you a low-cost way to collect your required CE points with the help of NCTA. Our General Meetings, workshops and other educational events are the key to a versatile, affordable and local way to accomplish this. The table below gives an example where the only additional cost (in addition to your ATA membership fee) is the cost of one workshop in three years (generally only about $40!).
Naturally, you can mix & match various items depending on your preferences. If you can’t come to every General Meeting, take a workshop or two each year. Two 4-hour workshops each year already give you more than enough points at less than $100 a year—all tax-deductible.
Also, remember that local colleges and other organizations offer many interesting and useful courses that will give you CE points. However, if you feel that you can’t find suitable courses or workshops anywhere, let us know what you would like to learn. We are constantly looking for new workshop ideas.
As you can see from the table above, fulfilling your CE requirements does not necessarily mean long trips, expensive hotels and high conference fees. You can do it all here locally and affordably.
ATA membership – 2 points - Maximum allowed per 3 years is 2 points.
NCTA General Meetings - 1 point - Maximum allowed per 3 years is 12 points.
Published article on translation/interpreting (e.g. in Translorial) – 2 points – Maximum allowed per 3 years is 4 points.
NCTA workshop - 4 or more points – Maximum allowed per year is 10 points.
May 1st, 2004 | NCTA Info | No Comments
We have our own domain on the Web. Check out NCTA’s home page at www.ncta.org.
There you will find information about our organization, a selection of past articles from Translorial, and other helpful information.
From our home page there is a link to The Translator’s Home Companion, or you can go directly to www.lai.com/companion.html.
As a benefit of membership, NCTA maintains three free mailing lists:
NCTA-Members@yahoogroups.com, for general-interest discussions and exchanges of information;
EntreNous@yahoogroups.com, for francophones and those interested in the French language;
CiberTertulia@yahoogroups.com, for Spanish-speakers and those interested in the Spanish language.
These lists are available only to NCTA members and will not accept messages from non-subscribers. For further information, visit the NCTA Web site at www.ncta.org/html/list.html. For a free subscription to any of these lists, e-mail a request to listmaster@ncta.org.
If you are a subscriber and have not recently received any list mail, write to the listmaster and complain.
—Listmaster Mike
May 1st, 2004 | NCTA Info | No Comments
By Juliet Viola, NCTA Administrator
Simply put, it is a marketing tool for both individual and corporate/institutional NCTA members. The “Translator & Interpreter Referral Service of the NCTA” is found in the San Francisco Yellow Pages, on numerous websites, and by word of mouth. Seekers of translators and interpreters either call the NCTA office (510-845-8712) or check our online referral service.
• If contacted by telephone, I answer the NCTA telephone line and assist with referrals. I either give instructions on how to use our online database, or I give at least three names and numbers for translators/interpreters in our database that would suit the caller’s parameters (i.e., language pair, subject area, location, translator or interpreter, etc.). I generally use the online database to give referrals, but also refer to our actual NCTA database. By the way, the online listings are searchable by keyword, and randomized so that the order is different each time (e.g., no preference is given to those with surnames at the beginning of the alphabet).
• If queried on the website, our online referral service is available 24/7, located at www.ncta.org: “Click here to find a translator or interpreter.” Information is organized by language pair and by subject area. The online data is updated once per month.
If a caller to the referral service has a multi-language project or is inexperienced with hiring interpreters for a conference (for example), I will usually refer the caller to NCTA corporate members. These are listed separately on the NCTA website: “Click here to find a translation agency.”
If you are an individual member of the NCTA and aren’t already participating in the referral service, I’ll be glad to send you the application form or answer your questions about our “professional listings” (as they have traditionally been called). Please e-mail me any changes to your information; I continuously update the NCTA database.
Editing your info
Need to make any changes to your address? Telephone numbers? E-mail address?
Simply e-mail your changes to
Juliet Viola, administrator@ncta.org,
or fax to (510) 883-1355, or mail to
NCTA, P.O. Box 14015
Berkeley, CA 94712-5015
