New Trends in Crowdsourcing: The Kiva/Idem Case Study from NCTA BM on Vimeo.
Wisdom of the crowd or something for nothing? BY SARAH LLEWELLYN
The final general meeting of 2009 took place on December 12 at The Center in San Francisco. Despite the rain and the upcoming holidays, the meeting enjoyed an excellent turnout, with over 40 members and non-members in attendance. → continue reading
Association business, literary translation & business pointers are all covered at the September GM. BY NORMA KAMINSKY
Margarita Millar and Anne Appel on literary translation
The Fall NCTA General Meeting was held on September 12 at The Center. First on the agenda was the approval of an amendment to the NCTA By-laws, Article 11, covering Voting and Elections. The text in bold was added to the existing article: “Each member in good standing shall be entitled to one vote cast either at General Meetings of the Association, cast electronically or sent by surface mail in the pre-addressed envelope attached to the Notice of the Annual General Meeting. The Board shall decide which of these methods shall be used for voting. Proxies shall not be recognized in any voting.”
This change means that members will now be able to cast their votes electronically in NCTA elections. Fewer resources will be used and our voting system will be more environmentally friendly.
The proposed amendment was approved by a vote of 22 to 0 with 0 abstentions.
After the vote, we had interesting and varied feature presentations. In the first part, two translators shared some of their experience and insights into literary translation. → continue reading
SCORE volunteer Katherine D. Sullivan speaks at the NCTA May 2008 meeting about how to start up and successfully run a small business. BY RAFFAELLA BUSCHIAZZO
The spring General Meeting took place on May 10, 2008 at the LGBT conference center in downtown San Francisco. Association Secretary Stafford Hemmer opened the meeting at 1:30 p.m. after the customary orientation session for new members presented by NCTA Vice President Yves Avérous. Stafford provided the latest news, promoted the new membership directory, talked about the full calendar of events that the Association offers regularly-upcoming workshops and monthly happy hours in Oakland and SF-and transmitted his enthusiasm about the major event of the year that we are preparing for the fall: the celebration of the NCTA’s 30th anniversary. A survey was also sent to our members in order to get their suggstions regarding this event. → continue reading
The first NCTA meeting of 2008 took place on February 9 and featured—in addition to our election results and news of ongoing projects—longtime NCTA member Hany Farag’s presentation on new developments in machine translation.
BY SARAH LLEWELLYN
NCTA Secretary Stafford Hemmer, standing in for the absent Vice President Yves Avérous, began the meeting with a series of announcements, including details of upcoming NCTA workshops, a call for volunteers to present future NCTA workshops and also to contribute to Translorial, and a reminder about the monthly happy hours that take place the last Monday of every month in San Francisco and Oakland. → continue reading
By Raffaella Buschiazzo
The December 1st NCTA General Meeting had a bit of everything, from a celebration of our most active volunteers to a presentation on how to become a California Certified Court Interpreter to a lively and pleasant hour of stuffing envelopes, sticking stamps, and general all-around schmoozing as we discussed our plans for the imminent holidays.
NCTA Vice President Yves Avérous opened the General meeting at 1:40 p.m. with a few announcements of upcoming events, and a call for volunteers to replace Alison Dent as manager of the online extension of our magazine Translorial (www.translorial.com). The site will include the full archives of Translorial from its first issue 30 years ago; Alison did a tremendous job putting content online and managing it, and we will all be very sorry to see her move back to Europe. Yves continued his introduction by drawing attention to the fact that 2008 will be a special year for our Association. We will celebrate NCTA’s 30th anniversary with a major event. Suggestions are welcome!
Awards
NCTA gave free one-year memberships to four members who distinguished themselves in 2007 by their contributions to the Association’s activities. Karen Tkaczyk played an instrumental role during the ATA Conference in San Francisco by working at the NCTA table and providing a storage place in her hotel room for all the association’s collateral materials. Patricia Ramos, who served as a board director from 2000 to 2002 and hosted the board retreats at her house several times, made the trip to San Francisco to attend the ATA Conference from Spain, where she currently lives, and helped at the NCTA hospitality table every morning. Tatyana Neronova has managed all the Translorial mail meticulously for a long time. And last but not least, Paula Dieli was presented with the Volunteer of the Year Award for her involvement in the ATA Conference and for setting up and maintaining the NCTA wiki page on the Conference.
Interpreting in the Courts
The NCTA board wanted to have a presentation giving an overview of the role that court interpreters play in the court system, and what is required to become a certified or registered court interpreter in California. The goal was to offer specific information to those translators interested in expanding their careers and to interpreters who are thinking about adding this specialization to their resume.
The two speakers selected for our presentation by the San Francisco Judicial Council of California complemented each other thanks to their different profiles. Cannon Han is a Court Services Analyst with the Court Interpreters Program. Prior to joining the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), he was an attorney in the non-profit sector and in private practice. As an attorney, Mr. Han addressed language interpretation and quality of care issues in the mental health system and assisted low-income clients on a wide range of legal issues, ranging from public benefits to patients’ rights violations. Dr. Patricia Kilroe is a Linguistics Analyst for the Court Interpreters Program. Prior to this position she taught linguistics, French, English expository writing, and ESL for many years. Her degrees are a B.A. in French, an M.S. in linguistics, and a Ph.D. in Romance-language linguistics.
Mr. Han opened the presentation by quoting from the California Constitution’s mandate that “[a] person unable to understand English who is charged with a crime has a right to an interpreter throughout the proceedings.” For this reason courts must provide specially trained language interpreters whenever a party involved in a proceeding understands little or no English. The Judicial Council is the organ responsible for certifying and registering court interpreters. Currently, court interpreters can be certified in 12 languages: Arabic, Armenian (Eastern and Western), Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese. Only interpreters who pass the Court Interpreter Certification Examination and register with the Judicial Council are considered as “certified court interpreters.”
Exams
Part of the examination tests writing skills in English and in the target language for vocabulary, reading comprehension, and grammar. The written examination consists of 155 multiple-choice questions to be answered in four hours and 20 minutes. If the candidate passes, he or she goes on to the oral component to test skills in simultaneous and consecutive interpreting and in sight translation. Interpreters of spoken languages for which there is no state certifying examination are called “registered interpreters of non-designated languages.” They must pass an English proficiency examination which consists of oral and written tests. In both cases, after passing the examination, the interpreter must submit an application to register with the Judicial Council and pay an annual fee. To maintain the certification, the interpreter must attend a Code of Ethics workshop in the first two-year compliance period, and submit proof of 30 hours of continuing education and 40 recent court interpreting assignments for every two-year period.
Dr. Kilroe explained what kind of knowledge, skills, and abilities are needed in court interpreting. She distributed a very long list of linguistic, speaking, listening, reading comprehension, interpreting, and behavioral skills required for this profession. These include language fluency and interpreting skills, such as the ability to concentrate and focus, to process linguistic information and choose terminology quickly, to think analytically, to conserve intent, tone, style, and utterances of all messages, to reflect register, and to self-monitor and self-correct. There are several colleges that provide training, but Dr. Kilroe offered some tips on how to prepare the for the exam with self-study techniques: expand your vocabulary, develop your own glossaries, develop interpreting techniques for consecutive and simultaneous interpretation and sight translation, develop memorization techniques and practice effective listening. She suggested the exercise of “shadowing” to improve one’s interpreting techniques. This consists of having somebody record passages from magazines and newspapers on tape and repeating everything the speaker says including writing out any numerals from ten to 100. We tried this exercise in groups of two people. For more information on becoming a court interpreter or on official workshops, you can visit http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/courtinterpreters/becoming.htm
Thank you to Mr. Han and Dr. Kilroe for their very comprehensive presentations and for staying with us until the end of the general meeting to answer our multiple questions. They certainly provided a lot of information and good suggestions for those courageous enough to follow their path!
By Yves Avérous
It’s a Mac Macworld
After the big “Year of the iPhone,” in 2007, it was past time for Apple to give the star treatment back to the Mac in this year’s Macworld Conference and Expo held in San Francisco last month. More than ever, with all the recent product introductions, Mac users have an exciting choice of deft machines offering the best productivity a freelancer can get.
On the software side, the Apple suites iLife and iWork—having been refreshed last June—had to yield the center of the productivity stage to the big suite that finally could: Microsoft Office 2008! (The one that doesn’t support macros …) The good news there is the price, with a competitive $150 Home & Student version. Ars Technica’s first look (http://snipurl.com/1wum2) and Macworld’s review (http://snipurl.com/1y9q4) will show you all there is to like and dislike in this release.
Facing the possibility of no longer using Word on the Mac, I have given more consideration to Pages 2 (part of iWork ‘08) and got to really enjoy the elegant new version.
The Mac marketplace is now flush with applications that are as helpful as affordable. In the recent weeks, members of the TransMUG list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug) were made privvy to a few amazing online deals. On my short list of tools that you may want to try and find via Macupdate.com, I highly recommend content managers such as Yojimbo, Yep!, and Together; password managers such as Wallet or 1Password; and a fresh crop of “Getting-Things-Done”-inspired applications, from the basic TaskPaper, to the powerful OmniFocus, or the elegant Things.
With so much to discover on the Mac lately, do not miss our next TransMUG meeting, on Saturday, February 9 at 11 AM, just before the Annual Meeting, at The Center’s café. This time, it’s tech support (and switcher) extraordinaire Emmanuel Lemor who will MC the meeting. Don’t miss it.
By Sarah Llewellyn
With the 2007 ATA Conference taking place in San Francisco for the first time in 10 years, the event was an obvious choice for the theme of the September 15th General Meeting. Take a panel of past convention-goers sharing experiences and advice, throw in a free conference pass as a door prize, and you’ve got all the makings of a lively and informative get-together.
Before Yves Avérous called the meeting to order at 1:45 PM, board director Naomi Baer sat down with a small group of new NCTA members to conduct a half-hour orientation session. When it came time for association business, the focus, needless to say, was on the conference. Yves Avérous requested resources for print material, Paula Dieli asked for contributions to NCTA’s conference “wiki site,” and Naomi Baer solicited volunteers to sign up for shifts at NCTA’s conference table.
The General Meeting began at 2 PM. Yves welcomed the panel—Renate Chestnut, Robert Killingsworth, Paula Dieli and Karen Tkaczyk—and introduced each member with a summary of their respective biographies.
The veterans’ perspective
First to share her conference experiences was Renate Chestnut, the panel’s self-confessed “conference veteran.” Renate is a German freelance translator who attended her first ATA conference in 1988 and has been attending alternate years ever since.
A specialist in medical/pharmaceutical translations, Renate now enjoys most of all the social aspect. However, she was keen to stress the opportunity for making industry contacts. And she should know: one of the first contacts she made outside her freelance business was at an early ATA conference, and ultimately led to a position at the esteemed Monterey Institute of International Studies. Renate recommended attending as many sessions as possible and also praised the Job Exchange, which she said was a good way to see other people’s resumés and pick up tips.
Next to offer conference advice was Robert Kllingsworth, a freelance French-to-English translator who specializes in financial and business texts, and who will be presenting a session on “Getting the Terminology Right in Financial Translations” at this year’s conference. Another regular conference attendee, Bob attended his first ATA conference in 1996 and has missed only two since.
While little direct business has come Bob’s way from the conferences, he has found them enormously beneficial in terms of getting to know fellow translators. Of the contacts he has made over the years, many have been translators he had interacted with only in online forums. Bob also reminded audience members who are ATA certified that the conference is a valuable way of accumulating continuing education points.
For Paula Dieli, this year’s conference will be her fourth. Paula’s background is in IT, and at the time of her first ATA conference she was considering leaving her job as a software engineer to become a full-time translator. She therefore viewed the conference as a chance to explore the field of translation before deciding whether to go into it permanently.
By her third conference, Paula was working full-time in translation. Her advice to first-time delegates: be prepared for some serious networking, have plenty of business cards and resumés, practice a 30-second self-introduction in front of the mirror, and introduce yourself to as many people as possible. She also recommended sitting in on sessions that are “different.”
Thoughts of a newbie
Last to share her thoughts on attending the conference was Karen Tkaczyk, who translates from French into English in the highly specialized field of chemistry and its industrial applications, and whose experi¬ence comes from last year’s event in New Orleans.
The New Orleans conference met some of Karen’s expectations, failed to meet others, and exceeded some she didn’t know she had! The orientation and general business advice sessions were particularly helpful, she found, and the opportunity to network with colleagues was an excellent way to build relationships. Like the other panel members, Karen enthused about some of the sessions she had attended that were outside her area of interest.
Q&A—and a winner!
Before beginning the Q&A session, a ticket was drawn for the door prize of a free conference pass. The lucky winner was Norma Kaminsky.
The Q&A session turned out to be an opportunity for audience members to share their own tips, such as checking to make sure publicized sessions are still going ahead (cancellations and substitutions are not uncommon) and not being afraid to walk out of a session if it does not live up to expectations.
Before the meeting wrapped up and Naomi reminded everyone of the events NCTA would be organizing during the conference, each panel member was presented with a fancy box of Joseph Schmidt chocolates. The ATA conference: how sweet it can be.
By Stafford Hemmer with Barbara Guggemos
The NCTA General Meeting took place on May 12th at San Francisco’s LGBT Center. The event featured a few familiar elements, from new member orientation to our traditional networking and schmoozing, as well as an extraordinary guest speaker, renowned linguist Geoffrey Nunberg.
As at each General Meeting, the main event was preceded by new member orientation, this time coordinated by Board Director Naomi Baer. Then, NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainen officially called the meeting to order at 1:45 with opening announcements about the association’s upcoming workshops and events, and particular focus on the year’s major event: The 48th Annual ATA Conference in San Francisco.
NCTA Wants You!
Tuomas and Vice President Yves Avérous outlined the results of a February brainstorming session hosted by NCTA Member Christine Lemor-Drake, involving 18 member volunteers. Because NCTA will be the host chapter of this year’s conference, both officers encouraged all NCTA members to consider volunteering, to help the association implement its many ideas and fulfill its host responsibilities once the conference starts on October 31st.
Yves also announced the launch of NCTA’s very own wiki site, which will be a nexus of information for all ATA conference participants. The site was warmly received by meeting attendees, and both officers encouraged members to submit contributions and ideas to the site. In addition, as the host chapter, NCTA will have its own information table staffed at all times during the conference. So, both officers encouraged attendees —and all NCTA members—to contact any board member if interested in participating in the ATA conference on behalf of NCTA in some capacity, and especially to help staff the NCTA table. Working the table is also a great way to connect with old friends, meet new colleagues and network with potential clients—while helping the chapter at the same time.
Nunberg on language
NCTA member Francisco Hulse kindly delivered an introduction to his very own Spanish pupil and celebrated linguist, Geoffrey Nunberg, as our featured guest speaker. An adjunct full professor at UC Berkeley, linguist, researcher and consulting professor at Stanford University, regular contributor to National Public Radio (including Fresh Air with Terry Gross), Geoffrey Nunberg addressed our general meeting with refreshing insights into the intersection of language and politics, with wit and impeccable expertise.
Nunberg intended to “talk as a linguist about ‘language attitudes,’ and what linguists do that bear on this.” He asked attendees to contemplate a recent report from the BBC on the world’s most difficult word to translate, the Tshiluba word ilunga, which means “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.” The word gave Nunberg a perfect foil for the linguistic equation that he explored in the rest of his presentation: does language “x” have no word for the concept “y”? How do interpreters and translators convey, or fail to convey, the proper meaning in the absence of an available foreign language correlate?
Language and nation
For instance, it may be a “false, misleading or irrelevant” endeavor to explore the notion that German has no corresponding word for “humor,” or that Arabic needs a “companion,” or that Russian is bound by a lack of “freedom.” Yet historically, this tendency fostered a “romantic nationalism” and a sense of identity intrinsically tied to the “geist” of the language, time, geography and its people. As the English language spread to other parts of the British Empire, people wanted to find a unifying theme, which yielded, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary.
A similar situation arose in the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s: With waves of immigration, laws were passed to restrict use of the immigrants’ languages. Nebraska restricted foreign language study until 9th grade, for example. Iowa voters had to read the constitution in order to cast a ballot. A most recent wave of language restrictions in the 1980s and 1990s was accompanied by claims that English was the guardian of democratic ideals. These claims, which were also made in literature, were based on the idea that, as Nunberg put it, “only if you have the words can you have the concepts, and hence the embodiment of national ideals and identity.” If a language doesn’t have a word for a concept, then the concept cannot be understood.
This idea can be traced to the Yale linguist Benjamin Whorf, who argued that humans organize nature in their minds by assigning terms. According to Whorf, language lays down a grid, and its speakers cannot think outside of that grid. But Nunberg disputes this notion, saying it cannot be proved experimentally. Moreover, the opposite can be proved: As evidence that people are capable of thinking outside the categories of their language, Nunberg notes that English does not have a one-word translation for German Schadenfreude, but English speakers nevertheless unquestionably understand the concept of malicious joy at someone else’s misfortune.
Word association
Differences in the ways languages categorize nature can pose problems for translators. In English, a single verb can describe both a manner of motion and a change in location. Sentences such as, “She danced down the stairs” are hard to translate into Romance languages, because Romance languages categorize motion differently. Two verbs are needed in Spanish to convey the exact meaning of the English sentence. Often, one verb is left out in the translation.
Word associations also present problems for translators: For example, when the English term “empowerment” is translated into German, a dictionary search might turn up the German word Ermächtigung. From the dictionary definition, Ermächtigung would appear to be a very close translation, but actually it is not because the two words have vastly different associations. “Empowerment,” a term from the US civil rights movement, has such positive associations for Americans that it has been appropriated by right wing conservatives in the USA. Ermächtigung, on the hand, has very negative connotations for Germans, who associate it with the events of 1933 that brought Hitler to power.
Another example is “ownership society.” Half the time, translations keep this term in English. When “ownership” is translated with a term meaning something like “stakeholder,” the English meaning is not conveyed because of different associations.
Theme words
There are certain theme words in every political society. In the U.S., every political issue is framed in terms of “freedom.” Roosevelt’s “economic freedom” meant freedom to do something, but in the editorial pages of newspapers on both right and left, “freedom” means freedom from government interference. Other societies have different theme words with symbolic significance that cannot be easily rendered in another language. “Freedom” in a sense is untranslatable.
Q&A
Dr. Nunberg wrapped up his presentation with a question and answer period with the audience. Here are just a few highlights:
• The fact that English “just” and French “juste” are descended from the same Latin word us irrelevant to their current usage. Each language has had plenty of time to evolve separate meanings for both words.
• According to Chomsky, recursion is the characteristic feature of human language. When speakers of different languages marry and speak a pigeon language, within one generation relative clauses develop: This is the paper. Jack read the paper. –> This is the paper that Jack read. The pigeon language has turned into a creole.
• Comments on “homeland” vs. “nation” and “country”: Traditionally, English has not had any word for “nation” or “country” that has the same connotations as “la patrie” or “das Vaterland.” “Homeland” as in “homeland security” borrows from the European concept of Vaterland. It suggests that nationality is a matter of blood relationships.
• Recommended authors/books for translators:
1) Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct (refutes Whorf’s theories)
2) Daniel Slobin
• Machine translation is enormously better than it was 20 years ago, but nobody notices because it still only gets 20% right. Proponents currently estimate that it will be 25 years before it machine translation becomes practical. Twenty years ago, the estimate was 25 years as well, so not much has changed.
After a short, but informative Q&A session with the audience that closed Dr. Nunberg’s presentation, the general meeting ended with a brief round of networking and schmoozing.
By Raffaella Buschiazzo
A particularly eclectic lineup of events greeted attendees at the February General Meeting. From discussions of amendments to praise (and requests!) for volunteers to the appearance of a special guest—and these were not even our main subjects—the meeting provided information and inspiration to all.
The NCTA General Meeting that took place on February 10 at The Center was particularly rich in events and information. We also had a special guest attending, ATA President Marian Greenfield. NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainen opened the meeting at 1:45 pm with an announcement of the association’s upcoming events and workshops. He then called for volunteers, stressing the importance of their role in an association that currently counts over 600 corporate and individual members.
Because NCTA is the most active ATA chapter, with more workshops and events than any other, it needs more volunteers to help the board organize these activities. This year, NCTA will have an even busier slate of activities than usual because the ATA annual conference will be held in San Francisco from October 31 to November 3. As the local chapter we will provide ATA with our support in organizing what we are sure will be another great conference. This requires, though, even more volunteers to gather information in advance and to help with shifts at the NCTA table during the conference.
Tuomas and NCTA Vice President Yves Avérous continued the presentation by thanking a long list of volunteers whose contribution to the Association and Translorial was extremely important in 2006. Marian Greenfield underlined the importance of serving as a volunteer. She said that doing work for the association allows volunteers to receive a bit of well-deserved recognition. She is a good example herself, having been on the ATA board for 10 years and a freelancer since 2001. She said that the extent of her marketing is the Association.
Recognized members
NCTA gave awards to three members who distinguished themselves by their zeal and good work for the association: Barbara Guggemos received a lifetime honorary membership for her four years as Treasurer and several years as a very active volunteer; Brigitte Reich received a one-year honorary membership for her great contributions as Webmaster and her willingness to help out over the years; and Afaf Steiert was awarded Volunteer of the Year for her personal initiative in organizing a monthly NCTA lunch for all of 2006, and also received a one-year honorary membership.
The Board proposed an amendment to the NCTA bylaws which was approved by a majority of the audience (37 votes for and two votes against). The amendment will modify the length of the grace period, if a member’s dues are not paid, from three months to one. This will make it easier to administer our new membership system, which switches from a calender year to rolling renewals.
After the amendment discussion, the final vote count for the annual board election was ready, and Tuomas introduced newly elected board members Alison Dent (85 votes), Michael Schubert (109 votes), Raffaella Buschiazzo (118 votes), Yves Avérous (123 votes), and himself (131 votes). Afaf Steiert, the sixth candidate, got 53 votes. The five elected members will serve on the Board for two years.
Tax Presentation
The highlight of the meeting was a presentation on an excruciating topic: taxes. Elizabeth Shwiff, a CPA in the firm of Shwiff, Levy & Polo, LLP, has been in the public accounting business for over sixteen years. Now, as Senior Partner in the firm, she focuses mainly on the company’s business development aspects. Among her many talents, Elizabeth speaks fluent Russian and German. She has years of experience in due diligence and fraud investigation.
Elizabeth started her presentation by gathering some information from the audience. Along with information that our members provided in a pre-meeting survey, she was able to offer many practical examples of what translators can deduct on their tax returns (from gasoline to an office space in their home), how they can keep their books efficiently, and how they can be prepared in case they get audited.
She explaned how to do taxes in today’s environment, and how to deal with very complicated terminology. Elizabeth provided important tips such as keeping tax-related papers for three years and having a calendar on which to write down all expenses. After the meeting she stayed around to individually answer questions from members. Thanks to her enthusiasm, the presentation on this painful subject was extremely lively and full of humor. Thank you, Elizabeth!
Winners all around
Before concluding another successful general meeting, there was a drawing for a $150 gift certificate for services at Shwiff, Levy & Polo, LLP, won by Stacey Ramirez. We ended with a delicious buffet of refreshments, organized for the first time with the help of new member and new volunteer Paula Dieli, who is supporting me in this task.3
By Raffaella Bushiazzo
Almost sixty people attended our General Meeting on December 2nd, “… the last event of a great year,” in the words of Vice President Yves Avérous. We closed 2006 with 56 corporate members and 507 individuals, for whom we provided a variety of workshops, presentations on practical topics, Happy Hours all over the Bay Area, and other social events.
NCTA President Tuomas Kostiainenopened the General Meeting at 1:30 with a few announcements on upcoming events and introduced the candidates for NCTA board elections: himself for President, Yves Avérous for Vice President, and Raffaella Buschiazzo, Afaf Steiert, Alison Dent, and Michael Schubert for Directors. Those elected will serve on the board of directors for two years.
PDF and Conversion Software
Representatives from three different companies participated in this presentation. Dealing with PDF files is problematic for translators. When we receive source files in this format, we need to convert them to a format in which the text can be edited. There are some conversion programs on the market that work pretty well, while others don’t. In this session we tried to present the best solutions available today.
Joel Geraci, who has been working for Adobe Systems (www.adobe.com), maker of Adobe Acrobat, in a variety of roles for as long as the company has been around, opened by explaining that Adobe Acrobat was designed as a publishing tool. It was not meant to be used for extraction of text and it is not a data interchange application. Even though the new Adobe 8 handles files far better than previous versions because of its improved optical character recognition (OCR), the product was still not originally conceived for this purpose.
ABBYY (www.abbyyusa.com), maker of PDF Transformer and FineReader, is an OCR company that specializes in converting images into text. Ilya Evdokimov, Business Development Manager at ABBYY USA, showed us how its main product, PDF Transformer, works. In three simple steps, by pushing three buttons on a screen, the program converts PDF files into editable files and reproduces the original PDF page layout. The accuracy is up to 99%, which can become 100% with good quality documents. PDF Transformer is currently available in 177 languages.
The third speaker was Robert Weideman from Nuance Communications (www.nuance.com), maker of OmniPage and PDF Converter. He presented PDF Converter Professional, which is a full PDF client application. This product simplifies the process even further because it opens a PDF file directly without having to export it. Once opened, the PDF file is ready to be edited. Another advantage of this product is that captions and graphs can also be edited. It is also able to read a PDF file aloud thanks to its text-to-speech technology function. Mr. Weideman presented another useful piece of software called FormTyper, especially designed to fill the fields of forms in PDF files. He specified that it is a good companion program to Adobe Acrobat.
The discussion continued with a long and prolific Q&A session during which the audience raised very specific issues from their everyday professional experience in dealing with PDF files as translators. In one of the questions, Robert Killingsworth summarized in a couple of lines the translator’s dilemma: “As a translator all I need is a text!” However, if a PDF file is locked with a password, it is practically impossible to unlock it. Both ABBYY and Nuance Communications are careful to follow Adobe’s security policy to the letter. So, as translators, we may need to investigate other means to get at the source material necessary to do our job.
Other goodies
NCTA also provided the audience with copies of tips and suggestions from Jost Zetzsche’s Tool Kit. They were very helpful, as we have come to expect from Jost’s presentations.
The meeting ended by raffling off seven excellent products from our corporate presenters as prizes. The lucky NCTA members were Donald Couch, Ed Tsumura, Alison Dent, Sylvia Korwek, Raquel Brewer, Steve Goldstein, and Christian Rozotto. After the presentation we had a delicious buffet, and then worked as a team to stuff and stamp the December mailings to members as we networked and made plans for future projects and events.